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The February 1st Amnesty International report on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians broke a new ground. Amnesty became the first major international human rights organisationto state explicitly that since its establishment in 1948, Israel has always practiced apartheid against Palestinians living under its rule.

In the 211-page document entitled, Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity”, Amnesty provided the historical context  and documented “Israel’s institutionalised and systematic discrimination against Palestinians”  and its use of “attack” to maintain this system which “amounts to the crime against humanity of  apartheid”.

Amnesty pointed out that the Zionists who established Israel found that before 1948 Palestinians constituted  70 per cent of the population of the country and possessed 90 per cent of privately owned land while Jews were 30 per cent and owned only 6.5 per cent. Therefore, the Zionists transformed the situation in 1947-48 by displacing “in what amounted to ethnic cleansing” 800,000 of the 1.2 million indigenous Palestinians. The 150,000 who remained were granted citizenship but were placed under military rule until 1966 and have faced discrimination, dispossession and deprivation of the same rights accorded to Israeli Jews.

Since then, Amnesty stated, “Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining Jewish demographic hegemony and maximising its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis while minimising the number of Palestinians and restricting their rights and obstructing  their ability to challenge” this policy. After Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, the West  Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel drove another 350,000 Palestinians into Jordan and extended apartheid to the newly conquered territories.

Israel employs both its military and settlements to dominate the Palestinians, Amnesty argued, adding,

“All Israeli settlements in the [occupied Palestinian territories] are illegal under international law, regardless of their status under Israeli law.”

Amnesty summed up by saying that, while Palestinians “overwhelmingly regard themselves as Palestinian and have deep and shared political, ethnic, social and cultural ties” wherever they reside,  Israel “considers and treats Palestinians as an inferior non-Jewish racial group.”

During the four years Amnesty was assembling its well documented case, the Israeli human rights organisation, B’Tselem reported that Israel has imposed “Jewish supremacy” through apartheid in “all the territory it controls” the from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.  B’Tslem wrote on January 12, 2021, “The key tool Israel uses to implement the principle of Jewish supremacy is engineering space geographically, demographically and politically. Jews go about their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. In contrast, Palestinians live in a space that is fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights — given or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews.”

Human Rights Watch followed B’Tselem with a report, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”,  which contended that in the land inhabited by 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians, “Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies and statements by leading

Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”  This conclusion is a bit less forthright than that reached by B’Tselem andAmnesty.

All three reports have been roundly condemned by Israel and its loyal friends in high places and the organisations which published them stand accused of anti-Jewish racism.  But, this does not deflect from the gravamen of the charge of apartheid, which the state of Israel adopted  at its founding in 1948, the sameyear it was enforced in South Africa to formally separate whites and blacks.

It is significant that due to these three reports the word “apartheid” has finally gained respectable currency among organisations and individuals characterising the situation in Israel and the occupied territories although it has applied for nearly 74 years to the state of Israel.

While the Hebrew word, “hafrada”, meaning “separation”, is used to describe the policy adopted by the Israeli government towards the Palestinians, Israel objects to the application of the word “apartheid” which means “aparthood” because of its South African origin.  The cruel policy towards black Africans was designated as a crime under the 1973 Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid adopted by the UN General Assembly.

Apartheid has been applied to Israel but ignored for decades. Asa Winstanley, writing in Middle East Monitor on February 6th, revealed this designation was put forward as early as 1965 by Palestinian diplomat Fayez Sayegh who represented Kuwait at the UN. He wrote, “Whereas the Afrikaner apostles of apartheid in South Africa… brazenly proclaim their sin, the Zionist practitioners of apartheid in Palestine beguilingly protest their innocence.”   Sayegh’s reference to “Zionists” is appropriate because their colonists practiced apartheid long before the state emerged.

In a 2007 report, UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine John Dugard, a South African, stated, “elements of the Israeli occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law”. His successor Richard Falk also used apartheid to describe the situation in a 2014 document.

Rima Khalaf, executive director of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia  and under secretary general said a 2017 report drawn up by the Commission “clearly and frankly concludes that Israel is a racist state that has established an apartheid system that persecutes the Palestinian people.”

In 2020, Yesh Din, another Israeli human rights organisation, said that Israeli treatment  of the West Bank Palestinian population amounts to apartheid as defined by international statutes.

More timid organisations and personalities dared to use this characterisation in 2021 after the Human Rights Watch report appeared.  An opinion poll released in August 2021 found that 65 per cent of academic experts on the Middle East described Israel as a “one-state reality akin to apartheid”. Seven months earlier, the figure was 59 per cent.

At the launch of this month’s Amnesty report, Secretary General Agnes Callamard stated,

“Governments who continue to supply Israel with arms and shield it from accountability at the UN are supporting a system of apartheid, undermining the international legal order and exacerbating the suffering of the Palestinian people. The international community must face up to the reality of Israel’s apartheid, and pursue the many avenues to justice which remain shamefully unexplored.”

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Americans use the slang “lockstep” recalling a characteristic trait of their prisons of the 19th century when inmates had to shuffle step due to the chain that linked their legs. But the US President Joe Biden used that powerful evocative metaphor to convey on Monday that his country and Germany are aligned on fighting any Russian aggression in Ukraine. 

“Germany is one of America’s closest allies,” he said, adding the two nations were “working lockstep” to address the alleged Russian aggression. Biden was speaking ahead of his bilateral meeting with new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House. 

For Russia, “lockstep” is a horrific 20th century metaphor that harks back to Nazi Germany. Disregarding the pejorative tone, Biden casually tossed it around to drive home German-American solidarity and discipline. Scholz simply responded, “I’m looking forward to working closely together with you.” Scholz said the US is one of Germany’s “closest allies.” 

Much has been made out of Scholz’s reluctance to mention the Nord Steam 2 project at this joint press conference with Biden. But did it really matter? Biden spoke for him, suggesting firmly that the Nord Stream 2 issue should not get in the way of ties with Germany. 

Indeed, Biden, who’s been a leading figure in American foreign policy for nearly half a century, recognises the delicate politics Scholz is facing with the project. He also knows Scholz is new to his job and is unable to unite the transatlantic alliance in a response to Russia, as his predecessor Angela Merkel would have. 

Overall, Biden has reason to feel pleased that the relations between the US and its European allies are strong despite apparent  disagreements on certain aspects of a response to Russia. Fundamentally, the alliance agrees that a Russian military intervention in Ukraine cannot go unchecked. 

Washington is also not losing sleep over the French-led talks with Russia and sees President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to engage with the Kremlin as a way to amplify France — and therefore himself — as a more influential player than Biden or Boris Johnson. Macron is only two months away from the presidential election where he seeks a second term. 

After the visit to Moscow, Macron traveled to Kyiv on Tuesday. He told reporters that “the next few days will be decisive and will require intensive discussions which we will pursue together.” But Moscow cannot be in two minds that when the chips are down, the US’ allies will inevitably line up behind Biden, as history testifies. 

The unknown unknown, if at all, is how the allies might react if the Russian intervention were to fall short of a large scale military move and is limited to, say, an operation confined to the Donbass region of Ukraine. This probably explains why Scholz would not publicly commit on the future of Nord Stream 2 pipeline.  

The CNN speculated that Scholz would have reached some sort of understanding with Biden. The point is, German economy is closely tied to Russia’s, and scrapping the Nord Steam 2 could hit it hard as well as Scholz’s political standing.

At such a sensitive juncture, it is also part of Washington’s tool box to confuse Moscow by playing the good cop, bad cop. The so-called Berlin Declaration of the Weimar Triangle between Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday called on Russia “to de–escalate the situation at the Ukrainian border and engage in a meaningful dialogue on security on the European continent.” 

It said,

“France, Poland and Germany express willingness to engage constructively in meaningful and result–oriented discussions on security issues of mutual concern.” Yet, it added, “In line with the Alliance’s dual–track approach the leaders agreed that the Alliance needs to continuously keep its deterrence and defence posture under review and be ready to adapt as necessary to a further deterioration of the security environment, including in the framework of NATO’s enhanced forward presence.” 

The moribund Weimar Triangle’s sudden appearance can only confirm Moscow’s suspicion that Washington is playing games. While Germany and France have so far opted for a more diplomatic approach towards Russia and continuously emphasised the need to resume dialogue with Moscow, Poland has taken a tougher stance. The trilateral format is a clumsy attempt to recalibrate Europe’s approach to the Kremlin. 

Clearly, Russia is being wooed by such diverse quarters in the West, in different permutations and combinations. British Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss is landing in Moscow on Thursday and Scholz himself next Tuesday. But on the core issues as such, namely, NATO’s rollback and Russia’s security demands, there is no movement.

In fact, none of these countries — UK, France, Germany or Poland — is even qualified to negotiate the core issues with Russia. At best, they can provide an “exit route” for Russia to “de-escalate” by withdrawing troops far away from the Ukraine border, without loss of face. 

Frustration is building up in Moscow. The Foreign Ministry lashed out at Germany today calling it an “occupied state” where American ambassadors “are giving orders to German officials” and are “backed up by 30,000 American boots on the ground.” 

The Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova implied that Scholz caved in under US pressure. She said,

“Germany needs this gas not because they like Russia or want to please us – they just need it, it’s what feeds their economy, it’s a resource their industrial development hinges on, it’s what they need to live, basically… a vital issue.” 

Zakharova lamented that not only with Germany but with the rest of Europe too, it’s the same case. “There’s been no talk of any sovereign interests for a long time now,” as she put it. 

The timing of this outburst cannot be accidental. Certainly, it deliberately scattered the “feel-good” lingering in the air following Macron’s visit. Russia is not impressed that European leaders are making a beeline for Moscow. It sees a strategy to wear it down in inconsequential diplomatic gyrations. 

And, all this is while NATO is substantially building up its forces on Russia’s borders and continues to develop military infrastructure on adjacent territories. Also, the Russia-Ukraine relations are deteriorating with both sides massing large numbers of military personnel and equipment along their borders. 

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Featured image: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (L), French President Emmanuel Macron (C) and Polish President Andrzej Duda (R) met in Berlin on February 8, 2022 in the format of the so-called Weimar Triangle.  (Source: Jakub Szymczuk/KPRP)

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***

The Canadian “Freedom Convoy” started pulling into Ottawa January 29, 2022, gathering in front of the Parliament building. They have vowed to stay put until the Canadian government agrees to roll back all federal mandates, including the vaccine mandate and the vaccine passport

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tried to downplay the protest, referring to it as a “small fringe minority” of people “who hold unacceptable views” and don’t represent the views of Canadians

As the convoy descended on Ottawa, Trudeau moved out of his residence and then claimed to have contracted COVID and that he would remain in isolation for a week

Inspired and encouraged by the Canadian trucker movement, truckers in other countries are now organizing their own Freedom Convoys. In Europe, a European Freedom Convoy will meet up in Brussels, February 14, 2022, and remain there “until vaccination passports and associated restrictions are abolished” across the European Union

Australia also organized a Freedom Convoy to gather outside the Parliament House in Canberra, starting January 31, 2022, and in the U.S., American truckers are planning a DC Freedom Convoy

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Did you know there’s a massive trucker convoy protesting COVID jab mandates in Ottawa, Canada? You’re forgiven if you missed it, because this gigantic movement received very minimal coverage in the conventional press for the first week or so. Ditto for similar trucker protests forming in other countries, such as Australia and Germany.

The Canadian Freedom Convoy

The Canadian “Freedom Convoy” started pulling into Ottawa January 29, 2022, gathering in front of the Parliament building. According to The New York Times:¹

“The convoy was organized in response to a regulation, implemented this month, that requires truckers returning from the United States to show proof of vaccination. But it recent days, it has broadened to include Canadians critical of pandemic restrictions in general, and of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau …

Private cars and pickup trucks greatly outnumbered the heavy trucks that made up the convoy in its first days. Throughout Saturday, the vehicles clogged the streets in and around Parliament, most of them bearing flags or signs denouncing public health measures related to the pandemic.

Thousands of protesters on foot, many carrying handmade signs on hockey sticks, wandered through the parked vehicles and the slow-moving traffic or gathered on the lawn in front of Parliament … Few people appeared to be following Ontario’s rules requiring social distancing and masks at crowded, outdoor gatherings …

Several Canadian news outlets reported that Mr. Trudeau and his family had been moved out of their official residence by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as a precaution.”

Trudeau Shows His True Colors

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau initially tried to downplay the protest, referring to it as a “small fringe minority” of people “who hold unacceptable views” and don’t represent the views of Canadians. It boggles the mind to think how rapidly our countries have spiraled into authoritarianism where the very idea of freedom is now “unacceptable.”

We can’t be surprised, however. It’s no secret that the World Economic Forum, which is leading the technocratic takeover of the whole world, has penetrated the cabinet of Trudeau and many other countries. WEF head and founder Klaus Schwab admitted it in 2017.²

Once this “fringe minority” descended on Ottawa, however, Trudeau ran. Not only was he escorted out of his official residence, as reported by The New York Times, he’s also said to have tested positive for COVID and will be in isolation for a week.³

Countless videos illustrate just how out of touch Trudeau’s comments are, and that’s putting it kindly. Along highways and overpasses, in the city and outside of it, Canadians have gathered in astounding numbers to cheer the truckers on, everywhere thanking them for taking up this peaceful fight for freedom.

While the actual number of trucks involved is still unknown, it seems reasonable to assume it’s in the thousands. According to Local 12 News,⁴ the convoy could be a “world-record setter” in terms of its size — an estimated 70 kilometers or some 43.5 miles.

The truckers have vowed to stay put until the Canadian government agrees to roll back all federal mandates, including the vaccine mandate and the vaccine passport.⁵

In the video above, Jimmy Dore plays an interview with Benjamin Dichter, one of the organizers of the Freedom Convoy, who describes how Canada has already rolled out previously unknown technology that scans and reads a trucker’s passport and vaccine status on approach, without them actually having to show any papers or display their vaccine QR code on their phone.

Their cell phones pop up automatically on the border agent’s screen as they approach the station, and the cell phone is automatically linked to the driver’s passport and vaccine card, which are also displayed automatically.

So much for right to medical privacy! The secret surveillance and tracking we’ve been warning about is here, or at the least at the Canadian border. The question is, where else it might be deployed without our knowledge?

Google Runs Is Part and Parcel of the Surveillance State

For years, I’ve warned people about the creeping surveillance state, of which Google is a significant part. If you still haven’t ditched Google products from your life (which include Android), now’s a good time to start. In early 2020, I interviewed Robert Epstein, Ph.D., who for the last decade has helped expose Google’s manipulative and deceptive practices. As noted by Epstein, Google’s powers pose three very specific threats to society:

In his article⁶ “Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy,” Epstein outlines his recommendations for protecting your privacy while surfing the web, most of which don’t cost anything.

Vaxxed or Unvaxxed — People Want Freedom

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Jimmy Dore as we both grew up in a poor neighborhood in Chicago and I love his humor. But for the record, while Dore tells his audience that the COVID jab will protect you from severe illness and death, I disagree. Mounting evidence suggests it might actually destroy your natural immune function, especially after the third dose.

Be that as it may, Dore rightfully states that being against mandates and vaccine passports isn’t a cause restricted to the unvaccinated. He, Dichter and countless others who have received the jab did so because they wanted to protect themselves, but they’re not willing to give up their freedoms and live in a totalitarian state.

A Political Tsunami

The good news is that, for whatever reason, the Canadian Freedom Convoy has captured the attention and hearts of the global population — even with mainstream media ignoring and/or minimizing it for days. As noted by Ron Paul in the Liberty Report above, it’s turning into “a political tsunami.”

Truck driver is one of the most common jobs in North America, and perhaps around the world, which might explain the wide appeal of this movement, and how news of it spread so rapidly and organically despite media blackouts and social media censorship. Another reason is probably because people recognize the leverage truckers as a group have.

For example, nearly 70% of all goods freight transported annually in the U.S. are delivered by truck.⁷In Canada, that percentage is closer to 90%.⁸ When thousands of truck drivers stop delivering goods and instead honk their air horns outside a government building, the effects are bound to rapidly become noticeable in the form of empty shelves.

Anyone tired of living in Orwellian dystopia recognizes that this kind of leverage over the political class is far more significant than people marching in the streets with signs — which is what Europeans have been doing every weekend for months on end, to no avail.

The Rise of Global Freedom Convoys

Inspired and encouraged by the Canadian trucker movement, truckers in other countries are now organizing their own Freedom Convoys.⁹ In Europe, a European Freedom Convoy will meet up in Brussels, February 14, 2022, and remain there “until vaccination passports and associated restrictions are abolished” across the European Union.^10,11

Australia also rapidly started organizing a Freedom Convoy to gather outside the Parliament House in Canberra, starting January 31, 2022.^12,13 Within days, the Official Convoy to Canberra Facebook page had gathered 170,400 members.¹⁴ Facebook has now removed the group.

In the U.S., American truckers are planning a DC Freedom Convoy. Facebook was quick in deleting their page, though — a move its organizers blasted as “Censorship at its finest.” As reported by Fox News:¹⁵

“The group, titled ‘Convoy to D.C. 2022,’ acted as a place for truckers to plan and coordinate their trek from California to Washington, D.C. Jeremy Johnson, who set up the Facebook group, said his personal account was also removed, prompting him to contact a civil rights attorney to discuss the next steps …

[Mike] Landis, a trucker involved in the freedom convoy, told host Carley Shimkus that this movement is ‘a long time coming.’ He said Americans are tired of the ‘government overreach’ and criticized politicians for, as he believes, not following the Constitution.

‘The presence of that amount of people that show that they are unhappy with what’s going on is a good way to hopefully get their attention,’ he said. Johnson and Brase anticipate a wide range of Americans, not only truckers, will come out to support their cause.

‘This crosses all genders, all races, all sexual orientations, all occupations,’ Brase said. ‘Truckers might be standing up, but it’s not about the truckers. It’s about America.’ The group’s goal is to end vaccine mandates through peaceful protests. ‘The government needs to really take a look at what the American people want,’ Johnson said. ‘And they don’t want mandates.'”

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Notes

¹ New York Times January 29, 2022 (Archived)

² Twitter Mercola January 31, 2022

³ The Truth About Cars January 31, 2022

⁴ Local 12 News January 28, 2022

⁵ Fox News February 2, 2022

⁶ Medium March 17, 2017

⁷ TruckInfo Trucking Statistics

⁸ Canada Statistics Commodity Flows

⁹ Blog.weaccuse.org January 28, 2022

¹⁰ Twitter European Freedom Convoy 2022

¹¹ Twitter James Melville January 28, 2022

¹² National Times Australia February 1, 2022

¹³ Wentworth Report January 30, 2022

¹⁴ Facebook 2022 Official Convoy to Canberra

¹⁵ Fox News February 2, 2022, US truckers slam Facebook for removing page organizing DC freedom convoy: ‘Censorship at its finest’

Featured image is from The Last Refuge

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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Understandably enough, commentaries on the crisis between Russia and the West tend to dwell on Ukraine. After all, more than 100,000 Russian soldiers and a fearsome array of weaponry have now been emplaced around the Ukrainian border. Still, such a narrow perspective deflects attention from an American strategic blunder that dates to the 1990s and is still reverberating.

During that decade, Russia was on its knees. Its economy had shrunk by nearly 40%, while unemployment was surging and inflation skyrocketing. (It reached a monumental 86% in 1999.) The Russian military was a mess. Instead of seizing the opportunity to create a new European order that included Russia, President Bill Clinton and his foreign-policy team squandered it by deciding to expand NATO threateningly toward that country’s borders. Such a misbegotten policy guaranteed that Europe would once again be divided, even as Washington created a new order that excluded and progressively alienated post-Soviet Russia.

The Russians were perplexed — as well they should have been.

At the time, Clinton and company were hailing Russian President Boris Yeltsin as a democrat. (Never mind that he had lobbed tank shells at his own recalcitrant parliament in 1993 and, in 1996, prevailed in a crooked election, abetted weirdly enough by Washington.) They praised him for launching a “transition” to a market economy, which, as Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich so poignantly laid out in her book Second Hand Time, would plunge millions of Russians into penury by “decontrolling” prices and slashing state-provided social services.

Why, Russians wondered, would Washington obsessively push a Cold War NATO alliance ever closer to their borders, knowing that a reeling Russia was in no position to endanger any European country?

An Alliance Saved from Oblivion

Unfortunately, those who ran or influenced American foreign policy found no time to ponder such an obvious question. After all, there was a world out there for the planet’s sole superpower to lead and, if the U.S. wasted time on introspection, “the jungle,” as the influential neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan put it, would grow back and the world would be “imperiled.” So, the Clintonites and their successors in the White House found new causes to promote using American power, a fixation that would lead to serial campaigns of intervention and social engineering.

The expansion of NATO was an early manifestation of this millenarian mindset, something theologian Reinhold Niebuhr had warned about in his classic book, TheIrony of American History. But who in Washington was paying attention, when the world’s fate and the future were being designed by us, and only us, in what Washington Post neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer celebrated in 1990 as the ultimate “unipolar moment” — one in which, for the first time ever, the United States would possess peerless power?

Still, why use that opportunity to expand NATO, which had been created in 1949 to deter the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact from rolling into Western Europe, given that both the Soviet Union and its alliance were now gone? Wasn’t it akin to breathing life into a mummy?

To that question, the architects of NATO expansion had stock answers, which their latter-day disciples still recite. The newly born post-Soviet democracies of Eastern and Central Europe, as well as other parts of the continent, could be “consolidated” by the stability that only NATO would provide once it inducted them into its ranks. Precisely how a military alliance was supposed to promote democracy was, of course, never explained, especially given a record of American global alliances that had included the likes of Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos, Greece under the colonels, and military-ruled Turkey.

And, of course, if the denizens of the former Soviet Union now wanted to join the club, how could they rightly be denied? It hardly mattered that Clinton and his foreign policy team hadn’t devised the idea in response to a raging demand for it in that part of the world. Quite the opposite, consider it the strategic analog to Say’s Law in economics: they designed a product and the demand followed.

Domestic politics also influenced the decision to push NATO eastward. President Clinton had a chip on his shoulder about his lack of combat credentials. Like many American presidents (31 to be precise), he hadn’t served in the military, while his opponent in the 1996 elections, Senator Bob Dole, had been badly injured fighting in World War II. Worse yet, his evasion of the Vietnam-era draft had been seized uponby his critics, so he felt compelled to show Washington’s power brokers that he had the stomach and temperament to safeguard American global leadership and military preponderance.

In reality, because most voters weren’t interested in foreign policy, neither was Clinton and that actually gave an edge to those in his administration deeply committed to NATO expansion. From 1993, when discussions about it began in earnest, there was no one of significance to oppose them. Worse yet, the president, a savvy politician, sensed that the project might even help him attract voters in the 1996 presidential election, especially in the Midwest, home to millions of Americans with eastern and central European roots.

Furthermore, given the support NATO had acquired over the course of a generation in Washington’s national security and defense industry ecosystem, the idea of mothballing it was unthinkable, since it was seen as essential for continued American global leadership. Serving as a protector par excellence provided the United States with enormous influence in the world’s premier centers of economic power of that moment. And officials, think-tankers, academics, and journalists — all of whom exercised far more influence over foreign policy and cared much more about it than the rest of the population — found it flattering to be received in such places as a representative of the world’s leading power.

Under the circumstances, Yeltsin’s objections to NATO pushing east (despite verbal promises made to the last head of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, not to do so) could easily be ignored. After all, Russia was too weak to matter. And in those final Cold War moments, no one even imagined such NATO expansion. So, betrayal? Perish the thought! No matter that Gorbachev steadfastly denounced such moves and did so again this past December.

You Reap What You Sow

Russian President Vladimir Putin is now pushing back, hard. Having transformed the Russian army into a formidable force, he has the muscle Yeltsin lacked. But the consensus inside the Washington Beltway remains that his complaints about NATO’s expansion are nothing but a ruse meant to hide his real concern: a democratic Ukraine. It’s an interpretation that conveniently absolves the U.S. of any responsibility for ongoing events.

Today, in Washington, it doesn’t matter that Moscow’s objections long preceded Putin’s election as president in 2000 or that, once upon a time, it wasn’t just Russian leaders who didn’t like the idea. In the 1990s, several prominent Americans opposed it and they were anything but leftists. Among them were members of the establishment with impeccable Cold War credentials: George Kennan, the father of the containment doctrine; Paul Nitze, a hawk who served in the Reagan administration; the Harvard historian of Russia Richard Pipes, another hardliner; Senator Sam Nunn, one of the most influential voices on national security in Congress; Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a one-time U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense. Their warnings were all remarkably similar: NATO’s expansion would poison relations with Russia, while helping to foster within it authoritarian and nationalist forces.

The Clinton administration was fully aware of Russia’s opposition. In October 1993, for example, James Collins, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Russia, sent a cable to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, just as he was about to travel to Moscow to meet Yeltsin, warning him that NATO’s enlargement was “neuralgic to Russians” because, in their eyes, it would divide Europe and shut them out. He warned that the alliance’s extension into Central and Eastern Europe would be “universally interpreted in Moscow as directed at Russia and Russia alone” and so regarded as “neo-containment.”

That same year, Yeltsin would send a letter to Clinton (and the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) fiercely opposing NATO expansion if it meant admitting former Soviet states while excluding Russia. That would, he predicted, actually “undermine Europe’s security.” The following year, he clashed publicly with Clinton, warning that such expansion would “sow the seeds of mistrust” and “plunge post-Cold War Europe into a cold peace.” The American president dismissed his objections: the decision to offer former parts of the Soviet Union membership in the alliance’s first wave of expansion in 1999 had already been taken.

The alliance’s defenders now claim that Russia accepted it by signing the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. But Moscow really had no choice, being dependent then on billions of dollars in International Monetary Fund loans (possible only with the approval of the United States, that organization’s most influential member). So, it made a virtue of necessity. That document, it’s true, does highlight democracy and respect for the territorial integrity of European countries, principles Putin has done anything but uphold. Still, it also refers to “inclusive” security across “the Euro-Atlantic area” and “joint decision-making,” words that hardly describe NATO’s decision to expand from 16 countries at the height of the Cold War to 30 today.

By the time NATO held a summit in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, in 2008, the Baltic states had become members and the revamped alliance had indeed reached Russia’s border. Yet the post-summit statement praised Ukraine’s and Georgia’s “aspirations for membership,” adding “we agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” President George W. Bush’s administration couldn’t possibly have believed Moscow would take Ukraine’s entry into the alliance lying down. The American ambassador to Russia, William Burns — now the head of the CIA — had warned in a cable two months earlier that Russia’s leaders regarded that possibility as a grave threat to their security. That cable, now publicly available, all but foresaw a train wreck like the one we’re now witnessing.

But it was the Russia-Georgia war — with rare exceptions mistakenly presented as an unprovoked, Moscow-initiated attack — that provided the first signal Vladimir Putin was past the point of issuing protests. His annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, following an illegal referendum, and the creation of two “republics” in the Donbas, itself part of Ukraine, were far more dramatic moves that effectively initiated a second Cold War.

Averting Disaster

And now, here we are. A divided Europe, increasing instability amid military threats by nuclear-armed powers, and the looming possibility of war, as Putin’s Russia, its troops and armaments massed around Ukraine, demand that NATO expansion cease, Ukraine be barred from the alliance, and the United States and its allies finally take Russia’s objections to the post-Cold War security order seriously.

Of the many obstacles to averting war, one is particularly worth noting: the widespread claim that Putin’s concerns about NATO are a smokescreen obscuring his true fear: democracy, particularly in Ukraine. Russia, however, repeatedly objected to NATO’s eastward march even when it was still being hailed as a democracy in the West and long before Putin became president in 2000. Besides, Ukraine has been a democracy (however tumultuous) since it became independent in 1991.

So why the Russian buildup now?

Vladimir Putin is anything but a democrat. Still, this crisis is unimaginable without the continual talk about someday ushering Ukraine into NATO and Kyiv’s intensifying military cooperation with the West, especially the United States. Moscow views both as signs that Ukraine will eventually join the alliance, which — not democracy — is Putin’s greatest fear.

Now for the encouraging news: the looming disaster has finally energized diplomacy. We know that the hawks in Washington will deplore any political settlement that involves compromise with Russia as appeasement. They’ll liken President Biden to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who, in 1938, gave way to Hitler in Munich. Some of them advocate a “massive weapons airlift” to Ukraine, à la Berlin as the Cold War began. Others go further, urging Biden to muster an “international coalition of the willing, readying military forces to deter Putin and, if necessary, prepare for war.”

Sanity, however, can still prevail through a compromise. Russia could settle for a moratorium on Ukrainian membership in NATO for, say, two decades, something the alliance should be able to accept because it has no plans to fast-track Kyiv’s membership anyway. To gain Ukraine’s assent, it would be guaranteed the freedom to secure arms for self-defense and, to satisfy Moscow, Kyiv would agree never to allow NATO bases or aircraft and missiles capable of striking Russia on its territory.

The deal would have to extend beyond Ukraine if it is to ward off crises and war in Europe. The United States and Russia would need to summon the will to discuss arms control there, including perhaps an improved version of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that President Trump ditched in 2019. They would also need to explore confidence-building measures like excluding troops and armaments from designated areas along the NATO-Russian borderlands and steps to prevent the (now-frequent) close encounters between American and Russian warplanes and warships that could careen out of control.

Over to the diplomats. Here’s wishing them well.

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Rajan Menon, a TomDispatch regular, is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations emeritus at the Powell School, City College of New York, director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities, and Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace at Columbia University. He is the author, most recently, of The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.

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The role of the Canadian media in this crisis. How it destroys people’s lives.

Kristen Nagle shames CBC workers in the streets of Ottawa.

CBC people have no heart.

This is a must watch.

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Video: Brian Peckford, Signatory of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, on Trudeau and the COVID-19 Mandates

By Brian Peckford, February 10, 2022

Watch Brian Peckford speaking to a crowd in December 2021 on Trudeau’s vaccine mandate and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Video: Trudeau Ripped for Labeling Protesters as ‘Nazis’ and ‘Fringe Minority’

By Fox Business, February 10, 2022

‘Freedom Convoy’s’ lead attorney Keith Wilson and former Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford call out the Canadian prime minister for characterizing the protesters as ‘Nazis’ and a ‘fringe minority.’

Video: The True Causes of The Environmental Crisis. Why and How Do Corporations Keep You Addicted to Fossil Fuels?

By Emanuel Pastreich, February 09, 2022

I have watched the sad sight of sincere high school students led by Greta Thunberg, or other climate activists, demanding of politicians that they change policies and receiving from those so-called “leaders” sorrowful apologies and inspiring promises only to discover, to their surprise, that absolutely nothing has changed after six months, or after a year.

World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leaders” Revealed

By Jacob Nordangard, February 09, 2022

Through its Young Global Leaders program, the World Economic Forum has been instrumental in shaping a world order that undermines all democratic principles. For several decades, this program has nurtured compliant leaders acting as WEF agents in governments around the world. The consequences are far-reaching and may turn out to be devastating for humanity.

The Truckers Take Abuse in Ottawa: COVID Crimes Committed Behind the Cover of “Emergency Measures”

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, February 09, 2022

In the name of a supposed health emergency, governments have assigned to themselves all sorts of new powers. This state of emergency was deemed to be a necessary requirement to facilitate the fight against the spread of the supposedly new coronavirus.

Insane: Austrian Government Authorizes Dystopian Vaccine Registry and Imposes COVID Restrictions Through January 2024 – Will Begin Pulling Drivers Over at Random and Fining Un-Boosted Citizens Next Month

By Julian Conradson, February 09, 2022

This week, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen imposed new Covid restrictions that require all adults in the country to be fully vaccinated and boosted or risk being fined. The new authoritarian law runs through January 31st, 2024, and will go into effect next month.

Austrians Being Stopped Randomly by Authorities and Forced to Prove They Are Vaccinated

By Steve Watson, February 09, 2022

After Austria became the first European country to mandate COVID vaccines for the ENTIRETY of its population, details have emerged on how the government plans to enforce the measure. Reports note that citizens will be stopped randomly in the street and pulled over in their vehicles and forced to comply with vaccine status checks by the ‘authorities.’

How Fact Checking Is Controlled and Faked

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, February 09, 2022

Prior to 2015 or 2016, you could still read what you wanted online without much interference. This has since changed, as propagandists have infiltrated the media and, along with other major players, like Big Tech and government, set out to control information. Fact-checking — a once-obscure term that’s since gone mainstream — is one part of the campaign to control what you see online, and therefore what you think and how you perceive reality — but it’s all a ruse.

History of World War II: The Japanese March Through Southern Malaya and to Singapore’s Outskirts, 80 Years Ago

By Shane Quinn, February 09, 2022

After the successful Japanese amphibious landings at Kota Bharu, northern British Malaya on 8 December 1941, in the 5 weeks that elapsed Tokyo’s forces had advanced more than 200 miles to capture the Malayan capital city, Kuala Lumpur, on 11 January 1942.

Slovakia: 1000s Protest U.S. Military Pact. Official Says Worse Than 1968 Soviet Deal

By Rick Rozoff, February 09, 2022

The U.S. securing air bases in Slovakia would mark the Pentagon and NATO already or soon having air bases in no less than nine former Warsaw Pact nations: Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Those are all the former Warsaw Pact countries in NATO except for the Czech Republic.

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Chris Sky of the people, for the people. Ottawa Freedom Rally, February 7, 2022.

Watch him speak to the freedom fighters in the video below.

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‘Freedom Convoy’s’ lead attorney Keith Wilson and former Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford call out the Canadian prime minister for characterizing the protesters as ‘Nazis’ and a ‘fringe minority.’

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Fist published on August 17, 2022

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Government officials said the program is “the electronic equivalent of a recognized proof-of-identity document,” such as a driver’s license or passport, which “confirms that ‘you are who you say you are’ in a digital context.”

The Canadian government, building on a partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF), is developing a new federal “Digital Identity Program.”

The aim of the new initiative is to develop a digital proof-of-identity document, which could be used across different systems and environments ranging from government services to airports and border control, according to Slay News.

Officials revealed details of the program in the government’s sprawling “Canada’s Digital Ambition 2022” report, published Aug. 4.

According to the report, the “Digital Identity Program” is part of Priority 2.2 of Canada’s “Digital Ambition,” which seeks to “build and use common solutions for digital service delivery.”

“Our next step in enabling digital government is adopting a ‘government as a platform’ service delivery model,” the report states. The federal Digital Identity Program is the “next step in making services more convenient to access.”

Officials said the program is “the electronic equivalent of a recognized proof-of-identity document,” such as a driver’s license or passport, which “confirms that ‘you are who you say you are’ in a digital context.”

According to the report, “The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for government services to be accessible and flexible in the digital age.”

However, Canada’s partnership with the WEF began prior to the pandemic. Under Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a member of the WEF’s Young Global Leaders program, Canada has since 2018 participated in the “Known Traveler Digital Identity” (KTDI) program, the WEF’s pilot program to develop a digital ID.

The WEF described KTDI as “the first global collaboration of its kind” that “brings together a global consortium of individuals, governments, authorities, and the travel industry to enhance security in world travel.”

Canadian government officials in 2018 stated the aim of the KTDI initiative was “to test emerging digital technologies and how they can improve security and the seamless flow of legitimate air travellers,” in light of an expected increase in air travelers globally from 1.2 to 1.8 billion by 2030.

2030 is the target year of the United Nations’ “Agenda 2030” and its “Sustainable Development Goals,” or SDGs.

The WEF characterized the KTDI program as “the disruptive innovation the global travel security ecosystem needs,” and as a “paradigm shift to an interoperable digital identity system that prioritises traveller-centricity, upholds privacy by design, and enables the trustful cooperation between international public and private sector partners required for ensuring the safe and secure movement of people across borders.”

According to the WEF,

“The KTDI pilot offers greater control over personal information, putting passengers in charge of when and how data is shared through a ‘traveller-managed digital identity.’”

Claims that individuals will have “greater control over personal information” are a common theme in such digital identity initiatives, including digital vaccine passports, as previously reported by The Defender.

The WEF in a 2019 press release explained how the KTDI is linked more broadly to government-issued identification documents of all stripes, stating that “KTDI is based on an interoperable digital identity, linked directly to government-issued identity documents,” through the use of “cryptography, distributed ledger technology and biometrics.”

The system “ensure[s] portability and … safeguard[s] the privacy of personal data,” while the digital ledger “provides an accurate, tamper-proof record of each traveller’s identity data and authorized transactions,” the press release stated.

Blockchain technology figures prominently in KTDI, with its primary function described as being to “cryptographically issue, revoke, and verify credential identifiers without the need of a centralized intermediary (like a certification authority).”

Using “identity data that is usually stored on a chip on a passenger’s passport,” this digital appwould be “securely stored and encrypted on [a] mobile device,” and is checked by authorities “using biometrics … without the need for a physical passport.”

The WEF press release and other documents don’t explain why the use of physical passports is now apparently burdensome and don’t specify whether the “identity data” that would be digitally stored would include vaccine credentials — in effect, an extension of vaccine passports.

Andrew Bud, CEO of biometric ID company iProove, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security contractor, recently described vaccine certificates as driving “the whole field of digital ID in the future,” adding they are “not just about COVID [but] about something even bigger” and that “once adopted for COVID [they] will be rapidly used for everything else.”

Under the KTDI program, passengers can establish a “known traveller status” over time by accumulating “attestations” from “trusted partners,” such as “border agencies and recognized airlines” — a feature that seemingly resembles “social credit score” systems currently being tested in China.

Also of interest are some of the WEF’s partners in the KTDI pilot program. They include:

• Amsterdam’s Schiphol International Airport, the site of major delays recently and where air traffic has been capped due to purported environmental concerns (the Netherlands is also part of the KTDI pilot program).
• Toronto-Pearson International Airport — which also saw major delays recently.
• Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, named after the current Canadian prime minister’s father, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and also the site of significant delaysthis past summer.

These partners are “supported” by the Irish-American information technology company Accenture, which helped Australia develop its digital vaccine passport system.

In turn, the idea for the KTDI was “initially conceptualized by a multi-stakeholder Working Group launched in 2015,” including several governments and entities such as Google, Visa, Marriott International, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the International Air Transport Association and INTERPOL.

Even though Canada has begun to loosen or eliminate some of the country’s COVID-19-related restrictions — among the world’s most restrictive over the past two-plus years — citizens and public officials continue to face penalties for violations of vaccine mandates and for refusing to use digital vaccine passports.

An Ontario councilor was docked 90 days’ worth of pay for allegedly violating her municipality’s vaccine mandate — specifically, by attending two council meetings in May without furnishing proof of vaccination against COVID-19. The penalty was levied even though the mandate in question has since been lifted.

And as recently reported by The Defender, in June, a Canadian doctor was fined $6,255 upon her return to the country, over her refusal to use the country’s ArriveCAN health information app.

According to Global Government Forum, Canada is one of eight countries that formed a working group for digital ID in 2020. The group also includes Australia, Finland, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, the Netherlands and the U.K.

Countries that have either implemented digital ID systems or are working on doing so include Estonia, Germany, the U.K. and Australia, as well as the EU.

Canadian government officials plan to launch public consultations on a digital ID framework for federal government services but have not yet announced when.

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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

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Excerpts: 

The Treasury Department this week reported that the total national debt of the United States surpassed $30 trillion for the first time in history, an amount equal to nearly 130% of America’s yearly economic output, known as gross domestic product. The eye-popping figure makes the U.S. one of the most heavily indebted nations in the world.

The federal debt has been high and rising for decades, but the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which involved massive infusions of cash into the U.S. economy, greatly accelerated its growth.

… While the $30 trillion figure, by itself, has no significant meaning, it may serve to focus attention on what some see as a major concern for the future health of the country.

The $30 trillion in outstanding debt is owed to a wide variety of creditors, including the federal government itself.

However, with the Federal Reserve poised to begin raising interest rates in an attempt to ward off rising inflation, the rate the Treasury has to pay on newly issued debt will likely rise, meaning that the overall cost of servicing the federal debt will likely go up in the relatively near future.

“$30 trillion in debt is an obscene number, but what’s even more depressing is the fact that most politicians in both parties don’t really care,” Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, said in a statement. “Someone is going to have to pay that money when these politicians are long gone, and — spoiler alert — it won’t be paid by them but instead by our kids.”

To read the full article on the VOA click here

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We live in times of the greatest civilisation transformation since the birth of capitalism and the greatest technological change since the dawn of industrial production.  But do we really catch all circumstances related?

Energy technologies as social constructs

To understand what is a social construct is in Foucault’s meaning we have to assume that our perception shapes social reality surrounding us.  So how we call and how we feel any phenomenon – in fact determines it.  Thus it should be noted that energy is that particular kind of good that allows people to satisfy their demand for other goods.  This positions both the demand for energy and energy technologies in a wider social and awareness context. 

We do not consume energy (only) for its own sake, e.g. in the form of heat – but it defines our position in relation to the entire consumption chain.

The way we perceive energy technologies often reflects our attitude to such recognised social constructs as the market, state, economical system, community, but also the perception of humanity and its place in the universe.  And in line with the dialectic of social constructionism – these are variational phenomena, undergoing transformations along with changes in the dominant trends of social awareness.

Although modern generations may find it hard to believe – the oil industry has presented itself and has been perceived not only as the avant-garde of modernity, but also as an outpost of egalitarianism.  The American Petroleum Institute commercials from the 1950s are easy to find – especially with the emblematic “Destination Earth” (1956).

Of course, today the story of the liberation of Mars from the tyranny of the Stalin-like emperor through the discovery of the blessed impact of oil refining – may be associated with another slogan, from a similar propaganda cuisine, saying that “DDT is so safe, that you can eat it” because “DDT is good for me-e-e!”.

However, today not only our ecological awareness is different – our consumer experiences also differ.

We are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Fordism, mass consumption and universal availability of almost everything is so obvious to us that some of us are worried about that.

For the post-war generations, however, none of this was obvious.  Not only in terms of the seasonality of agri-food production (typical even for the 1980s and 1990s), but also because limited availability of industrial goods from the era before the massification of plastics, which was also a consequence of the oil boom.  The World has been subjectively shrunken thanks to oil becoming the main energy resource, and global capitalism has gained the catalyst of its presumed endless development thanks to the continual increase in consumption.  And here is where the key feedback took place.

Capitalism to exist – needed an energy based on oil (and other fossil fuels), thanks to which it was possible to produce more and more, transport goods around the globe and sell more and more, constantly stimulating demand. Including, in particular, by constantly striving to improve one’s status, also expressed in the amount of individually consumed oil and its derivatives.

But such a boom also meant increased human-nature interaction.  Global hyperproduction and hyperconsumption, synonymous with the success of mankind in its supposedly “best period in history” – had an unprecedented impact on the climate, not only polluting the environment, but also leading to the threat of annihilation of life on Earth, as it was announced one day.  First, a few believed, then the slogan was picked up by those more and more influential.  That triggered a change of consciousness aimed at finding a new paradigm.  And the new consciousness needed a new social construct, also, and perhaps above all, in the energy sector.

Image on the right is from Pixabay

The dichotomy of the old and new paradigm was initially particularly visible in the antagonism of nuclear energy and the first proposals for renewable energy (RE) technologies.  The nuclear industry was perceived not only as potentially dangerous due to the possible effects of technological disasters, with the most emblematic example of Chernobyl. Nuclear power plants evoked negative social reactions in the Western world through their association with the nuclear arms race and the entire military-industrial complex, as well as the organisational formula clearly associated with great capital, top-down attitude, imposing the strenuous path of modernisation through industrialisation.  In the realities of the Eastern Bloc, where the effects, including the social ones, of Chernobyl, were felt even more strongly – opposition to nuclear technology was clearly oppositional.  Such a strongly counter-cultural character was, for example, the campaign conducted by ecologists and pacifists against the construction of a nuclear power plant in Żarnowiec, Poland.

Meanwhile, in opposition to the atom, a positive solution was searched for, which could at least aspire to the position of an energy alternative, and at the same time would reflect the social aspirations of the circles that were active in the 1970s and 1980s.  Renewable energy (initially mainly onshore, then also solar energy) was at this stage strongly associated with bottom-up attitude, self-sufficiency beyond the reach of large-scale industry and capital, dispersion and organic. Nuclear vs. renewable energy conflict had then this strongly conscious nature.  Supporters of the former identified it with order, free competition or a strong state (depending on their own preferences), progress and modernisation through industrialisation (depending on geopolitics – capitalist or real socialist). The opponents thus appeared as anarchists, hippies, and even neo-Luddites or potential “ecological terrorists”.

What is important – in fact, these early divisions, at least to some extent, influenced the very course of the energy transition in the countries where they occurred particularly clearly, such as in Germany.  The technological change was therefore associated with a paradigm shift, thanks to which, in Germany and Denmark, it was possible to maintain a more bottom-up, dispersed and communitarian nature of the renewable energy sector.  Interestingly, the contemporary clash between the social model associated with RE and its industrial opposite based on the atom also followed to some extent the path marked out in the 1970s and 1980s, while the role of the fictional Ventana and the real Chernobyl was repeated by Fukushima.

In California directing to the RE path was a response to the trauma of the Vietnam War, and kind of displacement of Ronald Reagan neoconservative governance and then his presidency.  Former hippies and beatniks, and their children after them, maybe they cut their hair and grabbed credit cards, but to buy Priuses and build smart houses powered by RE. Involvement on this side has become the expression and main manifestation of social participation.

Albeit more detailed studies bring an interesting imposition of the awareness of RE as a certain social concept – based on the classification by gender or education (although not by age).  So as we can see – reality confirms the weaving of energy technologies into existing and new social constructs.  The dominant social attitude may be a barrier to transformation, but in fact that is the committed minority that can be the catalyst for universal change.  Changes take place not only and not primarily with the formation of a new dominant paradigm and its universal acceptance, but through the coexistence and conflict of various constructs. That is, as Moscovici (1961) pointed formulating and implementing the assumptions of the Theory of Social Representation.

Also crises have a significant impact on our perception of energy technology as a socially active factor.  They are shock impulses that stimulate change by creating an image of the future.

A shock and opposite, the human ability to “adaptation and vulnerability”, in this case to a progressive climate crisis – both currently determine the social position of energy technologies.

Even despite some of their technical or performance weaknesses, which are no secrets at all. That is why this process must be bilateral, and the social implications must remain no less important than the technological ones also from the point of view of managers and engineers directly interested in implementing changes.

The oil-based energy technology was representative and itself co-created the reality of the Golden Age of post-war capitalism. 

Supplementing with nuclear energy corresponded to the dominant paradigm of the triumph of neoliberalism, the mirage of “Star Wars” and “the end of history” vision.  RE have not (yet?) brought the expected decentralisation, nor increased participation, and they still are not an undisputable tool for transition to post-growth.  On the contrary, like their predecessors, they have simply become tools of great capital, only under the cover of new social constructs, doctrines and ideologies, with profits for the same financial and industrial players as always.  This does not mean, however, that the process of transformation is over and that the RE as a social construct will not become the beginning of the end of the of capitalism as we know it, or even the end of capitalism itself.  After all, it is primarily a matter of our awareness and the ability to imagine the unimaginable.

Lock-in and path dependence

It could seem that we are dealing with a paradox.  Especially enthusiasts could doubt how technologies and projects associated with innovation and diversification could enter the path dependence and find themselves in a lock-in situation.  Thus similar to lock-in on carbon, the breaking of which is still a key element of the entire transition process.

This doubt, however, comes from a basic misunderstanding that technological, financial and social systems naturally tend to stasis, irrespective of the benefits of transient, possibly controlled gaps and shocks.  The risk of lock-in increases with the increase in the market position of a given technology. Including the recognition by the market of the prospects of its further development, of course in the sense of accelerating and increasing returns on investment.  Also states, as those entities which, in the case of energy policy, create a legal momentum for technological change – want to operate in a predictable and possibly planned environment that can be used in the rhythm of election campaigns.  Therefore the lock-in mechanism can by no means be considered a thing of the past as the carbon footprint is reduced.   But with all the negative connotations attached to it – lock-in is also a periodic stabilization within a path dependence and that how it should be analysed without prejudice.  Lock-in is sometimes chosen on purpose or is treated as inevitability, mainly due to the investment policy, the payback period, depreciation of assets etc.  This is i.a. why it was so difficult to break the coal lock-in – since the lifetime of coal-fired power plants was calculated on 40 years, and climate change announcement created social pressure for transition before the end of that period.  RE technologies, as still relatively young and developed in a distributed manner, should theoretically have a natural defence mechanism against lock-in.  However, because often they are introduced in a kind of shortcuts, due to the extraordinary situations, including external shocks – it leaves gaps for inertial tendencies.

Following the list of main lock-in mechanisms by Klitkou et al. (2015) – we must note that there is nothing to prevent them from occurring also with the development of the RE. When it comes to the economy of scale, for example, there is a sudden increase in the number of BEV cars.  Alternative technology based on hydrogen as less popular – is also less available.  And it is less available because it is less popular when BEV production is now closer to mass scale – so its consumers faced a typical lock-in risk of resources shortage, with lithium, nickel and cobalt instead of oil.   This, in turn, leads us to the economics of scope, in which the consumer himself is ready to reject diversity in the market, considering it excessive and burdensome.  And since it is produced and sold in a specific technology – learning effects are growing, also being an element introducing path dependence.   It is strengthened by the infrastructure created for the locked-in technology, the development of complementary technologies and, as a result increasing interest in informational returns.  An informal social norm takes shape, then a custom, then a tradition, all with a propensity for further reproduction. Especially when institutional actors, crucial in the case of energy technologies become more engaged, introducing an element of differentiation of power and institutions.

A very interesting case of lock-in stimulated by the German government policy of financial incentives was described by Haelg, Waelchi and Schmidt (2018) with the example of solar technologies: thin film vs. crystalline silicon.  The former dominates among larger installations, above 100 kW, especially open ones, while the latter have an advantage among roof installations.  So diversity has been preserved – one could question.  The problem is that it depends on the adopted research perspective, and simultaneously confirms the susceptibility of RE technology to lock-in mechanisms, even sectorally.  We have already dealt with similar situations, e.g. when wind energy was temporarily stopped at the onshore stage and the transition to offshore was clearly delayed by already implemented investments in the first technology.  Apart from car problems mentioned above – the lock-in mechanism is also noticed in the field of battery storage and the heating use of electricity from RE.  Path dependence is a continuous process, even if the path is still relatively short.

Meanwhile, lock-in is considered to be an objectively undesirable, reducing innovation, threatening future performance and potentially cost-intensive in the case of lock-in using non-optimal technology.  In the case of the RE, the key argument for using them was not only their compliance with the climate target, but also the potential to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and thus their supply shocks.  While in practice, we are witnessing a lock-in indirectly related to the transition to RE – concerning gas technology, considered complementary to RE.  And there were warnings about such a threat (Haelg, Waelchi and Schmidt 2018).  Since it was rightly pointed out that a lock-in on nuclear energy as an allegedly bridge technology can only ultimately change an oil shortage into a uranium shortage – the more such a hazard should have been seen in the case of gas.

The lock-in mechanism is therefore not a past or could be closed at any time.  In research on the subject, there is a tendency to consider this process, and especially its effects, to be negative, or at least potentially dangerous for technological development (Scrase and MacKerron 2009).  However, there are also voices in favour of a more neutral approach, seeing the path dependence and lock-in scheme as a more natural process and, at certain stages, perhaps even inevitable.  Therefore, it is rather an evolution to which technologies in the economic environment are subjected, at the time of gaining even a subjective advantage over competitive solutions.

It also touches upon another important issue, i.e. considerations whether a transition, especially such a far-reaching is and should be made in a manner adopted for deliberative democracy (evidently declining) or by gaining a discursive hegemony, what is happening before our eyes, especially during a pandemic.  Theoretically, the first mechanism would seem to favour the gradual generation of path dependency in the process of reconciling and averaging positions.  However, it is not obvious whether a sudden change, due to the rapid use of the “window of opportunity”, opened especially in the reality of a shock – could constitute a protection against further lock-in, especially if the previous conditions are restored.  We can investigate it directly by observing the situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recovery path that is just being adopted.  It may be a momentum that facilitates, even partially, shaking off the already existing dependencies to achieve the assumed climate and energy goals faster and more effectively.  However, reverse feedback may also occur.  But as well, all negative socio-economic effects of a pandemic and the frequently raised postulates of “stabilization and normality”, understood as the past that must be restored – can be used as arguments also for maintaining previous path dependence.  For the study of the lock-in mechanism in the RE sector – it is therefore a breakthrough moment.

Golden Path 

The main trends of modern economy work since decades around “Zero-Growth” idea.

Whether reaching it as a necessity forced by climate circumstance or considering as an objective result of exhausting the possibilities of capital accumulation.  However it is also known that permanent growth is an inherent feature of capital.  So, in fact it does not matter much whether the World economy stops by itself or should be forced to it. The shock is indispensable.  A shock supposed to manage disruptions in the supply chain (which in fact has not necessarily wanted to occur), as well as deal with weakening of demand, which also has not appeared on a satisfactory degree, so had to be caused intentionally.  But anyway – is the World of financial markets really false economy today, and production and services remain real ones? Or is it already opposite?

Maintaining the appearances of Not-Completely-Globalised Capitalism in the North-Western hemisphere seems to have lost its sense.  Sooner or later, we will be confronted with the problem of delabourisation anyway.  The problem what to do with people whose work is redundant in practice, at least in the present dimension.  Until now, however, their consumption was needed.  We checked that people can be paid to refrain from working.  And where to get for it?

By allocating a small percentage of capitalist rent obtained from the turnover of assets, considered optimal, to keep it all going somehow without nominal development and growth.  Characteristic changes known from the last two years: greater virtualisation of the remaining work, the almost complete digitisation of money, the mere increase in power of states, but only acting as actors of capital – are just details to complete a picture.

This is why COVID is the most important transformation of our times, a change at the level of the essence of Capitalism and civilization as such.  And it is a transition made jointly and inextricably with the use of energy instruments, to maximize profits from the energy market and to obtain a specific civilisation effect, in order to maximize profits from the energy market and to achieve a specific civilization effect, measurable using energy indicators.  And as it happens with transformations – we cannot even imagine their final effect, but we already know that we are led to it. Almost certainly – inevitably.

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

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***

I have watched the sad sight of sincere high school students led by Greta Thunberg, or other climate activists, demanding of politicians that they change policies and receiving from those so-called “leaders” sorrowful apologies and inspiring promises only to discover, to their surprise, that absolutely nothing has changed after six months, or after a year.

This “tragicomedy” is no accident; it is the result of a systematic strategy for misinforming the public through the media, through universities, and through government pronouncements concerning how policy decisions are made about energy.

We are so completely misinformed about how our environment is being destroyed by multinational interests that many citizens honestly believe that climate change is a hoax precisely because the fairy tales about carbon trading, electric cars, smart grids and the promotion of government corporate cooperation are exactly that: a hoax.

The recent COP 26 (October, 2021) meeting of government heads to discuss climate change in Glasgow reflected perfectly the fantastic farce to which citizens are subjected. This corporate show, funded by multinationals like Unilever, Hitachi and Microsoft that have deep ties to the promotion of petroleum, was not about policy or progress, and most certainly not about a greener planet. It was a show meant to brainwash us into thinking that a gradual, progressive shift in behavior by individuals will solve the environmental crisis.

It suggested that electric automobiles, wind farms, smart cities and smart electric grids, all run by multinational corporations funded by multinational banks would save humanity and that we need only hand over decision-making power to these criminal syndicates known as “public-private partnerships.”

COP 26 was silent about how to reduce the need for energy by creating a healthier culture and moving away from the cult of consumption, growth and trade that corporations have foisted upon us. Most countries are in a bind because their forced to prioritize growth in economic planning even though growth, as defined by the World Bank, is damaging, unsustainable and lacks any scientific, or even rational, basis.

The focus at COP 26 was on dazzling new technologies, all extremely expensive, and all with patents controlled by the few.

The true sources of the environmental crisis were covered up.

The collapse of biodiversity, the death of oceans, the plague of micro-plastics, the destruction of soil by chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the spread of deserts because of foolish “development,” and the destruction of drinkable water, and its replacement by bottled water controlled by those same multinationals, all these topics were taboo.

These trends are altering our climate but they are not related to “climate change” as the corporations defined it for us.

Their green revolution will result in the control of food, water, energy and money by a handful of billionaires and they punish the individual citizen for the destruction of the environment when the culprit is those multinational corporations who waste immense amounts of energy and rig up the economy in such a way that the citizen has no choice but to use fossil fuels.

We are supposed to believe that the best way combat climate change is to purchase a horribly overpriced Tesla, or to take out a massive loan to buy solar panels for our homes. Or, for our government to tax us, or to dilute the value of our money, by funding massive green projects which are run entirely by those multinational corporations.

I recently spoke with a professor who specializes in environmental policy. He told me that there was tremendous opposition to a wind farm being constructed of the coast in the United States from local residents. He made it sound as if these ignorant, rural Trump supporters opposed the wind farm because they had no understanding of the need for a green economy, or of the environmental crisis.

When pressed, however, he confessed that the entire project had been planned by multinational banks and that the local residents gained no jobs from this project and had not been consulted at any level before it was pronounced by the mighty. They had not stake in the wind farm and if they had applied for a loan to build a wind farm for 7 billion dollars, they would have certainly been turned down.

If we could get the sweetheart loans from the government that the multinational corporations receive, we would be happy to switch to solar power tomorrow. If you could get 30-year low interest loans to weatherize your home and install solar panels everywhere, it would be cheaper to pay off that loan than to pay for your gas and electricity—effective immediately. But no, that option is not on the table in the new “green economy” –except if you are a multinational corporation!

For that matter, you cannot generate electricity when riding your exercise bike and sell it to your neighbor. You do not have the basic rights of economic exchange in this “green economy.”

No one at COP 26 mentioned that we did not use fossil fuels much 100 years ago outside of manufacturing, and that individuals were able to use wind power, water power and horse power on a regular basis, to grow their own food, the mill their own wheat, and to travel without using automobiles while living in rationally-planned communities that did not require travel by highway.

No one at COP 26 said that the narcissistic culture that has led us to all live separately, as opposed to living together as extended families, can be reversed, or that we can build houses, or furniture or vehicles that last for hundreds of years—saving enormous amounts of energy.

Frugality and energy self-sufficiency at the local level, not smart cities and high tech automobiles, are the answer to the crisis.

No one at COP 26 suggested that the investment banks linked to fossil fuels, and the politicians and think tank experts who take kickbacks from fossil fuel concerns, should not have been invited in the first place. The reason was simple. The investment banks funded the whole show.

We are heading for an environmental crisis of Biblical proportions. You do not have to be a fundamentalist Christian anymore to believe in the Apocalypse. Hallelujah, I believe!

The true source of the crisis is not the personal decisions of individual citizens, but the creation of, and cultivation of, a sick culture based consumption and waste, on needless production and travel, that has become the norm, the ideal, for the entire world.

Most pollution comes from production sites around the world run by multinationals that are immune from regulation, from factory farms also run by multinationals that poison our soil and water, and from needless shipping of products back and forth across oceans burning coal and petroleum—an evil act considered necessary for “growth.”

All the important decisions in government are made by banks and corporations, and then fed to the heads of nation states via a network of consulting firms, lobbyists and privatized intelligence operatives.

The national leaders who appear on television to entertain us have no more impact on economic and energy policy than the clown has on the acts in the other two rings of the circus.

The inability of citizens to grasp the true nature of the environmental crisis is also a result of the decay of intellectual debate in universities and in journalism. The newspapers, the television news, and the textbooks used in schools, do not promote inquisitive debate, a search for truth, but rather promote false assumptions about science and economics favorable to corporations. Deep thinking about the future of the nation by citizens has vanished and democracy is impossible.

Intellectuals, who could help citizens to understand the climate crisis, are forced by new requirements promoted by universities—under financial pressure from corporations—forced to write articles for obscure academic journals that almost no one will read, and they are barred from participation in the debate on energy policy which is run entirely by paid lobbyists for multinational fossil fuel corporations.

We witness today the flowering of a long process that started out with the scheme of John D. Rockefeller to force complete dependence on petroleum on the citizens of the United States, and of the world, as a means of making a fortune and dominating every aspect of the economy and society, starting with the monopoly of Standard Oil.

The players have changed, the names have changed, but the game remains virtually unchanged.

If you do not control the mass media, you do not exist in the policy debate. That means anyone serious about the environment does not exist because the same global finance institutions, like BlackRock, who control the corporate media, also control fossil fuels.

They will do everything in their power to make sure that this economic parasitism rooted in the control of energy (petroleum, coal, nuclear, solar or wind) is dominated by corporations whose interests and whose administrative structure is hidden from sight and never discussed.

If you eat food, drink water, travel, receive an education, seek treatment at a hospital or are buried in a cemetery, the bankers want to make sure that they get a part of the monetary transaction, that they get their pound of flesh. They want to make sure that fossil fuels, which they control, are part of that process.

We can find cultural and spiritual depth in our lives by reading books and newspapers, writing for ourselves, creating our own art, and otherwise participating in a complex local cultural system. We do not need that much energy. We not even need computers for a healthy and meaningful life. Although the increase in human population has increased demand for energy, that demand could be radically reduced through changes in our culture, starting with the elimination of growth, production, and trade as indicators of the wellbeing of the economy.

The institutional investors that push for the use of petroleum to generate energy, to make plastics, and who promote biotechnology and pharmaceuticals that rely on petroleum want us to be dependent on them and to no longer able to produce what we need locally.

Those institutional investors also push for massive military and intelligence spending, much of which is classified, and much of which is unregulated, and therefore consists of the transfer of funds to offshore accounts.

Why do we need such a large military? We need it, they say to defend the import, and the transport, of petroleum, gas and coal over oceans, through straits, and across continents.

The obvious answer to this security problem is to produce energy at home and to minimize usage through rational city planning, organic local farming, and low cost public transit that reduces to near zero the amount of energy imported. For the cost of those F35 fighter planes the United State collects like bad nickels, we could easily pay to have solar and wind power generators installed across the nation.

But no! The powers that be want to make even more money by defending their inefficient and dangerous sources of energy.

The arguments for growth and consumption as a standard for assessing the health of society, for spending trillions of dollars to defend the transport of fossil fuels, for encouraging city planning that wastes energy are made by experts.

The banks and the fossil fuel interests, which include automobile manufacturers, and companies involved in construction and logistics, have showered billions of dollars on foundations that fund research and journalism, on universities and research institutes that produce authoritative studies, on experts for testimony, and on politicians at the local and national level.

These corporations have created a lineup of public intellectuals who rubber stamp their false assumptions.

If we want to save the Earth from climate collapse, we must first make sure that all citizens know why we have been forced to rely on petroleum, and by whom. They must know which banks and which billionaires are involved, and why. They must comprehend the manner in which those players forced us into an addiction to fossil fuels a hundred years ago, and how they plan to continue this scheme under a new green cover.

We must make manifest the hidden strategies of investment banks and hedge funds, uncover the massive investments by billionaires like Warren Buffett, Elon Musk and Bill Gates in industries seeped knee-deep in oil. We make sure that everyone sees not only that there is something deeply wrong, but also that they understand what exactly is the cause of this distortion in the economy.

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This article was originally published on US Provisional Government.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The most dangerous form of tyranny has raised its head simultaneously in Canada and the United States. The exercise of civil liberty is being criminalized. In Canada the city government of Ottawa with the aid of the US FBI and US Department of Homeland Security is criminalizing the truckers’ peaceful protest as “a threat to democracy” and is identifying organizers and participants for arrests and charges. Simultaneously, the US Department of Homeland Security has declared a domestic terrorism threat in the United States. Truth and all dissent from the official Covid narrative and Russian narrative have been labeled “false and misleading, misinformation, and conspiracy theories.” These alleged threats are “amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors.” See this.

What is the point of a peaceful protest when authorities and media lie and brand it violent and a threat to democracy? What has happened in Canada is that the elite now know who the Canadians are who will stand up for freedom. They have identified themselves, and being peaceful they will be easily taken down.

In the US, free speech is now classified as a threat to democracy. A recent DHS announcement associates all dissent from official narratives with “ideological beliefs and personal grievances that pose an ongoing threat to the nation.” Such “threat actors” are seeking to “sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” The ruling elite are very disturbed that the Covid and Russian narratives are losing public support and is desperate to stop the exposure of these two official lies.

Like Joseph Stalin, the US DHS is creating with its own disinformation a legal framework for prosecuting or confining to indefinite detention any and every person who confronts official lies with truth. Included in the misinformation that sows discord and undermines public trust in government are allegations of electoral fraud. The DHS adds to the massive file of dangerous speech the airline companies’ warnings about 5G cellular technology. The establishment is going to use force to protect its lies.

The DHS has no legislative power to criminalize civil liberty, but is nevertheless doing so. The courts would probably block some or all of the attempted prosecutions. But remember, the George W. Bush regime claimed the right to hold American citizens indefinitely without presenting evidence to a court. The American people made fearful by an alleged “terrorist threat” went along with this and other infringements of our constitutional protections. The day the PATRIOT Act passed marked America’s turn toward tyranny.

In the early days of Nazi Germany before the Nazis had set up their own court system, Nazi prosecutions were often dismissed by German courts. However, as soon as the released person walked out of the court, the Gestapo again arrested him and subjected him to indefinite detention in a concentration camp. This, I fear, will be the fate of all dissenters from the lies ensconced as official narratives throughout the “free West.”

Notice that no one in the Ottawa government and no one in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation respects freedom. Unless people from all over Canada pour into Ottawa in support of the truckers, thereby creating a cause too large to be suppressed, the truckers will suffer the fate of the “Trump insurrectionists.” If the Ottawa government survives the truckers’ protest, it will no longer be possible to hold government accountable. Voting Trudeau out will achieve nothing as his replacement will be the same servant of the ruling elite serving secret agendas. By the end of this year we should know whether accountable government is any longer possible in the “free West.”

Here Is Steve Kirsch’s List of the real Covid Disinformation Spreaders

• President Joe Biden
• CDC Director Rochelle Walensky
• NIAID Director Anthony Fauci,
• 
US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy
• 
Bill Gates
• FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock
• COVID-19 Guidelines Chairman Cliff Lane
• Tom Shimabukuro (CDC vaccine expert)
• John Su (CDC, VAERS expert)
• Steven A. Anderson (FDA), the top vaccine safety official at the FDA
• Gavin Newsom, Governor of California
• Dr. Richard Pan, California State Senator
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Medium
• Nextdoor

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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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***

This week, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen imposed new Covid restrictions that require all adults in the country to be fully vaccinated and boosted or risk being fined.

The new authoritarian law runs through January 31st, 2024, and will go into effect next month.

Beginning on March 15th, law enforcement authorities will begin checking people’s vaccine status by conducting random traffic stops, and spot checks, in order to find dissenters. Anyone caught violating the mandate can be fined “up to four times a year,” with the penalty increasing with each violation. An individual’s first offense will result in a €600 (~$687) fine and can go as high as €3,400 (~$3,890) by the fourth.

According to reports starting on March 15, authorities will begin conducting random checks for vaccination certificates, including traffic stops.

The new law also allows the Austrian government to create a dystopian vaccine registry that will record everyone who has been vaccinated and give those who have been found disobeying a date they must be vaccinated by, allowing the government to fine them repeatedly.

Only certain people will be exempt from the mandate, including pregnant people, those with health conditions affected by vaccines, and those who have been previously infected with COVID-19, according to SchengenVisaInfo News.

The latest health data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) shows that almost 73% of the Austrian population is two-dose vaccinated, with just over 54% having received the booster shot. But thanks to another mandate that went into effect earlier this month and requires a booster shot to be in compliance with government requirements, nearly 3.8 million Austrians will be impacted by the new law.

Unfortunately, not all of them will be able to provide proof of natural immunity. The World Health Organization has estimated a total of 1,968,963 Covid cases in the country since the beginning of the pandemic, which includes boosted individuals. Even if you account for all of the undocumented cases, there will still be countless Austrians that will be punished for not taking the experimental jab – and the booster, and the next booster, and so on.

The Austrian government also shortened the period in which vaccinations remain valid. Now, citizens are required to receive their next dose about 90 days earlier than before.

From SchengenVisaInfo News:

“‘From February 1, 2022, two-dose vaccinations are only valid for 180 days in Austria (exception: 210 days for under 18-year-olds). However, for ENTERING, the 270 days remain in place. The booster vaccination is valid for 270 days in both scenarios,’” the Austrian authorities explained.”

Meanwhile, as Austria steps up its crackdown on dissenters, several other countries in the European Union have started lifting Covid restrictions, and some have even done away with them altogether – Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, to name a few.

The fact that Austria put a timeframe of January 2024 on this Covid tyranny, is insane.

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***

After Austria became the first European country to mandate COVID vaccines for the ENTIRETY of its population, details have emerged on how the government plans to enforce the measure.

Reports note that citizens will be stopped randomly in the street and pulled over in their vehicles and forced to comply with vaccine status checks by the ‘authorities.’

If, heaven forbid, a person is found to be unvaccinated they will be fined on the spot, with the penalty increasing for each violation.

"government plans to send a letter to all Austrians [] giving them a month to comply [] That changes in mid-March, when the police are to start conducting random checks of vaccination status — including during traffic stops."https://t.co/0MCN0LqAdR

— tomitka crow (@tomitkacrow) February 5, 2022

A first ‘offense’ will mean a €600 ($687) fine, with subsequent violations reaching up to €3,400 ($3,890).

The Austrian government will check citizens’ vaccination status against their vaccine registry. Anyone found to not have two vaccines plus a booster will be punished accordingly.

The development confirms previous reports that the Austrian government will hire people to “hunt down vaccine refusers.”

Indeed, this is merely an official confirmation of what has already been happening in the country. After the government placed the unvaccinated under an unprecedented lockdown, footage emerged showing police patrolling shops and highways checking people’s vaccination status.

🇦🇹 #Austria's police and military have began manhunts for unvaccinated people.

They patrolling the streets, public spaces and shopping areas and asking for vaccine passports. pic.twitter.com/vUC87oGHW5

— Terror Alarm (@terror_alarm) November 16, 2021

Austrian police demand people show proof of vaccination as they shop in one of Vienna’s busiest shopping streets Mariahilferstraße pic.twitter.com/Rs6Fu4gX6S

— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) November 16, 2021

Days after imposing the lockdown on the unvaccinated, Austria hit a new COVID case record.

In addition, the Austrian government has shortened the period in which vaccinations remain valid, meaning citizens are required to receive their next dose 90 days earlier than previously.

SchengenVisaInfo News reports that “‘From February 1, 2022, two-dose vaccinations are only valid for 180 days in Austria (exception: 210 days for under 18-year-olds). However, for ENTERING, the 270 days remain in place. The booster vaccination is valid for 270 days in both scenarios,’” the Austrian authorities explained.”

The government has put a sunset on the law, for January… of 2024, meaning Austrians face at least another two years of COVID tyranny.

As we have previously reported, an amendment to the law could also see those who refuse to pay the fines for being unvaccinated imprisoned.

The amendment also orders people who are jailed to pay for their own imprisonment.

“If detention is carried out by the courts, the associated costs shall be recovered by the courts from the obligated party in accordance with the provisions existing for the recovery of the costs of enforcing judicial penalties,” it states.

No one will be “forcibly brought” to a vaccination center to get jabbed against their will, although rest assured, they will be “forcibly” placed behind bars if they continue to refuse.

It remains to be seen whether other European countries will follow suit. Several countries have begin to scrap restrictions, including vaccine passports. However, the EU wants to keep the passes in place for another entire year.

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***

February 8th press conference with Dr. Roger Hodkinson & Dr. Paul Alexander on efforts to get the government to engage in a scientific discussion of Covid mandates.

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Our thanks to Mark Taliano (CRG Research Associate) for sending us this video.

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After two years of empowering every aspect of the authoritarian insanity that is COVID Mania, the American ruling class has started to awaken to the reality that citizens have had enough of the Safety Regime’s tyrannical edicts.

Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ) announced this morning that New Jersey (not exactly MAGA country) will no longer require children to wear masks in school. These barbaric mask policies, which remain entirely unsupported by actual scientific evidence, has been in place in much of Safety Regime-compliant America for almost two years.

Effective March 7, the statewide mask mandate in schools will be lifted.

Balancing public health with getting back to some semblance of normalcy is not easy. But we can responsibly take this step due to declining COVID numbers and growth in vaccinations. https://t.co/CjnIYZycCe

— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) February 7, 2022

The new policy, and the governor’s sudden embrace of reality, is a vast departure from Murphy’s previous insistence that COVID must be entirely eliminated in order for society to return to normal.

In August of 2020, he stated that COVID deaths must go to zero in order for this “fight” against a virus to be over.

New Jersey has now lost 14,134 members of our broad and diverse family to #COVID19.

In their memories, we must continue to do all that we can to fight this pandemic. We cannot give up until the number is ZERO.

— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) August 26, 2020

Congressman Ted Lieu, who represents a 70/30 Democrat district in Los Angeles County, struck a similar tone in his messaging, going as far as to acknowledge natural immunity to COVID-19. Acknowledging natural was once a great sin, and it remains greatly upsetting to the Branch Covidians who remain true believers.

With the rapid decline of Omicron, pandemic restrictions will be lifted sooner rather than later. In considering when to do so, health officials must factor in natural immunity, not just vaccination rates. This CDC chart recognizes natural immunity and so should health officials. pic.twitter.com/6Hk0f4NRhC

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) February 7, 2022

The White House has mentioned that polling exists showing restrictions are becoming deeply unpopular. White House spox Jen Psaki said Monday that the polling shows “the public is tired of COVID.”

"We certainly understand and have seen in polling that the public is tired of Covid. We understand that. So are we," says Jen Psaki.

Says they are in “constant touch” with public health experts about updating guidelines

— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) February 7, 2022

Even noted COVID hysteric Leana Wen, who has routinely advocated for a two tiered segregation system that discriminates against the “unvaccinated”, has acknowledged that restrictions might need to come to an end.

PS- Here's yet another one. Memo CLEARLY went out. pic.twitter.com/MdZHtdaQGn

— IT Guy (@ITGuy1959) February 7, 2022

The pattern is obvious. The polling must be really bad for the restrictionists. This ruling class is indeed seeking the exits to protect their power, and they will attempt to do so without acknowledging that this two year campaign of destruction was all for nothing.

A slow drift of Democratic state and local leaders away from emergency COVID-19 measures comes as polling shows voters are growing impatient with restrictions.

From Denver to Chicago, here are some of the restrictions that could be lifted shortly:

https://t.co/dRI0hNBHAe

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) February 4, 2022

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***

These days, major European actors have a chance to make a good step towards a detente in Europe or plunge the region into war.

France, Germany, and Russia are trying to find common ground and avoid the outbreak of hostilities. The United States and Great Britain are striving to pursue their own warmongering agenda, without risking bloodshed within their own territories.

While French President Emmanuel Macron headed to Moscow for a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held talks with US President Joseph Biden.

During the press conference, Putin once again stated the fact that NATO ignores Moscow’s concerns about security guarantees in Europe. The Kremlin has clearly outlined its interests and signals its readiness for any further developments, including a big war.

The recognition of Crimea as Russian territory and the provision of guarantees of Ukraine’s non-entry into NATO are necessary conditions for Russia’s retaliatory actions. Moscow seems to be ready to recognize Ukraine as a zone of Western interests. While the Donbass is a debatable issue.

Putin stressed in his speech that European countries cannot avoid bloodshed if Ukraine joins NATO and attempts to regain Crimea. “The military potential of NATO and Russia is not comparable, we understand that. But we are a leading nuclear power. There will be no winners,” Putin said, stressing that neither Russia nor France are interested in a military scenario.

Macron’s statements were quite optimistic, and expressed Paris’ hope for a peaceful path for Europe and a readiness to cooperate with Russia on the security issue.

At the same time, Washington and Berlin agreed on their positions, which are marked by a lack of unanimity.

Despite the loud statements about the growing Russian threat near the borders of Ukraine and Russia’s use of energy resources as a weapon, Germany still chooses the position of “strategic uncertainty”. The US and European leaders did not disclose the content of possible sanctions against Russia. Scholz also did not mention Nord Stream 2 when discussing sanctions and possible measures against Moscow.

The day before, Biden had a phone conversation with Putin, which apparently led to no positive results. Also at the initiative of the United Kingdom, Putin spoke with Boris Johnson.

The visit of UK Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Liz Truss to Moscow as part of the current diplomatic round of negotiations is likely not to take place. At least the Kremlin is sending such signals.

Moscow has clearly demonstrated that it is no longer willing to listen to the moral teachings from the West, especially from London, and does not intend to retreat from its position.

Amid the round of high-level talks, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited Kiev. According to the results of negotiations with her Ukrainian counterpart, Berbock made ambiguous statements. “The interruption, of energy resources to Ukraine as well as the cyber attack are more serious threats for Kiev than a “tank attack” – declared Baerbock following the US agenda to clear the way to further justify aggressive actions against Russia. Simultaneously she moved away from Anglo-Saxon-style war hysteria.

Later, on the evening of February 7, Berbock refused to meet with Zelensky. She said she would not talk with the President, as the French Foreign Minister, who was also supposed to participate in the negotiations, canceled his trip to Ukraine and went to Moscow.

In general, this diplomatic carousel started by the West is being swung due to two opposing vectors within NATO. The desire of the Anglo-Saxons elite to set its European competitors on fire faces the dreams of the major continental European powers not to get burned in this fire, during the traditional Anglo-Saxon fun – dragging chestnuts with their hands and at the expense of the Germans and the French.

The role of Ukraine by all parties to the negotiation process is defined as an object, but not a subject of international relations. Putin spoke most vividly about this: “Cutie’s pleasure isn’t our measure”.

*

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***

Although liberal detractors would refuse to acknowledge, Trump is a charismatic demagogue revered by conservative Americans and has remained a persistent thorn in the side of political adversaries. Despite losing the re-election bid, he won over 74 million popular votes, likely the largest number of votes won in the US history by a losing candidate, and could stage a comeback anytime.

The storming of the Capitol by a frenzied mob on January 6, 2021, was clearly a conspiracy orchestrated by the US deep state in connivance with the political establishment to undermine Trump’s leadership of the Republican Party and forestall his re-election bid in 2024, as he was deemed a “national security risk” and derisively sneered at as a “toddler-in-chief” by the Pentagon’s top brass.

Following the riots and deaths of four unarmed Trump supporters, notably Ashli Babbitt who was shot, he was petrified to the extent that, for once, he appeared to concede defeat and pledged “the transition would be smooth,” though he later recanted and went back to the characteristic defiant attitude.

It’s not too hard to imagine that the deep state must have inserted moles inside the Trump campaign who were feeding false information to Trump. In all likelihood, they misled Trump that the outcome of the election was still far from settled and then-Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to certify the electors’ confirmation of Biden’s electoral victory.

Trump’s obvious intention in motivating the mob was that demonstrators would stage a protest in front of the Capitol to exert moral pressure on Veep Pence and the electors to refuse to certify Biden’s confirmation. But the Capitol’s security was overwhelmed by the size and fervid passion of the crowd. The chief of the Capitol Police acknowledged on the record that his repeated requests to send reinforcements were denied, not by the White house but by certain “other quarters” that I would identify later in the article.

Reuters reported following the riots [1]:

“’We are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,’ President Donald Trump exhorted his screaming supporters before they marched on the US Capitol last week, saying he’d go with them.

“Trump had wanted to join the thousands of hardcore followers who assembled at Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. He told aides in the days leading up to the rally that he planned to accompany them to demonstrate his ire at Congress as it moved to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s November election victory.

“But the Secret Service kept warning him that agents could not guarantee his safety if he went ahead, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump relented and instead hunkered down at the White House to watch television images of the mob rioting he is accused of triggering.”

Clearly, Trump’s intention wasn’t to storm the Capitol. He simply wanted his followers to go to the Pennsylvania Avenue and register their protest outside the Capitol. Furthermore, Trump wanted to accompany the demonstrators, but was advised against it by the intelligence agencies. Had Trump accompanied the protestors, they would’ve remained peaceful. But in the absence of leadership, the frenzied mob became rudderless and stormed the building.

The obvious beneficiaries of the ensuing melee clearly were Trump’s political adversaries, because the Republican Party has been divided following the storming of the Capitol. Ten Republican representatives lent their voice favoring the House resolution for Trump’s second failed impeachment bid and he is finding it hard to maintain his hold over the leadership of the GOP.

According to another informative report [2] by the Washington Post following the protests, the Pentagon top brass restricted the authority of the commander of the D.C. National Guard to send reinforcements ahead of the Capitol riots that could have prevented the ensuing violence and bloodshed.

The report notes:

“The commander of the D.C. National Guard said the Pentagon restricted his authority ahead of the riot at the U.S. Capitol, requiring higher-level sign-off to respond that cost time as the events that day spiraled out of control.

“Local commanders typically have the power to take military action on their own to save lives or prevent significant property damage in an urgent situation when there isn’t enough time to obtain approval from headquarters.

“But Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, said the Pentagon essentially took that power and other authorities away from him ahead of the short-lived insurrection on Jan. 6. That meant he couldn’t immediately roll out troops when he received a panicked phone call from the Capitol Police chief warning that rioters were about to enter the U.S. Capitol.”

Notwithstanding, with all the political and corporate lobbying, super-PACs and smear campaigns in the media, the US presidential contests are never smooth-sailing affairs. But the presidential contest in November 2020 was far more unpredictable and tumultuous even by the American standards.

From the bombshell New York Times report [3] in May 2019 detailing leading Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s murky dealings in Ukraine to the impeachment proceedings against Trump lasting from September 2019 through February 2020, and then an unprecedented second impeachment trial in January last year after Trump had already left the office.

Clearly, both the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump were nothing more than show trials. The Democrats initiated the impeachment inquiry against Trump in September 2019 as a diversionary tactic to cover up the sleazy dealings of Hunter Biden with Burisma Holdings of Ukraine, and consequent discrediting of leading Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden.

Although the Democrats had a thin majority in the House of Representatives to impeach Donald Trump, the Senate was controlled by the Republicans. Besides, convicting a president of impeachment requires two-third majority in the Senate that the Democrats never had. Then what was the purpose of initiating the proceedings if not to distract public attention away from the media trial of Hunter Biden, which was bringing damning press coverage not only to Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden but to the Democratic Party in its entirety?

The Capitol riots and impeachment hoaxes weren’t the only instance when the deep state flagrantly interfered in the US politics to discredit and, at times, even brazenly assassinate American presidents who dared to refuse to toe the national security policy formulated by the high-command of the world’s most powerful military force.

It’s worth recalling that at the height of the Cold War in the sixties when the US domestic politics was infested with the McCarthyite paranoia and communists were persecuted all over the country, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy, was picked up as a scapegoat because he had visited Russia and Cuba before the hit-job in order to put the blame for the high-profile political assassination on the communists.

Not surprisingly, he was silenced by Jack Ruby before he could open his mouth and prove innocence in the courts of law. The cold-blooded murder of a pacifist and non-interventionist American president was obviously perpetrated by a professional sniper on the payroll of the deep state.

It was not a coincidence that Kennedy was killed in November 1963, and months later, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorized Lyndon B. Johnson to directly engage in the Vietnam conflict in August 1964 on the basis of a false flag naval engagement.

It’s obvious that the American national security establishment was the only beneficiary of the assassination of Kennedy. Most likely, the deep state turned against Kennedy after the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis and Kennedy’s pacifist rhetoric and conciliatory approach toward Washington’s arch-rival, the former Soviet Union, in the backdrop of the Cold War.

Besides the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, another reason the Kennedy administration fell from the grace of the deep state was the botched Bay of Pigs invasion by the CIA operatives and the Cuban exiles in April 1961 to topple the government of Fidel Castro that JFK approved but later severely castigated the CIA for the fiasco and sacked CIA director Allen Dulles and several employees. The Pentagon wanted Kennedy to immediately invade Cuba following the foiled plot but he “vacillated” and let a golden opportunity to dismantle a security threat close to the US soil slip by.

Similarly, JFK’s brother Robert F. Kennedy was a leading Democratic candidate for the presidential office when he was shot dead by a Palestinian Christian Sirhan Sirhan in June 1968. Being a pacifist himself, Bobby Kennedy opposed the US involvement in the Vietnam War and wrote a book on the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 in which he credited his brother, JFK, for showing restraint and amicably resolving the crisis.

As the former attorney general of JFK, Bobby probably had good leads on the masterminds of the JFK assassination, and wanted to avenge his brother’s shocking murder by exposing the assassins after being elected president. This was the only reason he, too, was silenced before he could be elected president.

Though serving a life sentence at a California penitentiary, Bobby Kennedy’s murderer Sirhan, now 77 years old, is a suspicious and deranged character, who frequently backtracked on his testimonies and confession during and after the trial, had no recollection of the murder and subsequent events, and his defense team had pleaded for a retrial several times but the request was summarily denied. He was due to be released on parole in August but California Governor Gavin Newsom decided against setting him free in January.

Shortly before the murder of Bobby Kennedy, Sirhan joined the occult organization Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose Cross, commonly known as the Rosicrucians in 1966. In fact, Sirhan’s esoteric faith closely resembles a medieval cult “Hashishin,” from which the English word “assassin” has derived.

The Order of the Assassins was a Nizari Ismaili sect which lived in the mountains of Persia and Syria between 1090 A.D. and 1275. During that time, they founded a clandestine organization that orchestrated the assassinations of leading figures in the Middle East that were considered enemies of their medieval “deep state.”

The Nizari Ismaili State was ruled by Hassan as-Sabbah from 1090 A.D. until his death in 1124. The Western world was introduced to the assassins by the works of Marco Polo who understood the name as deriving from the eponymous narcotic hashish, which indeed was used to put the assassins under a spell for political assassinations.

The more recent examples of such murderous cults are the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a cultist political organization founded by the Rajavis of Iran that relocated first to Iraq and then to Albania, or the Fidayeen or suicide bombers of Islamic jihadist organizations who are promised paradise in return for mounting terrorist attacks against adversaries.

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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 the Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military industrial complex and petro-imperialism.

He is a regular contributor of meticulously researched and credibly sourced investigative reports to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Inside Trump’s Final Days: Aides Struggle to Contain an Angry President

[2] Pentagon restricted commander of D.C. Guard ahead of Capitol riot

[3] Joe Biden faces conflict of interest questions

Featured image: TRUMP SPEAKS IN WINSTON-SALEM, NC, SEPT. 8, 2020. SCREENSHOT FROM NBC NEWS VIDEO.

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg.

***

Fact-checking is one part of the campaign to control what you see online, and therefore what you think and how you perceive reality

Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson explains how virtually everything you see and hear online has been co-opted, or taken over to serve a greater agenda

Instead of real journalists and reporters, the media is infiltrated with propagandists who dictate what’s “fake news” and what’s not

The public is being manipulated to want their information censored by third-party “fact”-checkers, which were introduced as a tool to confuse and control the public further

“Conspiracy theory”, “debunked”, “quackery” and “antivaccine” are examples of terms that are being used as propaganda tools; if you hear them, it should make you dig deeper for the truth

Those who rely solely on the internet for their information are at serious risk of being controlled; you can fight back by doing your own research, trusting your cognitive dissonance and using your common sense

*

Prior to 2015 or 2016, you could still read what you wanted online without much interference. This has since changed, as propagandists have infiltrated the media and, along with other major players, like Big Tech and government, set out to control information. Fact-checking — a once-obscure term that’s since gone mainstream — is one part of the campaign to control what you see online, and therefore what you think and how you perceive reality — but it’s all a ruse.

Speaking with Jan Jekielek, The Epoch Times senior editor and host of the show “American Thought Leaders,” investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson explains how virtually everything you see and hear online has been co-opted, or taken over to serve a greater agenda:¹

“One has to understand that nearly every mode of information has been co-opted, if it can be co-opted by some group. Fact checks are no different either, they’ve been coopted in many instances or created for the purpose of distributing narratives and propaganda.

And your common sense is accurate when it tells you that the way they chose this fact check and how they decided to word it so they could say this thing is not true when at its heart it really is true, but the message they’re trying to send is that you shouldn’t believe it, your common sense is right.

That’s been created as part of a propaganda effort by somebody, somewhere, as part of a narrative to distribute to the public so virtually every piece of information that can be co-opted has been.”

The Information Landscape Is Being Controlled

Attkisson calls out several common online sources that are heavily manipulated — Wikipedia, Snopes and most “fact” checkers to name a few, along with HealthFeedback.org, which is a fake science group used by Facebook and other Big Tech companies to debunk science that is actually true.

Fact checkers are often referred to as scientists, but this, too, is “part of a very well-funded, well-organized landscape that dictates and slants the information they want us to have.” While there have always been efforts to shape the information being given out by the media, it used to be that news reporters would push back against organizations to ensure the public had the other side of the story.

Beginning in the early 2000s, Attkisson noted a shift from efforts to simply shape information to those that attempt to keep certain information from being reported at all. This was particularly true among the pharmaceutical companies she was covering at that time. Attkisson described “efforts by these large global PR firms that have been hired by the pharmaceutical industry, by government partners that work with the pharmaceutical industry, to keep the story from being reported at all.”²

Now, suppressing and censoring information that those in charge don’t want to be heard is really common. Attkisson believes the practice really took off in 2015 to 2016, “with Donald Trump proving to be a unique danger perceived by both Democrats and Republicans, and by that I mean by the interests that support and pay for them to be in office and make certain decisions.”³

With a wild card in office, a campaign was organized that exploited a media that was already conflicted and less apt to report what was actually going on. “This all dovetailed together to create this crazy information landscape we have today,” she said. Instead of journalists seeking to uncover the truth, we have “writers seeking to spread whatever establishment scientists or politicians want them to say, uncritically and at the expense, oftentimes, of accuracy.”

Now, instead of real journalists and reporters, the media is infiltrated with propagandists who dictate what’s “fake news” and what’s not. Many believe that fake news is a product of Trump, but Big Tech was brought into the campaign early on. A lobby campaign by behind-the-scenes propagandists met with Facebook and said you’ve got to start censoring and “fact” checking information, Attkisson said.

The term “fake news” was popularized after Trump was elected, but it actually got its start before that — it was an invention of political activist website First Draft News, which is partially funded by Google.⁴

Inviting Propagandists Into the Newsroom

We’re in the midst of an information war where it’s difficult to tell truth from fiction or lies. Journalists are no longer the watchdogs; instead, they take information from obviously conflicted sources and then try to convince the public to believe that particular viewpoint. Other information that’s in conflict is censored or “debunked.”

It’s an unusual time in history where efforts are even underway to manipulate the public to want their information censored and appreciate third-party “fact”-checkers, which were introduced as a tool to confuse and manipulate the public further.⁵

Yet, when you only hear one side of the story, and you can’t access other information to the contrary, it’s nearly impossible to uncover the truth — and that’s precisely the point. Is this all just a matter of reporters not knowing how to think critically and ask the right questions, or believing that they’re doing the right thing?

Attkisson states that it goes much deeper. A lot of propagandists have become part of the media, and while there used to be a firewall between reporters and the people they reported on, “that’s long gone.” She says:⁶

“We’ve not just invited them to influence what we report, but we’ve hired them, not just as pundits and analysts but they are reporters. They are editorial presences within our newsrooms. Now we are one and the same.

It’s hard to say that there’s a distinctive difference in many instances between the people trying to get out a message and the messengers in the media who should be doing a more independent job of reporting accurately.”

The COVID Misinformation Campaign

In early 2020, as the pandemic first started brewing, Attkisson talked to everyone she could, including scientists with the government and outside the government. “Pretty quickly, I could see that certain things that were being said publicly were bearing out as not true, and certain things that other scientists were telling me privately rang true, and in hindsight have actually been proven to be true.”⁷

Early on, quite a few scientists she talked to were questioning the advice being given by government scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and lead spokesperson for the president’s COVID response. She asked them if they should say something and speak out about their concerns, but they all came back with the same response:⁸

“They said they dared not speak out for fear of being controversialized and for fear of being called coronavirus deniers, because that phrase was starting to be used in the media. And secondly, they feared contradicting Dr. Fauci, who they said had been kind of lionized or canonized in the press for reasons that they couldn’t understand, because they really didn’t think that his guidance that he was giving publicly was the right guidance.”

Certainly, those scientists’ opinions deserved to be heard, but the fear of speaking out silenced them. They feared losing their grants, as most grants for research are funded by the government. If the government doesn’t like what you say or do, you can get fired or never get a grant again, ending your career and threatening your very livelihood.

“That started to strike me as, this is a really dangerous environment, when esteemed scientists who have valuable information and opinions are afraid to give them, and instead we’re hearing a party line that many of them disagree with but won’t say so,” Attkisson said.⁹

She mentioned the controversial U.S. government funding of gain-of-function research in China, and the notion that SARS-CoV-2 could have come from a Chinese laboratory — both were glaring issues that no one would talk about.

“These are the kinds of things early on that were sort of a red flag to me that says somebody’s trying to shape the information,” she continued. “They’re using reporters to do it. Public health figures are involved in some instances and that makes me want to know what’s really behind it.”¹⁰

‘Conspiracy Theory’ Was Devised by the CIA

The term “conspiracy theory” is now used to dismiss narratives that go against the grain. According to Attkisson, this is intentional, as the term itself was devised by the CIA as a response to theories about the assassination of JFK.

“It was shown in documents that there was a suggestion that agents go out and talk to reporters about these things as conspiracy theories — and again, common sense should tell you, as it does me, I’m married to a former law enforcement official who has said to me many times, you know the conspiracy theory phrase in its use doesn’t make sense. Nearly everything is a conspiracy.”¹¹

Anything that involves two or more people is technically a conspiracy, but now when people hear the term, they’re conditioned to think it’s false. “That’s designed to pluck this little part of your brain that says, ‘well that thing’s not true.’” When Attkisson hears the term, however, she thinks that information may well be true. “If somebody’s trying to debunk it, it usually means a powerful interest is behind it and it makes me want to go search for more information on that thing.”

The term “conspiracy theory” has lost meaning now because it’s used so much. “Debunked”, “quackery” and “antivaccine” are all terms that are similarly being used as propaganda tools. “There’s a whole cast of propaganda phrases that I’ve outlined that are cues. When you hear them, they should make you think, ‘I need to find out more about it,’” Attkisson says.

Fact Checkers Pounce on Accurate BMJ Investigation

In another example of the lengths that fact-checkers will go to discredit a story — even if it’s true — take an article published in the BMJ, titled, “COVID-19: Researchers blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial.”¹² Written by investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker, it details a series of problems with laboratory management and quality control checks by Pfizer subcontractor Ventavia Research Group, which was testing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

According to a regional director formerly employed by Ventavia, she witnessed falsified data, unblinded patients, inadequately trained vaccinators and lack of proper follow-up on adverse events that were reported. After notifying Ventavia about her concerns, repeatedly, she made a complaint to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — and was fired the same day.¹³

Soon after Thacker’s investigative piece was published in BMJ, it was “fact checked” by a group called Lead Stories, which referred to the investigation as a “hoax alert” in the related URL. Along with “correcting” statements that Thacker did not make, Lead Stories disparaged the investigation for “missing context,” but as investigative reporter Matt Taibbi explained, “‘Missing context’ has become a term to disparage reporting that is true but inconvenient.”¹⁴

Lead Stories took further issue with the BMJ investigation because it was shared by people such as Dr. Robert Malone and Robert F. Kennedy, who themselves have been targeted by fake fact checkers. Taibbi added:¹⁵

“The real issue with Thacker’s piece is that it went viral and was retweeted by the wrong people. As Lead Stories noted with marked disapproval, some of those sharers included the likes of Dr. Robert Malone and Robert F. Kennedy. To them, this clearly showed that the article was bad somehow, but the problem was, there was nothing to say the story was untrue.”

Thacker also called the “fact check” against his BMJ investigation “insane,” telling Taibbi:¹⁶

“Here’s what they do. They’re not fact checking facts. What they’re doing is checking narratives. They can’t say that your facts are wrong, so it’s like, ‘Aha, there’s no context.’ Or, ‘It’s misleading.’ But that’s not a fact check. You just don’t like the story.”

Reality Is Being Altered in Real Time

As it stands, information is being changed in real time to meet the common agenda. This includes definitions in dictionaries and on official government websites. Examples of definitions that have been changed recently include those for pandemic, herd immunity, vaccines and anti-vaxxer. Attkisson reiterates:¹⁷

“Virtually every form of information and sourcing that can be co-opted has been. That includes the dictionary definitions; that includes everything because these are important ways to influence thought. Language is very powerful. People don’t want to be affiliated with certain names and labels.

It reminds me of ‘1984,’ the George Orwell story about the futuristic society, under which history was being rewritten in real time to jive with the version that the government wanted or the party wanted it to be. Definitions now are being rewritten and changed in real time to fit with the vision that the establishment wants people to think.”

For now, you can still use the Internet Archive, commonly known as Archive.org and IA, as a historical archive. In addition to digitally hosting more than 1.4 million books and other documents, Archive.org acts as a historical vault for the Internet, preserving cached versions of websites that are no longer accessible to the public.¹⁸

Archive.org’s Wayback machine preserves digital information that has been removed or deleted, whether intentionally or for other reasons, but it, too, could one day disappear. Attkisson says:¹⁹

“It’s been a fascinating way to prove the effort to change our perception of how things are and the reality and what we thought we remembered from the other day, because all we really have now is the electronic record, by and large, and if that can be manipulated, there could be a time when — if they get rid of the Wayback machine, for example — that we can’t ever prove that anything was any different.”

Attkisson is maintaining a running list of things the media or public policy got wrong during the pandemic, which can still be verified using the Wayback machine, but which were not acknowledged for being wrong or corrected by the press. They include:²⁰

You Can Be Controlled if You Live Inside the Box

Attkisson references a whole generation of people who live inside the box, meaning the internet. Those who rely solely on the internet for their information are at serious risk of being controlled. She explains:²²

“They didn’t know a time when information was to be gathered elsewhere by looking around and seeing what you hear, and seeing what you saw, and talking to people around you and looking at books and research and so on.

And the people that want to control the information understand that if they can only control really a few basic sources — we’re talking about Google, Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia — they’ve got a lock on information, because we’ve all been funneled to those few sources, and that’s been the goal.

So if you think of it that way, there’s a whole lot of people that get pretty much everything they know through the internet. And the goal of the people trying to make the narrative is to make people live online and to think that’s reality.”

The danger of this is that the internet paints a picture that’s different from reality. You may read something that doesn’t sound quite right, or that you don’t agree with, but the internet makes you feel like you’re in the minority — even if you’re really not.

“Understand that you may actually be in the majority,” Attkisson says, “… but the goal of what they do online is to make you think you’re an outlier when you’re not, to make you afraid to talk about your viewpoint or what you think, because you may actually be the majority opinion but they want to control that and make you think you’re the one who’s crazy.” The solution? Live outside the box:²³

“You can be made to believe that — if you live in the box. So, I’m constantly telling people live outside the box. Yes, you can get information there and do what you do online, but certainly trust your cognitive dissonance, talk to the people around you. If you travel, talk to the people in the places you go. You’ll get a whole different picture, as I do, of what’s really happening out here than if you look online.”

The Truth Finds a Way To Be Told

While there are powerful forces at play to control information, all is not lost. Attkisson is aware of three entities that are actively working on a solution, which include:

1. Investors who want to invest in independent news organizations
2. Technical people trying to invent platforms that can’t be controlled and deplatformed by Big Tech
3. Journalists who want to work or contribute to these efforts

Outlets like Substack newsletters and the video platforms Rumble, Bitchute and Odysee, which don’t censor videos for ideological reasons, are actively getting around the censorship of Big Tech, and Attkisson believes that these efforts will accelerate in the next couple of years.

Further, she says, “The propagandists may have overplayed their hand by being so heavy-handed and obvious about the control of information and the censorship. It’s no longer deniable. Even people who want their information curated, they can’t always be happy with the notion that they’re not going to be able to get the full story, or that they’re only getting one side of something.”²⁴

Ultimately, she adds, “I think the truth finds a way to be told … it may take some time and there may be a lot of people that don’t want the truth out, but we inherently as humans seek it.”²⁵ On a personal level, you can go a long way toward finding the truth by following your own common sense and reason, and Attkisson agrees.

“I always say, do your own research, make up your own mind, think for yourself. Trust your cognitive dissonance, use your common sense. You’re going to be right more often than you think, but open up your mind, read a lot, think a lot and don’t buy into the prevailing narrative at face value.”²⁶

*

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Notes

¹ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 2:43

² The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 5:44

³ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 6:23

⁴ First Draft News – About

⁵ The Epoch Times January 23, 2022

⁶ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 15:28

⁷ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 17:00

⁸ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 17:46

⁹ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 18:50

¹⁰ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 20:00

¹¹ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 22:26

^12, 13 BMJ 2021;375:n2635

^14, 15, 16 Substack, TK News by Matt Taibbi February 1, 2022

^17, 19 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 25:31

¹⁸ Vox June 23, 2020

²⁰ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 30:00

²¹ N Engl J Med 2020; 382:1268-1269

^22, 23 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 39:30

²⁴ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 53:50

²⁵ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 51:10

²⁶ The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 58:30

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As police escalate pressure on the Freedom Convoy of truckers protesting Canada’s COVID vaccine mandates and Twitter bans the group’s account, public support for the protesters continues to grow.

Ezra Levant, journalist and founder of Canada’s Rebel News, on Monday told Tucker Carlson Canadian police forces are hoping to “starve or freeze the truckers out.”

“I don’t think it’s going to work though,” Levant said.

Levant questioned the legality of police confiscating diesel fuel from protesters:

“Taking away the diesel fuel is a low blow [because] it’s very cold in Ottawa and most of these truckers are living in the little cab in their truck so they need diesel fuel for heat. So by taking away their diesel fuel [Trudeau] is really freezing them out … I don’t know what legal justifications they have. The fuel is not illegal. Selling it, owning it, having it, is not illegal.”

The protest against COVID vaccine mandates is gaining popular support, according to Levant, who said:

“There was an opinion poll that showed 32% of Canadians see themselves reflected in the truckers. And in our multiparty system that would make them the leading party of Canada if the truckers formed a political movement.”

The truckers may have the support of the Canadian people but they’re facing strong resistance from Canadian police who’ve facilitated armed raids against the protestors, stolen their supplies and even arrested organizers.

Meanwhile, Twitter permanently suspended the Freedom Convoy account. A spokesperson for Twitter told Newsweek: “The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on ban evasion.”

Last week, GoFundMe seized millions of the trucker’s funds, but protestors are receiving support across the border in Alaska, where Alaskan truckers formed their own anti-mandate convoy.

Here’s the latest:

• Ottawa Police tweeted: “Anyone attempting to bring material support (gas, etc.) to the demonstrators could be subject to arrest. Enforcement is underway.”
• Protesters blocked the busiest international crossing in North America as Freedom Convoy drivers hindered travel Monday at the Ambassador Bridge that links Windsor, Ontario and Detroit. Canadian-bound traffic was still shut down this morning, while U.S.-bound traffic was flowing with limited bridge access.
• Canada’s Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom warned Ottawa police would be breaking the law if they attempted to intimidate people who bring food or other supplies to truckers who are peacefully exercising their Charter rights and freedoms in Ottawa.
• Draped in full paramilitary gear, Ottawa police made their “strongest show of enforcement yet” when they raided a parking lot serving as a staging area for anti-mandate protestors. The police confiscated at least a tanker of fuel and arrested two protesters. “Any other place that they’ve displaced to, we are attacking that as quickly as possible to make sure they don’t take root again.” said Ottawa Police Chief, Peter Sloly.
• According to Ottawa City News, Canada’s law enforcement agencies are launching “enhanced intelligence operations” against the protestors, collecting financial and digital information “that will be used in criminal prosecutions.”
• Farmers, in solidarity with the trucker protest, successfully moved their tractors and heavy farming equipment to the border crossing between Alberta and Montana, helping truckers “completely obstruct” border crossings.
• Towing experts told Canada’s CBC that it will be “difficult or impossible” to tow away or remove the hundreds of big rigs that protestors hauled into Ottawa’s downtown area.
• Armed police raided the home of political activist Pastor Artur Pawlowski and arrested him. Undercover police took him into custody the morning he was scheduled to speak to the anti-mandate truckers.
• GoFundMe has successfully seized $9M in fundraising money which was meant to support the truckers. Critics have called the move “pure theft.”

Yep! “Unfortunately GoFundMe caved to the political pressure and threats of legal action and announced they wouldn’t be dispersing the money to the truckers.” @KimIversenShow https://t.co/uFgScP4PJI

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 8, 2022

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Jeremy Loffredo is a freelance reporter for The Defender. His investigative reporting has been featured in The Grayzone and Unlimited Hangout. Jeremy formerly produced news programs at RT America.

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***

After the successful Japanese amphibious landings at Kota Bharu, northern British Malaya on 8 December 1941, in the 5 weeks that elapsed Tokyo’s forces had advanced more than 200 miles to capture the Malayan capital city, Kuala Lumpur, on 11 January 1942. This was a remarkable achievement by the Japanese 25th Army, led by the 56-year-old General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who would earn the nickname “The Tiger of Malaya”.

Mark E. Stille, a former United States Navy commander, wrote that “Of all the armies fielded by Japan during the war, the 25th Army was the best led and equipped” (1). On the ground, the distance that Yamashita’s divisions had covered to capture Kuala Lumpur was much greater than 200 miles. They had to take arduous, roundabout routes in the face of substantially larger enemy forces, advancing through the Malayan jungle and along the coastline, before they entered Kuala Lumpur unopposed in central Malaya.

The island of Singapore, another 200 miles to the south-east of Kuala Lumpur, was now very vulnerable. Were Singapore to be taken by the Japanese it would constitute “the worst disaster” in British history, Winston Churchill wrote (2). This calamity for the British did unfold, on 15 February 1942, which will be the subject of the next article.

Almost immediately, the Japanese had gained command of the air over British Malaya (comprising today mostly of Malaysia), and they also dominated the surrounding seas. On 10 December 1941, Japanese aircraft had sunk the famous British warships the ‘Prince of Wales’ and ‘Repulse’, off the east coast of Malaya. News of the battleships’ destruction came as a real blow to prime minister Churchill in London.

English military historian Antony Beevor wrote,

“Churchill, who had exulted in the great ships of the Royal Navy from his times as First Lord of the Admiralty, was stunned by the disaster. The tragedy felt even more personal to him, after his voyage in the Prince of Wales to Newfoundland in August [1941]. The Imperial Japanese Navy was now unchallenged in the Pacific. Hitler rejoiced at the news. It augured well for his declaration of war on the United States, announced on 11 December”. (3)

One indirect result of the early Japanese victories in south-east Asia, was that it had boosted the spirit of the Germans, at a time when their invasion of the Soviet Union was hitting the rocks. Japanese morale itself was very high, and a central factor in their advance through Malaya and elsewhere. The prominent British commander John Dill, in a memorandum to Churchill, had outlined that Singapore held more importance to Britain than the oil rich Middle East; because Singapore was “the most important strategic point in the British Empire” and “a stepping stone to Australia”. (4) (5)

In the final days of 1941 the British had already lost a prized possession, Hong Kong in south-eastern China, which was captured in a rapid Japanese assault. At this time, Japan’s forces were advancing through other Asian states namely British Borneo, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and the Philippines.

Like with the Japanese, the British had no rightful claim to territories such as Hong Kong. American intellectual and analyst Noam Chomsky said, “Hong Kong was stolen from China by British savagery, as part of their effort to destroy China in their huge narco-trafficking operations”. (6)

Regarding some of Britain’s other conquests Chomsky wrote,

“In extenuation, it could be noted that fostering drug production is hardly a US innovation: the British empire relied crucially on the most extraordinary narco-trafficking enterprise in world history, with horrifying effects in China and in India, much of which was conquered in an effort to gain a monopoly on opium production”. (7)

On 7 January 1942 the British General and Commander-in-Chief of India, Archibald Wavell, arrived in Malaya. He promptly attributed the Japanese successes, to date, as being due to errors committed by the British, refusing to give Yamashita’s men credit (8). Yet on the very day that General Wavell had landed in Malaya, along the Slim River the British-led divisions had suffered “The single most disastrous engagement of the entire Malaya campaign”, Stille stated (9); which he also described as “one of the most dramatic and significant actions of the entire Pacific War”. (10)

Stille is referring to the Battle of Slim River on 7 January 1942, which took place about 50 miles north of Kuala Lumpur. Thirty Japanese tanks supported by motorised infantry “rumbled down a single road machine-gunning and shooting up everything in their path”, inflicting 500 fatalities and capturing more than 3,000 British and Indian troops. By contrast the Japanese recorded fewer than 80 casualties during this battle.

The consequences were severe. Stille observed,

“It ensured the loss of central Malaya, and reduced the chances of holding southern Malaya long enough to enable the reinforcements flowing into Singapore to become fully effective”. (11)

Not resting on their gains the Japanese resumed their march southward, and 4 days later Kuala Lumpur was taken. In the capital, Japan’s soldiers found large quantities of ammunition and supplies, left behind by the British (12). These reverses compelled Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival – in overall command of British and Commonwealth divisions in Malaya – to order a withdrawal to southern Malaya, towards the Muar District and Johore.

Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita (seated, center) insists upon the unconditional surrender of Singapore as Lt. Gen. Percival, seated between his officers, demurs (photo from Imperial War Museum) (Licensed under the public domain)

Allied to the British, the Australian forces laid a devilish trap at Gemencheh, around 150 miles north-west of Singapore. Soldiers from the Japanese 5th Division were in the process of crossing Gemencheh Bridge, at 4 pm on 14 January 1942. They were unaware that the Australians had mined the bridge with explosives. As the Japanese tanks, trucks and cyclists were traversing the bridge, a huge detonation erupted sending bodies, bicycles and armour hurtling into the air, a surreal and terrible sight.

Australian sources claimed to have inflicted 1,000 casualties on the enemy here; but the tally may have been as few as 70 deaths and 57 wounded, initially at least as the fighting continued (13). The Japanese quickly recovered from the shock at Gemencheh Bridge, and in following hours forced the Australians on to the backfoot. By nightfall on 16 January, the Japanese had captured Muar town and the harbour.

As early as 18 January 1942, Lieutenant-General Percival was mulling over whether to pull out of southern Malaya, and to relocate all of his forces to Singapore slightly further south, in order to bolster that island’s defence. On 20 January, General Wavell instructed Percival to defend the southern Malayan region of Johore for as long as possible.

Also on 20 January, an angry Churchill issued an order demanding,

“I want to make it absolutely clear that I expect every inch of ground to be defended, every scrap of material or defences to be blown to pieces to prevent capture by the enemy, and no question of surrender to be entertained until protracted fighting among the ruins of Singapore city”. (14)

By 24 January, Percival had no choice but to compose an outline plan for a total withdrawal from the Malayan mainland, across the narrow Strait of Johore to Singapore (15). Churchill later expressed some sympathy for his beleaguered commander, writing that a “terrible load” had fallen “upon the shoulders of General Percival” (16). Between the 24th and 31st of January, the Australian troops retreated southward through Johore under Japanese pressure. The 11th Indian Infantry Division withdrew along the Malayan coastline, and was pursued by the Japanese Imperial Guards Division.

By the end of January 1942, some Indian and Australian units successfully reached Singapore, either by bridge or vessel across the Strait of Johore. The only road and rail lines, connecting Malaya to Singapore, was the Causeway at Johore Bahru, a kilometre long, 70 foot wide bridge. At 8:15 am on 31 January, the last British troops were safely over the Causeway and had entered Singapore. The Causeway was then destroyed with depth charges to prevent the Japanese from using it.

Seldom lacking in pride even in the most desperate circumstances, the British had conducted their retirement to Singapore in an orderly fashion. A Japanese lieutenant, Teruo Okada, when asked after the war what he thought of Britain’s forces, had said, “We thought the British officer was a very good fighter, although the ones we captured they always said to me ‘We will win the war, you see’. This I couldn’t understand because here is a man who has surrendered, and he still said ‘We will win the war’.” (17)

There was, amazingly enough, no hint of panic from the British soldiers, and no congestion of armour or infantry over the Causeway to Singapore, a commendable action personally overseen by Percival, who has been much criticised.

Stille wrote that this “was certainly Percival’s best-conducted operation of the campaign, and thwarted Yamashita’s plans to destroy British forces before they could reach Singapore” (18). Yamashita was furious to learn that the Japanese aircraft, for some baffling reason which has never been properly explained, had failed to bomb the Causeway at Johore Bahru – which the British and their allies were pouring across, the most ideal target for enemy planes.

Otherwise, Yamashita should have been exuberant with how the fighting had proceeded. In less than 8 weeks, the Japanese had reached the Strait of Johore on 31 January 1942, a lot sooner than they had expected (19). The battle for the Malayan mainland was now over and the battle for Singapore was imminent. From the second half of January 1942, Singapore had been the primary target of Japanese air raids, which occurred each day and were launched against the British naval base in Singapore, along with the nearby airfields and port. The Japanese air superiority contributed to a sense of futility in defending Singapore for long.

The population of Singapore according to one source was 1,370,300 in 1939 (20); but a detailed study shows that the island’s population in 1931 was 557,745, when the last census was compiled (21). About 75% of those living in Singapore by the 1930s were ethnic Chinese, with the remaining percentage consisting largely of Malays (11.7%) and ethnic Indians (9.1%). (22)

Singapore’s majority Chinese population presumably viewed with alarm the Japanese approach – as they should have, considering how Japan’s soldiers had conquered much of eastern China and sometimes committed dreadful atrocities. Of the approximately 70,000 combat soldiers and 15,000 service troops defending Singapore, only 13 of the 38 battalions in all were British, 17 were actually Indian battalions, and the remainder mostly Australians.

Just one of the 17 Indian battalions was at full strength. They had taken a pounding in the earlier fighting for Malaya. The British-led forces, despite suffering heavy personnel losses on the Malayan peninsula, still outnumbered the Japanese by at least 2-to-1, but the defenders for the most part were poorly trained and under-equipped. (23)

Singapore was a fortress in name only. There were no field defences or fortifications on the northern part of the island. Percival was determined to fight the Japanese on the beaches, and to prevent them from establishing a bridgehead. His plan had little chance of succeeding, due to the terrain’s unsuitability and the lack of depth in defence (24). What’s more, none of the officers subordinate to Percival had confidence in his strategy for defending Singapore, particularly the Australians, who were to endure most of the serious fighting.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

1 Mark E. Stille, Malaya and Singapore 1941–42: The fall of Britain’s empire in the East (Osprey Publishing; Illustrated edition, 20 Oct. 2016) p. 92

2 Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (RosettaBooks, 11 May 2014) p. 81

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

4 Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (Vintage Digital, July 6, 2010) p. 417

5 Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985) p. 381

6 Jenny Li, “Who Rules Asia? An Interview with Noam Chomsky”, 16 September 2021, New Bloom Magazine

7 America’s Other War: Terrorizing Columbia, Doug Stokes, Foreword by Noam Chomsky, Bloomsbury Collections

8 Stille, Malaya and Singapore 1941–42, p. 68

9 Ibid., p. 62

10 Ibid., p. 67

11 Ibid.

12 Alan Chanter, C. Peter Chen, Thomas Houlihan, Hugh Martyr, David Stubblebine, “Kuala Lumpur in WW2 History”, World War II Database

13 Stille, Malaya and Singapore, 1941–42, p. 71

14 Ibid., p. 72

15 Ibid.

16 Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, p. 82

17 The World At War: Complete TV Series (Episode 14, Fremantle, 25 April 2005, Original Network: ITV, Original Release: 31 October 1973 – 8 May 1974)

18 Stille, Malaya and Singapore, 1941–42, p. 73

19 Ibid.

20 C. Peter Chen, “Singapore in World War II”, January 2018, World War II Database

21 Saw Swee Hock, Population Trends in Singapore, 1819-1967, Journal of Southeast Asian History, Cambridge University Press, March 1969, p. 4 of 14, Jstor

22 Ibid., p. 6 of 14

23 Stille, Malaya and Singapore 1941–42, p. 79

24 Ibid., p. 80

Featured image: General Tomoyuki Yamashita plans a successful assault by Japanese troops in Malaya (Licensed under the public domain)

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***

A group of Republican lawmakers has introduced a bill to ban US arms shipments to Ukraine while there are unresolved security issues at the southern border. The attitude is a direct consequence of Republicans’ dissatisfaction with the mismanagement of border problems, which has already become a hallmark of Joe Biden. Illegal immigration, drug trafficking and armed militias significantly affect the country’s domestic security, but the White House insists on prioritizing foreign incursions, which do nothing to benefit the American people.

In a recent official Republican statement, it is possible to read: “Today, Representative Rosendale introduced the Secure America’s Borders First Act. This bill would prohibit the US government from providing military and security assistance to Ukraine until the border wall system on the southern border is completed, and operational control of the southern border is achieved”. The bill aims to stop the Biden administration’s lack of priority for US domestic security issues.

As is well known, in recent months Washington has been making Ukraine its main political agenda. The Biden administration continually spreads the fallacious narrative about the existence of a “Russian invasion plan” and states that there is a “need” to strengthen protective measures for Kiev within the NATO framework – despite Moscow constantly making it clear that there is no possibility of such an invasion plan to exist, and that its troops are only deployed within the country’s own territorial limits.

In response to this scenario, Washington frequently approves military aid packages to Kiev, sending money, weapons, military equipment, and soldiers to help the country deal with such alleged Russian threat. In addition, Washington also encourages other countries to do the same, especially the UK and Baltic states, which increasingly send weapons to Kiev. But, while the White House worries about spending large sums to help another country in a non-existent conflict in Eastern Europe, the US’ own internal security deteriorates day after day, with countless problems on the southern border.

One of the biggest criticisms by Republicans against the Biden administration since its inauguration has been precisely the terrible management of the border problems. Since Biden came to power, illegal immigration has become commonplace in the southern region, with entire caravans of irregular migrants crossing the border every day, without the authorities being able to exercise any kind of control. There is no police contingent or sufficient equipment to contain the transit of immigrants, due to the dwindling government funding for border security.

The Democrat president simply ignores the criticism received. For him, there is no problem with the issue of border security, simply because he agrees with the absence of rules for immigration. This is part of Biden’s liberal and humanitarian ideology, which values ​​unrestricted immigration as a “human right”, regardless of the consequences for national security.

In fact, many criminals are taking advantage of Democrat’s humanitarianism and sending drug dealers, terrorists and vandals amid the caravans. Undoubtedly, there is a humanitarian issue, as most immigrants are ordinary people in search of better living conditions, but it is wrong to ignore the profit that criminal networks have made of this type of situation. Some sort of control is needed.

Some months ago, a CIA consultant stated that the US is close to civil war due to its social and security problems. There are still other intelligence reports and analysis that point something in this direction. The problem arising from uncontrolled illegal immigration goes far beyond the security crisis as an extreme opposite pole is also created, with radical political groups demanding the automatic expulsion of immigrants and acting with violence in the streets – generally affecting normal and innocent people.

All these factors make the issue of the southern border the main contemporary American problem. The country faces a challenge of national integrity and emergency measures must be taken by the government in order to prevent further polarization and complete social chaos. But this will not be possible as long as the American priority is to encourage war plans on another continent.

It is necessary to remember that, encouraged by the US and NATO, the Ukrainian government has significantly advanced in its incursions against Russian-speaking populations in the Donbass region in recent weeks. The attacks and bombings have escalated, and, with that, the separatist militias are forced to also react more incisively. American weapons (tanks, rocket launchers, planes, among others) have been used on a large scale by Ukrainians to pursue a policy of ethnic extermination that is currently the topic of a lawsuit in the European Court of Human Rights. So, wouldn’t this be something much more incongruous with Biden’s humanitarianism than a legality control on migrations?

In fact, it urges Washington to review its priorities, or it will risk facing an irreversible scenario of civil conflict.

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

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***

The U.S. securing air bases in Slovakia would mark the Pentagon and NATO already or soon having air bases in no less than nine former Warsaw Pact nations: Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Those are all the former Warsaw Pact countries in NATO except for the Czech Republic.

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Slovaks protest defense treaty with US as lawmakers debate

By Associated Press

February 8, 2022

Excerpt from the article

Thousands of Slovaks rallied Tuesday to protest a military defense treaty between their nation and the United States, which are both members of NATO.

Waving national flags and banners such as “Stop USA Army,” the protesters gathered in Bratislava in front of Parliament, where lawmakers were debating the Defense Cooperation Agreement. Police prevented some protesters from entering the building.

 …

The opposition claims it would compromise the country’s sovereignty, make possible a permanent presence of U.S. troops on Slovak territory, enable a deployment of nuclear weapons in Slovakia and provoke Russia….

The treaty allows the U.S. military to use two Slovak air force bases – Malacky-Kuchyna and Sliac – for 10 years while Slovakia will receive $100 million from the U.S. to modernize them.

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General prosecutor: 1968 invasion agreement more advantageous than the US defence deal

By Slovak Spectator

February 8, 2022

Excerpt from the article

The parliament launched a discussion on the Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) between Slovakia and the United States on February 8.

The agreement was recently signed by Defence Minister Jaroslav Naď (OĽaNO) and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, but it still needs the approval of the parliament and subsequently the president.

…

General Prosecutor Maroš Žilinka came to the session, expressing his will to read an address concerning the DCA. He is known as the critic of the agreement. During the interdepartmental review process, he submitted 35 fundamental objections to the draft and his office has rejected it as a whole.

…

He called the interpretation clauses attached to the agreement by both Slovakia and the USA insignificant, and even called the agreement on the stay of Soviet soldiers on the territory of Czechoslovakia after the 1968 invasion more advantageous than the current defence deal with the USA.

“A person’s own opinion and will are actually his honour,” he claimed.

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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).

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***

LANCELOT: Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of
the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his
own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of
your son: give me your blessing: truth will come
to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man’s son
may, but at the length truth will out.

Shakespeare:  The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene 2

Truth will out.  Eventually, given enough time, the good, the bad, and the ugly will be revealed.

Such is the case with Monsanto’s dubious herbicide glyphosate.  The long-winding story on how Monsanto and its governmental enablers at the Environmental Protection Agency first registered the weedkiller Roundup under at best dubious circumstances is sickening.

In March 2015 U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California allowed public release of internal Monsanto documents showing how Monsanto influenced EPA to reclassify glyphosate from a Class C carcinogen to a Class E category which paved the way for glyphosate Roundup production.

It was nothing short of a cover-up that put greed ahead of public safety.

And now ironically we learn the cover-up may have included Monsanto’s own investors.  Bayer AG purchased Monsanto and dumped the company name back in 2018.  As if….that would be helpful.  Bayer has lost a string of jury trials where glyphosate was believed to be responsible for cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Now Bayer investors are saying the German agri-giant played fast and loose with the facts,  misleading them on 1) the safety of glyphosate and Roundup; 2) Bayer’s efforts at due diligence; and 3) the legal risks in the acquisition of Monsanto.  Their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California makes for some interesting reading:

“Defendants specifically downplayed the liability risks related to Monsanto’s Roundup product, emphasizing that Bayer conducted a “thorough analysis” during the due diligence process and “undertook appropriate due diligence of litigation and regulatory issues throughout the process” which led Bayer to finalize the Acquisition. These and similar statements made by Defendants during the Class Period were false and misleading. In truth, Defendants knew or recklessly disregarded that the Acquisition would not result in the benefits for Bayer that Defendants had represented, due to Monsanto’s significant exposure to liability risk related to Roundup.”

Naturally Bayer tried to get the case – Sheet Metal Workers National Pension Fund v. Bayer Aktiengesellschaft – thrown out of court.  But in October the court ruled against Bayer, finding, among other things, that:

“As for the differences between glyphosate and Roundup, Plaintiffs have pled that Monsanto was aware the Roundup formulation was possibly more dangerous than glyphosate, ¶ 141, and that (Bayer CEO Werner) Baumann stated during a conference call, “there is no difference” between glyphosate and the Roundup formulation, ¶ 250. By showing that an executive’s statement was in contradiction to Monsanto’s own assessment of the science, Plaintiffs have adequately pled a material misstatement concerning the safety risks of Roundup as compared to glyphosate.”

So now we’re going to get yet another layer of court discovery on glyphosate.  Given all we already know Roundup and glyphosate should have not been unleashed on the world.  But how companies like Monsanto are willing to go to almost any length – including duping its own investors – is a new low.

Truth will out.

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Dickey spent nearly 30 years at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s NPR member station WILL-AM 580 where he won a dozen Associated Press awards for his reporting. For 13 years, he directed Illinois Public Media’s agriculture programming. His weekly column for the Midwest Center covers agriculture and related issues including politics, government, environment and labor. His opinions are his own and do not reflect the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Email him at [email protected].

Featured image: Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is the most heavily-used agricultural chemical in history. (Photo: Mike Mozart/Flickr/cc)

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***

US President Joe Biden said after his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that he will “end” the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Europe if Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.

“If Russia invades … there will no longer [be] a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said during a joint press conference with Scholz. “We will bring an end to it.”

When pressed for more details on just exactly how the US can achieve this, Biden could only mutter:

“I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”

The American president of course found it difficult to answer this question because his country is not involved in the Nord Stream 2 project and has very little influence over it – the only thing Washington can hope for is that sustained pressure on European allies will make them capitulate to their demands.

However, the reality is that Germany, Europe’s most important country alongside France, has its own economic interests that must be served and not compromised for the sake of the US. Berlin has defended its ability to complete the pipeline, despite the fact that the US opposes the project in any way possible. Washington has no interest in the fact that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is vital for the German economy and industry.

None-the-less, to try and appease Washington, Scholz stressed to journalists that Germany was “absolutely united” and that “we will do the same steps, and they will be very, very hard to Russia.”

This is on the assumption though that Russia will invade Ukraine, something that the Kremlin has continually stressed it has no ambition of doing despite the constant warnings and rhetoric emanating from Washington. Both Berlin and Paris understand that Russia does not want to invade Ukraine and desperately want the manufactured crisis to end.

Brandon Weichert, author of “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower” and a former US congressional staffer, said to the Express newspaper this week:

“Paris is hesitant about getting too bogged down in a Russo-American fight over Ukraine for the same reason that Germany is desperate to avoid escalation in the particular fight over Ukraine.”

“Paris, like Berlin, fears the prospects of their own countries becoming frontline states yet again in either a renewed Cold War between Russia and the US or, more frighteningly, an actual war,” he added.

Following talks on Friday in Moscow between Russian and French Presidents Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron, the Financial Times, citing French sources, reported that Russia had “moved” towards de-escalating the situation around Ukraine.

Specifically, the meeting was said to revolve around the withdrawal of Russian troops from Belarus after the end of their exercises in the country. According to sources, this will lead to further meetings and the signing of an agreement on “structured dialogue on collective security.”

Macron had previously proposed a re-format of the European security system to include Moscow in it, but this offer went unanswered. This time, the French leader again noted that it is impossible to normalize the international situation without dialogue with Russia.

“We must protect our European brothers by proposing a new balance capable of preserving their sovereignty and peace. This must be done while respecting Russia and understanding the contemporary traumas of this great people and great nation,” the French president added.

In this way, Macron, despite some differences with Putin, has an immense respect for the Russian leader. Macron, just like his German colleague Scholz, is a realist and understands that discounting Moscow’s interests and concerns is not a realistic prospect if order, stability and peace is to be maintained in Europe, something that the Anglo Alliance (US and UK) are not interested in as they would not be directly affected by a potential continental war.

As Weichert noted, among other reasons, France and Germany are also dependent on Russian energy supplies. Because of this, the two countries do not want to enforce the harsh restrictions that Biden demands.

In the view of the former Congressional official, the two key allies would surely “[throw] the Americans under the bus, which they will because Paris thinks that would weaken America’s unwanted hold over European affairs.”

In this way, the two European powerhouses, ignoring the incessant complaints from Poland and the Baltic states, are themselves deescalating a crisis in Ukraine that Washington and Kiev manufactured seemingly out of nowhere. In addition, although the Europeans are vowing to respond to any Russian invasion of Ukraine, and in this way shows “unity” with the US, they fully understand that Moscow has no plans for such an invasion. For this reason, Germany is completely unwilling to sacrifice its energy and industrial needs for the sake of appeasing Washington’s hostile anti-Russian policies.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

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As everyone faces difficult times, the company which deals with the fulfillment of book sales on behalf of Global Research is no longer able to provide its services. We are unfortunately suspending the sale of print books until further notice.

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Memo to Congress: Diplomacy for Ukraine Is Spelled M-i-n-s-k

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, February 08, 2022

You would think Congress would be echoing the public sentiment that a war with Russia is not in our national interest. Instead, taking our nation to war and supporting the gargantuan military budget seem to be the only issues that both parties agree on.

Video: Group of Moms Helps Truckers in Ottawa. This Is What It Means to be a Citizen

By Jean-François Girard, February 08, 2022

Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau portrayed Ottawa’s protesters as violent, racists, and more… Here is one of many trucker’s tales showing this is as far from reality as it can go.

Video: Support for Freedom Convoy by Candice Bergen – New Conservative Leader

By Marcel Irnie, February 08, 2022

The Conservative Party of Canada has named Portage-Lisgar MP Candice Bergen as its interim leader. The announcement came Wednesday evening after a vote by caucus members. Bergen is among a growing number of Conservatives allying themselves with the protesters – a position that politicians across the political spectrum have criticized.

Freedom Convoy Is Being Threatened: Preemptive SOS Press Conference. Trudeau Is a Liar

By Global Research News, February 08, 2022

The Trudeau government has refused to enter into dialogue. The Prime Minister has portrayed the protesters (without a shred of evidence) of conducting acts of violence, racism and anti-semitism. Watch videos in the link.

Video: Freedom Convoy, Threats of Mass Arrests. Trudeau Refuses to Enter into Dialogue, SOS Press Conference

By Freedom Convoy, February 08, 2022

The leaders of the Convoy are prepared to talk to the government. We want tangible results. It is a political theater on the part of the Trudeau government. There has been no response from the City of Ottawa. They refuse to sit around a table. We are prepared to meet with Trudeau.

Video: The Powder Keg of Donbass

By Manlio Dinucci, February 08, 2022

The situation in Donbass is increasingly critical: 150 thousand soldiers of the Ukrainian Army and National Guard are deployed in front of Donetsk and Lugansk, inhabited by Russian populations. In the front line there is the neo-Nazi battalion Azov, promoted to regiment of special forces, distinguished for its ferocity in the attacks on the Russian populations of Ukraine, commanded by Andrey Biletsky who educates young people to hatred against the Russians with his book “The Words of the White Führer”.

Regional Power Play and Killing of Bin Laden and ISIS Caliphs

By Nauman Sadiq, February 08, 2022

As a Saudi citizen and belonging to the powerful Saudi-Yemeni clan of Bin Ladens, which has business interests all over the Middle East, Osama bin Laden was almost a royalty.

‘Pure Theft’ — GoFundMe Withholds $9 Million Donated to Truckers Protesting Vaccine Mandates

By Jeremy Loffredo, February 08, 2022

It all started when Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson announced the city was contemplating legal action against GoFundMe, in the hope of diverting the donations raised on behalf of the truckers to the city’s coffers.

This Medical Data from the US Department of Defense Is Explosive – Mainstream Media Has Been Ordered to Ignore It

By Steve Kirsch, February 08, 2022

On February 1st, 2022, US Senator Ron Johnson sent a letter to DoD Secretary Lloyd Austin highlighting the dramatic rise in adverse events reported in the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) after the vaccines were rolled out to the military.

China’s Belt & Road Already Delivering for Southeast Asia

By Brian Berletic, February 08, 2022

The West’s propaganda campaign against China is attempting to convince the world that Beijing and its policies pose a global threat. China is accused of everything from presenting an outright military threat to its neighbors and the world, to sinisterly trapping nations in debt for infrastructure projects the West insists are unnecessary in the first place.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò Endorses Canadian Truck Drivers, Calls for Prayers to Defeat ‘Infernal’ Great Reset

By His Excellency Carlo Maria Viganò, February 08, 2022

The global coup that in these two years of psycho-pandemic farce has been carried out by the globalist elite appears most clearly if we do not limit ourselves to considering what happened in individual Nations, but broaden our gaze to what has happened everywhere. 

NATO Holds Drills with Three Carrier Strike Groups, Seven Interceptor Warships in Eastern Mediterranean

By Rick Rozoff, February 08, 2022

The USS Bainbridge, USS Gonzalez, USS Gravely and USS Ross are Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers designed to fire Standard Missile 3 anti-ballistic missiles of the sort stationed in their so-called Aegis Ashore version in Romania and Poland.

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***

The Conservative Party of Canada has named Portage-Lisgar MP Candice Bergen as its interim leader. The announcement came Wednesday evening after a vote by caucus members.

Bergen is among a growing number of Conservatives allying themselves with the protesters – a position that politicians across the political spectrum have criticized.

The protesters want governments to end all pandemic restrictions and vaccination and mask mandates. On Thursday, organizers again said they won’t leave until their demands are met, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has rejected.

In the House of Commons on Monday, Ms. Bergen described the protesters as “passionate, patriotic and peaceful.”

On Twitter, she posted pictures of her meeting with some of the people blockading the streets and said they “deserve to be heard and they deserve respect.”

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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.

The Freedom Convoy is being Threatened

The Trudeau government has refused to enter into dialogue.

The Prime Minister has portrayed the protesters (without a shred of evidence) of conducting acts of violence, racism and anti-semitism.  (See Second Video below)

On the 2nd of February, he added the following tweet to his unsubstantiated accusations.

It is unclear whether the precise wording of his tweet was part of an unanimous vote of the House of Commons.

Why all these Lies on the Part of the Prime Minister of Canada 

Who are the Criminals? 

The Trudeau government’s decisions are in blatant derogation of fundamental human rights. 

All the Covid-19 Mandates implemented since March 2020 are Illegal. 

Amply documented the Covid-19 vaccine has resulted in an upward trend in mortality and morbidity.

It is a dangerous “drug” which is being imposed on Canadians without Informed Consent.  

All the data is there to Confirm that the mrNA vaccine is a dangerous “drug” which should be immediately withdrawn.

***

Video: Press Conference

Video: Trudeau’s libellous and defamatory accusations directed against the Freedom Convoy are without substance or evidence 

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Summary of the Statements and Discussion (not verbatim) raised during the Press Conference

The leaders of the Convoy are prepared to talk to the government.

We want tangible results. 

It is a political theater on the part of the Trudeau government.

There has been no response from the City of Ottawa.

They refuse to sit around a table. We are prepared to meet with Trudeau.

Meanwhile, there are threats to implement mass arrests.  

We are committed to peace and non-violence.

The police forces may resort to violence. 

Politicians were elected to enter into dialogue. 

Police have taken an oath. We encourage police officers to enter into dialogue with scientists within our movement regarding the vaccine.

We have police support within our movement.  We have a solid relationship with the police in Ottawa.

There is the building of a rhetorical language by politicians (and the media) which is totable unacceptable. 

The media are not reporting the news, they are creating the news. 

Regarding Health Canada: We do not have information regarding the vaccine.

Let the public get the information regarding the vaccine.

Video of the SOS Press Club

This second Video provides evidence that Trudeau’s libellous and defamatory accusations directed against the Freedom Convoy are without substance

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***

The situation in Donbass is increasingly critical: 150 thousand soldiers of the Ukrainian Army and National Guard are deployed in front of Donetsk and Lugansk, inhabited by Russian populations. In the front line there is the neo-Nazi battalion Azov, promoted to regiment of special forces, distinguished for its ferocity in the attacks on the Russian populations of Ukraine, commanded by Andrey Biletsky who educates young people to hatred against the Russians with his book “The Words of the White Führer”.

The Ukrainian deployment is not mentioned in the mainstream, which speaks only about the Russian one. At the same time it hides the fact that the Kiev armed forces are financed, equipped and trained, and thus in fact commanded, by US-NATO military advisors and instructors. As the Congressional Research Service itself documents, the U.S. and NATO have provided Ukraine with $10 billion in military aid.

There are also those of individual powers: Britain invests £1.7 billion to give the Ukrainian navy 8 fast missile launchers and build naval bases on the Sea of Azov, wedged into Russian territory.

Particularly alarming is the presence in the Donetsk region of US mercenaries, probably equipped with chemical weapons. This could be the spark that provokes the deflagration of a war in the heart of Europe: a chemical attack against Ukrainian civilians in the Donbass, immediately attributed to the Russians in Donetsk and Lugansk, who would be attacked by the preponderant Ukrainian forces already deployed in the region, to force Russia to intervene militarily in their defense.

Grandangolo can also be seen on live TV on cell phones or computers in the site.

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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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***

Dara’a, Syria was the hometown of Khalid. In the years leading up to 2011, he lived between there and Damascus. He was in his 3^rd year studying sociology at Damascus University. He shared a sparely furnished apartment in a working-class neighborhood of the capital with fellow Dara’a students. And all boasted that Dara’a natives were the most diligent and intelligent of all Syrians; naming professors, military officers and other successful Dara’a-born Syrians.

Khalid promised me a tour of his city. And we eventually went there together, but only after the uprising erupted and his proud birthplace was transformed into a garrisoned city with checkpoints along now subdued streets. Dara’a would fall to rebels for some years but was recently liberated by government forces. (Although Khalid himself would not witness any of those battles.)

Neither Dara’a city nor its countryside included Syria’s notable archeological sites or charming parks where families enjoy Friday outings. In 2011 because of its proximity to the Jordanian border, Dhara’a became a point for the infiltration into Syria of rebels and arms supported by the U.S., U.K., Israel and Jordan.

We’d known each other before political unrest erupted in 2011 in Tunisia, then spread to Egypt and finally reached Syria. From among those four friends, why Khalid alone decided to join the opposition movement, I don’t know. Maybe it was the security service indiscriminately detaining young men. Maybe he was recruited by a trusted friend. Maybe it was his fierce Dara’a pride.

Today, only he among those students can’t be traced. He went missing five years ago and none of us has had news of him since then.

Ruknideen Market on 4 May 2011

Nobody could openly criticize the Syrian government. Sometimes a subtle remark might indicate someone’s discontent. Not from Khalid though. In fact, he and his friends voluntarily proffered warm comments about their youthful, modern leader. They appeared genuinely impressed that ‘Dr. Bashar’ had studied abroad, that he moved about in public, that he showed no military ambitions. Al-Assad’s had recently returned from a tour of South American countries where he was warmly welcomed. This following his celebrated reception in Paris by President Sarkozy.

Public optimism grew after Syria and Turkey signed new treaties to open their borders to tourism and expanded trade. Internet access was widening. Syria’s high-quality films and its industrial and agricultural produce were in demand across the region, food was plentiful and the economy thriving. All this despite the obstinate U.S. sanctions begun in 1979 and regularly expanded — to the present.

During those early years of Al-Assad’s leadership Khalid felt encouraged. So he was shocked by the president’s reaction to the trouble that erupted in Dara’a in 2011, after the governor there had severely punished schoolboys who’d painted graffiti in support of the far-away Tunisian protests. Not only did the president not excoriate the governor; he didn’t call for an investigation into claims of torture. Then protests by parents of the jailed Dara’a boys led to demonstrations elsewhere; troops were sent to halt the marches; arrests and jailings began. That incident became sparked a fire which, by stages, would spread through the nation.

The initial uprising in Dara’a had been quelled by the time I travelled there with Khalid a few months later. Along the route from Damascus our bus was stopped at checkpoints. Passing through the city we gazed in silence at army posts newly installed at intersections. (Recalling the many West Bank neighborhoods I knew) The city was palpably tense. Three friends who stopped by to see Khalid stayed the night and spoke together in hushed tones. It was not a cheerful reunion.

Several months passed, by which time I’d returned to New York, not knowing if a new visa to Syria was advisable. Or possible. Khalid and I may have spoken by phone meantime; I forget. Then, suddenly, he called, announcing his arrival in NYC; he was attending some U.N. human rights conference, he said. The next day he visited me at home. Only then did I suspect he was working for the opposition, probably the Free Syrian Army, the U.S.-funded rebel force that emerged early in the conflict.

Khalid never told me about a political mission he may have had. Though he spent much of his time operating two laptops as well as a number of phones, linking up several parties simultaneously. He never discussed this with me. Nor did he hide it, nor inquire about my feelings concerning growing tensions and protests in his country. Was my home a safe location from which to set up his network, to undertake communications training? That hadn’t occurred to me.

I would only realize how deeply involved Khalid was six months later when he returned here. This time he was a guest of the State Department. He admitted his excitement about meeting the anti-Syria U.S. senator, John McCain. I suspect he helped prepare a secret visit by the senator into rebel-held areas of Syria.

We didn’t meet that time; he was busy traveling from city to city, he said. But we talked by phone about his Dara’a university mates.

One had left Syria, and was in Beirut from where he would take a boat to Greece, then walk across Europe with thousands of other refugees. Among family he left behind was his brother, Samir, whom we both knew. Samir was a lawyer in the Syrian military, posted in Palmyra in the eastern desert. (Either he could not or didn’t want to leave.) Their family was told that Samir was among those captured by ISIS rebels when they swarmed that city. Samir was imprisoned; that’s all they knew. Later, when Syrian forces successfully retook the city, no trace of him could be found. Samir’s family had not given up hope that he would be alive, somewhere. By 2021, there was still no word about him. The same goes for Khalid. After McCain’s Syria visit, I lost contact with him. So did the other lads.

Tell me: do these two missing Syrian patriots cancel out each other?

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

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

“Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”

By Barbara Nimri Aziz

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to order.

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***

Yesterday I stood with friends and colleagues at one of the many highway overpasses in Toronto as we watched a truly historic moment unfold before our tear-filled eyes. Thousands of liberty-loving Canadians from all walks of life were gathered there—as they were throughout the country—in the freezing cold, holding aloft flags and signs to show support for hundreds of courageous transport truck drivers as they passed by us in the Freedom Convoy on the way to our nation’s capital.  — David Skripac, renowned author and  pilot who served as a Captain in the Royal Canadian Air Force

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According to Justin Trudeau: 

the protesters “have expressed hateful rhetoric and violence towards their fellow citizens.”

“So to those responsible for this behaviour — it needs to stop, …

Canadians at home are watching in disgust and disbelief at this behaviour, wondering how this could have happened in our nation’s capital. …

Trudeau says that no one has a right “to abuse, intimidate and harass … fellow citizens.”

(January 31 Statement followed by Press Conference, Scroll down for Video)

“Disgust and Disbelief” according to Trudeau.

Millions of Canadians from coast to coast have supported and continue to support the Freedom Convoy 2022.

Statement of Prime Minster Trudeau on February 2, 2022

Are the protesters really what he claims them to be?

The Vaccine Is Safe According to Trudeau

NONSENSE!

Trudeau claims without evidence that the vaccine is safe. We do not support disinformation and conspiracy theories, he says.

He attacks Erin O’Toole, leader of the Conservative Party. He calls on politicians to think very carefully who they are supporting.

He calls upon politicians to “respect science”.

Science and Facts

Trudeau calls for “trust in science, trust in facts”. 

The official science and facts reports of the EU, US and UK pertaining to reported, recorded and registered vaccine-related deaths and adverse events are available.

Bear in mind: Most deaths and adverse events are not reported.

These are official figures. They are facts.

TOTAL for EU/UK/USA – 61,654 Covid-19 injection related deaths and 9,755,085 injuries reported as at 28 January 2022.

Health Canada has compiled the data on mortality and morbidity. But this information has not been made public.

Health Canada does not inform Canadians on the deaths and adverse events pertaining to Covid-19 vaccine.

See Trudeau’s Statement followed by Press Conference

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says “hate speech and racist symbols must not be tolerated in Canada.” 1:46

See video below.

This is what is happening. And Trudeau calls it a “fringe minority”.

Video: ALL of Canada Has Joined The Convoy, Except Trudeau

Swastikas

Trudeau referred to swastikas intimating that the organizers are supportive of Neo-Nazi symbols. (There was one swastika event in Ottawa coupled with a Confederate flag, confirmed by the Times of Israel).

What Trudeau, however, fails to mention is that his government is supporting Ukraine’s National Guard which is controlled by Neo-Nazi elements.

According to the Ottawa Citizen (November 9, 2021)

“Canadian officials who met with members of a Ukrainian battalion linked to neo-Nazis didn’t denounce the unit, but were instead concerned the media would expose details of the get-together, according to newly released documents.

The Canadians met with and were briefed by leaders from the Azov Battalion in June 2018. The officers and diplomats did not object to the meeting and instead allowed themselves to be photographed with battalion officials despite previous warnings that the unit saw itself as pro-Nazi. The Azov Battalion then used those photos for its online propaganda, pointing out the Canadian delegation expressed “hopes for further fruitful co-operation.”

There is ample evidence of Canadian and US support to Neo-Nazis in Ukraine going back to the 2014 Euromaidan:

Andriy Parubiy co-founder of the Neo-Nazi  Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda) was appointed [in 2014] Secretary of the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU). (Рада національної безпеки і оборони України), a key position which overseas the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence.

Neo-Nazi Leader Andriy Parubiy Invited by Trudeau to Ottawa 

Upon the formation of a new government in 2014, Neo-Nazi leader Andriy Parubiy became an Member of Parliament. He was then appointed Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament of Ukraine).  

In 2016 Nazi leader Andreiy Parubiy was invited to Ottawa to meet the Prime Minister of Canada.  

Deputy Chairman of Ukraine’s Parliament, Andriy Parubiy, visited Ottawa in February 2016, meeting with the prime minister. At that meeting (from left) are Ukraine’s Ambassador to Canada Andriy Shevchenko, Verkhovna Rada Deputy Chairman Andriy Parubiy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Member of Parliament Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

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Le Olimpiadi invernali del 2014 – che si aprirono a Sochi in Russia il 7 febbraio alla vigilia dell’esplosione della crisi ucraina con il putsch di Piazza Maidan (18-20 febbraio) – furono definite nella campagna mediatica anti-russa le «Olimpiadi dello zar Putin». Il presidente Obama e il vice Biden, seguiti da altri, le boicottarono accusando la Russia di violare i diritti umani degli Lgbt. Stesso scenario oggi con le Olimpiadi invernali di Pechino, definite nella campagna mediatica anti-cinese «i Giochi di potere di Xi, il Grande timoniere olimpico» (La Repubblica, 3 febbraio).

Il presidente Biden le ha boicottate, accusando la Cina di violare i diritti umani degli Uiguri. Al seguito degli Stati uniti, la Gran Bretagna, il Canada, l’Australia, la Lituania, l’Estonia e il Kosovo (noto difensore dei diritti umani, inquisito per traffico di esseri e organi umani alla Corte dell’Aja) hanno dichiarato il «boicottaggio diplomatico» delle Olimpiadi di Pechino.

Il boicottaggio fa parte della strategia di Washington di «contenimento» della Cina. Essa non è rimasta semplicemente la «fabbrica del mondo» in cui le multinazionali statunitensi ed europee hanno delocalizzato da decenni gran parte delle loro produzioni, ricavandone colossali profitti. La Cina ha realizzato un proprio sviluppo produttivo e tecnologico e, su tale base, progetti come la Nuova Via della Seta: una rete terrestre (viaria e ferroviaria) e marittima tra la Cina e l’Europa attraverso l’Asia Centrale, il Medio Oriente e la Russia. In tale quadro, le relazioni economiche tra Cina e Russia si sono rafforzate, soprattutto dopo le sanzioni imposte da Stati uniti e Unione europea alla Russia.

L’interscambio tra Stati uniti e Cina resta maggiore, ma, dato che molti prodotti sul mercato statunitense sono fabbricati in Cina da multinazionali Usa o forniti da società cinesi, gli Stati uniti registrano nel commercio bilaterale un deficit di oltre 300 miliardi di dollari annui. La Cina ha inoltre fortemente ridotto i propri investimenti negli Usa. Ancora più grave per Washington è il fatto che la quota in dollari delle riserve valutarie cinesi è sensibilmente calata e che la Cina cerca monete alternative a quella statunitense da usare nel commercio internazionale, mettendo in pericolo l’egemonia del dollaro.

Non potendo arrestare tale processo che può mettere fine al predominio economico degli Stati uniti, Washington getta la spada sul piatto della bilancia. Il «contenimento» economico diventa «contenimento» militare. L’ammiraglio Davidson, capo del Comando dell’Indo-Pacifico – la regione che nella geopolitica di Washington si estende dalla costa occidentale degli Usa a quella dell’India – ha richiesto al Congresso 27 miliardi di dollari per costruire attorno alla Cina una cortina di basi missilistiche e sistemi satellitari. «Dobbiamo cominciare ad affrontare la Cina da una posizione di forza», ha dichiarato il segretario di Stato Antony Blinken.

In tale quadro rientra l’Aukus, il partenariato strategico-militare costituito da Stati uniti, Gran Bretagna e Australia con «l’imperativo di assicurare la pace e stabilità nell’Indo-Pacifico», Stati Uniti e Gran Bretagna aiuteranno l’Australia ad acquisire sottomarini a propulsione nucleare, armati di missili sicuramente anche a testata nucleare, tipo il Trident D5 Usa che può trasportare fino a 14 testate termonucleari indipendenti. Questi sottomarini di fatto sotto comando Usa, avvicinandosi alle coste della Cina e della Russia, potrebbero colpire in pochi minuti i principali obiettivi in questi paesi con una capacità distruttiva pari a oltre 20 mila bombe di Hiroshima.

Cina e Russia rafforzano di conseguenza non solo la loro cooperazione economica, ma anche quella politica e militare. Nella dichiarazione congiunta a Pechino, i presidenti Xi Jinping e Vladimir Putin hanno sottolineato che «Russia e Cina si oppongono ai tentativi di forze esterne di minare la sicurezza e stabilità nelle loro regioni adiacenti» e che «si oppongono all’ulteriore allargamento della Nato». La strategia Stati uniti-Nato della tensione e della guerra, che riporta al confronto tra blocchi contrapposti, spezza i cinque cerchi intrecciati, simbolo olimpico dei cinque continenti uniti per «un mondo migliore e pacifico».

Manlio Dinucci

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NATO plans to build a gas pipeline from Spain to Germany – media

By 112 Ukraine

February 7, 2022

NATO is considering building a pipeline from Spain to France and Germany that will “reduce Central Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.” This was reported by La Vanguardia, citing sources in the Spanish government.

“The gas pipeline between Spain and Germany will reduce Central Europe’s dependence on Russian gas in the coming years,” the statement said.

According to the agency, the construction of a new Trans-Pyrenean connection to send gas from Algeria to Central Europe is being considered. It is noted that there are eight regasification stations required for liquefied gas treatment in the Iberian Peninsula, namely in Spain and Portugal.

It is noted that the authorities are studying the option of restarting the Midcat project, which was stopped three years ago. The project involves the creation of a Mediterranean gas corridor to deliver gas from Algeria to central Europe. The newspaper claims that Germany is extremely interested in it.

It was reported earlier that the authorities of Poland and Ukraine are discussing the construction of a joint gas pipeline to transfer large volumes of gas from west to east in the near future.

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NATO Reportedly Contemplates Building New Pipeline in Bid to Reduce Dependency on Russian Gas

By Tasnim News

February 6, 2022

NATO has plans to build a pipeline that would connect Catalonia, Spain and France in order to reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas, the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia reported, citing anonymous sources in the country’s government.

The proposed structure could reportedly be used to transfer around 7 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year from Algeria and foreign LNG shipments. The latter could be stored and processed in eight LNG plants located in Spain and Portugal, the newspaper said. La Vanguardia’s sources claim the proposal is on NATO’s “working table” and that Germany is “very interested” in the project, Sputnik reported.

The pipeline project itself is not new and is known as Midcat. It was first proposed three years ago, but was rejected by Spanish and French regulators as potentially unprofitable due to Europe’s plans to achieve net-zero emissions by the middle of the century via the use of green energy.

The reports of a new pipeline being discussed come in the wake of a tough year for the European energy industry, which faced spiking gas prices in 2021. The price tag first breached the ceiling of $1,000 per thousand cubic meters due to the EU’s reservoirs being half full after a tough winter, only to reach $2,000 at the end of the year.

The skyrocketing prices were generally put down to the EU’s failure to fill up its reservoirs in 2021, growing consumption amid the closing of several nuclear power plants in Europe, and the failure to buy extra LNG abroad due to Asian nations buying up all the free stocks of it. Yet, numerous European politicians and their American allies blamed Russia and the EU’s dependency on gas supplies from Moscow.

Moscow and the Russian gas exporting company Gazprom rejected the accusations, with both stressing that the country has fulfilled all of its contractual obligations on natural gas supplies.

At the same time, a joint EU-Russian venture, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which was finished in September 2021, still remains non-operational due to a lack of certification. The process of issuing the latter was put “on pause” according to German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. Berlin claims the pipeline, which could pump up to 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year, might be violating European energy laws, specifically the Third Energy Package.

However, there have been several media reports, as well as suggestions from American politicians, that Nord Stream 2’s future might fall victim to Western sanctions against Russia in the context of ongoing tensions around Ukraine.

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Borrell: US, EU to help Ukraine develop energy security

By 112 Ukraine

February 7, 2022

Ukraine is now better prepared for any conflict but it still needs to increase investments in its own sources of renewable energy

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell claimed that the U.S. and the EU will jointly assist Ukraine with maintaining the energy security. The politician wrote that on his blog on the website of the European External Action Service.

“While we seek to address the EU’s own energy and climate goals and enhance our resilience, we must do the same for Ukraine. In terms of energy security, Ukraine today is already better prepared for any conflict. As in the rest of Europe, true energy security can however only come through more investment in domestic renewables and better connections with the EU market”, reads the message.

Before going to the session of the EU-US Energy Council in Washington, Borrell claimed that the meeting “will be an opportunity to seek even tighter coordination on energy market reforms needed in Ukraine to reinforce corporate governance and transparency ahead of Ukraine’s synchronisation to the European electricity network, planned in 2023”.

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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).

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***

The 2014 Winter Olympics – which opened in Sochi, Russia, on February 7, on the eve of the explosion of the Ukrainian crisis with the putsch in Maidan Square (February 18-20) – were defined in the anti-Russian media campaign as the “Olympics of Czar Putin”.

President Obama and Deputy Biden, followed by others, boycotted them accusing Russia of violating the human rights of LGBT people. Same scenario today with the Beijing Winter Olympics, defined in the anti-Chinese media campaign as “the Games of power of Xi, the Great Olympic helmsman” (La Re-pubblica, February 3). President Biden boycotted them, accusing China of violating the human rights of the Uighurs. Following the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, Lituania, Estonia and Kosovo (a well-known human rights defender, indicted for trafficking of human beings and human organs) declared a “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing Olympics.

The boycott is part of Washington’s strategy of “containment” of China. China has not simply remained the “factory of the world” in which U.S. and European multinationals have relocated for decades much of their production, earning huge profits. China has realized its own productive and technological development and, on this basis, projects such as the New Silk Road: a land (road and rail) and sea network between China and Europe through Central Asia, the Middle East and Russia. Within this framework, economic relations between China and Russia have strengthened, especially after the sanctions imposed by the United States and the EU on Russia. Trade between the USA and China remains strong, but since many products on the US market are manufactured in China by US multinationals or supplied by Chinese companies, the USA has a deficit in bilateral trade of over 300 billion dollars annually.

China has also strongly reduced its investments in the US. Even more serious for Washington is the fact that the dollar share of China’s foreign exchange reserves has dropped significantly and that China is looking for alternative currencies to the U.S. currency to use in international trade, endangering the hegemony of the dollar.

Unable to stop this process that can put an end to the economic dominance of the United States, Washington throws the sword on the scales. Economic “containment” becomes military “containment”. Admiral Davidson, head of the Indo-Pacific Command – the region that in Washington’s geopolitics extends from the west coast of the U.S. to that of India – has asked Congress for $27 billion to build a curtain of missi-listic bases and satellite systems around China. “We must begin to approach China from a position of strength,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In this framework is part the Aukus, the strategic-military partnership formed by the United States, Great Britain and Australia with “the imperative to ensure peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific”. The United States and Great Britain will help Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, armed with missiles certainly also with nuclear warheads, such as the U.S. Trident D5 that can carry up to 14 independent thermonuclear warheads. These submarines under U.S. command, approaching the coasts of China and Russia, could hit in a few minutes the main targets in these countries with a capacity of over 20 thousand Hiroshima bombs.

As a result, China and Russia are strengthening not only their economic but also their political and military cooperation. In their joint statement in Beijing, Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin stressed that “Russia and China oppose attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their adjacent regions” and that they “oppose further enlargement of NATO.” The U.S.-NATO strategy of tension and war, which brings back to the confrontation between opposing blocs, breaks the five intertwined circles, the Olympic symbol of the five continents united for “a better and peaceful world”.

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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).

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

In an exclusive insider account [1] with its vast network of NATSEC shills, the New York Times has chronicled the most detailed “official story” of the killing of al-Baghdadi’s shadowy successor at Syria’s border along Turkey in a Special Ops night raid on Thursday.

But the whole screed is based on the testimony of five unnamed witnesses, including the one with pseudonym Abu Muhammad. I’m assuming his real name wasn’t Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the fearsome head of al-Nusra Front, the savage terrorist organization controlling Syria’s northwest Idlib province, where the new ISIS Caliph, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, was killed, considering the Times reporters virtually played the role of terrorist apologists for myriad groups of Islamic jihadists and “moderate rebels” during Syria’s decade-long proxy war.

Sarcasm aside, the Times report notes:

“About 11 months ago, a Syrian truck driver rented the house targeted in the raid, said Muhammad Sheikh, whose family owns it. The truck driver paid $130 per month and lived there on the second floor with his wife, their three children, his sister and her daughter, Mr. Sheikh said.

“Late last year, the United States got a tip that Mr. al-Qurayshi was living on the top floor, Biden administration officials said. He never left the building, but sometimes bathed on the rooftop. To communicate with the far-flung terrorist organization he headed, he relied on the polite truck driver who lived downstairs.”

Although the Times report alleges the ISIS leader was killed in a non-descript three-story house on the outskirts of Atmeh, a densely populated town in Syria’s northwest Idlib province straddling the border with Turkey, and the building and the impoverished locality were purportedly inhabited by “civilian refugees,” the fortified neighborhood was in fact an al-Nusra Front redoubt populated by militants and their families, with an al-Nusra Front checkpoint only 200 meters away, a Turkish police station 500 meters and a Turkish military outpost a kilometer away from the building, according to credible sources [2] with inside information of Syria’s Idlib.

Clearly, both the self-styled caliphs of ISIS, al-Baghdadi and al-Quraishi, were hiding in Syria’s Idlib with the blessings of al-Nusra Front and Turkish security forces and were used as bargaining chips to extract geo-strategic concessions from the Trump and Biden administrations, respectively.

The scapegoating of both the ISIS caliphs by the Erdogan government, first in October 2019 to let Turkey mount Operation Peace Spring in northeast Syria and then on February 3 to reconcile with the Biden administration as Erdogan was repeatedly snubbed by Biden throughout his maiden year as president due to Erdogan’s personal friendship and business partnership with Biden’s political rival Trump, are reminiscent of the killing of the foremost terrorist leader, Osama bin Laden, also in a Special Ops night raid in May 2011, who was also hiding under the “protection” of Pakistan’s security forces until he was betrayed by his patrons for “geo-strategic concerns.”

As a Saudi citizen and belonging to the powerful Saudi-Yemeni clan of Bin Ladens, which has business interests all over the Middle East, Osama bin Laden was almost a royalty. He had so much clout even in the governments of Middle Eastern countries that he was treated like a “royal guest” by Pakistan’s military at the behest of the Saudi royal family for five years from 2006 after his escape from Afghanistan right up to his death in 2011.

In comparison, even though they adopted the nom de guerre Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, respectively, in fact both Ibrahim Awad and Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla were simply rural clerics in mosques in Iraq before they assumed the title of the caliphs of the Islamic State.

Regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, despite a few minor discrepancies, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has published the most credible account to-date of the execution of Bin Laden in his book and article titled: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden [3], which was published in the London Review of Books in May 2015.

According to Hersh, the initial, tentative plan of the Obama administration regarding the disclosure of the execution of Bin Laden to the press was that he had been killed in a drone strike in the Hindu Kush Mountains on the Afghan side of the border, which could also have provided face-saving to Pakistan’s military authorities.

But the operation didn’t go as planned because a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound and later blown up by the Navy Seals. Consequently, the whole sleepy town now knew that an operation was underway and several social media users based in Abbottabad live-tweeted the whole incident on Twitter.

Therefore, the initial plan was abandoned and the Obama administration had to go public within hours of the operation with a hurriedly cooked-up story. This fact explains so many contradictions and discrepancies in the official account of the story, the most glaring being the United States Navy Seals conducted a raid deep inside Pakistan’s territory on a garrison town without the permission of Pakistani authorities.

According to a May 2015 AFP report [4], Pakistan’s military sources had confirmed Hersh’s account there was a Pakistani defector who had met several times with Jonathan Bank, the CIA’s then-station chief in Islamabad, as a consequence of which Pakistan’s intelligence disclosed Bank’s name to local newspapers and he had to leave Pakistan in a hurry in December 2010 because his cover was blown.

In his May 2016 report [5], Greg Miller of the Washington Post posited that Mark Kelton, the CIA station chief in Islamabad at the time of Bin Laden’s killing in May 2011, was poisoned by Pakistan’s intelligence service due to Kelton’s role in the killing of Bin Laden. It’s worth noting that Mark Kelton succeeded Jonathan Bank in January 2011, after the latter’s name was made public by Pakistan’s military intelligence due to Bank’s “suspicious activities.”

According to inside sources of Pakistan’s military, after the 9/11 terror attack, the Saudi royal family had asked Pakistan’s military authorities as a favor to keep Bin Laden under protective custody, because he was a scion of a powerful Saudi-Yemeni Bin Laden family and it was simply inconceivable for the Saudis to hand him over to the US. That’s why he was found hiding in a spacious compound right next to the reputed Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad.

But once the Pakistani walk-in colonel, as stated in Seymour Hersh’s book and corroborated by the aforementioned AFP report, told then-CIA station chief in Islamabad, Jonathan Bank, that a high-value al-Qaeda leader had been hiding in a safe house in Abbottabad under the protective custody of Pakistan’s intelligence service, and after that when the CIA obtained further proof in the form of Bin Laden’s DNA through the fake vaccination program conducted by Dr. Shakil Afridi, then it was no longer possible for Pakistan’s military authorities to keep denying the whereabouts of Bin Laden.

In the book, Seymour Hersh has already postulated various theories that why it was not possible for Pakistan’s military authorities to simply hand Bin Laden over to the US, one being that the Americans wanted to catch Bin Laden themselves in order to gain maximum political mileage for then-President Obama’s presidential campaign slated for November 2012.

Here, let me only add that in May 2011, Pakistan had a pro-American People’s Party government led by then-President Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of late Benazir Bhutto, in power. And since Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, then the army chief of Pakistan’s military, and the former head of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Shuja Pasha, were complicit in harboring Bin Laden, thus it cannot be ruled out that Pakistan’s military authorities might still have had strong objections to the US Navy Seals conducting a raid deep inside Pakistan’s territory on a garrison town.

But Pakistan’s civilian administration under then-President Asif Ali Zardari persuaded the military authorities to order the Pakistan Air Force and air defense systems to stand down during the operation. Pakistan’s then-ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani’s role in this saga ruffled the feathers of Pakistan’s military’s top brass to the extent that Husain Haqqani was later implicated in a criminal case regarding his memo to Admiral Mike Mullen and eventually Ambassador Haqqani had to resign in November 2011, just six months after the May 2011 raid.

In his March 2017 article [6] for the Washington Post, Husain Haqqani confessed to the role played by the Asif Ali Zardari government in facilitating the killing of Bin Laden. Husain Haqqani identified then-President Asif Ali Zardari as his “civilian leader” and revealed: “In November 2011, I was forced to resign as ambassador after Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus gained the upper hand in the country’s perennial power struggle. Among the security establishment’s grievances against me was the charge that I had facilitated the presence of large numbers of CIA operatives who helped track down bin Laden without the knowledge of Pakistan’s army, even though I had acted under the authorization of Pakistan’s elected civilian leaders.”

In his April 2013 article [7] for the New York Times, Mark Mazzetti noted: “Husain Haqqani had orders from Islamabad to be lenient in approving the visas, because many of the Americans coming to Pakistan were — at least officially — going to be administering millions of dollars in foreign-aid money. By the time of the Lahore killings, in early 2011, so many Americans were operating inside Pakistan under both legitimate and false identities that even the US Embassy didn’t have accurate records of their identities and whereabouts.”

Although Mark Mazzetti scrupulously avoided mentioning the role played by the mole inside Pakistan’s security forces and the CIA station chiefs in locating the couriers of Bin Laden in his article and even tried to distract attention to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the timing of the surge of CIA operatives in Pakistan, late 2010 and early 2011, was telling, because those were exactly the months when the CIA was tracking Bin Laden’s whereabouts.

Finally, although Seymour Hersh claimed in his account of the story that Pakistan’s military authorities were also on board months before the operation, let me clarify that according to the inside sources of Pakistan’s military, only Pakistan’s civilian administration under the pro-American People’s Party government was on board, and military authorities, which were instrumental in harboring Bin Laden and his family for five years, were intimated only at the eleventh hour in order to preempt the likelihood of Bin Laden’s “escape” from the custody of his facilitators in Pakistan’s security apparatus.

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

Notes

[1] ‘Those Who Remain Will Die’: Neighbors Recall Night of Fear in Syria Raid: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/world/middleeast/isis-raid-idlib-qurayshi.html

[2] Slain ISIS Terror Leader Resided In Turkish Occupation Area Of Syria: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-commandos-take-out-top-isis-leader-daring-raid-syrias-idlib

[3] Seymour Hersh: The Killing of Osama bin Laden: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

[4] Pakistan military officials admit defector’s key role in Bin Laden operation: http://www.dawn.com/news/1181530/pakistan-military-officials-admit-defectors-key-role-in-bin-laden-operation

[5] CIA station chief in Islamabad was poisoned by Pakistan’s intelligence service: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-bin-laden-raids-shadow-bad-blood-and-the-suspected-poisoning-of-a-cia-officer/2016/05/05/ace85354-0c83-11e6-a6b6-2e6de3695b0e_story.html

[6] Ambassador Husain Haqqani’s article in the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/10/yes-the-russian-ambassador-met-trumps-team-so-thats-what-we-diplomats-do/

[7] How a Single Spy Helped Turn Pakistan Against the US: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/magazine/raymond-davis-pakistan.html

Featured image is from New Lines Magazine

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***

Many world leaders have visited the Chinese capital of Beijing to support their national teams in the ongoing Winter Olympics, but the trips of three in particular stand out as extremely strategic. These are the meetings that Argentine President Alberto Fernández, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin had with Chinese President Xi Jinping. This analysis will highlight the top takeaways from each meeting and explain their impact on the emerging Multipolar World Order.

Argentina is a developed economy that participates in the G20. It’s a regional leader and currently holds the rotating presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). President Fernández’s visit also coincided with the 50^th anniversary of diplomatic relations between his country and China. He became president in 2019, which also resulted in former Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becoming Argentina’s Vice President. Both politicians are regarded as firm believers in multipolarity.

It’s therefore fitting that President Fernández signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China on Cooperation within the Framework of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative. They also reached a deal on nuclear power too, which is fully in line with both leaders’ environmentalist visions. These outcomes showed that developed economies also mutually benefit by cooperation with China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), which takes more forms than just roads and ports.

Moving along to Prime Minister Khan, his country has long been regarded as China’s iron brother due to their fraternal ties over the decades. His meeting with President Xi saw the two sides further strengthen the Pakistan-China All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership following a 33-paragraph joint statement. They reaffirmed their full support for one another on every issue of importance and agreed to expand the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is BRI’s flagship project.

Unlike Argentina, Pakistan is a developing country but even it too immensely benefits from BRI. Prime Minister Khan specifically praised the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) lifting of 770 million people out of poverty and hopes to emulate its success. To that end, they also signed a number of other deals, including on investment and vaccine cooperation, et al. Both countries also discussed expanding CPEC to Afghanistan and enhancing their cooperation in international fora to promote real multilateralism.

President Putin stands apart from those two other leaders by virtue of the fact that he leads a major country, one that also happens to be experiencing unprecedented pressure from the declining US unipolar hegemon at the moment. Since China and Russia jointly serve as the most powerful engines of the emerging Multipolar World Order, they released a whopping 5,300-word statement together. This declaration confirmed that they see practically everything of global significance the same way.

This meeting was very important for President Putin because Russia was relying on its comprehensive strategic partners in China to serve as a pressure valve vis-à-vis the West. President Xi, of course, didn’t disappoint. Their joint statement literally concerned “International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development”. They also agreed to another gas deal for Russia to supply China with 10 billion cubic metres more of gas a year, which will reduce Russia’s export dependence on the EU.

Most people don’t think of Argentina, Pakistan, and Russia as having much if anything in common, but the Beijing Winter Olympics proved that their leaders all have a shared interest in visiting China to cheer on their national teams and also meet with President Xi. Each of their countries are China’s respected BRI partners, all of whom are envisioned as playing different but complementary roles in this global connectivity vision.

Argentina, by virtue of its developed economy status and presence in Latin America, shows that BRI isn’t just for developing countries in the Eastern Hemisphere like some have wrongly thought. Regarding Pakistan, its hosting of CPEC makes this country’s comprehensive success integral to BRI’s. As for Russia, this country doesn’t just serve as a bridge between Eastern Eurasia and Western Eurasia but is a fiercely sovereign major country that won’t submit to US bullying. All three countries also support multipolarity.

The Winter Olympic Games themselves are a purely apolitical event focusing solely on sporting but they nevertheless served as a convenient reason for many world leaders to visit Beijing and meet with their gracious host President Xi while they were there. The timing couldn’t have been better since the deals that were reached are truly game-changing in the grand strategic sense and came precisely at the moment when the US’ unipolar hegemonic decline has unprecedentedly accelerated.

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As of February 6, Turkish forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continue to exchange fire in Syria’s northern and northeastern regions, further destabilizing the situation in the war-torn country.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) was drawn into the stand-off between the two sides on February 4 when three of its service members were wounded as a result of a series of Turkish artillery strikes that targeted the SDF-held towns of Mara’naz, Shawargha and al-Irshadiyah in the northern countryside of Aleppo.

The SAA responded on the same day by targeting a vehicle of the Turkish-backed Mu’tasim Division near the town of Marea in the northern Aleppo countryside with an anti-tank guided missile. One militant was killed and two others were wounded as a result of the strike.

On the same day, the SDF shelled Marea as well. The attack resulted in some material damage and several civilians were wounded.

On February 5, a primitive suicide drone that was launched by Turkish-backed militants crashed as a result of a technical failure in the outskirts of the SDF-held town of Baylouniyah in the northern countryside of Aleppo. The target of the drone was likely a position of the SDF.

Turkey took matters into its own hands on February 6. Turkish combat drones targeted two positions of the SDF near the village of Arab Hassan in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo. However, no casualties were reported. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, both positions were evacuated before the strikes.

The situation in northern and northeastern Syria may escalate even more in the upcoming days, especially as Turkey appears to be looking for excuses to launch an operation against the SDF.

Meanwhile, in Syria’s central region, the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) continue its combat operations against ISIS cells.

On February 5, at least 16 Russian airstrikes targeted several caves and dens in the eastern Homs countryside and the Hama-Aleppo-Raqqa triangle where ISIS terrorists were hiding.

On February 6, more than 32 Russian airstrikes hit the terrorist hideouts near the town of Ithriyah in the eastern Hama countryside and the town of al-Resafa in the southern countryside of Raqqa.

The recent decline in ISIS attacks indicates that the terrorists group has sustained some serious damage as a result of the recent Russian and Syrian operations in the central region.

In Syria’s northwestern region, known as Greater Idlib, the ceasefire is still holding up despite a few minor ceasefire violations by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies.

The VKS responded to these violations on February 6. A series of Russian airstrikes hit the outskirts of the town of Kafer Shalaya in the southern countryside of Idlib. The targets were likely positions belonging to HTS.

The situation in Greater Idlib may deteriorate in the upcoming days as the weather is getting better. This will allow HTS and its allies to carry out larger attacks.

Meanwhile in the southern Syrian regions, the situation has been calm. No security incidents were reported in al-Quneitra, Daraa or al-Suwayda as of February 7. However, there are no guarantees that the situation will remain stable in a short term.

Overall, the escalation between Turkish forces and the SDF in Syria’s northern and northeastern regions remain the biggest threat to the security and stability of the country. A full-on military confrontation between the two sides could break out soon.

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GoFundMe’s suspension of millions to support protesting truckers in Canada shocked many, particularly when the company initially announced its intention to distribute the money to other charities.  It was less of a surprise for those of us who have criticized the company for years over its use of the platform to target and block funds for conservative and libertarian causes. Indeed, the company has revised an old practice known as the “Nag’s Head light” in luring the unsuspecting into what has become a liberal lockbox on funds.

In the Carolinas, locals would sometimes tie a lantern under the head of a horse to lure ships to their doom.  Thinking the light was a ship in deep water, the ships would unwittingly sail into the shore rocks where they would be stripped of their cargo. That is how the resort town Nag’s Head, North Carolina got its name.

GoFundMe is the ultimate Nag’s Head operation. It draws conservative and libertarian causes to its shore with promise of being a neutral crowdfunding site. At its creation, the founders pledged to change the world by “disrupting giving” by handing control to average people in supporting others with common values and views.

The easy-to-use technology and need for crowdfunding services quickly expanded the company into a multibillion enterprise. However, it soon became clear that the company was using its control of funds to advance its own political agenda. Worse yet, the company effectively coaxing groups into fundraising campaigns on its site, only to freeze accounts before the money could be used.

In the case of the Canadian truckers protesting Covid mandate, the company perfectly replicated the Nag’s Head Light. It allowed people to donate over $10 million, thinking that they were helping the truckers and presumably not donating to other sites. It then suspended the account and announced that it would distribute the money to other charities in consultation with the truckers. Once the ships crashed on its rocks, it was literally going to salvage the wreckage.

The announcement was breathtakingly moronic and led some to call for criminal investigations.  It turns out that soliciting funds for one reason and then using them for another (“better”) cause is considered fraud in some circles. The company quickly backtracked. However, it still refused to allow the donations to go to the truckers. It will return the money.  In the meantime, critical time and support has been lost for those who trusted the company.

It is a familiar pattern for the company in allowing people to send money for badly needed support only to lock the funds away at the last minute. The company’s record has moved it well beyond any plausible deniability that it is not using access to donations as a way of advancing its own priorities.

Consider GoFundMe’s freezing of funds for legal defense funds. One would think that funding litigation costs would be unassailable since it is an effort to secure judicial review of the underlying merits of a case or a cause. After all, if a cause is based on disinformation, a court can quickly sort out the truth. Right? Wrong.

GoFundMe froze donations needed to support Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense because he was accused of a violent crime. However, that is the point of a trial. He was accused of a crime and he was entitled to a presumption of innocence. However, the media ran false accounts of the story while social media companies like TikTok censored pro-Rittenhouse material. One police officer was fired for simply donating to Rittenhouse anonymously on GoFundMe. Neither the company nor the media came to the defense of Norfolk Police Officer William Kelly. Rittenhouse was, of course, acquitted. Then GoFundMe released the funds after they were no longer needed to support his trial.

The company also suspended litigation funds for accused police officers as well as parents who sought to challenge vaccinate mandates in courts.

When the company blocked the distribution of donations to Rittenhouse, it declared “GoFundMe’s Terms of Service prohibit raising money for the legal defense of an alleged violent crime.” It is a ridiculous policy since defendants have a presumption of innocence and we should all parties being able to present their best cases before independent judges. That includes Canadian truckers, Black Lives Matter, Antifa and other groups facing litigation. Moreover, critics have noted that the company has supported legal funds supporting rioters in various cities as well as an appeal for the 2020 Seattle Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP.)

The hypocrisy of the company on such issues has been flagged repeatedly, including by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Double-standard?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2022

It does not matter. Like the social media companies, GoFundMe controls billions in funds and has become the very scourge that it was designed to combat. Rather than empower average people, it now operates more like a corporate overlord on what causes are worthy of crowdfunding.

Notably, GoFundMe relied on accounts from the Canadian government to label the truckers as violent despite the fact that the truckers are protesting the government. The protests have been largely peaceful, particularly in comparison to the “mostly peaceful” protests in past summers (by groups allowed to crowdfund by the company). It is the same pattern used by other companies in serving as a conduit of government priorities and policies.

YouTube and Twitter have blocked critics of Putin or governments like India. Even the W.H.O. has supported such censorship to deal with what it now calls the “infodemic,” which includes criticism of itself. YouTube and Twitter have blocked critics of Putin or governments like India. In the United States, Democratic leaders (including President Joe Biden) have pushed for more corporate censorship on subjects ranging from global warming to gender issues to election integrity to vaccines.

The inclusion of GoFundMe in this increasingly united front is particularly chilling. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, money is a critical part of free speech. You speak through your donations and those funds then support further free speech and associations. As companies like Twitter actively silence dissenting voices, GoFundMe has served as a chokepoint for funds. The result is that many are finding it not only difficult to use social media to voice their views but to use crowdfunding to garner the support of like-minded people.

GoFundMe can clearly redefine itself as a progressive company. It has free speech rights like those who it is seeking to silence. Like many in the media, the company has largely written off half of the country. The problem of the company is when the crowd in its crowdfunding business goes somewhere else.

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“The Canadian government has been doing everything it can to stop and hinder the Freedom Trucker Convoy from continuing,” said journalist and political commentator, Kim Iversen on the latest episode of The Hill’s “Rising.”

Iversen said government officials are issuing $700 tickets and threatening to arrest anyone who brings fuel or other essential supplies to the truckers.

They also declared a state of emergency in Ottawa, giving police more power to begin towing and removing protestors, Iversen said.

Iversen described how the government successfully pressured GoFundMe to withhold more than $9 million in donations from the truckers.

It all started when Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson announced the city was contemplating legal action against GoFundMe, in the hope of diverting the donations raised on behalf of the truckers to the city’s coffers.

Watson told CBC his “hope” was that GoFundMe would understand that “this is a completely inappropriate use of dollars.”

“Unfortunately GoFundMe caved to the political pressure and threats of legal action and announced they wouldn’t be dispersing the money to the truckers, and instead the money would be rerouted to approved charities,” Iversen said.

Watson took to Twitter to “sincerely thank” GoFundMe for seizing the trucker’s funds and implored other crowdfunding platforms to “take the same position.”

Iversen characterized the move as “pure theft.” She said:

“People don’t give money to GoFundMe, people give money to others through GoFundMe. For the platform to take the money and then reroute it to someone other than intended is theft. There’s no other way to put it.”

When donors complained, the platform announced it would offer refunds, but only if, as Iversen put it, donors “jumped through the hoops of filling out forms.”

After several U.S. state attorneys general threatened to sue the crowdfunding platform, GoFundMe announced it would offer automatic refunds.

“Had GoFundMe been allowed to reroute the money, they would have been able to keep their 3% fee, which is probably the reason they didn’t offer refunds automatically,” Iversen argued. “The 3% fee on the $9 million confiscated is about $270,000.”

“Extremely shady stuff,” she said.

The peaceful anti-mandate trucking protests are spreading, and “trouble could be heading to DC,” Iversen said.

“A convoy is forming with the intent to head to the nation’s capital to pressure Biden into dropping the mandates,” she reported. “But of course, Facebook shut down the organizers page.”

“There’s nothing like Big Tech colluding with the government to censor and silence working class protestors,” Iversen said.

Watch the segment here:

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Jeremy Loffredo is a freelance reporter for The Defender. His investigative reporting has been featured in The Grayzone and Unlimited Hangout. Jeremy formerly produced news programs at RT America.

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February 1, 2022, Pfizer/BioNTech asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency use authorization (EUA) for their COVID shot to babies and children aged 6 months through 4 years

The EUA will be for a two-dose regimen, with the possibility of extending it to a third dose, as two injections have been shown to be ineffective in 2- to 4-year-olds

Children aged 6 months to 4 years will get a dose that is one-tenth the adult dose

Were Pfizer to wait until the triple-dose experiment is completed, the EUA request would not be possible until late March 2022, and federal officials are reportedly “anxious to begin a vaccination program for the youngest children because the studies showed there were no safety concerns with two doses”

Meanwhile, Pfizer’s own data raise massive safety concerns, as they received 42,086 injury reports, including 1,223 fatalities in the first 2.5 months of their COVID jab rollout for adults

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I’m sure you’re aware of the massive catastrophe we have with children under 5 dropping ill like flies from COVID, as this is the justification Pfizer is using to get an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) so they can jab these defenseless and innocent children. No? Me, neither.

Despite conclusive evidence that young children have virtually no risk of severe complications or death from COVID-19, Pfizer is hustling to get our infants and toddlers injected with their experimental gene transfer technology.

February 1, 2022, Pfizer/BioNTech asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency use authorization (EUA) for their COVID shot to babies and children aged 6 months through 4 years.^1,2,3

In mid-December 2021, Pfizer admitted that two injections, at one-tenth the adult dose, failed to produce an adequate immune response in 2- to 4-year-olds. They’re now experimenting to see if three doses will produce adequate results in that age group. In the meantime, the EUA will be for a two-dose regimen, with the possibility of extending it to a third dose.

As reported by The New York Times,⁴ were Pfizer to wait until the triple-dose experiment is completed, the EUA request would not be possible until late March 2022, and federal officials are reportedly “anxious to begin a vaccination program for the youngest children because the studies showed there were no safety concerns with two doses.”

In other words, they apparently don’t care whether the shots are effective or not. They claim the shots are “safe,” so it’s OK to inject young children even though they might not gain any benefit. Does that make any sense?

According to MSN:⁵

“[Pfizer] and its partner BioNTech said that the submission was at the request of the FDA, which is an unusual move. Quickly after the announcement, the FDA scheduled a meeting of its vaccine advisory committee for Feb. 15 to discuss the application.

Allowing Pfizer to submit the request now means that, if authorized, ‘parents will have the opportunity to begin a COVID-19 vaccination series for their children while awaiting potential authorization of a third dose,’ according to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. Data on the third dose will be submitted to the FDA ‘in the coming months,’ the company said.”

COVID Shots Shown to Destroy Immune Function

Click here to watch the video.

The list of concerns is a long one. We’ve already seen that Pfizer’s own data reveal there are serious problems with the shots, and real-world data confirming worst fears are mounting by the day.

A number of medical experts, scientists and published studies have warned the COVID shots can reprogram your immune system to respond in a dysfunctional manner. For example, a study⁶posted on the preprint server medRxiv, May 6, 2021, found the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID jab “reprograms both adaptive and innate immune responses,” causing immune depletion.

While the jab “induced effective humoral and cellular immunity against several SARS-CoV-2 variants,” the shot “also modulated the production of inflammatory cytokines by innate immune cells upon stimulation with both specific (SARS-CoV-2) and nonspecific (viral, fungal and bacterial) stimuli.”

People who were “fully vaccinated,” having received two doses of the Pfizer shot, also produced significantly less interferon upon stimulation, which hampers vitally important innate immune responses.

In other words, we’re looking at a horrible tradeoff. You may get some protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, but you’re weakening your overall immune function, which opens the door wide to all sorts of other health problems, from bacterial, fungal and viral infections to cancer and autoimmunity.

Is it really wise to expose babies and toddlers to such risks? Just because children aren’t dying within a few weeks of the shot does not mean it’s harmless and therefore safe to use. Most of the damage from these jabs will emerge far down the road, long after they’ve gotten the shot.

The FDA is really behaving in an irresponsible and negligent manner, putting every child in America in harm’s way in the longer term — and for no reason at all, since they know very well two doses won’t work in 2- to 4-year-olds, and they have no idea if three doses will do the trick.

Pfizer’s own trial data,⁷ which are starting to be released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FDA, also do nothing to assuage safety concerns. Quite the contrary. Cumulatively, between December 1, 2020, and February 28, 2021 — a period of just 2.5 months — Pfizer received 42,086 injury reports, including 1,223 fatalities.

Compare that to the 1976 swine flu vaccine, which was pulled after 25 deaths. Pfizer even acknowledges the abnormal rate of injuries. They actually had to hire more data entry and case processing personnel to handle the influx of adverse events reports. Still, they insist everything is hunky-dory and there’s absolutely no problem.

Initially, the FDA wanted 55 years to release all of Pfizer’s trial data at a rate of 500 pages per month. After finding another trove of related documents, they asked for 75 years. A judge denied both requests, ordering the agency to release the data at a rate of 55,000 pages per month, starting March 1, 2022, to finalize the full release in about eight months.⁸

Judging by what we found in the initial 500-page batch released in November 2021, it’s no wonder the FDA wanted enough time to make sure all culpable parties would be dead and buried before the full truth of their malfeasance came out. If all goes well, we should have all that evidence by September 2022.

Pfizer Intervenes in FOIA Lawsuit

There’s yet another wrinkle in the FOIA lawsuit against the FDA, though. Pfizer is now pushing to intervene in the case. Pfizer says it wants to “help” the FDA with the redaction of the documentation, claiming it contains trade secrets and proprietary information that need to be protected and might be inappropriately disclosed if rushed.^9,10 January 26, 2022, Reuters reported:¹¹

“Pfizer Inc. wants to intervene in a Texas federal lawsuit seeking information from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration used in licensing the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, a litigation move that plaintiffs who are suing for the data say is premature.

Pfizer’s lawyers at DLA Piper told U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman on Jan. 21 it wanted a role in the proceedings to help the FDA avoid ‘inappropriately’ disclosing trade secret and confidential commercial information …

The group of doctors and scientists who sued last year over public access to the FDA’s Pfizer licensing records said in a court filing that the company’s bid to jump into the lawsuit was untimely because the plaintiffs have not challenged any redactions to requested records.”

The Defender further reported:¹²

“The FDA claimed Pfizer is entitled to intervene in the case and the process of redacting the documents in question, due to the “Trade Secrets Act,” signed into law by President Obama in 2016, stating:

‘FDA anticipates that coordination with Pfizer to obtain the company’s views as to which portions of the records are subject to Exemption 4, the Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1905, or other statutory protections will be a necessary component of the agency’s endeavors to meet the extraordinary exigencies of this case.’

However, according to The Gateway Pundit, the Trade Secrets Act is being misinterpreted by the FDA and Pfizer: ‘[T]he protections provided under that law allow for an owner of a trade secret to sue in federal court when its trade secrets have been misappropriated and does not even imply that a company could intervene in a public records request through the FOIA.’

[Aaron] Siri [of the Siri & Glimstad law firm] also questioned the FDA’s commitment to transparency and hinted at a cover-up, stating: ‘The Court is, other than Congress, the only check on the FDA …

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

Siri said the FDA’s ‘potential embarrassment’ over its decision to license the Pfizer vaccine must take a back seat to the transparency demanded by FOIA and ‘the urgent need and interests of the American people to review that licensure data.’”

‘The Truth About Pfizer’

Click here to watch the video.

The British “Dispatches” documentary above, “Vaccine Wars: The Truth About Pfizer,” reviews a number of issues relating to Pfizer’s handling of the COVID pandemic, including its “war profiteering” (focusing on profits during a pandemic) and spreading misleading claims about its competitors, a whistleblower’s claims of scientific misconduct, and questions about Pfizer “playing God” by unilaterally dictating who would get its jab and who wouldn’t, thereby prolonging the pandemic.

According to the Dispatches report, Pfizer’s jab was not only more expensive than its rival AstraZeneca to begin with, costing the U.K. government £18 per dose compared to £3 for AstraZeneca, but as a third booster dose rolled out, Pfizer raised its price to £22, a decision that has raised questions about the company’s motives. It seems fairly obvious that it’s all about the money for them.

Pfizer will, of course, disagree with that obvious conclusion. According to professor Sir Andrew Pollard, who helped develop the Pfizer shot, the company’s incentive was never about maximizing profits. U.S. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, on the other hand, told Dispatches that Pfizer clearly made no effort to rein in their pricing or limit their profits.

Unprecedented Profiteering

According to Dispatches, Pfizer’s COVID jab has become the most profitable pharmaceutical product the world has ever seen. As of the third quarter of 2021, Pfizer’s revenues were 130% above operational costs, with COVID jab revenue for 2021 reaching $36 billion. Revenue from the jab is predicted to rise to $55 billion in 2022 — equivalent to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Croatia.

One of the reasons for Pfizer’s record-breaking profits, Dispatches says, is because it has been prioritizing sales to wealthier Western nations willing and able to pay the higher cost. Pfizer has also refused to license its patented recipe to ensure an adequate supply for poorer nations.

Its gross profit margin is estimated to be somewhere around 80%, or perhaps a little more. Pfizer, meanwhile, claims its profit margin for the jab is in the high-20%. Pfizer defends its profiteering, in part, by saying it pays for needed research and development, but let’s remember that taxpayers paid for all of the research and development that went into this jab in the first place.

As explained in the video, the initial development of the Pfizer jab was done by BioNTech, which received millions of euros of public funding from both the German government and the European Union. Essentially, the public paid for its development and then got fleeced while Pfizer makes out like a bandit.

By the end of 2021, Pfizer had manufactured 2 billion doses of the jab. But while the company claims it’s dedicated to provide “equitable and affordable access,” only 16% had gone to lower- and middle-income countries, and only 1% to the poorest of nations.

In 2022, Pfizer intends to produce 4 billion doses. According to Dispatches, the total cost of manufacturing is somewhere between 80 cents and $1.40 per dose. The most likely cost is right around $1.05. Pfizer disputes this, saying it “does not reflect the true costs” of making the jab, as this cost does not include the cost of scaling up manufacturing efforts, global distribution and clinical trials.

The U.K., which pays the highest price for Pfizer’s jab, had at the end of 2021 paid Pfizer an estimated £2.6 billion (about $3.5 billion) which, based on the cost of production, is thought to be about £2 billion (around $2.7 billion) more than it should have paid, had the profit margin been more reasonable.

Pfizer Spread Misinformation About Rivals

According to Dispatches, Pfizer is also responsible for spreading misinformation about rival COVID shots, including the AstraZeneca injection. A Canadian PowerPoint presentation sent to medical professionals included a slide detailing alleged disadvantages of viral vector DNA injections (such as the AstraZeneca shot).

The slide states that viral vector DNA injections might cause chromosomal integration and oncogenesis. In other words, the DNA might become permanently integrated in your genes, and could cause cancer. There was also a warning against its use in immunocompromised patients.

Curiously enough, when asked, Pollard claims there’s no truth to any of those claims. So, “how did those claims come to be shown to health professionals across Canada?” Dispatches asks. After some digging, they discovered the presentation was, in part, funded by Pfizer, and that the key speaker who gave the presentation had received Pfizer funding.

More specifically, the portion of the presentation that listed disadvantages of viral vector DNA products was written by a team that included at least one member who had previously worked in Pfizer’s vaccine department.

When asked about the risks associated with vaccine misinformation, Pollard says there are “huge risks,” as anything that causes people to be hesitant about getting the shot can result in them risking their lives.

So, seeing how Pfizer appears to have undermined a competing COVID jab, aren’t they then guilty of causing vaccine hesitancy and putting lives at risk? And, seeing how Pollard claims there’s no truth to any of those warnings, doesn’t that suggest Pfizer put people’s lives at risk for no other reason than to maximize their own profits? Pfizer, of course, denies having had any influence over the creation of the presentation.

Keep in mind, I strongly disagree with Dispatches’ claims that the Pfizer shot is a life-saving drug. I also disagree with Pollard’s claim that vaccine hesitancy is potentially life-threatening. What I’m pointing out here is the hypocrisy.

While Dispatches valiantly tries to paint Pfizer as a global savior, albeit a greedy one, I believe all COVID jabs are a dangerous scam that are doing far more harm to humanity than good. They’re literally raking in unprecedented profits from the suffering and death of untold millions.

Were Corners Cut?

After giving the audience a blanket assurance that the Pfizer jab is “clearly safe and effective,” Dispatches goes on to review whistleblower testimony¹³ from Brooke Jackson, a clinical research coordinator and former regional director of Ventavia Research Group, a research organization charged with testing Pfizer’s COVID jab at several sites in Texas.

Jackson, who worked on Pfizer’s Phase 3 COVID jab trial in the fall of 2020, claims she found evidence of trial data being falsified. She was also shocked to realize that patients in the clinical trials were unblinded.

Their charts contained information showing whether they got the real shot or a placebo, which is a serious breach. “In all the time I’ve been doing research, I’ve never seen the type of misconduct that I saw [at Ventavia],” Jackson says.

She repeatedly informed her superiors about concerns over poor laboratory management, patient safety and data integrity issues — all of which were ignored. She also tried to get in touch with the Pfizer site liaison, but was never able to speak to him directly. Eventually, she filed a complaint with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and that too was ignored. To top it off, she was fired.

In response to Dispatches inquiries, Pfizer claims they conducted “a thorough investigation” into Jackson’s claims, that “actions were taken to correct and remediate” the problems she’d reported, and that no evidence was found that would “invalidate the data or jeopardize the integrity of the study.” Ventavia also claims they found Jackson’s accusations to be “unsubstantiated,” and the FDA insists it has “full confidence” in Pfizer’s data.

Why Are We Experimenting on Children?

Historically, children have been excluded from early human trials, and for good reason. The possibility of harm is great no matter what the drug, and here we’re talking about a never-before-used gene transfer technology that hasn’t even been tested on animals.

Worse yet, hundreds of thousands of American adults have experienced very serious and debilitating side effects. More than 10,300 have died post-jab, as of January 21, 2022, in the U.S. territories alone.¹⁴ Why is the FDA risking our children?

As mentioned, we already know children are essentially at zero risk of dying from COVID. They might test positive. They might develop symptoms, but they get through it just like they get through the common cold or flu. There’s no reason to jeopardize their long-term health with a COVID jab. They don’t need it, and therefore ANY risk of the jab, no matter how small, is unconscionable and unacceptable.

Fortunately, many parents, including many who got the shot themselves, are not willing to gamble their young ones. By mid-December 2021, just under 20% of children between the ages of 5 and 11 in the U.S. had received their first COVID shot, with vaccination rates among urban children being twice that of those living in rural areas.¹⁵

However, since then, the injection rate has rapidly dropped off. In Florida, the weekly injection rate among children 5 to 11 was 55,548 in mid-November 2021, when the EUA for this age group went into effect. By the last week of January 2022, that weekly rate had dwindled to 10,084.¹⁶ I would sincerely hope that as the EUA is extended all the way down to 6-month-olds, parents simply refuse their children’s participation in this ongoing experiment.

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Notes

^1, 4 New York Times January 31, 2022 (Archived)

^2, 5 MSN February 1, 2022

^3, 16 Yahoo! News February 1, 2022

⁶ medRxiv May 6, 2021

⁷ PHMPT.org Pfizer documents

⁸ Denver Gazette January 7, 2022

⁹ Endpoint News January 27, 2022

^10, 12 The Defender January 31, 2022

¹¹ Reuters January 26, 2022

¹³ The BMJ 2021; 375:n2635

¹⁴ OpenVAERS US/Territories data as of January 21, 2022

¹⁵ NBC News December 15, 2021

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Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed of the Democratic Federal Republic of Ethiopia welcomed presidents, ministers and other delegates to the first African Union (AU) Summit held since the advent of COVID-19 in 2020.

This gathering was held under the theme of “Strengthening Resilience in Nutrition and Food Security on the African Continent: Strengthening Agro-Food Systems, Health and Social Protection Systems for the Acceleration of the Human, Social and Economic Development”.

Image on the right: Ethiopia Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed at AU Summit, Feb. 2022 (Source: Ethiopian Press Agency via Abayomi Azikiwe)

During the course of the summit held on February 5-6, a change of leadership took place as the chairperson serves only a one-year term of office. President Macky Sall of the Republic of Senegal assumed control of the AU from H.E. Felix- Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), who ended his term as the Chairperson of the African Union for 2021. The transitional ceremony occurred as part of the official opening of the 35th AU Summit of Heads of State and Government, in the presence of the Chairperson of the AU Commission (AUC), H.E. Moussa Faki Mahamat, the Deputy Chairperson of the AUC, H.E Dr. Monique Nsanzabaganwa, representatives of the United Nations, the Economic Commission for Africa, dignitaries and invited guests as well as the AU staff.

The AU headquarters has been located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia since the inception of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the AU, in May 1963. The formation of the OAU in 1963 came just three years after the so-called “Year of Africa” during 1960 when 18 former colonies gained their independence. Prior to 1960, several African territories such as the Gold Coast, now Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco had already gained their freedom from colonial rule. Liberia was formed by emancipated Africans from the United States with the assistance of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1847, while Ethiopia, which had never been formally colonized although the country was occupied between 1936-1941 by the Italian fascist regime.

In 2002, two decades ago, the OAU was transformed into the AU, where the organizational charter was revised to adopt strengthened principles and guidelines as it relates to the overall objective of enhancing unity through economic, cultural and military cooperation. In recent years, an African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) was formed in Rwanda and headquartered in Ghana as more states join the initiative to integrate national planning.

Contemporary Questions Facing the AU

Since the early months of the pandemic two years ago, AU member-states have adopted various means of curbing the public health disaster which has compounded the existing social problems related to underdevelopment stemming from the international system of neo-colonialism.

Initially there was the difficulty in security effective coronavirus tests and later after it was broadly acknowledged that the pandemic was spreading rapidly across Africa, the energy was rapidly shifted to the acquisition and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC), an affiliate of the AU based in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, has taken on a leading role in educating the African people, the international community and the media on the status of the pandemic, the rollout of the vaccination programs and the already operational production facilities manufacturing vaccines in Africa for continental and foreign distribution.

In the opening report by AU Commission Chair Faki Moussa Mahamat commented extensively on the security crisis on the continent. There have been a rash of military coups that have exposed the lack of effectiveness of regional organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in light of the seizure of power by army officers under the guise of fighting terrorism.

In West Africa, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Chad and Niger have either had coups or attempted usurpation of state power by the military. These defense forces elements have all been shown to enjoy close ties with the Pentagon and the French foreign services. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has thousands of troops occupying permanent and temporary bases from Djibouti in the Horn of Africa to Mali in West Africa. Annual joint military exercises involving Pentagon, French and allied national defense forces have not enhanced the security status of the affected states. To further illustrate the threat of instability, DRC President Tshisekedi was compelled to leave the AU Summit before its conclusion due to the arrest of a leading official inside his government on suspicions of a plot to undermine the authority of the state.

The reality is that the increasing presence of western imperialist military and intelligence agencies has been positively correlated with the worsening security crisis in African states. A coup in the Republic of Sudan in April 2019 has been utilized by Washington and the state of Israel to further penetrate and manipulate the domestic and foreign policy imperatives of the interim regime. Since the masses appear to want immediate democratic rule, the imperialists realize that the realization of self-determination for the people of Sudan could prove disadvantageous for Washington and its allies.

In reference to the character of the discussions at the AU Summit, the North Africa Post reports from the 35th Ordinary Summit that:

“Addressing the session, Chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat expressed concern over the security situation in the African continent. ‘The security situation of the continent today is deeply marked by terrorism and the dangerous resurgence of unconstitutional changes of governments,’ Mahamat said.

Chairperson of the pan-African bloc said terrorism and violent extremism was Africa’s security challenge last year with international terror links are embedded in east, west, and southern Africa. ‘The security situation on the continent now calls for a real new approach which should question our peace and security architecture and its correlation with the new destabilizing factors in Africa,’ Mahamat said.”

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the AU Summit was the challenge by South Africa and Algeria to the unilateral decision made during 2021 by Commission Chair Mahamat to grant Israel observer status within the continental organization. Historically the progressive and anti-imperialist forces in Africa have demonstrated unconditional solidarity with Palestine along with other national liberation movements fighting colonialism. To grant Tel Aviv observer status absent broad consultations within the organization raises questions about the loyalty and commitment to the most progressive legacy within the OAU-AU tradition.

Mahamat in a lengthy memorandum explaining his rationale for the decision to grant such a concession to the apartheid Israeli state, attempted to utilize the already existing diplomatic relations between Tel Aviv and various African states to justify further acquiescence to Washington’s foreign policy in West Asia and North Africa by the continental organization. The Camp David Accord signed in 1978 between Egypt and Israel has not led to the liberation of Palestine. This was the position articulated by Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh of the Palestinian Authority who spoke at the AU Summit. The people of Gaza and the West Bank died in large numbers during 2021 due to the bombing by the Israel Air Force (IAF) and the security apparatus utilizing live ammunition against nonviolent demonstrators in Jerusalem and other areas of occupied Palestine. These attacks on the oppressed Palestinians are facilitated by U.S. weapons, intelligence technology and diplomatic cover. (See this)

According to a report published by Al Jazeera on Shtayyeh’s speech, it emphasized:

“’Israel should never be rewarded for its violation and for the apartheid regime it does impose on the Palestinian people,‘ he said. ‘Your excellencies, I’m sorry to report to you that the situation of the Palestinian people has only grown more precarious. The decision to grant Israel an observer status is a reward that [Tel Aviv] does not deserve, and we call for this decision to be withdrawn.’”

By the second day of the AU Summit, it was announced that the debate on Palestine would be suspended and relegated to a special committee to be discussed at a later date. Mahamat suggested that the Palestinian question should not divide the AU. Nonetheless, there is nothing more important in the present period than the solidarity of the African people with the Palestinians in their struggle against colonialism and for an independent sovereign state.

Pan-Africanism Cannot Accommodate Apartheid and Neo-colonialism

These contradictions within the AU deliberations must be resolved in order for the majority of African workers, farmers, women and youth to be adequately represented in international bodies. By upholding the right to self-determination of oppressed peoples inside and outside of Africa would considerably lend moral authority to regional organizations which have not been readily effective in resolving internal political crises stemming from the continuing dependency of the 1.3 billion Africans to the world capitalist system.

Today in states where military coups have occurred, the people are rapidly turning against the former colonial and current neo-colonial power blocs within North America, Britain and the European Union (EU). In Mali, the coup government has expelled the French ambassador while people have gone into the streets in the thousands to celebrate the erosion of the legitimacy of Paris.

In both Burkina Faso and Mali, people raised the Russian flag alongside their national symbols as a means of demonstrating their exasperation with France. However, to remove French and U.S. military penetration of African states, the masses must be organized and mobilized independently of imperialist-backed apparatuses in order to exercise genuine liberation and sovereignty.

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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: African Union appoints new chair Senegal President Macky Sall (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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***

The global coup that in these two years of psycho-pandemic farce has been carried out by the globalist elite appears most clearly if we do not limit ourselves to considering what happened in individual Nations, but broaden our gaze to what has happened everywhere. 

Your protest, dear Canadian truck driver friends, joins a worldwide chorus that wants to oppose the establishment of the New World Order on the rubble of nation states, through the Great Reset desired by the World Economic Forum and by the United Nations under the name of Agenda 2030. And we know that many heads of government have participated in Klaus Schwab’s School for Young Leaders – the so-called Global Leaders for Tomorrow – beginning with Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron, Jacinta Ardern and Boris Johnson, and before that Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Tony Blair. 

It would seem that Canada is – along with Australia, Italy, Austria and France – one of the nations most infiltrated by the globalists. And in this infernal project we must not only consider the psycho-pandemic farce, but also the attack on traditions and Christian identity – indeed, more precisely the Catholic identity – of these countries. 

You understood this instinctively, and your yearning for freedom was shown in all its coordinated harmony, moving towards the capital Ottawa. Dear truck drivers, you are facing great difficulties, not only because you give up your work to demonstrate, but also because of the adverse weather conditions, long nights in the cold, and attempts to be cleared away that you face. But along with these difficulties you have also experienced the closeness of many of your fellow citizens, who like you have understood the looming threat and want to support you in protesting against the regime. Allow me also to express to you my support and my spiritual closeness, to which I join the prayer that your event may be crowned with success and may also extend to other countries. 

In these days we see the masks of tyrants from all over the world fall, and unfortunately we also see so much conformism, so much fearfulness, so much cowardice in people who up until yesterday we regarded as friends, even among our family members. Yet, precisely because of this extreme situation, we discover with amazement gestures of humanity made by strangers, signs of solidarity and brotherhood on the part of those who feel close to us in the common battle. We discover so much generosity and so much desire to shake us from this stupor. We discover that we are no longer willing to passively suffer the destruction of our world imposed by a cabal of unscrupulous criminals, thirsty for power and money. 

In this relentless attack on the traditional world, not only your way of life and your identity have been affected, but also your possessions, your activities, and your work. This is the Great Reset, this is the future promised by slogans like Build Back Better, this is the future of billions of people being controlled in their every move, in all their transactions, in every purchase, every bureaucratic practice, every activity. Automatons without souls or wills, deprived of their identity, reduced to having a universal income that allows them to survive, to buy only what others have already decided to put up for sale, transformed by a gene serum into people who are chronically ill. 

Today more than ever it is essential that you realize that it is no longer possible to passively assist: it is necessary to take a position, to fight for freedom, to demand respect for natural freedoms. But even more, dear Canadian brothers, it is necessary to understand that this dystopia serves to establish the dictatorship of the New World Order and totally erase every trace of Our Lord Jesus Christ from society, from history, and from the traditions of peoples. 

Demonstrate for your rights, Canadian friends: but may these rights not be limited to a simple claim to the freedom to enter supermarkets or not to be vaccinated: may it also be a proud and courageous claim to your sacrosanct right to be free men. But your demonstration should be one of true freedom, reminding you that it is the Truth – that is, Our Lord Jesus Christ – who alone can guarantee you freedom: the truth will make you free.

Let us pray that Christ will return to reign in society, in your hearts and in your families. Take up the spiritual weapon of the Holy Rosary, and pray to the Blessed Virgin, Sainte Ann, Saint George and the Holy Canadian Martyrs to protect your homeland.

I would like to conclude my appeal by asking you to pray with me, with the words that Our Lord has taught us: may they be the seal of this awakening, of this national liberation. Let us all pray it together, out loud, so that our prayer may rise to Heaven, but also so that it may resound powerfully in these squares, in these streets, all the way to the palaces of the powerful:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. Amen.

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Featured image: Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò at the Rome Life Forum on May 18, 2018. (Source: Steve Jalsevac / LifeSiteNews)

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***

New tensions are emerging over the legitimacy of British rule over the Falkland Islands. In a joint statement with the Argentine president, Xi Jinping declared that China supports Buenos Aires’ sovereignty over the islands’ territory. In response, the UK’s foreign minister published a statement reaffirming British sovereignty, starting a war of words and narratives over this old and controversial topic, which still seems far from any final resolution.

Last week, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez visited Beijing in order to attend the Winter Olympics. On the occasion, Fernandez met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, and a broad dialogue took place about several issues relevant to both countries. The most important result of the meeting was the release of a joint statement, in which the Chinese government said it supports the Argentine sovereignty over the territory of the Falkland Islands – a South American island area dominated by the UK and historically claimed by Argentina.

The case generated deep fury in the British government. Chinese support for Argentine claims about the Isles sounded unacceptable to London, leading government officials to publish several pronouncements repudiating the joint attitude of the Chinese and Argentine presidents and reaffirming British sovereignty over the Falklands. The British Foreign Minister, Liz Truss, for example, wrote the following words in one of her webpages: “We completely reject any questions over the sovereignty of the Falklands. The Falklands are part of the British family and we will defend their right to self-determination. China must respect the Falklands’ sovereignty”.

Responding the words of Truss and other politicians and media agencies, the Chinese Embassy in London issued a new document reaffirming its unconditional support for Argentine sovereignty over that disputed zone. With this, new tensions arose, with the legitimacy of British rule over the Falkland Islands being questioned once again.

In fact, British dominance in that region has always been controversial. The territory is located within the Argentine coastal zone, but in the 19th century the British began to invest in a strong policy of occupation, turning most of the local people into British citizens, which later came to ‘justify’ the UK’s claims in this regard – which has never been accepted by Argentina. In the early 1980s, the situation reached the extreme of tensions. At the time, the Argentine military invested in a military intervention with the objective of regaining control over the region, but, after a two-month war, the London’s forces obtained their victory, making UK’s sovereignty over the territory official.

In fact, there are many reasons for a government to defend Argentine dominance in the Falkland Isles – called “Malvinas” by the Argentinians. The very fact that the zone is located within the Argentine national territory is a very strong argument, for example. However, the biggest curiosity in this case is the advanced degree of Chinese involvement. Chinese foreign policy is guided by a trade agenda, in search of global partners for economic cooperation projects. With this, the country avoids getting involved in major international controversies or disputes involving two or more states. In general, for China, it is enough that there are mutual commercial interests in order to establish a bilateral partnership.

It is not a typical attitude for China to engage in foreign territorial disputes, but the country not only issued a declaration of support for Argentine sovereignty in the islands but also reiterated its support after the actions of British officials. This kind of attitude is interesting, considering the Chinese internationalist tradition, but can easily be explained if we remember some recent events involving China and the UK.

Since it leaved the European Union, the UK has been trying to invest in new markets around the world and has combined its commercial strategy with a policy of automatic support for US international plans. As a result, the British government has adopted aggressive measures in Asia and the Pacific to combat Chinese influence. One such measure has been the attempt to restore colonial ties in Hong Kong.

British politicians created, for example, a law that facilitates the process to get a permanent visa in case of Hong Kong citizens. As a result, a wave of mass emigration was initiated, with risks of harm to the local demography. All these factors directly affect China’s interests and motivates the country to develop response measures. In this regard, taking a position in historical territorial disputes and defending the interests of its partners (China and Argentina are nations with great bilateral partnerships in various areas, mainly agribusiness) really seems to be one of the tactics used by Beijing today.

It is still too early to say to what extent the position taken by China will represent some political force for the nations chosen as partners, however, this is undoubtedly an interesting step in strengthening south-south cooperation. Beijing’s message is simple: if the West continues to interfere in China’s internal affairs with its dissident territories, the Asian country will be also willing to use its power and influence to act contrary to its enemies in their respective internal affairs.

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

Featured image is from unitedworldint.com

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***

“Why is Boris Johnson making false claims about Starmer and Savile?” runs a headline in the news pages of the Guardian. It is just one of a barrage of indignant recent stories in the British media, rushing to the defence of the opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer.

The reason? Last week the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, blamed Starmer, now the Labour party leader, for failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, a TV presenter and serial child abuser, when his case came under police review in 2009. Between 2008 and 2013, Starmer was head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Savile died in 2011 before he could face justice.

Johnson accused Starmer, who at the time was Director of Public Prosecutions, of wasting “his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile”. 

The sudden chorus of outrage at Johnson impugning Starmer’s reputation is strange in many different ways. It is not as though Johnson has any record of good behaviour. His whole political persona is built on the idea of his being a rascal, a clown, a chancer.

He is also a well-documented liar. Few, least of all in the media, cared much about his pattern of lying until now. Indeed, most observers have long pointed out that his popularity was based on his mischief-making and his populist guise as an anti-establishment politician. No one, apart from his political opponents, seemed too bothered.

And it is also not as though there are not lots of other, more critically important things relating to Johnson to be far more enraged about, even before we consider his catastrophic handling of the pandemic, and his raiding of the public coffers to enrich his crony friends and party donors.

Jumping ship

Johnson is currently embroiled in the so-called “partygate” scandal. He  attended – and his closest officials appear to have organised – several gatherings at his residence in Downing Street in 2020 and 2021 at a time when the rest of the country was under strict lockdown. For the first time the public mood has shifted against Johnson.

My latest: The media's watchdog role is an illusion. The current scandal over Boris Johnson's lockdown parties reveals just how dependent journalists are on government https://t.co/BxykcG3qfc

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 21, 2022

But it was Johnson’s criticisms of Starmer, not partygate, that led several of his senior advisers last week to resign their posts. One can at least suspect that in their case – given how quickly the Johnson brand is sinking, and the repercussions they may face from a police investigation into the partygate scandal – that finding an honorable pretext for jumping ship may have been the wisest move.

But there is something deeply strange about Johnson’s own Conservative MPs and the British media lining up to express their indignation at Johnson’s attack on Starmer, a not particularly liked or likable opposition leader, and then turning it into the reason to bring down a prime minister whose other flaws are only too visible.

What makes the situation even weirder is that Johnson’s so-called “smears” of Starmer may not actually be smears at all. They look like rare examples of Johnson alluding to – admittedly in his own clumsy and self-interested way – genuinely problematic behaviour by Starmer.

One would never know this from the coverage, of course.

Here is the Guardian supposedly fact-checking Johnson’s attack on Starmer under the apparently neutral question: “Is there any evidence that Starmer was involved in any decision not to prosecute Savile?”

The Guardian’s answer is decisive:

“No. The CPS has confirmed that there is no reference to any involvement from Starmer in the decision-making within an official report examining the case.

“Surrey police consulted the CPS for advice about the allegations after interviewing Savile’s victims, according to a 2013 CPS statement made by Starmer as DPP.

“The official report, written by Alison Levitt QC, found that in October 2009 the CPS lawyer responsible for the cases – who was not Starmer – advised that no prosecution could be brought on the grounds that none of the complainants were ‘prepared to support any police action’.”

That’s a pretty definite “No”, then. Not “No, according to Starmer”. Or “No, according to the CPS”. Or “No, according to an official report” – and doubtless a determinedly face-saving one at that – into the Savile scandal.

Just “No”.

Here is the Guardian’s political correspondent Peter Walker echoing how cut and dried the corporate media’s assessment is: “[Starmer] had no connection to decisions over the case, and the idea he did emerged later in conspiracy theories mainly shared among the far right.”

So it’s just a far-right conspiracy theory. Case against Starmer closed.

But not so fast.

Given Savile’s tight ties to the establishment – from royalty and prime ministers down – and the establishment’s role in providing, however inadvertently, cover for Savile’s paedophilia for decades, it should hardly surprise us that the blame for the failure to prosecute him has been placed squarely on the shoulders of a low-level lawyer in the Crown Prosecution Service. How it could be otherwise? If we started unpicking the thorny Savile knot, who knows where the threads might unravel?

Sacrificial victim 

Former ambassador Craig Murray has made an interesting observation about Johnson’s remark on Starmer. Murray, let us remember, has been a first-hand observer and chronicler of the dark arts of the establishment in protecting itself from exposure, after he himself was made a sacrificial victim for revealing the British government’s illegal involvement in torture and extraordinary rendition.

My latest: The refusal to hear Craig Murray’s appeal against his unprecedented conviction for ‘jigsaw identification’ means the British state has now effectively been given the power to license journalists https://t.co/czxg9VNtnU

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) July 30, 2021

As Murray notes:

“Of course the Director of Public Prosecutions does not handle the individual cases, which are assigned to lawyers under them. But the Director most certainly is then consulted on the decisions in the high profile and important cases.

“That is why they are there. It is unthinkable that Starmer was not consulted on the decision to shelve the Savile case – what do they expect us to believe his role was, as head of the office, ordering the paperclips?”

And of the official inquiry into Starmer’s role that cleared him of any wrongdoing, the one that so impresses the Guardian and everyone else, Murray adds: 

“When the public outcry reached a peak in 2012, Starmer played the go-to trick in the Establishment book. He commissioned an ‘independent’ lawyer he knew to write a report exonerating him. Mistakes have been made at lower levels, lessons will be learnt… you know what it says. Mishcon de Reya, money launderers to the oligarchs, provided the lawyer to do the whitewash. Once he retired from the post of DPP, Starmer went to work at, umm,…”

Yes, Mischon de Reya.

Delighted to be joining Mishcon de Reya and to remain with Doughty Street Chambers under new dual capacity rules http://t.co/ejoBDIxImK

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) June 23, 2014

Starmer and Assange

Murray also notes that MPs and the British media have resolutely focused attention on Starmer’s alleged non-role in the Savile decision – where an “official report” provides them with cover – rather than an additional, and far more embarrassing, point made by Johnson about Starmer’s behaviour as Director of Public Prosecutions.

The prime minister mentioned Starmer using his time to “prosecute journalists”. Johnson and the media have no interest in clarifying that reference. Anyway, Johnson only made it for effect: as a contrast to the way Starmer treated Savile, as a way to highlight that, if he chose to, Starmer was quite capable of moving to prosecute.

But this second point is potentially far more revealing both of Starmer’s misconduct as Director of Public Prosecutions and about the services he rendered to the establishment – the likely reason why he was knighted at a relatively young age, becoming “Sir” Keith.

The journalist Johnson was presumably referencing is Julian Assange, currently locked up in Belmarsh high-security prison as lawyers try to get him extradited to the United States for his exposure of US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At an early stage of Assange’s persecution, the Crown Prosecution Service under Starmer worked overtime – despite Britain’s official position of neutrality in the case – to ensure he was extradited to Sweden. Assange sought political asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London in 2012, when Starmer was still heading the Crown Prosecution Service. Assange did so because he got wind of efforts by the Americans to extradite him onwards from Sweden to the US. He feared the UK would collude in that process.

Assange, it turns out, was not wrong. With the Swedish investigation long ago dropped, the British courts are now, nearly a decade on, close to agreeing to the Biden administration’s demand that Assange be extradited to the US – both to silence him and to intimidate any other journalists who might try to throw light on US war crimes.

My latest: It is the ultimate, ugly paradox that Julian Assange’s legal and physical fate rests in the hands of two states – the US and UK – that have the most to lose by allowing him to regain his freedom and publish more of the truths they want concealed https://t.co/M7WTKq0ZXf

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) December 17, 2021

The Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi has been pursuing a lengthy legal battle to have the CPS emails from Starmer’s time released under a Freedom of Information request. She has been opposed by the British establishment every step of the way. We know that many of the email chains relating to Assange were destroyed by the Crown Prosecution Service – apparently illegally. Those would doubtless have shone a much clearer light on Starmer’s role in the case – possibly the reason they were destroyed.

The small number of emails that have been retrieved show that the Crown Prosecution Service under Starmer micro-managed the Swedish investigation of Assange, even bullying Swedish prosecutors to pursue the case when they had started to lose interest for lack of evidence. In one email from 2012, a CPS lawyer warned his Swedish counterpart: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”. In another from 2011, the CPS lawyer writes: “Please do not think this case is being dealt with as just another extradition.”

Prosecutors arm-twisted 

Again, the idea that Starmer was not intimately involved in the decision to arm-twist Swedish prosecutors into persecuting a journalist – a case that the UK should formally have had no direct interest in, unless it was covertly advancing US interests to silence Assange – beggars belief.

Despite the media’s lack of interest in Assange’s plight, the energy expended by the US to get Assange behind bars in the US and redefine national security journalism as espionage shows how politically and diplomatically important this case has always been to the US – and by extension, the British establishment. There is absolutely no way the deliberations were handled by a single lawyer. Starmer would have closely overseen his staff’s dealings with Swedish prosecutors and authorised what was in practice a purely political decision, not legal one, to persecute Assange – or as United Nations experts defined it, “arbitrarily detain” him.

My latest: Lies about UN body threaten not just Julian Assange https://t.co/AKiTmP8VL5 #Assange #unwgad

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) February 5, 2016

Neither Murray nor I have unique, Sherlock-type powers of deduction that allow us to join the dots in ways no one else can manage. All of this information is in the public realm, and all of it is known to the editors of the British media. They are not only choosing to avoid mentioning it in the context of the current row, but they are actively fulminating against Boris Johnson for having done so.

The prime minister’s crime isn’t that he has “smeared” Starmer. It is that – out of desperate self-preservation – he has exposed the dark underbelly of the establishment. He has broken the elite’s omerta, its vow of silence. He has made the unpardonable sin of grassing up the establishment to which he belongs. He has potentially given ammunition to the great unwashed to expose the establishment’s misdeeds, to blow apart its cover story. That is why the anger is far more palpable and decisive about Johnson smearing Starmer than it ever was when Johnson smeared the rest of us by partying on through the lockdowns.

Scorched-earth tactic? 

Look at this headline on Jonathan Freedland’s latest column for the Guardian, visibly aquiver with anger at the way Johnson has defamed Starmer: “Johnson’s Savile smear was the scorched-earth tactic of a desperate, dangerous man”. 

A prime minister attacking the opposition leader – something we would normally think of as a largely unexceptional turn of political events, and all the more so under Johnson – has been transformed by Freedland into a dangerous, scorched-earth tactic.

Quite how preposterous, and hypocritical, this claim is should not need underscoring. Who really needs to be reminded of how Freedland and the rest of media class – but especially Freedland – treated Stramer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn? That really was a scorched-earth approach. There was barely a day in his five years leading the Labour party when the media did not fabricate the most outrageous lies about Corbyn and his party. He was shabby and unstatesmanlike (unlike the smartly attired Johnson!), sexist, a traitor, a threat to national security, an anti-semite, and much more.

Anyone like Freedland who actively participated in the five-year campaign of demonisation of Corbyn has no credibility whatsoever either complaining about the supposed mistreatment of Starmer (a pale shadow of what Corbyn suffered) or decrying Johnson’s lowering of standards in public life.

We have the rightwing populist Johnson in power precisely because Freedland and the rest of the media relentlessly smeared the democratic socialist alternative. In the 2017 election, let us recall, Corbyn was only 2,000 votes from winning. The concerted campaign of smears from across the entire corporate media – and the resulting manipulation of the public mood – was the difference between Corbyn winning and the Tories holding on to power.

Corbyn was destroyed – had to be destroyed – because he threatened establishment interests. He challenged the interests of the rich, of the corporations, of the war industries, of the Israel lobby. That was why an anonymous military general warned in the pages of the establishment’s newspaper, The Times, that there would be a mutiny if Corbyn ever reached 10 Downing Street. That was why soldiers were filmed using an image of Corbyn as target practice on a firing range in Afghanistan.

Johnson’s “smears” aside, none of this will ever happen to Starmer. There will be no threats of mutiny and his image will never used for target practice by the army. Sir Keir won’t be defamed by the billionaire-owned media. Rather, they have shown they have his back. They will even promote him over an alumnus of the Bullingdon Club, when the blokey toff’s shine starts to wear off.

And that, it should hardly need pointing out, is because Sir Keir Starmer is there to protect not the public’s interests but the interests of the establishment, just as he did when so conscientiously he was Director of Public Prosecutions.

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

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

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***

As Turkey attempts to economically recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is facing uncertainties due to formidable challenges, including high inflation rates, depleting central bank reserves and continued depreciation of the local currency, the lira. The uncertainties have further intensified due to a sudden energy crisis following shortages of natural gas. Facing the brunt of power shortage are the Turkish people and industries. But this does not auger well for a nascent economic recovery, especially as Ankara refuses to deescalate its military adventures and provocations.

Turkey recently experienced electricity shortages due to Iran’s unexpected cut in gas supply for ten days under the pretext of a “technical malfunction.” Although Tehran announced restarting the supply after payment of the outstanding dues, the possibility of shortages in the future is haunting Turkey and its industrial sector.

While people bore immitigable pain during the cold winter, the electricity outage (January 24-28) caused an estimated cost of $5 billion to industry. The industrialists, who cannot fulfill their export commitments due to the energy outage, are afraid of orders from foreign clients being cancelled.

Power shortage and price hike is also fuelling inflation in the country. From the beginning of 2021, the price of natural gas used by Turkish industry increased 5.5 times and the price of natural gas used in electricity production increased four times.

Recovery of the Turkish economy depends on some of the crucial sectors, especially automobiles and tourism. However, during the power shortage, car maker Renault SA stopped production for 15 days at its Bursa plant. Automakers such as Tofas halted production altogether. It is reminded that the automotive sector contributed to 11% of Turkish exports in 2021.

Power shortage in the country is partly caused by non-payment of dues to traditional suppliers. Ankara also erred in planning and making early decision about gas supply contracts. Although Iran’s share in Turkey’s total gas supply is 16% and plays a crucial role in the country’s energy matrix, Turkey also imports gas from Russia and Azerbaijan. Despite varying energy sources, Turkey was not able to get the required gas due to the great global energy demand this winter.

Analysts say that Ankara failed to take adequate measures despite expected harsh winters and high oil prices. Turkish leaders expected a fall in energy prices, which might have saved deterioration in the economic crisis amidst the COVID-19 impact, but it did not happen. The error in judgment by Ankara led to the non-renewal of medium and long-term natural gas contracts.

A sudden surge in international energy prices is now forcing Ankara to buy Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) at the spot market. Fearing for the worst, Ankara secured a deal with Azerbaijan to import an additional four million cubic meters of natural gas per day in February.

Spokesperson for the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Faik Öztrak, stated that “the [Erdoğan] government gambled thinking that natural gas prices would decrease, but they lost.”

This gamble has caused further pressure on its foreign exchange reserves, which is already under pressure for debt servicing requirements in immediate terms.

Ankara is facing multiple problems since the COVID-19 pandemic exposed Turkey’s volatile and high-risk economic policies. Its annual inflation has already reached 49%, hitting a 20 year high, and the lira depreciated by over 40% last year. Turkey is now trying to ward off recession and pins its hope on an expected tourism revenue of $30 billion in 2022 – so long as the pandemic does not strike once again.

Meanwhile from a low base of economic growth of under 2% in the last three years since 2018, Turkey’s growth rate has been estimated to be around 9% in 2021, only to be moderated to 3.3% in 2022 and 3.9% in 2023. However, it all depends how Ankara addresses it impending economic problems, including power shortage, and perhaps most importantly, military adventurism.

With inflation out of control and the Turkish lira at its weakest point, Turkey is unrelenting in continuing its military occupations of Cyprus, Syria, Libya and Iraq, as well as sponsoring war in the South Caucasus. This too absorbs up desperately needed funding.

Turkish military expenditure has increased by 8.6% since 2010 to reach an estimated $20.4 billion in 2019, representing 2.7% of GDP. However, this does not take into account its secret operations, such as financing, training and arming terrorist forces, including ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

With military adventurism sucking up finances, compounded by energy issues, Turkey’s economy is in dire straits. This is also now being reflected in polls as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s approval rating was only at 40.7% in January. His disapproval rating still remains higher though, at 54.4%.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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While the Biden administration is sending more troops and weapons to inflame the Ukraine conflict and Congress is pouring more fuel on the fire, the American people are on a totally different track. 

A December 2021 poll found that a plurality of Americans in both political parties prefer to resolve differences over Ukraine through diplomacy. Another December poll found that a plurality of Americans (48 percent) would oppose going to war with Russia should it invade Ukraine, with only 27 percent favoring U.S. military involvement.

The conservative Koch Institute, which commissioned that poll, concluded that

“the United States has no vital interests at stake in Ukraine and continuing to take actions that increase the risk of a confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia is therefore not necessary for our security. After more than two decades of endless war abroad, it is not surprising there is wariness among the American people for yet another war that wouldn’t make us safer or more prosperous.”

The most anti-war popular voice on the right is Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has been lashing out against the hawks in both parties, as have other anti-interventionist libertarians.

On the left, the anti-war sentiment was in full force on February 5, when over 75 protests took place from Maine to Alaska. The protesters, including union activists, environmentalists, healthcare workers and students, denounced pouring even more money into the military when we have so many burning needs at home.

You would think Congress would be echoing the public sentiment that a war with Russia is not in our national interest. Instead, taking our nation to war and supporting the gargantuan military budget seem to be the only issues that both parties agree on.

Most Republicans in Congress are criticizing Biden for not being tough enough (or for focusing on Russia instead of China) and most Democrats are afraid to oppose a Democratic president or be smeared as Putin apologists (remember, Democrats spent four years under Trump demonizing Russia).

Both parties have bills calling for draconian sanctions on Russia and expedited “lethal aid” to Ukraine. The Republicans are advocating for $450 million in new military shipments; the Democrats are one-upping them with a price tag of $500 million.

Progressive Caucus leaders Pramila Jayapal and Barbara Lee have called for negotiations and de-escalation. But others in the Caucus–such as Reps. David Cicilline and Andy Levin–are co-sponsors of the dreadful anti-Russia bill, and Speaker Pelosi is fast-tracking the bill to expedite weapons shipments to Ukraine.

But sending more weapons and imposing heavy-handed sanctions can only ratchet up the resurgent U.S. Cold War on Russia, with all its attendant costs to American society: lavish military spending displacing desperately needed social spending; geopolitical divisions undermining international cooperation for a better future; and, not least, increased risks of a nuclear war that could end life on Earth as we know it.

For those looking for real solutions, we have good news.

Negotiations regarding Ukraine are not limited to President Biden and Secretary Blinken’s failed efforts to browbeat the Russians. There is another already existing diplomatic track for peace in Ukraine, a well-established process called the Minsk Protocol, led by France and Germany and supervised by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The civil war in Eastern Ukraine broke out in early 2014, after the people of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine as the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics, in response to the U.S.-backed coup in Kiev in February 2014. The post-coup government formed new “National Guard” units to assault the breakaway region, but the separatists fought back and held their territory, with some covert support from Russia. Diplomatic efforts were launched to resolve the conflict.

The original Minsk Protocol was signed by the “Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine” (Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE) in September 2014. It reduced the violence, but failed to end the war. France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine also held a meeting in Normandy in June 2014 and this group became known as the “Normandy Contact Group” or the “Normandy Format.”

All these parties continued to meet and negotiate, together with the leaders of the self-declared Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics in Eastern Ukraine, and they eventually signed the Minsk II agreement on February 12, 2015. The terms were similar to the original Minsk Protocol, but more detailed and with more buy-in from the DPR and LPR.

The Minsk II agreement was unanimously approved by the U.N. Security Council in Resolution 2202 on February 17, 2015. The United States voted in favor of the resolution, and 57 Americans are currently serving as ceasefire monitors with the OSCE in Ukraine.

The key elements of the 2015 Minsk II Agreement were:

• an immediate bilateral ceasefire between Ukrainian government forces and DPR and LPR forces;
• the withdrawal of heavy weapons from a 30-kilometer-wide buffer zone along the line of control between government and separatist forces;
• elections in the secessionist Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics, to be monitored by the OSCE; and
• constitutional reforms to grant greater autonomy to the separatist-held areas within a reunified but less centralized Ukraine.

The ceasefire and buffer zone have held well enough for seven years to prevent a return to full-scale civil war, but organizing elections in Donbas that both sides will recognize has proved more difficult.

The DPR and LPR postponed elections several times between 2015 and 2018. They held primary elections in 2016 and, finally, a general election in November 2018. But neither Ukraine, the United States nor the European Union recognized the results, claiming the election was not conducted in compliance with the Minsk Protocol.

For its part, Ukraine has not made the agreed-upon constitutional changes to grant greater autonomy to the separatist regions. And the separatists have not allowed the central government to retake control of the international border between Donbas and Russia, as specified in the agreement.

The Normandy Contact Group (France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine) for the Minsk Protocol has met periodically since 2014, and is meeting regularly throughout the current crisis, with its next meeting scheduled for February 10 in Berlin. The OSCE’s 680 unarmed civilian monitors and 621 support staff in Ukraine have also continued their work throughout this crisis. Their latest report, issued February 1, documented a 65% decrease in ceasefire violations compared to two months ago.

But increased U.S. military and diplomatic support since 2019 has encouraged President Zelensky to pull back from Ukraine’s commitments under the Minsk Protocol, and to reassert unconditional Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea and Donbas. This has raised credible fears of a new escalation of the civil war, and U.S. support for Zelensky’s more aggressive posture has undermined the existing Minsk-Normandy diplomatic process.

Zelensky’s recent statement that “panic” in Western capitals is economically destabilizing Ukraine suggests that he may now be more aware of the pitfalls in the more confrontational path his government adopted, with U.S. encouragement.

The current crisis should be a wake-up call to all involved that the Minsk-Normandy process remains the only viable framework for a peaceful resolution in Ukraine. It deserves full international support, including from U.S. Members of Congress, especially in light of broken promises on NATO expansion, the U.S. role in the 2014 coup, and now the panic over fears of a Russian invasion that Ukrainian officials say are overblown.

On a separate, albeit related, diplomatic track, the United States and Russia must urgently address the breakdown in their bilateral relations. Instead of bravado and one upmanship, they must restore and build on previous disarmament agreements that they have cavalierly abandoned, placing the whole world in existential danger.

Restoring U.S. support for the Minsk Protocol and the Normandy Format would also help to decouple Ukraine’s already thorny and complex internal problems from the larger geopolitical problem of NATO expansion, which must primarily be resolved by the United States, Russia and NATO.

The United States and Russia must not use the people of Ukraine as pawns in a revived Cold War or as chips in their negotiations over NATO expansion. Ukrainians of all ethnicities deserve genuine support to resolve their differences and find a way to live together in one country – or to separate peacefully, as other people have been allowed to do in Ireland, Bangladesh, Slovakia and throughout the former U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia.

In 2008, then-U.S. Ambassador to Moscow (now CIA Director) William Burns warned his government that dangling the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine could lead to civil war and present Russia with a crisis on its border in which it could be forced to intervene.

In a cable published by WikiLeaks, Burns wrote, “Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”

Since Burns’s warning in 2008, successive U.S. administrations have plunged headlong into the crisis he predicted. Members of Congress, especially members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, can play a leading role in restoring sanity to U.S. policy on Ukraine by championing a moratorium on Ukraine’s membership in NATO and a reinvigoration of the Minsk Protocol, which the Trump and Biden administrations have arrogantly tried to upstage and upend with weapons shipments, ultimatums and panic.

OSCE monitoring reports on Ukraine are all headed with the critical message: “Facts Matter.” Members of Congress should embrace that simple principle and educate themselves about the Minsk-Normandy diplomacy. This process has maintained relative peace in Ukraine since 2015, and remains the U.N.-endorsed, internationally agreed-upon framework for a lasting resolution.

If the U.S. government wants to play a constructive role in Ukraine, it should genuinely support this already existing framework for a solution to the crisis, and end the heavy-handed U.S. intervention that has only undermined and delayed its implementation. And our elected officials should start listening to their own constituents, who have absolutely no interest in going to war with Russia.

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. 

Featured image: Peace protest at the White House (Source: iacenter.org)

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Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau portrayed Ottawa’s protesters as violent, racists, and more… Here is one of many trucker’s tales showing this is as far from reality as it can go.

“Trucker’s Tales” is a collection of great testimonies from Canadians who take a stand for truth and freedom. God bless their souls.

In French:

Le premier ministre Justin Trudeau a dressé un portrait méchant des manifestants à Ottawa. Violents, racistes, islamophobes et j’en passe… Pour montrer la réalité, j’ai collecté des témoignages de manifestants Canadiens. La réalité ne ment pas, les manifestants sont en grande majorité des citoyens exemplaires. Dieu bénisse leurs âmes.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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As of this writing, GoFundMe has cut off (stolen) $9 million from the Canadian Trucker Convoy.

The money was donated by thousands of individuals to support the truckers, who are demanding the Canadian government cancel vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, and brutal COVID restrictions.

After a major backlash from the enraged public, GoFundMe has stated it will automatically refund all $9 million to the individual donors.

Regardless, GoFundMe will not forward the money to the group it was intended for: the truckers.

All right: here come the dots—

A venture capital firm, Accel, and Technology Crossover Ventures, own the majority stake in GoFundMe.

The big infusion of cash that sent Mark Zuckerberg and his fledgling college enterprise on their way came from Accel, in 2004.

Jim Breyer, head of Accel, attached a $13 million rocket to Facebook, and nothing has ever been the same. (Breyer—billionaire, CFR, World Economic Forum, major fund investor in China.)

Earlier in 2004, a man named Gilman Louie joined the board of the National Venture Capital Association of America (NVCA). The chairman of NVCA? Jim Breyer. Gilman Louie happened to be the first CEO of the important CIA start-up, In-Q-Tel.

In-Q-Tel was founded in 1999, with the express purpose of funding companies that could develop technology the CIA would use to “gather data.”

That’s not the only connection between Facebook funder and Accel’s Jim Breyer and the CIA’s man, Gilman Louie. In 2004, Louie went to work for BBN Technologies, headed up by Breyer. Dr. Anita Jones also joined BBN at that time. Jones had worked for the CIA’s In-Q-Tel and was an adviser to DARPA, the Pentagon’s technology department that helped develop the Internet.

With these CIA/DARPA connections, it’s no surprise that Jim Breyer’s jackpot investment in Facebook is not part of the popular mythology of Mark Zuckerberg. Better to omit it. Who can fail to realize that Facebook, with its endless stream of personal data, and its tracking capability, is an ideal CIA asset?

Accel co-owns the majority stake in GoFundMe. Accel has a history of rubbing shoulders with the CIA. Accel helped launch Facebook, the largest profiling and data-mining company in the world.

Given all this, it might be more surprising if GoFundMe DIDN’T cut off the Canadian truckers’ $9 million.

It’s also worth mentioning that Accel has invested in Spotify, the platform whose number-one star is Joe Rogan. Spotify is now under pressure to cancel Rogan, because his views and guests don’t align 100% with the official COVID narrative. In step one of a new censorship program, Spotify has stated it will post warning messages on all content that veers from official COVID positions and offer links to approved government and public health sources (for outrageous lies).

GoFundMe, Accel, Facebook, CIA, In-Q-Tel, Jim Breyer, CFR, World Economic Forum, major investments in China.

Basically, The Club.

The member’s statement of belief: “More money for me, less freedom for the peons, global control.”

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The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Featured image is from The Daily Signal

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A peer-reviewed study published last month found the prophylactic use of ivermectin reduced COVID mortality by 90% among more than 223,000 study participants in a town in Southern Brazil.

A peer-reviewed study published last month found the prophylactic use of ivermectin reduced COVID mortality by 90% among more than 223,000 study participants in a town in Southern Brazil.

The study, published in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science, also found a 44% reduction in COVID cases among those who took the re-purposed drug.

Between July 7, 2020, and Dec. 2, 2020, all residents of Itajaí were offered ivermectin. Approximately 3.7% of ivermectin users contracted COVID during the trial period, compared with 6.6% of residents who didn’t take the drug.

Based on the results, Dr. Flavio Cadegiani, one of the study’s lead authors, said, “Ivermectin must be considered as an option, particularly during outbreaks.”

Dr. Pierre Kory told The Epoch Times the results of the study “should convince any naysayer. What they found was astounding.”

Kory said:

“You would think this would lead to major headlines everywhere. And yet, nothing. And this is not new, this censorship of this highly effective science and evidence around repurposed drugs. The censoring of it, it’s not new, it’s just getting more and more absurd. And it has to stop.”

Kory said it’s not even about ivermectin, “it’s about the pharmaceutical industry’s capture of our agencies and how our policies are all directed at suppressing and avoiding use of re-purposed drugs” in favor of high-profit medicines.

As is common with studies that show ivermectin as an effective treatment for COVID, various “fact-checkers” were quick to discount the study.

A number of sources, including Politifact, cited a long Twitter thread by an Australian graduate student in epidemiology, Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, as evidence the study was “flawed.”

One tweet called the study “a fairly simple example of observational research that you’d do on routine medical data” but alleged the controls for confounding factors such as occupation and risk factors were “pretty inadequate given the purpose.”

Cadegiani called the criticism unfounded, saying researchers controlled for “all relevant factors,” including comorbidities, age, sex and race.

He said the inability of critics “to focus on the data provided by the study itself is … proof of the extreme high quality of the study.”

“To us, this is the best observational study on COVID-19 to date,” Cadegiani concluded, “with a power almost equivalent to a huge, randomized clinical trial.”

Cadeigiani and his colleagues also plan to publish further results about hospitalization rates based on the study.

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David Charbonneau, Ph.D. is a fellow for The Defender.

Featured image is from CHD

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As everyone faces difficult times, the company which deals with the fulfillment of book sales on behalf of Global Research is no longer able to provide its services. We are unfortunately suspending the sale of print books until further notice.

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Video: Trudeau’s Brother Kyle Kemper takes Firm Stance against the Vaccine Mandate and “The Great Reset”

By Kyle Kemper, February 07, 2022

Its’ a “globally orchestrated phenomenon” by the World Economic Forum.  According to Kyle Kemper, the COVID scam is there to facilitate a massive processes of wealth appropriation as outlined in  WEF’s Great Reset.

Life Insurance Payouts Skyrocket 258% as Post-Vaccine Deaths Rapidly Accelerate

By Mike Adams, February 07, 2022

In a little-known Reuters story that garnered almost no attention in the corporate media, Dutch insurer Aegon revealed its third quarter, 2021 life insurance payouts skyrocketed 258% compared to third quarter, 2020 payouts.

The British Medical Journal Story That Exposed Politicized “Fact-Checking”

By Matt Taibbi, February 07, 2022

Thacker has an in-your-face style and a dark sense of humor, and talking to him can feel like being lost in a Bill Hicks routine, but his information is good. In his years in the Senate, his job was publicizing damaging information about the world’s most litigious companies.

Bowing to Authority: The Real Contagion of Our Time

By Julian Rose, February 07, 2022

There must be some powerful subconscious process at work throughout a large swathe of the population to cause such a high percentage to do what they are told, in spite of the fact that what they are told to do lacks any practical justification or logical explanation and is highly likely to harm them.

How the Corporate Media Smears Canada’s Freedom Convoy. Trudeau Accuses Them of “Racism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Homophobia, Transphobia”

By CJ Hopkins, February 07, 2022

Trudeau had vowed to stand and fight, but he had no choice but to flee the capital after he mysteriously tested positive for Covid (which also might have been the work of the Russians, possibly the same professional team of weed-smoking, hooker-banging Novichok assassins that got to the Skripals back in 2018).

Video: Freedom Convoy Address to the Nation. “State of Emergency Update”. Movement Spreads Across Canada

By Marcel Irnie, February 07, 2022

Ottawa Mayor declared a state of emergency. How Ottawa Police taking the convoy fuel and occupying the convoy tents does not impact the Freedom Convoy logistics.

Video: Prove It’s Misinformation: Dr. Peter McCullough after the Joe Rogan Show on Covid

By Dr. Peter McCullough and Kristina Borjesson, February 07, 2022

Dr. Peter McCullough talks about the fallout from his bombshell interview on the Joe Rogan Experience: celebrities have left or are threatening to leave Spotify because they’re angry Rogan interviewed guests like him who they say are spreading covid disinformation.

An Inconvenient Truth: The Peasant Food Web Feeds the World

By Colin Todhunter, February 07, 2022

In October 2020, CropLife International said that its new strategic partnership with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) would contribute to sustainable food systems. It added that it was a first for the industry and the FAO and demonstrates the determination of the plant science sector to work constructively in a partnership where common goals are shared.

Hidden Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Data Suggests All Pregnant Vaccinated Women Miscarried

By Captaindaretofly, February 07, 2022

A lawsuit filed by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency produced documents from Pfizer revealing that its Covid-19 vaccine caused all of the pregnant women in its trial to miscarry.

British Children Up to 52 Times More Likely to Die Following a COVID Shot: Government Report

By David McLoone, February 07, 2022

Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released data indicating that children who received the COVID-19 jabs have suffered a death rate 54 times greater than that of their un-jabbed counterparts.

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The January 6 death of Sidney Poitier came at a portentous time. The screen’s seminal Civil Rights icon died on the one-year anniversary of an attempted insurrection by Confederate flag-waving white supremacists and as the voting rights he had campaigned for remained in limbo.

More than the career of any other major actor in Hollywood history, the motion picture odyssey of the man who became the first Black male to win an Oscar for playing Homer Smith resembles a tightrope act. Poitier, who was born in 1927 in Miami but raised in the Bahamas, somehow had to fulfill the expectations of two constituencies: Obviously, of Blacks, but also of whites, who formed the dominant majority culture, bought most movie tickets and financed films. To please both audiences Poitier had to somehow perform a delicate, intricate balancing act between appearing to be an Uncle Tom on the one hand and an “uppity” you-know-what on the other.

The following is a motion picture postmortem, an analysis of the political highlights and meanings of Sidney Poitier’s screen career, which stretched for more than half a century and included at least 55 acting credits and more.

In terms of the African-American screen image, Poitier was a transitional figure. In D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist epic The Birth of a Nation, the Ku Klux Klan put the Reconstruction Era’s Badass Brothers and Sisters back into “their place.” For the next 35 years or so Black actors played mostly subservient, sexless, superstitious, celluloid stereotypes typified by Stepin Fetchit, Mantan Moreland and Butterfly McQueen.

Then three things happened that would change these humiliating onscreen depictions: The independence movements in Africa; the Civil Rights cause in the segregated South; and World War II. Blacks who fought against fascism abroad were unwilling to continue accepting racism at home. One of those WWII-era veterans was Poitier, who lied about his age while he was only 16 to join the Army.

In Sidney’s first credited movie role, 1950’s No Way Out, he plays a doctor who treats the criminal Richard Widmark, despite his abusive racism. The film, directed and co-written by Joe Mankiewicz, also depicts a race riot. In a way, No Way Out set the template for Sidney’s most successful screen image, as the noble Black who loftily sacrifices himself for ignoble whites.

Sidney Poitier in No Way Out (1950). [Source: irishnews.com]

But before he returned to this motion picture persona Poitier played a reverend in the 1951 South Africa-set anti-apartheid drama Cry, the Beloved Country, clandestinely co-written by the blacklisted Communist Party member John Howard Lawson, one of the Hollywood Ten.

Source: imdb.com

In 1957 Poitier co-starred in three roles that were departures from the “Good Negro” characters. In the Civil War drama Band of Angels, featuring Gone with the Wind’s Clark Gable, Poitier plays a plantation “House Negro” who escapes and joins the Union Army. In Something of Value opposite Rock Hudson, Sidney became a leader of the violent Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya against British colonialism. In The Mark of the Hawk, Poitier plays a character with the presidential sounding name of “Obam” (!) and is again embroiled in Africa’s anti-colonial cause, but this time he opts for non-violence.

Poitier achieved greater success in Stanley Kramer’s 1958 The Defiant Ones, as an escaped convict who sacrifices himself for the bigoted prisoner he has been chained to. White audiences cheered when Sidney gave up his chance for freedom to instead help Tony Curtis, but according to James Baldwin, Black ticket buyers jeered this act of self-sacrifice.

Source: amazon.com

A Hollywood favorite, both of these were Oscar-nominated and The Defiant Ones received five more nominations, including for Best Picture, and won two Academy Awards (including for blacklisted screenwriter Ned Young, who used a pseudonym but was glimpsed in the opening credits).

Sidney played the crippled title character in Otto Preminger’s 1959 adaptation of the George Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess. He attained well-deserved acclaim for playing the chauffeur who yearns for a better life in 1961’s screen adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s “moving-on-up” Broadway hit A Raisin in the Sun.

That year, Poitier also co-starred with Paul Newman as expatriate jazz musicians who romance Diahann Carroll and Joanne Woodward in Paris Blues, directed and written by Martin Ritt and Walter Bernstein, who had both been blacklisted. Carroll pointedly reminds her expat beau that after their Parisian idyll, they eventually must return home to fight for their people’s rights.

In 1962’s Pressure Point, Poitier once again played a Black medical practitioner caring for a white racist, this time as a psychiatrist treating Bobby Darin’s imprisoned neo-Nazi.

In 1964—as LBJ was launching the Great Society—Poitier became the first Black performer to win a Best Actor Academy Award for a leading role and the first Black to win any Oscar since Hattie McDaniel had won for playing the slave-cum-servant Mammy in 1939’s Gone with the Wind.

As Homer Smith in 1963’s Lilies of the Field, Poitier is the lord’s servant, henpecked by nuns into building a chapel. Because they are celibate women of the cloth, handsome Sidney is allowed close proximity to these white females.

Source: wikipedia.org

But four years later, at the pinnacle of his stardom, Poitier was permitted to openly woo a white woman in Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? The year this tepid interracial romance was lensed, Sidney also starred in two other major releases, including as a teacher presiding over troubled white pupils from the slums of London’s East End in James Clavell’s pseudo-hip To Sir, with Love.

In 1967, Poitier had become the world’s number one box office star. Until that point, Poitier’s career trajectory had reflected the pro-integration, non-violent, Civil Rights Movement. But by 1967, as militants such as Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown and the Black Panthers vied with Dr. Martin Luther King for hegemony over the African-American masses, as civil disobedience competed with armed struggle. “Black Power” impacted movies, too.

In the third and best of the trilogy of Sidney’s 1967 productions, he played a Philadelphia detective who confronted Southern bigotry. Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won five, including for Best Picture, Best Writing and Best Actor for Rod Steiger.

There’s a key, compelling scene that has been repeatedly screened in TV tributes to Sidney after his death, wherein Poitier the tightrope walker transcended passive resistance, moved toward militancy and helped set the stage for the return of the Badass Brothers (who’d been banished from the screen by Griffith and his Klansmen in 1915) in militant and Blaxploitation pictures.

In this pivotal, singular sequence a prominent plantation owner slaps Poitier who, instead of just simply, subserviently taking it, slaps whitey back. When the powerful Endicott (Larry Gates) asks the police chief what he’s going to do about the blow, Steiger is staggered, at a loss as to how to react. It was the slap heard ’round the world, which may have cost Poitier another Oscar nomination but announced the emergence of a new movie militancy.

Poitier’s leftward-veering screen image reflected the offscreen Stokely vs. King, “The-Fire-Next-Time” vs. the “We-Shall-Overcome” dynamic and dialectic. As the title to Heat’ssequel suggests, Poitier insists upon his honorific—and, like Aretha, respect—in 1970’s They Call Me Mister Tibbs! Male Blacks are second-class “boys” no more. As the picket signs of protesters way down yonder in the land of cotton had been poignantly proclaiming: “I am a Man.”

The 1968 assassination of Reverend King and ensuing urban rebellions also marked the death knell of passive resistance as a viable tactic in the equal rights crusade. That same year, when the revolutionary H. Rap Brown (who famously said: “Violence… is as American as cherry pie”) became its Chairman, SNCC (which had already expelled all white members and staffers by 1967) changed its name from the Student NONVIOLENT Coordinating Committee to the Student NATIONAL Coordinating Committee.

Trying to stay timely and relevant, Poitier appeared in several movies with Black Power themes, although his characters were not necessarily militants per se. Carol Reed’s 1947 Odd Man Out IRA drama was adapted and updated, relocated to a Black militant milieu in Philadelphia in 1969’s The Lost Man. Poitier uses the activist group as a diversion in order to pull a heist.

When Poitier returns home in a small Southern town to attend his sister’s funeral in 1971’s Brother John, he is suspected of being an outside agitator from the North on a mission to incite Black folks. Instead, in a version of the “magical Negro” trope, this mystical movie reveals that John Kane is the messiah—and he’s Black! (Call it “Guess Who’s Second Coming to Dinner?”) In 1971 Sidney also reprised his role as Lt. Virgil Tibbs in The Organization, cooperating with a band of Black radicals to stop drug trafficking in the community.

While Poitier fights with a white lawman in Brother John, Melvin Van Peebles actually shoots and kills a Caucasian policeman for using excessive force as the title character in Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song in the actor/writer/director’s trendsetting militant movie made the same year as the tamer Brother John. Like Van Peebles’ 1970 Watermelon Man, both of these indies were far more militant than any of Poitier’s political pictures and openly advocated armed self-defense.

In 1975’s South Africa-set, Kenya-shot The Wilby Conspiracy, Poitier is an anti-apartheid activist teamed up with Michael Caine, a pairing reminiscent of The Defiant Ones. Sidney went on to portray Thurgood Marshall in the 1991 TV miniseries Separate But Equal and as Nelson Mandela opposite Michael Caine again in another South Africa-set production, the so-so 1997 made-for-TV movie Mandela and de Klerk.

Source: imdb.com

But Poitier never fully made the transition for the new Black Consciousness audience and its expectations. His smooth, middle class, integrationist image and oeuvre were too ingrained for more politically aware, nationalistic, militant moviegoers of the sizzling sixties and seventies, as the Black proletariat replaced the Black bourgeoisie.

Although Poitier continued to act, he started directing mass entertainment pictures that he sometimes also acted in and were particularly popular with African-American audiences, starting with the 1972 Western Buck and the Preacher, co-starring Harry Belafonte. Most of the nine movies Sidney helmed featured Black casts and were more lighthearted fare, comedies and/or shoot-’em-ups, starring actors such as Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, and also Gene Wilder.

Poitier’s movie moment as the top box office attraction for the Civil Rights period had passed as he became increasingly passe. The Blaxploitation genre largely stripped Sweetback of its political awareness while perpetuating some of Van Peebles’ empowering elements with muscular, sexualized, nitty-gritty characters such as Shaft, Superfly or “Dracula’s soul brother,” Blacula. With an eye on the dominant majority culture, which bought most movie tickets and financed all Hollywood productions, and only one foot in the changing Black community, the superstar never shed his turn-the-other-cheek, Civil Rights skin to successfully evolve into a more assertive, empowered persona that connected with theatergoers.

Poitier never resolved the contradictions engendered by a new “Black and Proud” nationalist sense of self and ethnic pride. And after the upsurge of the “We-Shall-Overcome” and Black Power periods from the 1950s to the 1970s had subsided, and Reaganism reigned, there was less of a demand for Black-themed films and stars. President Reagan’s racial rants about “welfare queens” replaced Blaxploitation characters such as Pam Grier as Coffy and Foxy Brown or Tamara Dobson as Cleopatra Jones or Vonetta McGee as Blacula’s wife and the Angela Davis-like political prisoner in 1977’s Brothers.

As the current iteration of America’s racial reckoning unfolds, it is up to Black artists of today, such as Daniel Kaluuya, who won an Oscar for portraying a Black Panther revolutionary in Judas and the Black Messiah, Michael B. Jordan who was in the Africa-set Black Panther superhero blockbuster, directors Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay, et al., to complete the image arc in the 21^st century that Sidney Poitier helped launch in 1950.

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Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based film historian and critic who also also reviews culture, foreign affairs and current events. Ed can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image: Sidney Poitier in his glory days. [Source: achievement.org]

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Near the entrance to the Black Sea.

Charles de Gaulle is the only nuclear aircraft in the world aside from the U.S.’s eleven.

The USS Bainbridge, USS Gonzalez, USS Gravely and USS Ross are Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers designed to fire Standard Missile 3 anti-ballistic missiles of the sort stationed in their so-called Aegis Ashore version in Romania and Poland. The USS Cole, USS Jason Dunham and USS San Jacinto are Ticonderoga-class cruisers are also equipped for Standard Missile 3 interceptors.

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Below is an excerpt from the following article:

American, French, Italian Carrier Strike Groups Sail Together in the Mediterranean Sea

By U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa/U.S. Sixth Fleet Public Affairs

February 7, 2022

Naval forces from France, Italy and the U.S. sailed together while conducting naval training in the Mediterranean Sea, Feb. 6-7.

The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (HSTCSG) integrated with the French carrier Charles de Gaulle’s Task Force 473 and Italian carrier Cavour strike groups….

“The capabilities of a US aircraft carrier strike group are made stronger by operating alongside our allies and partners; and adding the French and Italian carrier teams provides an exciting chance to strengthen our interoperability together.”

The HSTCSG completed participation in the NATO-led activity Neptune Strike 22, Feb. 4, 2022. This activity involved the handover of the HSTCSG to NATO command and control, highlighting the natural evolution of NATO’s ability to integrate the high-end maritime warfare capabilities of a carrier strike group to support the defense of the Alliance.

The Italian aircraft carrier Cavour and elements of its associated carrier strike group also participated in Neptune Strike 22, strengthening their maritime partnership with both the U.S. and NATO. This partnership has shone through in other activities in recent months as well, as SIXTHFLT units participated in Italy’s Mare Aperto exercise in October 2021 and as American and Italian naval units continue to operate alongside one another bilaterally and through the NATO alliance on a routine basis.

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“There are few nations that are able to operate carrier strike groups and this was a great opportunity to confirm the high level of integration.”

The Charles de Gaulle CSG departed Toulon, France, to begin its 14th deployment in the Mediterranean, Feb. 1. This deployment, named Clemenceau 22, brings together a variety of allied resources, including the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Ross.

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The convergence of three allied aircraft carrier strike groups strengthens maritime integration by allowing naval crews and aircraft to operate in relatively close water and airspace…..

Elements of the strike group include the staff of Carrier Strike Group 8; flagship USS Harry S. Truman; the nine squadrons of Carrier Air Wing 1; the staff and guided-missile destroyers of Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 28, which include: USS Gonzalez , USS Bainbridge, USS Gravely ; the Royal Norwegian Navy’s Fridtjof-Nansen class frigate HNoMS Fridtjof Nansen deployed as part of the Cooperative Deployment Program; and the Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS San Jacinto. USS Coleand USS Jason Dunham are also part of the carrier strike group and currently supporting U.S. Fifth Fleet Area of Operations….

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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 U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa/U.S. Sixth Fleet Public Affairs

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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Its’ a “Globally orchestrated phenomenon” by the World Economic Forum.  

According to Kyle Kemper, The Covid Scam is there to facilitate a massive processes of wealth appropriation as outlined in  WEF’s Great Reset  

Below is an important interview with Justin Trudeau’s Brother, who has taken a firm stance against the Vaccine Mandate