This Week’s Most Popular Articles

February 18th, 2022 by Global Research News

World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leaders” Revealed

Jacob Nordangard, February 12, 2022

Johns Hopkins University Confirms: You Can be “Vaccinated” with a PCR Test, Even Without Knowing

Weaver, February 16, 2022

Video: Whistleblower Canadian Army Major Breaks Ranks and Spills the Truth on Covid-19 Mandates

Major Stephen Chledowski, February 11, 2022

The Crisis in Ukraine Is Not About Ukraine. It’s About Germany

Mike Whitney, February 15, 2022

Graphene COVID Kill Shots: Let the Evidence Speak for Itself

Dr. Ariyana Love, February 16, 2022

Klaus Schwab’s WEF “School for Covid Dictators”, a Plan for the “Great Reset”

Michael Lord, February 13, 2022

Colossal Financial Pyramid: BlackRock and The WEF “Great Reset”

F. William Engdahl, February 13, 2022

Trudeau Threatens Canadians Who Uphold the Charter and the Basic Tenets of Democracy

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 13, 2022

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

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 18, 2022

Bombshell Document Dump on Pfizer Vaccine Data

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 13, 2022

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

The Daily Expose, February 14, 2022

“The Truth Of COVID-19: The India Statement.”

Walter Gelles, February 13, 2022

The COVID Mandates Are Leaving Europe. Is Freedom Winning?

Joanna Miller, February 16, 2022

The Vaccine Death Report: Evidence of Millions of Deaths and Serious Adverse Events Resulting from the Experimental COVID-19 Injections

David John Sorensen, February 6, 2022

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

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 15, 2022

The COVID Narrative and “Conspiracy Theories”: A Physician’s Perspective

Michael C, February 12, 2022

Video: Grand Jury Day 1: Attorney at Law Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, Germany, for the “PCR Plandemic Trial” Before a Grand Jury

Reiner Fuellmich, February 11, 2022

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

Robert J. Burrowes, February 14, 2022

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

Resistance GB, February 14, 2022

Video: World Awakening – Freedom Convoys

Marcel Irnie, February 15, 2022

Video: Breaking News: Justin Trudeau Accuses Jewish Member of Parliament for Supporting Nazis

By Jamie Schmale, February 18, 2022

Instead of answering questions, he resorted to accusing Melissa Lantsman, a Jewish Member of Parliament and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, of supporting those waving swastikas. There were many on the opposition side of the House who immediately came to her defence. However, the Liberal benches were silent on the Prime Minister’s demeaning comments.

Video: Dr. Charles Hoffe Speaks Out to the World

By Dr. Charles Hoffe, February 18, 2022

Dr. Charles Hoffe is a family physician in British Columbia. “I have been horrified to see what the COVID shots have done to my own patients. I have a small country practice with about 2,000 patients and amongst those people, I now have 12 in my own practice who are disabled since their COVID shots.”

Video: #FreedomConvoy2022 to Veterans and Civilians: “Please Come. Your Country Needs You.”

By Bridge City News, February 18, 2022

They addressed a narrative circulating around mainstream media regarding the removal of a fence around the National War Memorial. They also asked for other veterans and civilians to come support the Freedom Convoy, saying “Please come. Your country needs you.”

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

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 18, 2022

The latest developments suggest that the COVID-19 narrative is crumbling amidst major protests worldwide. A mass movement against the COVID mandate is unfolding coast to coast across Canada in solidarity with cross-border truck drivers. Tens of thousands of people have joined the truck drivers in Ottawa.

Justin Trudeau’s Swastikas. “Democracy with Neo-Nazi Characteristics”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 18, 2022

Justin Trudeau is unceasingly referring to swastikas intimating that the Freedom Convoy organizers are not only supportive of  Nazi symbols but are anti-Semitic. And on February 16, he directed these wild accusations against the Conservative Party of Canada.

NATO Insists on Russian Invasion Narrative to Justify New European Battlegroups

By Paul Antonopoulos, February 17, 2022

The predicted February 16 Russian invasion of Ukraine came and passed without incident. In fact, not only did Russian soldiers begin demobilization on February 15 with the end of defense exercises, but Russian officials even took the opportunity to mock the West for their bold announcement on when exactly the supposed invasion of Ukraine would begin.

Video: War with Ukraine Cancelled Due to Bad Weather

By South Front, February 17, 2022

Russian General Staff officers woke up on Wednesday morning and were surprised to find that their tanks were not yet in Kharkov, and the troops were not in Odessa. It turned out that the United States decided to cancel Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 16.

Video: Fired 20-year Global News, News Director Anita Krishna Speaks Out

By Anita Krishna, February 17, 2022

Anita Krishna tells everyone how things changed in 2020…when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals handed out 600M dollars to “news” organizations, calls out some specific bad actors, her former news rivals/colleagues and more.

Canada’s Emergency Act — We All Need to Contact Our MPs and Senators Now

By Shirley Guertin, February 17, 2022

It’s essential that every one of us telephones their MP (BOTH offices – local & Ottawa) and as many other MPs and senators (105, so suggest to begin with Independent — they listen and read) as possible now to protest the Emergencies Act.

Pfizer, BioNTech Seek COVID Biologic Emergency Use Authorization for Infants as Young as Six Months Old

By Natasha Hobley, February 17, 2022

A statement from Pfizer states that the “rolling submission” application was submitted on Feb. 1, 2022 at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “in response to the urgent public health need in this population.”

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Truck driver James Doull discusses the fate of the Canadian trucker ‘Freedom Convoy’ as PM Justin Trudeau vows to freeze protesters’ bank accounts, arguing he doesn’t see the PM’s efforts ‘making any difference.’

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***

During question period, the Conservative Party upheld their parliamentary obligation to hold the Prime Minister accountable for enacting the Emergencies Act.

Instead of answering questions, he resorted to accusing Melissa Lantsman, a Jewish Member of Parliament and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, of supporting those waving swastikas. There were many on the opposition side of the House who immediately came to her defence. However, the Liberal benches were silent on the Prime Minister’s demeaning comments.

Prime Minister Trudeau should immediately apologize and focus on unifying the nation rather than stoking divisions for political gain.

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***

Here are my impressions of Canada’s Freedom Convoy:

Despite the government-declared “emergency”, the Freedom Convoy remains very strong and is a potent force against the current Canadian dictatorship. The convoy is entirely peaceful, and everywhere I look I see widespread support. Awareness of what is really happening to us in Canada (and globally) is increasing exponentially, and we can thank the truckers and their supporters for this.

The Ottawa police commissioner resigned today, but in terms of policing, I would say the police have mostly handled the situation well. People I talked to seem to be of the same opinion. — M. Taliano, February 15, 2022

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

All images in this article are from the author


Voices from Syria

Author: Mark Taliano

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-9-1

Year: 2017

Product Type: PDF File

List Price: $6.50

Special Offer: $5.00 

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Former RCMP sniper, Daniel Bulford and veterans, Eddie Cornell and Vincent Gircys held a press conference in Ottawa Wednesday afternoon.

They addressed a narrative circulating around mainstream media regarding the removal of a fence around the National War Memorial. They also asked for other veterans and civilians to come support the Freedom Convoy, saying “Please come. Your country needs you.”

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Video: LIVE FROM OTTAWA IN REAL TIME, DAY 21, FEB 17, EVENING

February 18th, 2022 by Global Research News

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In this posting, Global Research is providing real time video reports from Ottawa on the Freedom Convoy Movement.

On February 17, the application of a National Emergency directed against The Freedom Convoy 2022 was debated at the House of Commons.

The House of Commons is divided. The NDP has signified that it will be siding with the Liberal minority government.

Meanwhile, a major police initiative against the Freedom Convoy involving a high tech “Nazi style” special forces operation is contemplated by the Prime Minister Trudeau.

We stand in Solidarity with the Freedom Convoy 2020

Global Research, February 17, 2022

 


 

 

This is the Bloomberg  Coverage focussing on an Impending Police Operation


From the Ottawa Citizen: 

  • Police are handing out notices to downtown demonstrators warning that if they continue to block streets, they are committing a criminal offence and face arrest
  • A convoy organizer threatens to call the police and RCMP on local counter-protesters who have been challenging the occupation in Ottawa’s streets
  • An injunction ordering “Freedom Convoy” truckers to stop blowing their air horns has been extended for 60 days
  • Residents still advised to avoid non-essential travel in the downtown core as traffic and transit disruptions, closures continue
  • Ottawa City Council meets to discuss the impact of the truck convoy demonstration on the city’s residents and businesses at 4 p.m.
  • Steve Bell, formerly a deputy chief, takes over as Ottawa’s interim police chief after the abrupt departure of Peter Sloly
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The predicted February 16 Russian invasion of Ukraine came and passed without incident. In fact, not only did Russian soldiers begin demobilization on February 15 with the end of defense exercises, but Russian officials even took the opportunity to mock the West for their bold announcement on when exactly the supposed invasion of Ukraine would begin.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova requested on February 16 for Bloomberg, The New York Times and The Sun “to publish the schedule for our upcoming invasions for the year” so that, as she said, “plan my vacation.” A day earlier she said: “February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day of the failure of western war propaganda. Humiliated and destroyed without firing a shot.”

Meanwhile, Lugansk defense militias accused pro-Kiev forces of firing in their area of control four times. Although it is not yet clear how serious these incidents are, there has been no reaction for now from Kiev or the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is monitoring the situation in eastern Ukraine but has withdrawn in recent days some of its observers from the region.

Representatives of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Lugansk said in a statement on February 17 that Ukrainian forces used mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns in four separate attacks. This shows that although the ridiculous invasion prediction obviously failed to materialize, with much humor, Kiev’s continued violations of the Minsk agreement is certainly no laughing matter.

In fact, this latest violation of the Minsk agreement is made all the more dangerous as the Anglo Alliance (US-UK-Australia, or AUKUS), refuses to backdown from its Russian invasion narrative. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on February 16 that there was “currently little evidence of Russia disengaging” from its military buildup near Ukraine.

Boris was backed up by British Lieutenant General Sir Jim Hockenhull, the Chief of Defence Intelligence, who said in a rare statement that they “have not seen evidence that Russia has withdrawn forces from Ukraine’s borders. Contrary to their claims, Russia continues to build up military capabilities near Ukraine.”

In unison with Britain, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said they had in fact seen “more Russian forces” and “not fewer” along the Ukraine border. When asked why Moscow would claim to be withdrawing troops when US intelligence, commercial satellite photos and social media videos showed no evidence of that, Price said: “This is the Russian playbook, to paint a picture publicly… while they do the opposite.”

Perhaps the Anglo officials, intelligence agencies and media missed videos freely available of Russian troops and heavy equipment withdrawing following the end of their defense exercises.

It was NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg who revealed on February 16 the likely reason why the Anglo Alliance is maintaining a Russia invasion narrative despite the major humiliation they experienced recently. After claiming that NATO is not a threat to Russia but that it must bolster its collective militaries because of the supposed Russian threat, he said the alliance was thinking about “establishing new NATO battlegroups in central and eastern, south-eastern Europe.”

In effect, rather than reciprocating Russia’s demobilization, NATO announced its consideration of new battlegroups geographically located with the obvious intention of surrounding and pressuring Russia.

With the Anglo Alliance failing to provoke Russia into war with Ukraine, it is now trying to find new justifications to increase troop numbers on Russia’s border. The only palatable way in the current climate for this to be achieved is to maintain a Russia invasion threat narrative, no matter how many times the Kremlin announces it has no intentions of this and no matter how many times the Anglo Alliance is humiliated with botched intelligence and failed predictions.

For this reason, Kiev will continue violating the Minsk agreement and attack Donbass defense forces knowing that there will be continued silence from the Anglo Alliance, NATO and the OSCE. Moscow is left in a difficult position as it attempts to navigate the manufactured Ukraine crisis with a diplomatic approach, but at the same time cannot tolerate and allow the Ukrainian military and its Far-Right militia allies to target and kill Russian passport holders in Donbass.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

A Report from Donetsk News Agency

February 17, 2022

Kiev forces shell nine Donbass settlement areas

Ukrainian armed formations delivered strikes at the areas of nine settlements in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics within two hours on Thursday morning, expending some 160 rounds of ammunition of calibre over 12.7mm, the DPR Office at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) said.

The strikes were delivered between 5:32 and 7:42 at the areas of of the following settlements: Kominternovo, Oktyabr, Novolaspa and Petrovskoye in the DPR and Veselenkoye, Donetsky, Zolotoye-5, Nizhneye Lozovoye and Sokolniki in the LPR. The enemy used 120mm and 82mm mortars (expending 67 rounds overall), grenade launchers (90 rounds) and high calibre small arms, the JCCC said.

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

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Donetsk News Agency
February 17, 2022

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Video: #Freedomconvoy2022: Police Ready to Move In

February 17th, 2022 by Maverick Multimedia

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Freedom Convoy 2022: Live Coverage from Ottawa, where Ottawa Police appear ready to make their move and take action to disperse demonstrators.

Join hosts Rick Walker, Brendan Kennedy, and Carla Olson for LIVE VIDEO from Parliament Hill, analysis, interviews, and commentary.

Tonight’s special guest: Brian Everaert PPC Canadidate and political analyst.

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There was one key point that he made that deserves further attention and that’s his claim that “Neither the U.S. nor NATO have missiles in Ukraine. We do not — do not have plans to put them there as well.”

US President Joe Biden updated the American people on the ongoing Russian-NATO tensions following Moscow’s announcement on Tuesday that many of its troops will be returning to their barracks as scheduled due to the impending completion of military drills. That development led to the collapse of the US’ information-terrorism campaign fearmongering about a so-called “Russian invasion of Ukraine” and prompted American intelligence agencies to deploy their Russophobic back-up plan of once again ridiculously claiming that Russian spies secretly run English-language websites in a desperate attempt to distract their targeted audience from the aforesaid.

His speech on the undeclared USprovoked missile crisis in Europe was a bunch of malarkey (a word that he’s fond of using that literally means “nonsense”) that mostly aimed to paint Russia as a contemporary Nazi-like threat that thankfully blinked under unprecedented American-led Western pressure and thus seems to have pulled the world back from the brink of another global conflict. That bulk of his remarks was nothing but information warfare and should accordingly be ignored by all objective observers, but there was one key point that he made that deserves further attention and that’s his claim that “Neither the U.S. nor NATO have missiles in Ukraine. We do not — do not have plans to put them there as well.”

Biden’s obviously lying since Russian President Vladimir Putin very clearly articulated such concerns from his country’s intelligence agencies while speaking at an “Expanded Meeting of the Defense Board” on 21 December according to the official Kremlin website. Up until this point, however, the US – whether its officials, “experts”, or “perception managers” in the media – had refused to acknowledge its rival’s worries. Instead, the entire crisis was deliberately misportrayed as being over Donbass, a sliver of deindustrialized and war-torn territory along the Russian-Ukrainian border. The very fact that Biden finally felt compelled to at least deny these concerns is a major narrative development.

It might not lead to sea change in America’s discourse on this crisis but it could at the very least make it “acceptable” to publicly discuss Russian intelligence’s concerns, even if only to remind their target audience that Biden simply denied their credibility. Without realizing it, Biden – or whoever it was that wrote his speech – inadvertently undermined the US’ strategic communications campaign and thus afforded Russia a narrative victory in the sense of finally raising awareness of this hitherto “taboo” topic among the Western public. Another interpretation though is that this was deliberate and thus implies that some relevant agreement might eventually be reached between the US/NATO and Russia on this.

After all, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had said earlier that same day that “The swiftness with which NATO has changed its position suggests that not everything is lost in relations with this bloc; [It indicates] that they can admit the obvious when they really want it”, which was mentioned in reference to the US and NATO’s response to his country’s security guarantee requests from late December. While Russia still deems it insufficient, it nevertheless believes that it’s a pragmatic starting point for continuing diplomatic negotiations as evidenced by President Putin’s public commitment to diplomacy following his meetings with Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu Monday evening.

What that key tidbit from Biden’s speech seemingly reveals is that the US and the NATO bloc that it controls are finally coming around to realizing the seriousness of the missile crisis that they provoked with Russia after the American leader belatedly acknowledged his counterpart’s concerns even if only to insincerely dismiss them in public at this point in time. This signifies a step in the direction of revising the European security architecture that had gradually eroded against Russia’s interests following the US’ unilateral expansion of military infrastructure closer to that Eurasian Great Power’s borders driven by Washington’s unstated attempt to eventually undermine Moscow’s nuclear second-strike capabilities.

This observation doesn’t mean that the crisis has finally ended, just that diplomacy is once again a hot topic behind the scenes ahead of Russia passing along its planned 10-page response to the US and NATO’s own response to its initial security guarantee proposals that Lavrov seemed cautiously optimistic about on Tuesday. It’ll of course remain to be seen whether the US sincerely has the political will to seriously pursue whatever proposals Russia is expected to put forth in that document, but this development is nevertheless a positive one when all things are considered since it suggests that the crisis is somewhat de-escalating, at least for the time being barring any provocations in Donbass.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

Video: War with Ukraine Cancelled Due to Bad Weather

February 17th, 2022 by South Front

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Russian General Staff officers woke up on Wednesday morning and were surprised to find that their tanks were not yet in Kharkov, and the troops were not in Odessa. It turned out that the United States decided to cancel Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 16. CNN complains that due to the warm weather and mud, the equipment of the Russian Armed Forces will not be able to offense. Previously, the soil was “still soft”, but now it is “already soft”. Probably, according to CNN’s soft brains, the Russians were going to attack not in tanks, but in Lada Kalina cars.

Probably, that’s why the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation issued a statement on February 15, claiming the beginning of a planned withdrawal to the places of permanent deployment of military personnel of the Western and Southern military districts bordering Ukraine after the annual exercises.

It is obvious to all progressive humanity that it was the weather conditions that turned out to be stronger than the “insurmountable aggressive ambitions” of Mr. Putin. The CBS channel went further. While the Russian units taking part in the exercises were already hundreds of kilometers from the Ukrainian border, returning to their home stations, and Russian Defense Minister Shoigu was in Syria, the CBS correspondents reported on the night of February 16 that Russian troops allegedly moved to attack position.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba immediately stated at a briefing that Ukraine “managed to restrain Russia from further aggravating the security situation,” … with the power of thought. At that time, the anthem of the USSR sounded on the central square of Kiev…

On February 15, the Russian Parliament decided by an overwhelming majority to send a request to Russian President Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the DPR and the LPR. The deputies believe that this would ensure security guarantees and protect the locals “from external threats”

Kiev responded that it would consider Moscow’s recognition of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR as Russia’s withdrawal from the Minsk agreements. French President Macron urged Putin not to recognize the independence of the republics.

Two days before the “scheduled invasion”, President Zelensky declared February 16, 2022, the day of Ukrainian unity. The success of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, which “stopped the aggressor”, needs to be celebrated with a festival.

“We are told that February 16 will be the day of the attack. We will make it a Day of Unity. On this day we will hang out national flags, put on blue and yellow ribbons and show the whole world our unity,” Zelensky said.

Zelensky’s euphoria has very specific consequences. As there is still no invasion, Ukraine continued to build up its forces and materiel near the line of contact. In addition to the hundreds of pieces of equipment and heavy weapons already available on the front lines, the Kiev regime has begun advancing medium- and long-range air defense weapons to the borders of the unrecognized republics and Belarus.

Up to two battalions of S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems were deployed in the areas controlled by Kiev.

The other day, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (UAF) received Stinger portable anti-aircraft missile systems from their Anglo-Saxon patrons. According to available data, more than a hundred of such systems were delivered to Kiev. Ukraine has also requested from NATO more than a hundred SUVs, as well as means of mine clearance and radiation, chemical and biological warfare reconnaissance. On February 14, the OSCE SMM patrol found 22 Ukrainian, not Russian, T-72 tanks near the Podlesnoe village. They were deployed in the immediate vicinity of the contact line and were aimed at striking Pervomaisk or Zolotoye which are under the LPR’s control.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Kiev had sent more than half of the UAF personnel to Donbass. Moscow expressed concern over the transfer of NATO military equipment to the Russian borders and the increase in the number of Western instructors in the Donbass. The United States, Great Britain and its European satellites continue the large-scale transfer of weapons to the Kiev regime for use against regions in the east of the country.

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Anita Krishna tells everyone how things changed in 2020…when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals handed out 600M dollars to “news” organizations, calls out some specific bad actors, her former news rivals/colleagues and more.

Watch the video below.

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***

 

 

Time is of the essence on this call to action: Today and tomorrow. The House of Commons is on break by Friday so the debate will be rushed.

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Hello Freedom Fighters,

Here’s some more information and encouragement to act now. Bless you all.

It’s essential that every one of us telephones their MP (BOTH offices – local & Ottawa) and as many other MPs and senators (105, so suggest to begin with Independent — they listen and read) as possible now to protest the Emergencies Act.

Letters/emails show our views, but phoning is far more powerful.

Follow-up call with an email please so it’s documented.

The EA was proposed on Monday, Feb. 14, but must be confirmed or withdrawn by a motion within seven days. Trudeau wants that motion made this week, before the House of Commons goes on a break for a week on Friday. We have only today or tomorrow to contact the members.

This is a crucial moment in the history of Canada. Speak up now. You can make a difference to the peace and freedom of this country.

Thanks for your phone calls and follow-up emails. May Canada be free and at peace.

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Suggestions on what to say to MPs and Senators

The Emergencies Act is for a crisis which threatens the entire country of Canada. There is no threat to the country. The truckers are completely peaceful, both in Ottawa and at the border protests.

The Emergencies Act would give Justin Trudeau totalitarian power, obliterating human rights and allowing him to arrest and imprison anyone without trial. This is totally unjustified by anything that has happened in recent weeks.

Here is the section which defines “National Emergency”. The current situation does NOT qualify as a National Emergency.

“National emergency

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

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

(b) seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada

and that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.”

Emergencies Act – description: click this link.

Emergencies Act – text: click this link.

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Feds bringing emergency declaration to Parliament ‘imminently’

See this.

“As part of the parliamentary oversight requirements in invoking these powers, the government must table a motion in both the House and Senate within seven sitting days outlining why federal officials feel the powers are required and detailing what specific measures will be taken, to allow the two parliamentary bodies to confirm it.”

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Here are a few suggested points to make when speaking with and follow-up email to your MP in both offices (local & Ottawa).

1. Section 3 of the Emergencies Act spells out the circumstances under which it may be invoked.

These are:

a. A national emergency that seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or

b. A national emergency that seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity of Canada.

Neither of these conditions are met.

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A frequent flyer grounded because he medically can’t tolerate wearing a face mask filed for summary judgment today asking a U.S. district judge to strike down the Federal Transportation Mask Mandate ordered by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, advancing the case into final proceedings after a legal battle that began in early June. The motion was filed only hours after Texas became the first state to sue the federal government to halt the mask requirement.

Plaintiff Lucas Wall, 44, of Washington, D.C., argues CDC’s mask mandate is illegal and unconstitutional. He charges CDC and its parent agency, the Department of Health & Human Services, with eight counts of violating the Constitution and federal law by imposing a requirement that all passengers and employees throughout the nation’s entire public-transportation system obstruct their oxygen intake. Wall also charges the agencies with four constitutional and statutory violations for the International Traveler Testing Requirement, which mandates that all airline passengers flying to the United States – but not travelers entering the country by land or sea – submit a negative COVID-19 test within one day of departure.

“The Court should vacate the Federal Transportation Mask Mandate and International Traveler Testing Requirement as well as permanently enjoin CDC and HHS from issuing any future orders mandating transportation passengers and workers don face masks as well as that passengers flying to the United States present a negative COVID-19 test prior to check-in,” Wall asserts in the motion. “The Biden Administration has issued numerous mandates related to the COVID-19 pandemic attempting to coerce Americans to wear masks, get vaccinated, and/or endure regular virus testing. … Every significant Executive Branch pandemic mandate has been blocked in the courts except for three: The FTMM, ITTR, and HHS’ requirement that all healthcare workers at facilities accepting Medicare and Medicaid get inoculated.”

Wall lodged an amended complaint Dec. 26 after U.S. District Judge Paul Byron ruled Dec. 18 that his claims against CDC, HHS, the Central Florida Regional Transportation Authority, and the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority could proceed to a final determination, refusing to dismiss those charges. He has been stranded in Florida since Southwest Airlines and the Transportation Security Administration, enforcing CDC’s order, refused to let him board a flight maskless June 2, 2021, at Orlando International Airport. The federal mask mandate is currently in effect until at least March 18, 2022.

His motion contends CDC failed to take into account that the mask mandate discriminates against passengers with medical conditions who can’t tolerate having their breathing blocked, the voluminous scientific and medical research showing masks have proven to be totally ineffective in reducing COVID-19 spread and deaths, and that masks pose serious health risks to humans forced to wear them.

Wall, chairman of Americans Against Mask Mandates, asks Byron to declare both the FTMM and ITTR contrary to statute and unconstitutional, vacate the orders, and permanently enjoin their enforcement worldwide. He also demands an order that CDC and HHS “immediately ensure all federal agencies remove all signs informing passengers of the requirement to wear a mask from all airports, transportation hubs, and other locations worldwide as well as to remove from its website and in all of its publications any references to the” mask mandate and testing requirement.

His court filing came on the same day a federal judge in Boston instructed American Airlines and Southwest Airlines to stop discriminating against a 4-year-old boy with autism who can’t wear a face covering, a major win for Americans Against Mask Mandates members who have brought 11 lawsuits against CDC, HHS, TSA, and nine airlines. And Thursday the Health Freedom Defense Fund will also move for summary judgment against the FTMM in a case at the federal court in Tampa, Florida.

Read more and download Wall’s motion for summary judgment at www.lucas.travel.

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Spying on Americans: CIA Spies and Their Collaborators

February 17th, 2022 by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

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In the past month, this column has twice addressed the unbridled propensity of federal intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without search warrants as required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

These agencies believe that the Fourth Amendment — which protects the individual right to privacy — only regulates law enforcement and does not apply to domestic spying.

There is no basis in the constitutional text, history or judicial interpretations for such a limiting and toothless view of this constitutional guarantee. The courts have held that the Fourth Amendment restrains government. Period. Last week, Congress got burned when the CIA released a heavily redacted summary of its current spying in the United States.

Here is the backstory.

When the CIA was created in 1947, members of Congress who feared the establishment here of the type of domestic surveillance apparatus that the Allies had just defeated in Germany insisted that the new CIA have no role in American law enforcement and no legal ability to spy within the U.S. The legislation creating the CIA contains those limitations.

Nevertheless, we know from statements of former governors of several states that CIA agents claim to be physically present in all 50 statehouses in the United States.

The agents who have infiltrated state governments didn’t arrive until after Dec. 4, 1981. That’s the date that President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333, which purports to give the CIA authority to spy in America — supposedly looking for narcotics from foreign countries — and keep from law enforcement whatever it finds.

Stated differently, while Reagan purported to authorize the CIA to defy the limitations imposed upon it by the Constitution and by federal law, he insisted on a “wall” of separation between domestic spying and law enforcement.

So, if the CIA using unconstitutional spying discovered that a janitor in the Russian Embassy in Washington was really a KGB colonel who abused his wife in their suburban Maryland home, under E.O. 12333, it could continue to spy upon him in defiance of the Fourth Amendment and the CIA charter, but it could not reveal to Maryland prosecutors — who can only use evidence lawfully obtained — any evidence of his domestic violence.

All this changed 20 years later when President George W. Bush demolished Reagan’s “wall” between law enforcement and domestic spying and directed the CIA and other domestic spying agencies to share the fruits of their spying with the FBI.

Thus, thanks to Reagan and Bush authorizing it, and their successors looking the other way, CIA agents have been engaging in fishing expeditions on a grand scale inside the U.S. for the past 20 years. Congress knows about this because all intelligence agencies are required by statute to report the extent of their spying secretly to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

This, of course, does not absolve the CIA of its presidentially authorized computer hacking crimes; rather, it gives Congress a false sense of security that it has a handle on what’s going on.

What’s going on is not CIA lawyers appearing before judges asking for surveillance warrants based upon probable cause of crime, as the Constitution requires. What’s going on is CIA agents going to Big Tech and paying for access to communications used by ordinary Americans. Some Big Tech firms told the CIA to take a hike. Others took the CIA’s cash and opened the spigots of their fiber optic data to the voracious federal appetite.

If the CIA went to a judge and demonstrated probable cause of crime — for example, that a janitor in the Russian Embassy was passing defense secrets to Moscow — surely the judge would have signed a surveillance warrant. But to the CIA, following the Constitution is too limiting.

Thus, by acquiring bulk data — fiber optic data on hundreds of millions of Americans acquired without search warrants — the CIA could avoid the time and trouble of demonstrating probable cause to a judge. But that time and trouble were intentionally required by the authors of the Fourth Amendment so as to keep the government off our backs.

Not to be outdone by its principal rival, the FBI soon began doing the same thing — gathering bulk data without search warrants.

When Congress learned of this, it enacted legislation that banned the warrantless acquisition of bulk data. Apparently, Congress is naive enough to believe that the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, their cousin with 60,000 domestic spies, actually comply with federal law.

Last week, that naivete was manifested front and center when the CIA sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee documenting the extent of its domestic acquisition of bulk data on Americans.

Two senators who should have known better claimed they were “shocked” at what they read. They read an admission of continued CIA warrantless bulk acquisition of personal data on unsuspecting and unsuspected Americans, and they saw large portions of the letter redacted so that the senators do not know the nature of the data received.

So, notwithstanding the persistent efforts of members of Congress from both parties to limit and in some cases to prohibit the warrantless acquisition of bulk data by the CIA from Americans, the practice continues, the CIA defends it and presidents look the other way.

In 1947, Congress created a monster which today is so big and so powerful and so indifferent to the Constitution and the federal laws its agents have sworn to uphold that it can boast about its lawlessness, have no fear of defying Congress and always escape the consequences of all this largely unscathed.

I suspect the CIA and its cousins get away with this because they spy on Congress and possess damning personal data on members who regularly vote to increase their secret budgets. When will we have a government whose officials are courageous enough to uphold the Constitution?

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In October of 2021, I observed that “our governments are no longer legitimate.” I directed particular attention to the chaotic mess created in our country by Justin Trudeau once he decided in 2020 to transform the job of Canadian Prime Minister into that of National Vaccine Czar. See this.

Right now Trudeau is trying to take over Canada’s Parliament. In the words of US journalist Leo Hohmann, his goal is “essentially to declare himself supreme dictator over the nation on our northern border.” See this.

Many prominent voices are being raised to declare Trudeau’s invocation of the modern version of the War Measures Act to be both “unconstitutional and factually unsupported.” These voices are receiving mainstream coverage in the United States at, for instance, Newsweek and the New York Post. See this.

Other voices are pointing out that there is an emergency in Canada but at the core of the real emergency is the treason of the Trudeau government. The Trudeau Liberals are trying to criminalize the actions of protesters whose goal it is to defend Canadian democracy as well as the rule of law. One marker of Trudeau’s disregard for the rule of law in Canada is his contemptuous disregard for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. See this.

I have pointed out the irony of the obsessive addictions of our governments in Canada and throughout the world in making declarations of emergency. This pattern kicked in with a vengeance after 9/11 and then became even more outrageous beginning with the massive publicity showered on the celebrity virus beginning in early 2020.

In the name of their false flag emergencies, governments have been granting to themselves many new powers, and then acting on their claims in ways that kill, maim, jail, and bankrupt people with a huge resulting destabilization of society as we have known it.

This massive and pervasive government overreach has been causing economic disasters, civil liberties disasters, astronomical suicides, medical disasters, education disasters and a plague of mental illness from the ruthless psychological warfare of media conglomerates often funded by the Bill Gates crime family. In light of all this I ask in my latest commentary published today, February 16, “Is Justin Trudeau Waging a War on the National Security of Canada and Canadians?” See this.

This article comes closely on the tails of my previous essay, “Trudeau and the Truckers.”

One of the major players in this coup being attempted by the Trudeau Liberal in in Canada is Chrystia Freeland. Freeland doubles as both Canada’s Finance Minister and as a top Board member of the Swiss-based World Economic Forum. She collaborates closely with Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh who are also disciples of the WEF Founder Klaus Schwab WEF. Schwab and his Canadian kindergarten are seeking to impose a “Great Reset.”

We are now getting more proof that the Great Reset is, in its Canadian context, a power grab led by the Schwab/Freeland/Trudeau/Singh set of co-conspirators. The radical character of this power grab becomes especially clear from Freeland’s description of the new regime of terrorist banking laws being rushed into force. The assumption is made that the Truckers are terrorists, occupiers, and insurectionists who must be stopped through radical alterations in the structure of our core financial relationships in Canada. The bankers, it seems, are involved in this coup.

The Act would empower banks with huge new authorities to seize accounts of those customers who they suspect of being “terrorist” Truckers. The new powers could also be applied to the partners, friends, family, allies, and associates of those unilaterally declared to be Trucker terrorists by the bankers who are subject to no judicial oversight whatsoever.

This process of financially wrecking the targets of Trudeau’s war on dissidents can take place completely at the discretion of bankers who essentially are now being deputized to wage play a central role in the ascent to the emergency measures dictator. Like the makers of the deadly COVID injections, the Canadian bankers in league with Trudeau are to be indemnified in their new role as a financial police force. They can’t be sued by the victims of the reign of financial terror being pushed by Freeland and her WEF co-conspirators.

It is becoming increasingly clear that globalist forces including the WEF are directing the effort by the legacy media and government to smear and criminalize the large constituency that identify with the agenda of the Canadian Freedom Convoys. The Canadian brach of the global coup want to extend the US Biden regime’s preoccupation with ruining the lives of political opponents by smearing the descendants of the “Deplorables” as “domestic terrorists” and “White supremacists.”

Faked Evidence?

Trudeau’s effort to institute the Emergency Act has no factual basis to back it up. The main supposed evidence being offered points to a police claim in Alberta about a supposed cell being of terrorists being discovered at the Coutts protest just south of Lethbridge where I live. A report from Global News lays out the claims of police along with pictures of the weapons that they claim to have discovered among the protesters.

Of course none of this has been litigated. It seems, however, that court proceedings are increasingly irrelevant in this era. We live in a time when there is plenty of evidence that trial-by-media is all that is required to destroy people seeking to blow the whistle on crime and corruption. This scenario is being played out in spades in the war of smear and disinformation directed at the Truckers and at their allied lawyers, scientists and medical practitioners. See this.

The possibility that the emerging police state in Canada might not be above planting weapons on Truckers to accuse them of terrorism has already been raised by former RCMP officer, Danny Bulford. After condemning the “authoritarian” character of Canada’s vaccine policies, Bulford left the RCMP where he was for a time a sniper in the unit assigned to protect Justin Trudeau. Listen to his warnings about the possible intentions of possible saboteurs inside the government who might be seeking to smear and criminalize the Canadian Truckers who have courageously taken a bold stance in defence of Canadian democracy and the rule of law.

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What to Do About Inflation

February 17th, 2022 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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Americans live from threat to threat. Now that the “covid threat” and the “Russian threat” have played out, we have the “inflation threat,” but is it any more real?

It is true that the Central Bank has poured out unprecedented amounts of money for more than a decade.  The excuses were:  to cause a 2% annual inflation that would stimulate economic growth, and to save the economy from the banks financial speculations. 

I didn’t think the Federal Reserve could create so much new money without driving up inflation and interest rates and driving down the dollar and equities.  But the money went into the prices of financial assets–stocks and bonds–and into home prices.  If you were loaded up with stocks and bonds and residential real estate, the Fed made you rich.  The money also went into bank reserves as the Fed bought troubled assets from the banks and put them in the Fed’s portfolio.  

So the expected inflation in consumer goods and services did not occur.

Now suddenly here is inflation with some measures knocking on double-digit doors. Judging by high stock and bond prices, this is not inflation from previous money-printing being drawn out of stocks and bonds to spend on consumer goods.  Some claim that the checks sent to locked-down people to substitute for missing pay checks are at fault, but this money, at best, only replaced the money in the missing pay checks.

So what is the cause of the inflation?  Or, more precisely, is it really inflation, that is, prices driven up by excessive spending, or is it a reduction of supply in relation to demand? If the latter, the solution is to increase supply, not reduce demand with higher interest rates or higher tax rates.

The better part of the rise in prices is the direct result of the foolish and counterproductive lockdowns. The lockdowns reduced supply.  Much work came to a halt.  Supply chains were adversely impacted. Many businesses failed and have not reopened.  Real GDP declined, but money didn’t.  

With the flow of goods and services reduced while money wasn’t, prices rose.  Many service businesses, such as pool services, heating and air, jumped at the chance to raise prices. Supermarkets have to bid for items in short supply, and this has pushed food prices up.  

Other idiotic policies of governments, such as vaccine mandates for truckers, have tied up delivery trucks in protests. The California governor banned half of the US trucking fleet from entering the state, because it doesn’t meet emission standards.  This means the docks at the ports can’t be unloaded, which means the ships waiting to unload can’t unload.

The fake “Russian threat” sent up the oil prices. The extraordinarily low interest rates caused a house building boom, driving up prices of construction materials. 

Equity valuation driven by money creation is not a good thing.  But the Fed has been at it for so long, how does the Fed stop without unwinding values based on Fed liquidity?  Washington’s abusive misuse of the dollar as reserve currency by imposing sanctions on other countries has led to Russia and China organizing their own system of international payments.  This will cause the use of dollars, and therefore the demand for dollars to drop, leaving the Fed with the problem of dollar depreciation, which will add to inflation. A less valued dollar raises import prices.

To sum up, the sources of today’s rising prices are three.  The Fed quantitatively eased to save the banks and went on from there to make the rich richer by driving up stock, bond, and real estate prices, and rents rose with real estate prices.  Washington undermined the dollar by discouraging countries from its use with sanctions.  The lockdowns shrank supply and set back the ability to produce, resulting in supply and demand sending prices up.

The solution to this problem is not higher interest rates. There is no doubt that interest rates are artificially low because of the Fed’s bond purchases, but raising interest rates will not repair the damage to supply caused by the lockdowns and caused by the financialization of the economy that the Federal Reserve has aided and abetted. 

A financialized economy is one in which debt service–mortgage, car, credit card, student loans–uses up a large percentage of monthly income, leaving little discretionary income to drive economic growth. Financialization was worsened by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.  The repeal permitted commercial banks to be investment banks. This changed the nature of bank lending and behavior. Instead of lending for new plant and equipment, the banks finance takeovers of existing assets and engage in financial speculation.

The solution to the causes of the current inflation is to remove the policies that restrain the growth of output. There has to be a supply-side solution.  In the early Reagan years the solution was a reduction in the high marginal tax rates that restricted output.  Today the supply-side solution is policies that move the economy away from the absorption of income in debt service and toward supporting the expansion of output. 

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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.

Oversaturation of Ukrainian Forces Escalates Security Crisis

February 17th, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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The current security crisis in Ukraine fueled by Kiev and its western allies is on the verge of triggering a new wave of violence in the Donbass region. Recent statements by Russian officials have warned about the possibility of a resurgence of large-scale clashes, which would be a consequence of the extreme militarization promoted in the conflict zone by Ukrainian forces. However, Kiev’s government continues to ignore all the warnings made by Moscow, boosting the aggressiveness of its measures day after day.

In a recent statement, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Mihail Popov stated that the current situation of concentration of troops and weapons on the Donbass border is generating a process of “oversaturation”. This process, in addition to the belief in unrestricted Western support in any circumstance, can take both the Ukrainian regular armed forces and the paramilitary nationalist militias to an illusion of invincibility, pushing them into conflict whose violence is expected to reach unprecedented levels.

Earlier, the head of Russian foreign intelligence service, Sergey Naryshkin had already made a statement claiming that Kiev is preparing its forces for a new attack on Donbass. Naryshkin mentioned he has data that proves that the combat units of the Ukrainian army are already concentrated in the line of contact with the autonomous republics, ready to start a new wave of attacks, whose objective seems to be not only to fight the rebels, but also to try to bring Russia into the conflict.

In the same vein, the deputy head of the Donetsk’s Militia Department, Eduard Basurin, stated that Kiev transferred its S-300 anti-aircraft artillery division to Donbass, as well as several rocket launch systems, which undoubtedly indicates that there is an offensive plan in progress. The popular media of the autonomous republics also denounced that several service points of guidance for aviation are being installed by the Ukrainian armed forces in the line of contact in the Donbass, which raises the concern about possible air attacks with high power of destruction.

Another news that has also raised concern among people in Donetsk and Lugansk is the sending to the border of Ukrainian soldiers from the 24th Brigade, which is a special group of the armed forces, trained in the use of advanced weapons, such as the Swedish anti-tank systems NLAW and a wide list of American grenade launchers. This indicates that that Ukrainian forces are preparing for a really brutal and violent attack, the aim of which will be to provoke a Russian intervention to protect the local population.

In this third week of February, most of the Russian troops on the border were demobilized. In the West, media agencies are spreading a series of fake news, alleging absurd hypotheses to reconcile the discourse of the “invasion plan” with the retreat of the soldiers. In fact, what happened was simply the conclusion of a series of Russian military exercises in the region, which had several objectives, including preparing the troops for an eventual emergency and also demonstrating strength in the face of external threats (considering that it is NATO that represents a threat to Russia with the occupation of the entire border). If it had been at all concerned about peace, the Ukrainian government would take advantage of the moment the Russian troops were withdrawing and would also start a demilitarization. But, apparently, Kiev’s plans are different.

There is nothing rational or strategic in trying to induce Russia into direct combat with Ukrainian forces, but Kiev’s officials are deluded about a possible victory, as they believe they will receive unrestricted Western support in such a situation. Indeed, the West foments chaos sending money and weapons, trying to provoke Russia to intervene and thus fulfill the prediction of the “invasion”.

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

Featured image is from balticword.com

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***

Pfizer and BioNTech have requested emergency use authorization (EUA) for doctors to administer two doses of their mRNA COVID-19 biologic to infants as young as six months old. A statement from Pfizer states that the “rolling submission” application was submitted on Feb. 1, 2022 at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “in response to the urgent public health need in this population.”1 Ten days later the company withdrew the request to gather more data on the vaccine’s effectiveness, which was suboptimal in two to four year olds, and provide evidence for a three dose primary series, rather than two doses.2

Pfizer Vaccine Fails to Elicit Robust Immune Response in Younger Children

Pfizer’s own data3 demonstrates that the vaccine failed to elicit a strong enough immune response with just two three microgram doses for some within the age group making the EUA process unique from any other age group’s authorization thus far. Pfizer had originally sought authorization for two doses to allow parents of young children to begin the vaccination process while awaiting potential authorization of a third dose. The third dose is scheduled to be administered no earlier than eight weeks after the second dose.4

Some physicians and public health officials have expressed concern that such an unusual vaccine approval application will further deter parents from vaccinating their children.4 As it currently stands, the FDA has granted an EUA to Pfizer for five- to 11-year-olds to receive two 10 microgram doses of the COVID vaccine and also approved a 30-microgram booster dose for ages 12 and up.5

CDC Data Says Booster Less Beneficial to Younger People

Newly published data released from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirms that the rationale for booster doses is less compelling in terms of providing benefit to younger populations compared to adults.6 Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, stated:

I’m in favor of boosters, but I don’t want to overstate their importance. The benefit of a booster dose is clearly greater in the elderly. It is progressively less in the lower risk groups.”6

The FDA’s Vaccines & Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) had been scheduled to meet on Feb. 15 to review the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness data and discuss Pfizer’s request. The FDA authorized the two-dose vaccine for use in children five through 11 years old in October 2021. According to the CDC, approximately one third of children in that age group have received the vaccine.7

An article by VOX states that giving COVID vaccines to children will help stop the spread of the virus and relieve stress on hospitals and allow schools to stay open…

[Vaccines for young children] would also provide peace of mind to parents, caregivers, and teachers whose lives have been repeatedly disrupted as the highly transmissible omicron variant continues to rage.

The article continues stating that vaccination of this age group, which makes up more than 20 million children, would help to close one of the biggest remaining gaps in vaccine eligibility.4

Only 27 Percent of Parents Eager to Vaccinate Children Under 12

An October survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation8 found that only 27 percent of parents with children ages five to 11 years old were “eager” to get the vaccine for their children while 30 percent said they will definitely not allow the vaccine to be given to their young children. Parents cited concerns over potential long-term side effects as well as the desire to “wait and see” how the vaccine is working.

Some Physician Researchers Urge Caution in Giving COVID Vaccine to Children

A group of physician researchers who collectively pioneered several vaccines and experimental cancer drugs wrote an opinion piece8 for The Washington Times in October urging the public to apply the brakes in the hastiness of administering the new COVID vaccine to the pediatric population. The article outlines the existing disabling reactions in adults, the use of novel mRNA technology which releases pro-inflammation factors with no built in “off” switch, and the fact that COVID is rarely causing severe illness in children.

The authors also outlined the history of medicine and how we have seen “time and time again” tragic side effects which are not known until decades later. The article concludes:

There is a lot that we don’t know about the long-term safety of available COVID-19 vaccines. Bottom line, no health professional in good conscience can look a parent in the eye today and say these vaccines are unequivocally safe. As medical students, we took the Hippocratic oath, a promise to practice ‘primum non nocere,’ meaning ‘first, do no harm.’ Let us patiently wait for the completion of long-term safety studies before we rush ahead blindly with blanket public health solutions that may cause unintentional and irreparable harm.8

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Notes

1 Pfizer. Pfizer and BioNTech initiate rolling submission for emergency use authorization of their Covid-19 vaccine in children 6 months through 4 years of age following request from U.S. FDA.Feb. 1, 2022.

2 Lovelace B. Pfizer postpones FDA request for Covid vaccine for kids under five. NBC News Feb. 11, 2022.

3 Lovelace B. Pfizer is testing a third Covid vaccine dose in young kids, delaying trial results. NBC News Nov. 4, 2021.

4 Irfan U. Why young children have waited so long for COVID-19 vaccines. VOX Feb. 3, 2022.

5 Pfizer. Pfizer and BioNTech receive US FDA emergency use authorization of COVID-19 vaccine booster for individuals 12 years of age and older.  Jan. 3, 2022.

6 Mandavilli A. Younger Americans benefited less from booster shots than older people. The New York Times Feb. 4, 2022.

7 U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Coronavirus (COVID-19) update: FDA advisory committee meeting request for authorization of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children 6 months through 4 years of age. PR Newswire Feb. 1, 2022.

8 Hamel L et al. KFF COVID-19 vaccine monitor: October 2021. Kaiser Family Foundation Oct. 28, 2021.

9 Kwak L, Rosen S, Shachar I. Applying brakes on ‘warp speed’ COVID-19 vaccinations for children. The Washington Times Oct. 28, 2021.

Featured image is from The Vaccine Reaction

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The plandemic of the “fully vaccinated” rages on as the latest data shows that the vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) are occurring in people who took the jabs.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) is reporting that an astounding four out of every five covid hospitalizations and deaths are jabbed, meaning only 20 percent of hospitalizations and deaths blamed on covid are occurring in the unvaccinated.

According to the figures, cases were down overall in February compared to January. However, the bulk is still comprised of fully vaccinated individuals, including the triple-vaccinated.

The data shows that the latest “wave” of negative health outcomes is occurring in three-pricked people, a demographic in which the death rate soared by 495 percent in the month of January.

“Overall cases have dropped in the last month in all demographics significantly compared to the number of cases recorded between 11th Dec and 7th Jan 22, but in both months the vaccinated have accounted for the vast majority of cases,” reported the Daily Exposé.

“The main difference between the two months is that the double vaccinated accounted for the majority of cases between 11th Dec and 8th Jan 22; recording 145,890 cases, but the triple vaccinated accounted for the majority of cases between 8th Jan and 4th Feb 22; recording 46,951 cases.”

The plandemic would already be over were it not for the “vaccines”

It turns out that the case rate is dropping substantially among the unvaccinated while it continues to rise among the fully vaccinated, and especially among the fully-fully vaccinated who are getting three shots or more.

Between December 11 and January 7, the non-jabbed population accounted for just 15 percent of all new cases of the Fauci Flu. One month later from January 8 through February 4, that percentage dropped to less than 13 percent.

Meanwhile, the vaccinated population accounted for 85 percent of all new cases between December 11 and January 7, with just 9 percent of those cases occurring in the one-dose vaccinated. (Related: Cases of covid among the fully vaccinated in Taiwan are also way, way up.)

Thirty-two percent of all new cases in the vaccinated category occurred in the triple vaccinated while 59 percent occurred in the double vaccinated.

“But fast forward one month and we find that the vaccinated accounted for 87% of cases, with the one-dose vaccinated accounting for 4% of those cases, the double vaccinated accounting for 33% of those cases, and the triple vaccinated accounting for 63% of those cases,” the Exposé further reported.

“This means that despite cases falling among all demographics they actually fell the most among the not vaccinated, single vaccinated, and double vaccinated, with the lowest drop coming in the triple vaccinated. This doesn’t make sense if the Covid-19 vaccines are effective. Clearly they are not, at least when it comes to preventing infection.”

As for hospitalizations, the unvaccinated are doing better and better overall while the fully vaccinated are doing worse and worse overall.

The PHS data shows that hospitalizations among the unvaccinated fell by -24 percent in January compared to in December. Hospitalizations among the triple vaccinated, meanwhile, increased by an astounding 88 percent.

“The vaccinated population accounted for 75% of hospitalisations between 11th Dec and 7th Jan 22, with 7% of those hospitalisations among the one-dose vaccinated, 46% of those hospitalisations among the triple vaccinated, and 47% of those hospitalisations among the double vaccinated,” the Exposé further reported.

“But fast forward one month and we find that the vaccinated accounted for 80.5% of hospitalisations, with the one-dose vaccinated accounting for 6% of those hospitalisations, the double vaccinated accounting for 26% of those hospitalisations, and the triple vaccinated accounting for 68% of those hospitalisations.”

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Months of frenzied speculation about an imminent Russian invasion of Kiev by Western journalists, think tanks, and politicians culminated on February 15 with Moscow reducing its military footprint near Ukraine’s border.

The withdrawal came one day before President Joe Biden‘s administration inexactly forecast a phantom incursion.

Panic was stoked to a perplexing degree. Atlantic Council representative Melinda Haring declared on February 11 that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “big weekend plans” forthcoming in Ukraine, including cutting off the nation’s power and heat, knocking out its entire navy and air force, killing a number of general staff in order to install a pro-Russian president, and resorting to “full-scale military invasion if Ukraine doesn’t give in.”

When none of this came to pass over the weekend, Haring meekly claimed emotions were “running high,” and she’d “let them get the better” of her. She said she would be “more judicious” in future.

Still, Haring complained of “Russian trolls,” and as Russia withdrew forces, she conveniently reframed the narrative. “We’ve been so focused on Russian troops and tanks that we missed Moscow’s strategy: strangle Ukraine’s economy and sap the resolve of its people.”

Almost as baffling and bizarre was British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss boldly asserting on January 22 that London possessed “information” indicating Moscow planned to forcibly install a puppet government in Kiev. Forces would invade Ukraine and mount a coup through the help of a quintet of Ukrainian politicians with alleged links to Russian intelligence.

“The information being released today shines a light on the extent of Russian activity designed to subvert Ukraine, and is an insight into Kremlin thinking,” Truss stated.

An Illogical Coup Leader

When asked to substantiate the claims, British officials were at a loss, and also refused to clarify how the information was obtained and verified.

These claims rapidly circulated. The New York Times praised Britain’s reckless inflaming of a highly volatile situation as “muscular.” But the media also acknowledged Truss “provided no evidence” to support the bombshell allegations.

In an ironic twist, Yevhen Murayev, a former Ukrainian MP named by London as the Kremlin’s pick for President, expressed amusement and dismay.

“You’ve made my evening. The British Foreign Office seems confused,” he told the Observer while laughing. “It isn’t very logical. I’m banned from Russia. Not only that, but money from my father’s firm there has been confiscated.”

Two days later, London followed the US lead in withdrawing its embassy staff from Kiev. Yet hours later, a senior European diplomat made clear European Union member states would not withdraw, adding snidely there was no need to “dramatize” the situation while talks with Moscow continued.

The Washington Post added to the confusion on January 29 when they quietly revealed that intelligence underlying Truss’ shock announcement was “collected and declassified” by the US, and the Biden administration had specifically asked British authorities to publicly expose the purported plot.

Oddly, details weren’t shared with allies, such as Germany, where officials consistently expressed skepticism toward the notion that Russia would invade Ukraine.

Nowhere in the Post’s coverage did the newspaper ask a very obvious question—why was the disclosure of the incendiary material outsourced in this manner?

An Obliging Client State

Britain’s laundering of US intelligence created the illusion that an ally had independently reinforced dodgy claims from US officials of an imminent Russian invasion. It allowed Washington to recast the December transfer of 90 tons of “lethal aid” to Ukraine as reactive.

What’s more, the ruse provided plausible deniability in the event that the false narrative unraveled, as it inevitably did.

The Biden administration knew very well that London could be relied upon. At the conclusion of World War II, a Foreign Office official ruefully concluded that a bankrupt Britain’s future lay in serving as “junior partner in an orbit of power predominantly under American aegis.”

Ever since, the UK government has consistently gone further than most countries in serving Washington interests.

In September 2021, Yahoo! News exposed how the CIA had “secret war plans” to kidnap or even assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange if he attempted to leave the Ecuador embassy in London for Moscow. The report contained a shocking example of Britain’s willingness to do the bidding of US intelligence. (Note: Assange’s legal team says Assange was opposed to Ecuador’s proposal to assign him to a diplomatic post in Moscow.)

Scenarios to thwart Assange’s escape included “gun battles with Kremlin operatives on the streets of London” and “shooting out the tires of a Russian plane carrying Assange before it could take off for Moscow.” US officials reportedly “asked their British counterparts to do the shooting if gunfire was required, and the British agreed.”

The British also took the leading role in producing propaganda ahead of the US invasion of Iraq.  As far back as 1998, MI6 “black propaganda specialists” were involved in “psychological warfare” known as Operation Mass Appeal, according to former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter. The foreign spying agency circulated “intelligence” to media outlets “to help shape public opinion about Iraq and the threat posed by WMD [weapons of mass destruction].”

“We have some outlets in foreign newspapers – some editors and writers who work with us from time to time – where we can spread some material,” MI6 representatives told Ritter. “We just need to be kept informed on what you are doing and when, so we can time the press releases accordingly.”

A particularly controversial British intelligence assessment claimed Iraq President Saddam Hussein was capable of attacking Europe with WMD in just 45 minutes. It turned out the source was a lone Iraqi taxi driver.

The claim was repeated in a televised speech by President George W. Bush in September 2002 and proved fundamental to the war in Baghdad two months later.

British intelligence led the way in fomenting the US-led conflict against Syria in August 2013, after opposition-controlled Ghouta was allegedly struck by rockets fired by government forces containing the chemical agent sarin.

The incident had the hallmarks of a false flag operation. US officials were forced to concede evidence implicating the Syrian government was hardly a “slam dunk,” and communications intercepted by German spies indicated that whatever happened, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s  government had not sanctioned or been aware of the attack.

However, the British Joint Intelligence Committee possessed no such doubts and declared it was “highly likely that the Syrian regime was responsible,” and “there [were] no plausible alternative scenarios.”

This resulted in a parliamentary vote on launching military intervention in Syria (alongside Washington and Paris mere days later). But that failed, taking the question of Western military action against Damascus off the table.

British Influence Operations In Ukraine

Ukraine is a country where Britain consistently seeks to influence events in order to derive economic, political, and military benefits.

For example, leaked documents indicate London funded consultants to effectively market neoliberal labor “reforms” to the Ukrainian public, which would destroy employment rights and protections.

The Foreign Office also financed Ukraine’s StopFake, a purported “fact-checking” website with deep links to fascist elements in the country.

StopFake defended Ukrainian military training camps for children that are run by the Neo-Nazi militia Azov Battalion. They also defended Andrey Parubiy, a Ukrainian parliamentary speaker from 2016 – 2019

Parubiy is an avowed Adolf Hitler fan. When Parubiy visited Britain in 2018, local reporters sprang to his defence. He was implicated in a reported false flag massacre of Maidan protesters in February 2014.

Even more significantly, the Foreign Office is secretly co-opting journalists and media organizations in Kiev via funding, training, and the surreptitious production of anti-Russian, pro-Western, and pro-NATO content. “Girls on HBO…but in Ukraine” was one suggested example of programming to support in leaked internal files.

These efforts are a component of a £100 million clandestine drive by London to “weaken the Russian state’s influence” over its neighbors.

All of which is another facet of Britain’s bond with the US that has been absolutely fundamental: relations between Moscow and Washington must remain tense.

By presenting itself as a dependable bastion of European security, Britain can remain relevant globally, able to perpetually piggyback off its partner’s might.

For this reason, London was willing to circulate bunk US intelligence about an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The West Keeps ‘Guessing’

Fittingly, in the wake of Moscow’s announcement that it would withdraw troop deployments from some annual military exercises, Britain’s notorious Sun tabloid published an “exclusive” stating Russia was still planning to invade at 1 am London time on February 16.

No “massive missile blitz” happened so the Sun updated the “exclusive” to say “Putin continued to keep the West guessing.”

The article quoted Truss at some length, who said officials were “preparing for the worst,” believed an invasion “highly likely,” and “over the next few days there could be an attempt to claim the Ukrainians are attacking them so the Russians have a justification for invading.”

“Certainly, our latest intelligence suggests that an invasion is imminent, that it’s highly likely, and that we’ve seen 100,000 troops stationed around the border,” Truss fulminated. “We would expect multiple sequenced attacks and not a single strike.”

“We could be on the brink of a war in Europe. That would have severe consequences not just for the people of Russia and Ukraine but also for the broader security of Europe,” Truss added.

Such fearmongering has been de rigeur since 1946, when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered an iconic speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.

Churchill warned that communism posed “a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization.” Without “a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the US,” there may be another World War.

At the time, opinion polls indicated American citizens not only valued and trusted their Soviet ally far more than Britain, but they foresaw a much-reduced role for the latter in world affairs following the war.

Churchill’s comments were poorly received, but their impact was quickly apparent. Six months later, US-Soviet cooperation collapsed due to disagreements over the future of occupied Germany.

Washington became wedded to a hardline anti-Soviet policy, and the Cold War was launched.

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Kit Klarenberg regularly publishes articles on the role of intelligence agencies in shaping politics and perceptions. Substack: kitklarenberg.substack.com

Selected Articles: Ukraine Invasion Scheduled for Wednesday Canceled

February 17th, 2022 by Global Research News

Ukraine Invasion Scheduled for Wednesday Canceled

By Ray McGovern, February 16, 2022

Over recent weeks, AP’s ace reporter Matthew Lee and colleagues had been repeatedly led down the White House garden path by the likes of broken-record “the-Russians-are-coming-and-it-could-be-Wednesday” national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Failure in Moscow: Liz Truss Loses Britannia’s Way

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, February 17, 2022

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is synonymous with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s idea of groping diplomacy.  Graceless, all confusion, and much ignorance besides, she has been given the task of howling in the Kremlin’s direction, warning that no invasion of Ukraine will be tolerated by Global Britain.

Crafting Messages for Vaccine Compliance. “Guilt, Anger, Embarrassment or Cowardice — What Works Best?”

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, February 16, 2022

In a study sponsored by Yale University — and started before COVID-19 shots were rolled out — researchers tested different messages of how to best persuade people to get injected.

Biden Insists Russian Invasion “Distinctly Possible” Despite Troop Demobilization

By Paul Antonopoulos, February 16, 2022

The Russian troops that took part in defense exercises in Belarus and Crimea are now returning to their barracks, contradicting widely circulated reports that Russia is about to invade Ukraine. Although Moscow repeatedly stressed that troop mobilizations were for defense exercises, a weak and unverified intelligence leak disseminated across Western media claimed that Russia would invade Ukraine on February 16.

Heroic GMU Law Professor Todd Zywicki Defeats Vaccine Mandate

By Jeff Deist, February 16, 2022

Heroic George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki sued his employer last year over its vaccine mandate for faculty and staff. His argument was clear: he had existing (demonstrable) antibody immunity from an earlier covid infection, and thus his immunologist considered a vaccine both potentially harmful and medically unethical.

Biden’s Decision to Seize Afghan Assets Is Immoral and Inhumane

By Alex Shephard, February 16, 2022

This decision is a betrayal of all that, as well as a betrayal of Biden’s promise to build a foreign policy built on cooperation and mutual respect. It will have serious repercussions for Afghanistan’s financial future, preventing the country from establishing a sound monetary policy, possibly for years.

ISIS Prison Break: False Flag by Kurds to Keep US Forces in Syria

By Nauman Sadiq, February 16, 2022

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

Canada’s Digital Crackdown on Freedom. Trudeau Answers to the Davos Elites

By Leo Hohmann, February 16, 2022

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

Is Justin Trudeau Waging a War on the National Security of Canada and Canadians?

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, February 16, 2022

Justin Trudeau is a fitting embodiment of those who inhabit the peaks of privilege in this unjust society. His recent action personifies how some members of his dynastic class further their unbounded quest for power by disguising their actions behind a veneer of emergency measures.

In the Donbass, the Fuse Is Lit

By Manlio Dinucci, February 16, 2022

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

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Failure in Moscow: Liz Truss Loses Britannia’s Way

February 17th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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Incompetent politicians and diplomats are on the level with ill-prepared generals fighting current wars with dated methods.  They err, they stumble, and they may well be responsible for the next idiotic slander, misfire or misunderstanding.  UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is synonymous with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s idea of groping diplomacy.  Graceless, all confusion, and much ignorance besides, she has been given the task of howling in the Kremlin’s direction, warning that no invasion of Ukraine will be tolerated by Global Britain.

Truss, former international trade secretary known for her “goofy public persona”, took over from the less goofy and somewhat severe Dominic Raab as foreign secretary in Johnson’s ministerial shake-up last year.  Her time at the Department of International Trade had been dubbed the “Department for Instagramming Truss”, given her insatiable appetite for social media platforms.

Ideology, not facts, interest her.  As she explained to Politico, “I’m probably one of the more ideological among my colleagues, in that that’s what motivates me.”  Her rapid immaturing has seen her moving ever more towards economic libertarianism, founding the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs keen to savage and prune employment laws and regulations.

The placing of ideology before facts has somewhat dented her performance at critical points.  In foreign relations, notably when war might be peeking around the corner between Ukraine and Russia, this is telling.  During the course of the BBC’s Sunday Morning show, she claimed that “we are supplying and offering extra support into our Baltic allies across the Black Sea.”

Identifying the wrong sea enabled Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, the reliably stern ice queen Maria Zakharova, to move in for the kill.  “The Baltic countries are called so because they are located precisely off the coast of this [Baltic] sea.  Not the Black [Sea].”  A grave Zakharova could only reflect that, “If anyone needs to be saved from anything, then it is the world from the stupidity and ignorance of Anglo-Saxon politicians.”

During that now notorious closed-door meeting between Truss and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, ignorance basked gloriously, with Truss floundering with amateurish accomplishment.  Truss, so goes the account, demanded of the Russian Foreign Minister that his country move its troops away from the Ukrainian border.  Lavrov’s steely point was elementary: Moscow could do what it wanted to within its own borders.

Then came the grenade, pin removed.  Truss, having previously been interested in trade, probably had her mine on cheese or pork products.  The Foreign Secretary was asked (trap laid in full view) whether the UK recognised sovereignty over Rostov and Voronezh.  According to the Kommersant newspaper, Truss was defiant: the UK would never recognise them as Russian.  In the long tradition of the diplomatic corps, the UK ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, had to aid Truss in correction.  Rostov and Voronezh were, well, Russian.

This gave Lavrov much ammunition in the press conference that followed.  He claimed that talking to Truss was like “speaking to a deaf person who listens but cannot hear”.  Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about Truss’s limited understanding of the region and, so it went, her brief, seemed to relish it.  “We are not in the position to answer this question.  It’s the Foreign Ministry’s competence.”

On Sky News, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, was brutally direct.  “There is always room for diplomacy but, frankly, we don’t trust British diplomacy.  I think in recent years British diplomacy has shown that it is absolutely worthless.”

The Truss ignorance show did not go down well in those quarters that still feel Britannia has a muscular role to play in foreign affairs.  Having cut his teeth as British ambassador to Moscow, Tony Brenton mourned the Truss Moscow “performance” as completing “the process of the UK  making itself irrelevant to serious diplomatic efforts to resolve the Ukraine crisis.”

Former editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, homed in on Lavrov as “Putin’s Gromyko”, one who ate “Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media.”

Martin Fletcher, former foreign editor of The Times, bemoaned Truss’s lass of serious preparation and her visit to Moscow as, for the most part, “a glorified photo opportunity”.  What he would have given for a harder, more disciplined engagement with the Russians, the sort that the late former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was rather good at.

Some British pundits were left scrounging for nuggets of justification.  James Forsyth clucked his way to suggesting that Lavrov’s rudeness was somehow a “sign that Liz Truss held the line in their meeting”.  Rallying support for Truss was the gossip columnist of the Spectator, who could not stomach the “Brit-poisoning Kremlin” to any degree. “For her part, Truss stayed calm and walked off after the snub, having used her meeting to re-emphasise the British government warnings about the build up of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border.”

The problem with Truss is fundamental, having little to do with showmanship or any proud display in the face of stupidity or a basic lack of understanding.  She may well be representing a power diminished, but the UK, billing itself as Global Britain, is doing poorly under her hollow, social media driven stewardship.  Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has even labelled her assessment of Beijing and Russian intentions (for Truss, these are inseparable) as “nothing short of demented.”

Writing for Spiked, Mary Dejevsky, having cut her teeth as Moscow correspondent for The Times between 1988 and 1992,  showed her talons in explaining why the Truss adventure was, diplomatically, all fizz and utter failure.  “Dispatched for little more than a day trip to Moscow, Liz Truss managed to confirm all of Russia’s negative preconceptions about British diplomacy – arrogance, coldness and an attachment to hypocritical sermonising about ‘values’ – while adding at least one more: ignorance.”  Punchy stuff, and accurate to boot.

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

Featured image is from TruePublica

Introducción 

En el transcurso de los últimos dos años a partir de principios de enero de 2020, he analizado la evolución de la crisis del coronavirus. 

Desde el principio, en enero de 2020, hubo una campaña de miedo en escala internacional. El objetivo era de convencer a toda la población de la existencia de una peligrosa epidemia. Una mentira. 

Estamos ante un proceso sumamente complejo. Estamos viviendo una de las crisis más graves en la historia de la Humanidad. 

 

 

 

 

El movimiento de protesta en Canadá

El Primer Ministro Trudeau califica al “Freedom Convoy” de los camioneros como un grupo de terroristas, racistas y antisemitas….

Véase la producción de Global Research:

Es un engaño

Poblaciones enteras en mas de 190 países miembros de Naciones Unidas han sido engañadas tanto por sus Gobiernos como por los medios de comunicación sobre las causas y las devastadoras consecuencias de la “pandemia” de COVID-19.

La verdad es que el nuevo coronavirus esun pretexto y una justificación a favor de poderosos intereses financieros y Gobiernos corruptos para precipitar al mundo entero en una espiral de desempleo masivo, bancarrota, y pobreza extrema.

Más de 7 mil millones de personas a nivel global han sido afectadas directa o indirectamente por la crisis del coronavirus.

“El pretexto global” 

Confirmado por destacados científicos, así como por organismos oficiales de salud pública, incluida la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) y el Centro para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC) de EE. UU. COVID-19 es un problema de salud pública, pero NO es un virus peligroso.

La crisis del COVID-19 está marcada por una “emergencia” de salud pública bajo los auspicios de la OMS que se está utilizando como pretexto y justificación para desencadenar un proceso mundial de reestructuración económica, social y política. La tendencia es hacia la imposición de un  Estado totalitario.

Se está aplicando ingeniería social. Se presiona a los gobiernos para que extiendan el confinamiento, a pesar de sus devastadoras consecuencias económicas y sociales.

No existe una base científica para implementar el cierre de la economía global como un medio para resolver una crisis de salud pública. Tanto los medios como los gobiernos están involucrados en la difusión de desinformación.

La campaña del miedo no tiene base científica. Los gobiernos MIENTEN. De hecho, se están mintiendo a sí mismos.


Capitulo II 

La cronología de la crisis del Coronavirus

Identidad Digital: La Alianza ID-2020 se reúne el 19 de septiembre de 2019

19 de septiembre de 2019:

L a Alianza ID-2020 celebró su Cumbre en Nueva York, titulada “Rising to the Good ID Challenge”. La atención se centró en el establecimiento bajo los auspicios de GAVI (Alliance for Vaccine Identity) de una vacuna con un pasaporte digital incorporado . El objetivo declarado era la creación de una base de datos digital mundial.

18 de octubre de 2019. Evento 201. El ejercicio de simulación de pandemia 201. El virus 2019-nCoV

El Foro Económico Mundial (FEM) se reúne en Davos, del 21 al 24 de enero de 2020

21-24 de enero de 2020: Consultas en el Foro Económico Mundial, Davos, Suiza, bajo los auspicios de la Coalición para Innovaciones en Preparación para Epidemias (CEPI) para el desarrollo de un programa de vacunas.

La evidencia sugiere que el proyecto de vacuna nCoV 2019 ya estaba en marcha en 2019. (Ver Capítulo VIII). Se anunció oficialmente en Davos, 2 semanas después del anuncio del 7 de enero de 2020 por parte de las autoridades chinas, y apenas una semana antes del lanzamiento oficial de la Emergencia de Salud Pública Mundial de la OMS el 30 de enero de 2020.

30 de Enero 2020. Emergencia de la OMS: ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)’

La “emergencia” de salud pública de COVID-19 bajo los auspicios de la OMS se presentó a la opinión pública como un “solución” para contener el “virus asesino”.

Si se hubiera informado a la opinión pública que el COVID es (según la definición de la OMS) “similar a la gripe estacional”, la campaña de miedo se habría derrumbado. 

La OMS lanzó la primera etapa de esta crisis (fuera de China) el 30 de enero de 2020 en un momento en que había 5 casos en EE. UU., 3 en Canadá, 4 en Francia y 4 en Alemania.

En total, 83 casos PCR positivos fuera de China, para una población mundial de 6,400 millones.  

El dia siguiente,

31 de enero de 2020: Decisión del presidente Trump de suspender los viajes aéreos con China

Al día siguiente (31 de enero de 2020), Trump anunció que negaría la entrada a los EE. UU. de ciudadanos chinos y extranjeros “que hayan viajado a China en los últimos 14 días” . Esto desencadenó de inmediato una crisis en los viajes aéreos, el transporte, las relaciones comerciales entre EE. UU. y China, así como las transacciones de transporte y envío.

El 20 y 21 de febrero de 2020 marca el comienzo de la crisis financiera de 2020

20 de febrero de 2020:  En una conferencia de prensa el jueves 20 de febrero por la tarde (hora CET) en una  sesión informativa en Ginebra, el Director General de la OMS.  El Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , dijo que estaba

“preocupado porque la posibilidad de contener la transmisión del coronavirus se estaba “cerrando”…

“Creo que la ventana de oportunidad todavía está ahí, pero la ventana se está estrechando”.

Solo hubo 1.076 casos fuera de China

Nota: Los datos tabulados anteriores para el 20 de febrero de 2020 indican 1.073 casos. 1.076 casos en conferencia de prensa de la OMS

Estas declaraciones de “conmoción y asombro” contribuyeron a aumentar la campaña de miedo, a pesar de que el número de casos confirmados fuera de China era extremadamente bajo.

15 en EE. UU., 8 en Canadá, 9 en el Reino Unido. (Ver tabla a la derecha, 20 de febrero de 2020).

Esas son las cifras utilizadas para justificar las advertencias del Dr. Tedros: “la ventana se está estrechando”:

Se registró un mayor número de casos fuera de China en Corea del Sur (153 casos según la OMS) e Italia (registrado por las autoridades nacionales).

Datos de la OMS registrados el 20 de febrero de 2020, al comienzo del llamado colapso financiero de COVID(derecha)

11 de marzo de 2020: La pandemia histórica de COVID-19, confinamiento, cierre de 190 economías nacionales

El Director General de la OMS ya había preparado el escenario en su conferencia de prensa del 21 de febrero .

“el mundo debería hacer más para prepararse para una posible pandemia de coronavirus”. La OMS había llamado a los países a estar “en una fase de preparación”.

El número de casos confirmados fuera de China (6.400 millones de habitantes) fue del orden de   44279 y 1440 muertes  ( cifras registradas por la OMS para el 11 de marzo, (el 12 de marzo) (ver tabla a la derecha).

Estas son las cifras utilizadas para justificar el confinamiento y el cierre de 190 economías nacionales.

Estimaciones falsas, “Fake Science”, Mentiras 

La prueba RT-PCR no tiene sentido (ahora confirmada por la OMS y los CDC). Toda la base de datos de los llamados “casos confirmados de COVID” es inválida.

Estas son las estimaciones que se han utilizado para justificar TODOS las restricciones alrededor de la “pandemia” de COVID-19 desde marzo de 2020. Las cifras sobre la  mortalidad relacionada con COVID-19 también son inválidas (Véase Capítulo III).

Estas son las “estimaciones” falsas utilizadas para justificar la violación de derechos humanos fundamentales.

 

El SARS-CoV-2 es “similar a la gripe estacional” según los CDC y la OMS. No es un virus asesino . (Ver Capítulo III)

Los impactos económicos y sociales

Los impactos económicos y sociales de los confinamientos son devastadores: quiebras, endeudamiento desempleo, pobreza y desesperación.  El impacto destructivo de las restricciones relativas a la pandemia de COVID-19 (Ver Capítulos IV y V)

La vacuna

Las vacunas de ARNm de COVID-19 han derivado en una tendencia mundial al alza en la mortalidad y morbilidad que está ampliamente documentada (ver Capítulo VIII). Un informe confidencial de Pfizer hecho público bajo Freedom of Information (FOI) confirma que la inyección de COVID-19 es una “vacuna asesina”. 

Mortalidad ligado a la vacuna desde 1990. Base de datos del gobierno de EEUU (VAERS database).

Chart Description automatically generated

“En un par de meses, los informes sobre fallecimientos derivados de las inyecciones de COVID superaron el recuento récord anual de cualquier otra vacuna en la base de datos. En menos de doce meses, el número de muertes relacionadas con las inyecciones de COVID superó el total de muertes reportadas en relación con todas las demás vacunas en los últimos treinta años.”

El  Impacto sobre la mortalidad (diciembre 2020 – febrero 2021)

Source: HeathData.org

5. Reportados y registrados

 para UE/Reino Unido/EE.UU.: 61654 muertes relacionadas con inyecciones de COVID-19 y 9 755 085 lesiones notificadas al 28 de enero de 2022  (solo se notifica y registra un pequeño porcentaje de muertes y lesiones).

La evidencia es abrumadora. Al momento de escribir (enero de 2022 ), las últimas cifras oficiales  apuntan a aproximadamente:

61 654 muertes relacionadas con inyecciones de COVID-19 y

9 755 085 lesiones para la UE, EE.UU. y el Reino Unido combinados.

Pero solo una pequeña fracción de las víctimas o las familias de los fallecidos pasarán por el tedioso proceso de informar las muertes y los eventos adversos relacionados con la vacuna a las autoridades sanitarias nacionales.

Además, las autoridades sanitarias están activamente involucradas en ofuscar las muertes y lesiones resultantes de la “vacuna” contra COVID-19 “no aprobada” y “experimental”.

Basado en datos históricos (Electronic Support for Public Health–Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (ESP:VAERS, p. 6)

“Los eventos adversos de los medicamentos y las vacunas son comunes, pero no se notifican. … menos del 0,3 % de todos los eventos adversos de medicamentos y del 1 al 13 % de los eventos graves se notifican a la Administración de Alimentos y Medicamentos (FDA). Asimismo, se notifican menos del 1% de los eventos adversos de la vacuna. (énfasis añadido)

Si bien no estamos en condiciones de establecer estimaciones precisas, podemos establecer el orden de magnitud.

Multiplique las cifras oficiales (registradas y registradas) por el parámetro correspondiente para obtener los NÚMEROS REALES de muertos y heridos.  

Números muy altos

Suponiendo que se informe un 10 % de las muertes y los eventos adversos (una suposición muy conservadora según  Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc , p. 6)

La “vacuna” del COVID-19 habría resultado en

610.000 muertes y casi 100 millones de “ eventos adversos” para una población combinada de aproximadamente 830 millones (Reino Unido, UE, EE. UU.). 

6. Pfizer tiene antecedentes penales en el Departamento de Justicia de los Estados Unidos. (Ver Capítulo VIII)  

7. Cuales son los intereses detrás de ese proyecto

Debate: ¿Se trata de un proyecto imperialista?

Gobernanza Global: Hacia un Estado Totalitario

Las personas y organizaciones involucradas en la Simulación 201 del 18 de octubre de 2019  ahora están involucradas  en la gestión real de la crisis una vez que se puso en marcha el 30 de enero de 2020 bajo la ‘Emergencia de Salud Pública de Preocupación Internacional’ (PHEIC) de la OMS, que a su vez estableció el escenario de la crisis financiera de febrero de 2020 y el cierre de marzo.

El confinamiento y cierre de las economías nacionales ha desencadenado varias olas de desempleo masivo junto con la quiebra diseñada (aplicada en todo el mundo) de las pequeñas y medianas empresas.

Todo lo cual está encabezado por la instalación de un Estado totalitario global que pretende romper todas las formas de protesta y resistencia.

El programa de vacunación contra COVID (incluido el pasaporte digital incorporado) es parte integral de un régimen totalitario global. (ver Capítulo VIII)

El infame ID2020 

Es un programa de identificación electrónica que utiliza la vacunación generalizada como plataforma para la identidad digital.

El programa aprovecha las operaciones existentes de vacunación y registro de nacimientos para proporcionar a los recién nacidos una identidad digital portátil permanente vinculada biométricamente. Zonas rojas, mascarillas, distanciamiento social, encierro” (Peter Koenig, 12 de marzo de 2020)

El “Gran Reinicio” del Foro Económico Mundial

El Gran Reinicio del Foro Económico Mundial (FEM) se ha estado gestando durante mucho tiempo. “Presione el botón de Reinicio” con miras a salvar la economía mundial  fue anunciado por el presidente del FEM, Klaus Schwab , en enero de 2014, seis años antes del ataque de la pandemia de COVID-19.

“Lo que queremos hacer en Davos este año [2014] es presionar el botón de Reinicio, el mundo está muy atrapado en una crisis”.

Los mismos poderosos acreedores que desencadenaron la crisis de la deuda global en medio de la “pandemia” de COVID-19 ahora están estableciendo una “Nueva normalidad” que consiste esencialmente en imponer lo que el Foro Económico Mundial describe como “El Gran Reinicio”

Los desempleados (y habrá muchos) recibirían algún tipo de ingreso básico universal y sus deudas (el endeudamiento y la bancarrota a gran escala son el resultado deliberado de los confinamientos y restricciones) se cancelarían a cambio de entregar sus activos a los Estados o, más precisamente, a las instituciones financieras que ayudan a impulsar este Gran Reinicio . El FEM dice que la opinión pública ‘alquilará’ todo lo que necesite: despojando el derecho de propiedad bajo el pretexto de ‘consumo sostenible’ y ‘salvar el planeta’. Por supuesto, la pequeña élite que implementó este Gran Reinicio será dueña de todo. (Colin Todhunter, Gran reinicio distópico, 9 de noviembre de 2020)

Los Microchips

Dos años más tarde, en una entrevista de 2016 con la cadena de televisión suiza en francés (RTS), Klaus Schwab habló sobre la implantación de microchips en cuerpos humanos que son, en esencia, la base de la vacuna de ARNm COVID “experimental”. “Lo que vemos es una especie de fusión del mundo físico, digital y biológico”, dijo Klaus Schwab.

Schwab explicó que próximamente los seres humanos recibirán un chip que será implantado en sus cuerpos para fusionarse con el mundo digital. (Escuchar entrevista en francés)

RTS: “¿Cuándo sucederá eso?”

KS: “Ciertamente, en los próximos diez años”.

“Podríamos imaginar que los implantaremos en nuestro cerebro o en nuestra piel”.

“Y entonces podemos imaginar que existe una comunicación directa entre el cerebro y el mundo digital”.

La entrevista de RTS con Klaus Schwab se presenta en los primeros minutos del video a continuación.

VIDEO: Hacia la tiranía digital con Peter Koenig

Haga clic aquí para vincular a la versión bitchute

Debate: Construyendo un movimiento mundial contra la “tiranía del coronavirus”

Lo que está en juego es la creación de  un movimiento de masas (a nivel nacional y mundial) que cuestione la legitimidad y autoridad de los arquitectos de este proyecto insidioso que, en términos generales, emana de: Big Money, Big Pharma, los conglomerados de tecnología de la información, los aparatos de seguridad e inteligencia, el Complejo Industrial Militar, Big Energy y los medios de comunicación corporativos.

 

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

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

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

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

14.oo horas (Los Angeles)

17.oo horas (Nueva York, Montreal)

***

Detalles sobre el Libro de Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Capitulo XIII

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

Capitulo XIV

La Bastilla 2.0: “Cambio de régimen real”:

Construyendo protesta y resistencia contra la Agenda COVID-19

 

Archivo de artículos del Michel Chossudovsky  (español)

 

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Below are excerpts from articles published on Newsweek and New York Post.

Trudeau’s Power Grab Is Unconstitutional

By Ryan Alford, Professor of Law, Lakehead University

Published on Newsweek

On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he would be invoking the Emergencies Act, giving him broad emergency powers to quash a nonviolent protest of truckers opposing vaccine mandates. It is only the second time the Canadian government has ever given itself such powers in peacetime.

….

First, the Emergencies Act specifies that only certain types of threats to public order can authorize emergency powers—which is why an order issued by the Governor General on Tuesday made the shocking allegation that the Freedom Convoy’s activities are “directed toward or in support” of terrorism.

It’s an astonishing claim for those who have been following the protests both in Canada’s capital and at border crossings closely. There is not a single violent incident that could possibly support a legally sufficient argument that the protests have been in support of or connected with terrorism.

Second, the new Emergencies Act required a “national emergency” to be invoked, something so serious that it cannot be resolved by means of any other law or combination of laws. And yet, the two most significant challenges to the government—the blockades of the Ambassador Bridge (from Windsor to Detroit) and the crossing from Sweetgrass, Montana to Coutts, Alberta—were both resolved peacefully, and without a single act of violence on the part of either the protesters or the police. At the end of the Coutts blockade, the demonstrators lined up to shake hands with law enforcement (the same ritual that ends every hockey game).

Only the protest in Ottawa remains, and evidence of terrorism, at least outside of the realm of mind-reading, remains rather thin. Moreover, Trudeau has refused to even meet with the truckers.

All of this means that Trudeau has failed to meet the requirements for invoking the Emergencies Act. His doing so is clearly unconstitutional.

Click here to read the full article on Newsweek.

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Justin Trudeau’s Canadian injustice is just a naked grab for power

By James Bovard

Published on New York Post

To save Canadian democracy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must first destroy it.

Since the start of the pandemic, Trudeau has acted like COVID entitled him to unlimited power in the name of public safety — sort of like Gov. Andrew Cuomo on amphetamines. Now he claims he is entitled to use an iron fist to crush the trucker protest movement against a vaccine mandate.

Many of the protesters believe the risks of the vaccine outweigh the benefit and, more important, that they have the right to control their own bodies. Trudeau responded by vilifying the peaceful protesters: “There is no place in our country for threats, violence or hatred.”

Who’s really the threat? 

Except Trudeau seems to be doing most of the threats and hatred. He’s denounced the protesters, baselessly, as “racist” and “misogynistic.” And Monday, he invoked the Emergencies Act, effectively awarding himself martial-law powers to repress resistance. Trudeau said his edict will provide him “the ability to compel” tow-truck companies to remove protesters’ trucks.

He’s even designating protesters as “terrorists” in the name of cutting off their funding. Canada’s

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced Tuesday: “We are broadening the scope of Canada’s anti-money-laundering and terrorist-financing rules so that they cover Crowd Funding Platforms and the payment service providers they use.”

Click here to read the full article on New York Post.

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In a study sponsored by Yale University — and started before COVID-19 shots were rolled out — researchers tested different messages of how to best persuade people to get injected

Messages designed to induce guilt, embarrassment, anger and “not bravery” were included

Psychological messages that involve community interest, reciprocity and embarrassment worked best, leading to a 30% increase in intention to get injected, a 24% increase in willingness to tell a friend to get injected and a 38% increase in negative opinions of those who decline to get the shot

The messages not only impact people on an individual level but are intended to further divide society, by encouraging people to pass negative judgment onto those who don’t get the shot and pressure others to comply with “social norms”

*

In a study sponsored by Yale University — and started before COVID-19 shots were rolled out — researchers tested different messages of how to best persuade people to get injected.

Officially titled, “Persuasive Messages for COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake,”1 the researchers must have had some forethought that people would be wary of an experimental gene therapy, and set to work to decipher the best propaganda campaign to ensure their widespread uptake.

The study’s abstract starts out with questionable statements from the start, parroting the myth that “Widespread vaccination remains the best option for controlling the spread of COVID-19 and ending the pandemic.”2 The authors do not, however, expand on how this is so, considering that just three months after the shot those who are injected are just as likely to pass COVID-19 to their close contacts as those who do not get the shot.3,4

The reasons why people may be reluctant to get COVID-19 shots — such as safety and efficacy concerns — are also ignored by the study,5 which is only concerned with how to best use psychological tactics to get people on board with being injected.

Guilt, Anger, Embarrassment or Cowardice — What Works Best?

The full study, which was published in the December 3, 2021, issue of Vaccine,6 involved two experiments. The first tested “treatment messages” designed to affect people’s intentions about whether or not to get the shot. For the control group, subjects were exposed to a message about bird feeding, while others read the baseline vaccine message, as follows:

“To end the COVID-19 outbreak, it is important for people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 whenever a vaccine becomes available. Getting the COVID-19 vaccine means you are much less likely to get COVID-19 or spread it to others. Vaccines are safe and widely used to prevent diseases and vaccines are estimated to save millions of lives every year.”

For the experiment, the following messages were added to the baseline message:7

For example, the guilt message, which is designed to work by social pressure, reads:8

“The message is about the danger that COVID-19 presents to the health of one’s family and community. The best way to protect them is by getting vaccinated and society must work together to get enough people vaccinated. Then it asks the participant to imagine the guilt they will feel if they don’t get vaccinated and spread the disease.”

Never mind that this statement is false, since they can still spread the disease if they’re injected. Similarly misleading messages designed to demean, guilt and shame people into getting the shot include:9

  • “If one doesn’t get vaccinated that means that one doesn’t understand how infections are spread or who ignores science.”
  • “Those who choose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19 are not brave.”
  • “[I]t asks the participant to imagine the embarrassment they will feel if they don’t get vaccinated and spread the disease.”
  • “[I]t asks the participant to imagine the anger they will feel if they don’t get vaccinated and spread the disease.”

The researchers explained it this way:10

“One subgroup of messages draws on the idea that mass vaccination is a collective action problem and highlighting the prosocial benefit of vaccination or the reputational costs that one might incur if one chooses not to vaccinate. Another subgroup of messages built on contemporary concerns about the pandemic, like issues of restricting personal freedom or economic security.

We find that persuasive messaging that invokes prosocial vaccination and social image concerns is effective at increasing intended uptake and also the willingness to persuade others and judgments of non-vaccinators.”

Propaganda Messages Created With No Scientific Support

It’s ironic that the study includes a “trust in science” message, since the messages used in the study were created in early or mid-2020, before science was available to support them. Yet, as noted by a Children’s Health Defense (CHD) article, “The messages tested by the researchers have been woven into mainstream media narratives and public health campaigns throughout the world.”11

In the second part of the study, the most effective messages from part one were tested on a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. This included the baseline message along with community interest, community interest + embarrassment, not bravery, trust in science and personal freedom messages.

They found that, compared to the control group, psychological messages that involve community interest, reciprocity and embarrassment worked best, leading to a 30% increase in intention to get injected, along with a 24% increase in willingness to tell a friend to get injected and a 38% increase in negative opinions of those who decline to get the shot.12

The messages are designed to not only impact people on an individual level, but also further divide society by encouraging people to pass negative judgment onto others and pressure others to comply with “social norms.” According to the researchers:

“Viewing vaccination through the lens of a collective action problem suggests that in addition to increasing individuals’ intentions to receive a vaccine, effective public health messages would also increase people’s willingness to encourage those close to them to vaccinate and to hold negative judgments of those who do not vaccinate.

By encouraging those close to them to vaccinate, people are both promoting compliance with social norms and increasing their own level of protection against the disease. Also, by judging those who do not vaccinate more negatively, they apply social pressure to others to promote cooperative behavior.”

Shots as a ‘Morally Right Choice’

Since the pandemic began, conforming to confusing and questionable public health mandates has been made an issue of moral superiority — to the point that those who questioned mask mandates were labeled as “grandma killers.”13

In an article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020, it’s further noted that “vaccination is a social contract in which cooperation is the morally right choice.”14 It further suggests that, under this social contract, people should change their behaviors toward those who choose not to get injected, and, indeed, people who are “especially compliant,” i.e., vaccinated, were less generous to those who were not.15 Further:16

“If so, vaccinated individuals should reciprocate by being more generous to a vaccinated other. On the contrary, if the other doesn’t vaccinate and violates the social contract, generosity should decline.”

Propaganda Aimed at Making People Feel ‘Disgusting’

CHD pointed out that one of the authors of the Yale study, Saad Omer, “has an extensive interest in public health messaging” and was behind the “Building Vaccine Confidence Through Tailored Messaging Campaigns” in 2020, which used social media to convince people to get COVID-19 and other shots.17

Working with the World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts Working Group on COVID-19 Vaccines, Omer detailed what worked in the past to increase the uptake of the HPV vaccine, and suggested it could work for COVID-19 shots. The solution, he said, involved appealing to values and stooping so low as to make a person feel disgusting while presenting vaccines as a form of purity. CHD quoted Omer, who said:18

“We wanted to test out, can we have a purity-based message? So we showed them pictures of genital warts and described a vignette, a narrative, a story, talking about how someone got genital warts and how disgusting they were and how pure vaccines are that sort of restore the sanctity of the body.

So we just analyzed these data. This was a randomized control trial with apriori outcomes. We found approximately 20 percentage point effect on people’s likelihood of getting an HPV vaccine in the next 6 months … We are trying out liberty-based messages or liberty-mediated messaging around this behavior related to COVID-19 outbreak.

That wearing a mask or taking precautions eventually make you free, regain your autonomy. Because if the disease rates are low, your activities can resume.”

This is similar propaganda to what’s being used to promote vaccine passports, with many willingly giving up freedoms that, once gone, may be difficult, if not impossible, to get back. By showing proof that you’ve received a COVID-19 shot, via a digital certificate or app on your phone, the hope is that you can once again travel freely, attend a concert or enjoy a meal in your favorite restaurant, just like you used to.

Except, being required to present your “papers” in order to live your life isn’t actually freedom at all — it’s a loss of freedom that you once had, one that disappeared right before your eyes and one that’s setting the stage for increased surveillance and control, and erosion of your privacy.

Propaganda Is the Real Misinformation

Carefully crafted messages that play on your emotions and moral compass are just one part of the campaign to ensure public compliance with the mainstream narrative. Fact checking is another tool being used in order to control virtually everything you see and hear online, in order to serve a greater agenda.19

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

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.20

Likewise, CHD explained, “The efforts to eliminate ‘misinformation’ resulted in unprecedented censorship of virtually anything that steps outside of state-sanctioned consensus and the creation of a captive audience primed to accept a singular narrative.”21

It’s important to remain aware that messages are being carefully crafted to mold human behavior to comply with COVID-19 shots and other public health measures — and to recognize that the use of propaganda is perfectly legal, even in the U.S.

As CHD continued, “And thanks to a multibillion-dollar budget from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we are under the influence of the best messages money can buy — whether or not those messages are true.”22

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Notes

1, 7, 8, 9 ClinicalTrials.gov, July 7, 2020, COVID-19 Vaccine Messaging, Part I

2, 6, 10 Vaccine December 3, 2021, Volume 39, Issue 49, Pages 7158-7165

3 medRxiv October 15, 2021

4 Nature October 5, 2021

5, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 21, 22 Children’s Health Defense February 4, 2022

13 Steve Kirsch Newsletter November 7, 2021

14, 16 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2020, 117(26) 14890-14899

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

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

Featured image is from Mercola

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From the closing weeks of 2020 through February 1, 2022, more than sixty percent of the world’s population was injected with COVID-19 vaccines.

This means that in a period of less than fourteen months more than 4.7 billion people received at least one COVID shot. Tens of millions received as many as four doses.

The first clinical trial of COVID vaccines was launched in Germany on April 23, 2020 with the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine. The first country to authorize the use of the vaccine in the general population was the United Kingdom. The UK issued its authorization on December 2, 2020, and this move was quickly followed by dozens of other nations. The United States issued its emergency use authorization on December 11.

This means that the massive global vaccination campaign – which quickly reached a frenzied pitch – was launched less than 8 months from the start of the clinical trials.

To begin administering a vaccine to the general population within such a short trial period was wholly unprecedented in the annals of modern medicine.

To establish that a vaccine is safe, extensive long-term testing must be carried out. This process involves multi-phase clinical trials and observational studies which include large numbers of subjects over time periods measured in years. This thorough and involved process takes at least five years to complete and usually much longer. According to Johns Hopkins University:

“A typical vaccine development timeline takes 5 to 10 years, and sometimes longer, to assess whether the vaccine is safe and efficacious in clinical trials, complete the regulatory approval processes, and manufacture sufficient quantity of vaccine doses for widespread distribution.”

Only upon satisfactory completion of this involved regimen can a vaccine be considered reasonably safe for mass administration to the general public.

Yet even the completion of this long process does not guarantee that a vaccine is completely safe. After receiving full approval, vaccines continue to be carefully monitored for adverse events in case some vaccinal flaw may have escaped detection during the multi-year trial phase. There have been a number of vaccines that were pulled from the market after they received full approval due to unexpected safety issues. Some of these include vaccines for Rotavirus, Lyme Disease and Whole Cell Pertussis among others.

Therefore, for a vaccine to be justifiably declared “completely safe,” it must undergo at least five years of intensive testing in clinical trials and then several years of monitoring as it is administered in populations at large.

The COVID vaccines, however, were publicly declared to be “completely safe” less than 8 months after the start of human clinical trials. On the normal vaccine trial timeline, month 8 is in Phase 2 of the three-stage clinical trial regime.

The claim that the COVID vaccines were “completely safe,” was, therefore, completely unjustifiable and unsubstantiated. Those who made this claim engaged in a deliberate and unconscionable act of public deception.

And yet this claim was used as the basis for a worldwide campaign in which more than half of Earth’s inhabitants have been injected with experimental pharmaceuticals that did not undergo proper testing.

The phrase “safe and effective” became the de-facto slogan of the planet-wide vaccination enterprise. Believing that the vaccines were “completely safe,” billions of people willingly – and even enthusiastically – lined up to receive their COVID injections.

Needless to say, not everyone was ready to accept the propaganda. Disregarding all reasonable objections, however, many governments decided that universal vaccination was their goal and decided that the unwilling needed to be coerced. This they sought to do through direct vaccines mandates and COVID passports or digital certificates. That latter two were designed in such a way as to compel the hesitant to submit to the shots on pain of being excluded from the normal course of societal life.

Government and public health officials justified this drastic approach by repeatedly stating that the vaccines were “completely safe” and effective, and because of this it was okay to force the shots even on those who did not want to take them.

The claim “safe and effective” was thus used as a means of allurement and coercion for the planet-wide COVID vaccination crusade.

We need to pause here and contemplate the enormity of what the vaccinators have “accomplished.”

Less than 22 months after the beginning of the clinical trials, they have managed to inject the plurality of mankind with their inadequately tested products. If things were being done properly, right now the vaccine developers would have been gearing for Phase III of clinical trials. This stage normally takes place between months 24 and 48 after the initiation of the trial process. This is how Johns Hopkins University describes what this stage is about:

“Phase III clinical trials are critical to understanding whether vaccines are safe and effective.”

Phase III is where we now find ourselves on the timeline of vaccine development. In the case of the COVID vaccines, however, the testing of Phase III is not being conducted on a selected group of volunteers but on the world’s population.

The billions who have been lured and coerced to participate in this experiment have not been honestly advised of the truth of the situation, i.e., that that the COVID vaccines have not undergone proper trialing and testing and that their safety profile could not be established with any satisfactory level of accuracy. Instead, they were lied to and told that the vaccines were “completely safe.”

Under the normal schedule, the COVID vaccines Phase III trials would be completed in April of 2024. If this phase went without a hitch, April of 2024 would be the earliest that anyone could justifiably start saying that the COVID vaccines are “safe and effective.”

It is as astonishing as it is frightening that this wide-scale, lightning-fast vaccination campaign featuring insufficiently tested substances was allowed to be carried despite the fact that the injections contained a new gene transfer mRNA technology that had never been tried before. Because of the presence of this novel technology, these vaccines should have been approached with great caution and tested with maximum thoroughness and vigor. Astonishingly, this did not happen. Quite on the contrary, some of the most rudimentary components of the customary trial routine were casually dispensed with.

Some fourteen months into this global injectioneering operation, it is obvious that the claim of the vaccines being “complete safe” was not only unsubstantiated but outright false.

Shortly after the vaccinating commenced, reports of severe adverse reactions and deaths started pouring it. Please see the chart below which depicts the explosion of death reports to the US government’s VAERS database. This explosion began in late 2020 which was when the vaccinators began administering their COVID products to the public at large.

Chart Description automatically generated

 

Within a couple months death reports garnered by the COVID injections exceeded the annual record count of any other vaccine in the database’s history. In less than twelve months, the number of deaths related to the COVID injections exceeded the death total recorded in connection with all the other vaccines in the last thirty years.

This is a gruesome count for vaccines that were supposed to be “completely safe.”

Although the vaccinators tried to cover and downplay the devastating side effects of their product, the reality could not be hidden. Myocarditis and pericarditis became a well-documented consequences of the Pfizer and Moderna shots. In December of last year, AstraZeneca scientists finally admitted something that had been known for many months, i.e., that their vaccine was causing deadly blood clots.

Trying to soften the news as much as they could, this is the headline with which the Mail Online announced this dire fact:

AstraZeneca uncovers what’s triggering blood clots after its jab: Vaccine acts like a magnet and attracts platelets which body mistakes for a threat and attacks

One can get a sense of just how dangerous and deadly these vaccines are from the fact that within twelve months of launching the vaccination campaign more than 1,000 articles and studies appeared in peer-reviewed scientific journals describing various side effects of these pharmaceuticals. Most of the discussed side effects are serious and deadly. They include:

  • Fatal cerebral haemorrhage
  • Venous thrombosis
  • Immune thrombocytopenic purpura
  • Myopericarditis
  • Guillain-Barré syndrome
  • Acute venous thromboembolism
  • Lymphadenopathy
  • Portal vein thrombosis
  • T-cell lymphoma
  • Aphasia
  • Anaphylaxis
  • Cardiomyopathy
  • Thrombophilia

Injecting more than half of all humankind with inadequately tested, dangerous pharmaceuticals based on a never-before-tried technology while claiming that that they are “completely safe” constitutes probably the greatest crime against humanity ever committed.

Never before has any government, an international actor or a transnational cabal undertaken an act that would expose such a big swath of humanity to such serious danger.

This operation was carried out under false pretenses and those who initiated it knew that their claims were unsubstantiated and false.

The question that must be answered is this: How could something like this been allowed to happen?

Untold millions across the world have already suffered severe side effects from these injections in the short-term. And we do not yet know that the medium- or long-term consequences may be, since these vaccines have not been trialed for such time frames.

Please keep mind that the clinical trials for the COVID vaccines began only less than 22 months ago. In such a short period of time it is simply impossible to adequately assess the safety of any vaccine.

The COVID-19 vaccination crusade is a global crime the like of which the world has not yet seen.

Those complicit in this vast crime against humanity are the vaccine manufacturers, the leaders of the regulatory agencies, public health officials and politicians. Also complicit is the media which endlessly amplified the “completely safe” claim which became the mantra under which this enterprise has been carried out.

Those responsible for this must be called to answer for their deeds in legal settings so that their actions can be evaluated and judged in accordance with national and international laws and statutes.

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In January 2019, the WHO defined the growing number of vaccination critics as one of the top ten threats to global health, and since the unprecedented Corona vaccination fiasco, the number of vaccination refusers has truly multiplied.

Meanwhile, resistance is forming even within the orthodox medical establishment. But the masterminds of the WHO continue to insist on an unrealistic vaccination coverage rate of at least 70 percent.

In this article, Jan Walter describes, with extensive source citations, which techniques are possible to still vaccinate the population, when people are becoming increasingly critical of vaccinations. This is only fueled by the continuing pressure for mass “vaccination” against a non-lethal disease for 99.8% of people, with a new type of “vaccine” that is actually gene therapy by means of mRNA. It seems like science fiction and is chilling, but the metohodes and techniques are available. There question is how far do we let it get?

Vaccinations increasingly scrutinized and the chilling alternative

In January 2019, WHO [1] defined the growing number of vaccine critics as one of the ten greatest threats to global health, and since the unprecedented corona vaccination fiasco [2], the number of vaccine refusers has really multiplied. Meanwhile, resistance is emerging even within the conventional medical community. But the masterminds at WHO continue to insist on an unrealistic vaccination rate of at least 70 percent.

Now several experts and former mainstream journalists like John O’Sullivan are warning that the massive PCR testing campaign could be a WHO vaccination program in disguise. (see Principia Scientific) [3] O’Sullivan is referring to a new technology developed at Johns Hopkins University that is supposed to make it possible to carry out covert vaccinations through a PCR test. (See Johns Hopkins Universitiy) [4]

Inspired by a parasitic worm that digs its sharp teeth into the intestines of its host, Johns Hopkins researchers have developed tiny, star-shaped micro-devices that attach to the intestinal mucosa and can deliver drugs into the body.

These tiny devices, known as “Theragrippers,” are made of metal and a thin film that changes shape. They are covered with heat-sensitive kerosene wax and each no larger than a dust particle. (See Figure 1)

When the kerosene coating on the Theragripper reaches body temperature, the devices close autonomously and clamp onto the wall of the colon. Because of the sealing action, the tiny, six-pointed devices burrow into the mucosa and attach to the colon, where they are held and gradually release their drug load to the body. Eventually, the Theragripper lose their grip on the tissue and are removed from the colon through normal gastrointestinal muscle function.

Note: According to Johns Hopkins University, Theragrippers are actually administered with a cotton swab. (see Figure 2)

Figure 2: Theragrippers on a cotton swab

The Johns Hopkins University research team published positive results from an animal study as a cover article in Science Advances on October 28, 2020 [5], confirming that the new technology works flawlessly:

Here we report that GI parasite-inspired active mechanochemical therapeutic grabs, or theragrippers, can survive 24 hours in the gastrointestinal tract of live animals by autonomously adhering to mucosal tissue. We also observe a remarkable six-fold increase in elimination half-life when using ripper-mediated delivery of the model analgesic ketorolac tromethamine. These results provide excellent evidence that shape-shifting and self-locking microdevices improve the effectiveness of long-term drug delivery.

Fig.3: Shape-shifting Theragripper as self-locking drug delivery devices

Coincidentally, the PCR test in China is now also performed anally because the reliability of the results is said to be better and of course this practice is immediately supported in the Western mainstream media. (See Business Insider) [6]

Note: If you can’t imagine the government administering toxins to you against your will and without your consent, think of all the horrific experiments on humans that were admitted afterwards and which, according to Wikipedia, [7] have continued well into modern times. In 2007, the CDC [8] even admitted that between 1955 and 1963, 10-30 million citizens were infected with the carcinogen SV40 via polio vaccination.

The Vaccination that is Not a Vaccination, but Gene Therapy

In a revealing video conference [9] with Dr. Judy Mikovits, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Dr. David Martin, it is explained that the mRNA vaccine, by the legal definition, is not a vaccine at all. It is falsely called a vaccine to hide the fact that the purported vaccine is, in fact, a gene therapy. Experienced physician and epidemiologist, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, stated in a censored interview with Rubikon, “Actually, this ‘promising’ vaccine should be PROHIBITED for the vast majority of people because it is genetic engineering!”

Mary Holland, Vice President and Chief Advocate of the Children’s Health Defense Organization, warns, “New vaccine technologies will likely lead to new types of vaccine harms. Since there has never been an approved mRNA vaccine, we really don’t know what such damage will look like. Because vaccines have been developed so quickly and clinical trials are so short, the long-term damage is completely unknown.”

What is particularly chilling is that the vast majority do not even know what the mRNA vaccine is doing in their bodies. They simply allow themselves to be blindly vaccinated, and this despite the fact that more and more independent and even orthodox medical experts are warning against it. (See doctors from around the world warn against mRNA vaccination) [10] In this context, it should not be forgotten that the American company modeRNA Therapeutics was founded in 2010 not as a vaccine manufacturer, but as a GenTech company. The example of the many Monsanto scandals makes it crystal clear that genetic engineering does not serve to protect species, but rather to gain power. The hidden agenda is to genetically modify species in order to patent or own them. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said, “Whoever controls the seed controls the world.” (See Press Portal) [11]

What’s next? Are they going to patent our bodies after they genetically engineer us with the mRNA vaccine?

Dr. Carrie Madej, [12] a specialist in internal medicine with over 19 years of experience, states that the COVID-19 vaccine could actually be a Trojan horse to patent humans because it alters our DNA. According to an Article published in the British science journal Phys.org in January 2020 [13], it is confirmed that modified RNA has a direct impact on our DNA. The following passage is particularly alarming:

“Several research groups are now working together to investigate what effect this may have on the DNA molecule. We already know that R-loop regions are associated with DNA sequences that contain active genes, and that this can lead to chromosome breaks and the loss of genetic information.”

Also alarming is the fact that leading vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer are warning their subjects not to reproduce after vaccination (see Pfizer, p. 132) [14 PDF] By doing so, the pharmaceutical company is confirming that the mRNA vaccine can have negative effects on human reproduction and is being vaccinated in spite of it!

Conclusion: Anyone who knows a little history knows that genetic experimentation and human experimentation are nothing new.

Although modern eugenics has its origins in the 19th century, the ideas, measures and justifications of state and social interventions and influences on reproduction have been known since ancient times. They can already be found in Plato’s “Politeia,” which, however, is limited to state selection and education.

In the Renaissance, corresponding lines of thought can be found in the social utopian writings “Utopia” by Thomas Morus, “Nova Atlantis” by Francis Bacon and “La città del Sole” by Tommaso Campanella. But because common sense instinctively resists such interventions, the establishment has always endeavored to disguise its true intentions with misleading labels. The Nazis, for example, disguised eugenics as “hereditary health science” or “hereditary care” to make it attractive to the masses, and today the same sick agenda is sold to us with a new “vaccine” to save us from a supposed “pandemic”.

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Notes

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200812085538/https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019

[2] https://www.legitim.ch/post/schockierende-bilder-beh%C3%B6rden-verschweigen-massenhaft-corona-impfsch%C3%A4den

[3] https://principia-scientific.com/are-pcr-tests-secret-vaccines/

[4] https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/11/25/theragripper-gi-tract-medicine-delivery/

[5] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/44/eabb4133

[6] https://www.businessinsider.com/microbiology-professor-china-anal-swab-test-covid-19-makes-sense-2021-1?r=MX&IR=T

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_subject_research

[8] http://web.archive.org/web/20110307094146/http:/www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/updates/archive/polio_and_cancer_factsheet.htm

[9] https://www.bitchute.com/video/4fVFgHXPELoO/

[10] https://tinyurl.com/y32qpl74

[11] https://www.presseportal.de/pm/62556/3331518

[12] https://banthis.tv/watch?id=5f176746677a7f01e9302af6

[13] https://phys.org/news/2020-01-rna-effect-dna.html

[14 PDF] https://pfe-pfizercom-d8-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/2020-11/C4591001_Clinical_Protocol_Nov2020.pdf

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The Russian troops that took part in defense exercises in Belarus and Crimea are now returning to their barracks, contradicting widely circulated reports that Russia is about to invade Ukraine. Although Moscow repeatedly stressed that troop mobilizations were for defense exercises, a weak and unverified intelligence leak disseminated across Western media claimed that Russia would invade Ukraine on February 16.

Doubling down on the weak leak about the imminent invasion, Western media even missed the sarcasm of Ukrainian President Volodimyr Zelensky when he referred to the report. Not realizing Zelensky’s irony, Western media reported his “confirmation” about Russia’s February 16 invasion day.

When being interviewed by Die Welt, Russia’s ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov sarcastically said:

“Wars in Europe rarely start on a Wednesday.” For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on February 15, “Do we want this [war] or not? Of course not.”

After weeks of propagating about an inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, news of troops being demobilized from the border region with the end of exercises disappointed even the most eager war mongers. It was hoped that the Russian invasion narrative would at least provide justification for harsher economic sanctions.

Yet, despite the withdrawal of Russian troops following the end of the exercises, US President Joe Biden is attempting to maintain the invasion narrative. Biden said he would “give […] diplomacy every chance,” but provocatively added that Russian forces remain “very much in a threatening position” and that “an invasion remains distinctly possible.”

With Biden seemingly unrelenting on letting go of the imminent invasion narrative, the situation surrounding Ukraine still remains dangerous and volatile despite Russian troops demobilizing. Ukraine, without intervention from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), continues to deploy its armed forces along the Line of Contact with Donbass. So long as the Ukrainian military threatens to reignite the war in Donbass, whether there is a Russian troop presence on the border or not, the West will maintain a narrative that Moscow is the aggressor.

None-the-less, Zelensky is left with little choice but to continue on this path. Time magazine reporter Simon Shuster, tweeted on February 14:

“Source close to Zelensky told me the US first warned his team of a Russian invasion last fall, putting the chances at 80%. The Ukrainians didn’t buy it, but they saw an opportunity – ‘more aid, more attention’ — and played along. Now they have regrets. Too much attention.”

Yet, Western thinkers, such as Professor Jorge Guira in writing for The Conversation, are attempting to twist the narrative and argue that “it’s possible this whole tense affair may be a bluff to weaken the Ukrainian economy and sow European discord.” This argument ignores the near daily statements from Moscow that stressed there were no plans of invading Ukraine. However, now it is claimed that this whole crisis was manufactured by Russia to target Ukraine’s economy and create division within the EU.

This line of thinking not only disregards Russia’s continued statements that it has no intentions of invading Ukraine, but also ignores that there are no such divisions in the EU, with only the three minnow Baltic states and Poland breaking consensus. These four countries hardly represent the 27-member bloc, or its two most important countries – France and Germany.

As has already been heavily scrutinised, the Ukrainian economy is actually the biggest loser because of the incursion narrative which Kiev helped concoct and promote. With the unintended and unforeseen economic consequences of the Russian invasion allegations, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on February 15 “a sovereign loan guarantee to Ukraine” of up $1 billion to support the country’s economic reform agenda and continued engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“This offer – combined with the strong partnership between Ukraine, the IMF, other international financial institutions, the G7 and other bilateral donors – will bolster Ukraine’s ability to ensure economic stability, growth, and prosperity for its people in the face of Russia’s destabilizing behavior,” Blinken said.

In turn, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter “another call with Blinken. We keep actively coordinating efforts to protect Ukraine. Grateful to the US for the decision to provide Ukraine with macro-financial assistance.”

Zelensky allowed the Russian invasion scenario to get out of hand, and what turned into a short-sighted opportunity to get more military aid from the West is now one that has economically indebted Ukraine to the US and under more IMF control. Kiev’s hostilities with Moscow will see it lose billions in transit fees when the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is activated, and now its propagation of an imminent Russian invasion sees foreign businesspeople, companies and diplomats flee the country.

None-the-less, even with Russian troops demobilizing after finishing their defense exercises, it appears that the imminent incursion assertions will be maintained, especially as Ukraine continues to provocatively deploy troops to the border of Donbass, with the OSCE remaining silent.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image: Zelensky in 2019, photo by President.gov.ua, licensed under CC BY 4.0

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British soldiers will leave Ukraine – informed James Heappe. UK Minister of the Armed Forces.  The United States also confirms readiness to evacuate its own citizens as well as the troops in case of a full-scale Russian-Ukrainian conflict.  Is this already capitulation?  Too early for joy.  The Western media still bomb the audience with the next dates of alleged Russian aggression, and the voices of reason are still drowned out by Goebbels-like screams about “Putin’s influence agents”.

BJ In Maggie’s shoes

The British newspapers, both related to the ruling Tories and the Labour Party play a special role in fuelling the war hysteria.

Threatening with Vladimir Putin takes on grotesque proportions, which observers associate with the weaking position of the Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

One can believe that in this situation, following the example of the infamous Mrs Thatcher, some short victorious war could possibly reverse the polls and cover up the scandals of the Conservative Government.  

The problem is that even a single British soldier’s coffin returning from Ukraine could be the coffin of the entire Cabinet.

The international embarrassment of the UK Foreign Minister, Liz Truss, echoed in the UK as well.  When B. Johnson is each week weaker – this politician has already been announced among the War Hawks as the new Iron Lady.

Meanwhile, during talks with Minister Sergey Lavrov, she was not only treated as an under-educated teenager, but also confirmed her own ignorance how the Russian-Ukrainian border runs.

All war provocations and Tory gaffes are publicised by the growing anti-war movement, cooling down the mood.  They are condemned by i.a. the popular blogger George Galloway, the leader of the radically anti-imperialist Workers Party of Britain.

Peace efforts are becoming increasingly effective across Europe. NATO’s military intervention in Ukraine is supported by less than half of the population of the UK. Proportions in Germany and France are quite similar.  Interestingly, the position of the Britons is the most negative what must be considered by the Tory Government. Europeans do not want to die for the neo-Nazi-oligarchic Kiev junta, neither the City nor the Wall Street another bloody businesses.

The Scots don’t want to fight for the Empire anymore

However, the war scarecrow is still used, also to mitigate UK centrifugal tendencies. “Scottish independence supporters leave us at Putin’s mercy!” – the Tory newspapers attacked couple days ago. MPs of the Scottish National Party (turning more and more towards the Liberal establishment) obediently participated in mission to Ukraine, de facto legitimising the Kiev junta politics.  This met with strong criticism from the pro-independence but opposition ALBA Party, distancing itself from the vision of the future sovereign Scotland’s membership in NATO.

“I have been watching with growing concern the apparent and increasing appetite for conflict in Ukraine. In recent days this has developed into a determined hyping of impending conflict with many weekend newspapers running front-page headlines that lacked any credible evidence to support such alarm in the copy below. What we have repeatedly heard is assertions from UK and US sources of intelligence that such a conflict is imminent, but again there has been a distinct lack of evidence beyond those assertions when the matter has been pressed. Memories may be short in some journalistic and political circles, but I know that many have not forgotten the catastrophic consequences of the dodgy dossier that took us to war in Iraq. We must not repeat such mistakes and we cannot go to war based on assertions” – declared in the House of Commons Neale Hanvey, ALBA Party MP.

“I don’t want to see an independent Scotland turn into an uber-bellicose NATO cheerleader, just to prove our European credentials. Independence allows Scotland to chart its own course. Naturally, we will be internationalists because we want to be good neighbours. But that does not mean we should run blindly into other people’s conflicts” – George Kerevan, a popular publicist and the undisputed authority of the Scottish national left, is of a similar opinion.

Putin is going to invade Ukraine [he] is the new Saddam who can deploy WMD in 45 minutes. And precisely the same mainstream media puppets who sneered at us for not believing the first lie, are still in their jobs to sneer at us for not believing the second” – mocked Craig Murray, a very popular Scottish writer and columnist, former diplomat and recently political prisoner of the Johnson’s regime.

The Scots are fed up with dying for the glory of the British Empire and the City’s profits.  But why are other Western societies so easily terrorised by war psychosis?

Final Alternative

Well, we all know these sects waiting for subsequent dates of the End of the World. Did the believers draw any conclusions as the date passed and the World did not end?

No, they just adapted smoothly to another one, again quite certain and final. Reactions to the next “absolutely certain and final dates of the Russian invasion” come straight from the same madhouse.

And yet it is still worth catching propagandists on lies and manipulations on every such occasion, extending the front for the peace and common sense.  Above the historical divisions into Left and Right, in the face of a much more important today alternative: for the life and survival of mankind – or for war, destruction, exploitation and tyranny.

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

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Heroic George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki sued his employer last year over its vaccine mandate for faculty and staff. His argument was clear: he had existing (demonstrable) antibody immunity from an earlier covid infection, and thus his immunologist considered a vaccine both potentially harmful and medically unethical. The New Civil Liberties Alliance successfully represented Zywicki in US District Court, forcing school administrators to grant a medical exemption. You can hear my interview of Professor Zywicki here  beginning at the 10:15 mark, and read the NCLA press release concerning his legal victory here.

“NCLA is pleased that GMU granted Professor Zywicki’s medical exemption, which we believe it only did because he filed this lawsuit. According to GMU, with the medical exemption, Prof. Zywicki may continue serving the GMU community, as he has for more than two decades, without receiving a medically unnecessary vaccine and without undue burden. Nevertheless, NCLA remains dismayed by GMU’s refusal—along with many other public and private universities and other employers—to recognize that the science establishes beyond any doubt that natural immunity is as robust or more so than vaccine immunity.” — Jenin Younes, NCLA Litigation Counsel and lead counsel in Zywicki v. Washington, et al.

“I am gratified that George Mason has given me a medical exemption to allow me to fulfill my duties this fall semester in light of unprecedented circumstances. Thanks to NCLA, we have increased public awareness that vaccinating the naturally immune is medically unnecessary and presents an elevated risk of harm to Covid-19 survivors. I speak for tens of millions of Americans in the same circumstances I am in, and I call on leaders across the country to develop humane and science-based approaches as opposed to one-size-fits-all policies.” — Todd Zywicki, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School

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Ukraine Invasion Scheduled for Wednesday Canceled

February 16th, 2022 by Ray McGovern

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“’Foiled again!’ rose the cry from those expecting Russian President Vladimir Putin to step out of character and risk war, just as he finally succeeds in getting the U.S. to take Russia’s security concerns seriously – and even address them.” Today we can simply recycle the above lede sentence from our article four weeks ago: Godot Likely To Arrive Before Russia Invades Ukraine.

New this time, and so far unique, is the lack-of-spin headline and lede that the AP promptly used yesterday in reporting on the significance of the talks held in Moscow by Russian President Vladimir Putin and visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. (Headline and lede sentences follow.)

Russia ready to discuss confidence-building measures, Putin says after talks with Germany’s Scholtz

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Moscow is ready for talks with the US and NATO on limits on missile deployments and military transparency, in a new sign of easing East-West tensions. The statement came after Russia announced it is pulling back some troops from exercises that have raised fears of a potential invasion of Ukraine.

Has AP Learned a Lesson?

Over recent weeks, AP’s ace reporter Matthew Lee and colleagues had been repeatedly led down the White House garden path by the likes of broken-record “the-Russians-are-coming-and-it-could-be-Wednesday” national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Might it be that, this time, at least one AP honcho became so weary of this drivel, that s/he decided to go ahead and publish before receiving the customary Guidance Memo from the powers that be, telling the Establishment media how to spin major events?

This time, the “guidance” came from President Joe Biden himself, who stuck to Sullivan’s ad nauseam alerts that a Russia invasion “remains distinctly possible.”

Reuters, too, apparently got the Memo in time and dutifully reported:

The Kremlin sought to portray its moves as proof that Western talk of war had been both false and hysterical.

“February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

Russia’s defence ministry published footage showing tanks and other armoured vehicles being loaded onto railway flatcars. But Western military analysts said they needed more information to judge the significance of the latest troop movements.

Putin With Scholz

At yesterday’s press conference, Chancellor Scholz at times played straight man for Putin, calling the announcement of the Russian troop pullback a “good signal” and agreeing that diplomatic options are “far from exhausted”, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had reported to Putin on Monday. Here’s what’s important (and was given appropriate prominence in AP’s reporting).

Putin at the presser with Scholz:

“… as [Lavrov] reported yesterday, the [US and NATO] responses still contain a number of considerations that we are not only ready to discuss but that we have actually suggested to our partners over the years. I am referring to our proposals on European security, certain weapons systems, notably, intermediate and shorter-range missiles, and military transparency. We are ready to continue this joint work. … [Emphasis added.]

So far, the NYT has omitted that statement by Putin, which, coming yesterday together with the troop pullback, is highly significant. That the Times“forgot” to include it is yet another sign that even the most sensible, rudimentary negotiations on key matters of concern to Russia will be resisted tooth and nail by the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank) complex in which the NYT is right there in the middle, the fulcrum – the key “M.”

Still, some Times editor apparently insisted on slipping in the important acknowledgment by Mr. Biden today that:

“Neither the US or NATO have missiles in Ukraine. We do not, do not have plans to put them there as well.” [Emphasis added.]

Biden made this commitment to Putin during the telephone call of Dec. 30 that Putin had urgently requested. It amounts to a major concession and enabled Moscow to conclude that at least one or two of Biden’s retinue – or Biden himself – have their heads screwed on right.

In sum, at the risk of boring Antiwar.com readers who have heard this many times before, this issue represents the most fruitful negotiating path. A key remaining question is whether the MICIMATT can thwart it. All in all, yesterday gave a glimmer of hope that if others of the MEDIA follow AP’s example, US citizens will become better informed of the realities and thus be chary of giving credulity to officials like Jake Sullivan. As President Eisenhower warned 61 years ago, only “an informed citizenry” can prevent inordinate accretion of power by the MIC, the Military-Industrial-Complex.

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

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Last summer, amid America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a dispute with France over nuclear submarines, and a speech to the United Nations in which President Biden declared, “America is back,” one criticism started appearing again and again: Joe Biden is just like Donald Trump.

If you squinted, you could see the broad outlines of a comprehensible critique—but it took a serious commitment to squinting to divine it. It went something a little like this: Biden was withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, something Trump, who was often falsely labeled an isolationist, had set in motion. “America is back” kind of sounded like a friendlier version of “America First,” the Lindbergh-era slogan that Trump had revived—and Biden was putting America first by handing Afghanistan over to the Taliban. (Never mind that leaving Afghanistan was broadly popular with the public, that the last three presidents had pledged at various points to end U.S. involvement in the country, and that two decades of occupation had done little to prepare the country for life without the presence of American troops.)

On one point, however, there was some merit: On both the Afghanistan withdrawal and the conflict with France over a submarine deal, the Biden administration got tagged with the demerits associated with bungled execution and the creation of needless chaos—and in the case of the troop pullout, horrific suffering to boot. But Biden’s critics were mostly making the comparison because, well, at the time, what could be more damaging than glibly comparing the current president to his immediate predecessor?

But the foundation of Trump’s foreign policy wasn’t isolationism, it was graft. Trump wanted to use the military as a kind of hyped-up gang: running a protection racket in Europe while robbing nearly everywhere else blind—and encouraging a small universe of like-minded kleptocrats to do the same. If anything sums up Trump’s approach to foreign policy, it was his oft-repeated insistence that America’s biggest mistake in Iraq was our failure to “take the oil.” For Trump, the presence of the United States anywhere in the world demanded that we looted whatever was available to a strongman-backed military.

If those critiques of Biden’s foreign policy were a stretch back then, however, they have in recent days become considerably more apt. Shortly after the Taliban seized power in August, the United States froze $7 billion in assets that the previous Afghan government had at New York’s Federal Reserve. Last week, it announced that it would be dividing those assets, instead of handing them back to those who need them most, while skimming off some plunder: $3.5 billion would go to humanitarian aid for the people of Afghanistan, who are currently suffering through a horrific famine, with nearly 20 million at risk of going hungry. And the other $3.5 billion would be redistributed to the families of victims of the September 11 attacks.

This last point is an outrage—it’s particularly unconscionable given that the current humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is perhaps the largest in the world right now. Throughout the two-decade-long conflict, the United States has taken pains to insist that it was fighting terrorist groups and the Taliban in Afghanistan over their role in facilitating a base of operations for Al Qaeda. It was the regime, and not the people of that country, who bore some responsibility for the September 11 attacks. The ostensible mission behind the continued involvement of the U.S. military in Afghanistan was to help those blameless people lead better lives.

This decision is a betrayal of all that, as well as a betrayal of Biden’s promise to build a foreign policy built on cooperation and mutual respect. It will have serious repercussions for Afghanistan’s financial future, preventing the country from establishing a sound monetary policy, possibly for years. But it will be especially damaging to the people of Afghanistan, who are currently in the throes of extraordinary suffering—nearly the entire country could be experiencing famine by the end of this year. “The decision would create a problematic precedent for commandeering sovereign wealth and do little to address underlying factors driving Afghanistan’s massive humanitarian crisis,” Human Rights Watch executive director John Sifton wrote in a statement.

There is no foreign policy argument for seizing this money; it seems only to come down to domestic political considerations. The Biden administration fears the repercussions of handing money over to the Taliban, but it also fears the potential political cost of redistributing it via humanitarian assistance—something that Donald Trump and his various disciples would likely seize on. The Biden administration has insisted on placing onerous financial restrictions on Afghanistan that make it nearly impossible to send money into the country, another decision that has been disastrous for the Afghan people.

It’s true that no one has any guarantee that the Taliban won’t use that money to enrich itself—but that can’t be squared with the decision to risk half the $7 billion kitty. Was the idea to simply steal as much as the Taliban might have done? This is not a decision guided by an authentic interest in ameliorating the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

All of this seems like some kind of cynical midterm election decision, designed to make up for the fact that the administration couldn’t or didn’t come through on a whole slew of popular policies to which it had been previously committed. If Biden’s administration goes through with this plan, it would be a moral black mark on top of previous bungles. Biden entered office vowing to restore America’s standing in the world. Stealing billions of dollars from some of the poorest people in the world is a strange way of fulfilling that promise.

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Alex Shephard is a staff writer at The New Republic.

Featured image: An Afghan man and children, suffering hardships from America’s longest war, pose for a portrait in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 19, 2021. [Source: theintercept.com]

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***

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

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

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

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

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

The report notes:

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

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

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

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

The report adds:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Af-Pak and Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.

Notes

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

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

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse


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ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-9-1
Year: 2017
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US Worsens Security Crisis as Its Submarine Violates Russian Waters

February 16th, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So who is the real criminal here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We also have them in the churches.

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

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

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

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

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

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In the Donbass, the Fuse Is Lit

February 16th, 2022 by Manlio Dinucci

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

War might break out with a false flag operation.

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

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

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

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

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We leave the answer for the coming weeks and months.

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Why Are We Evacuating Diplomats from Ukraine?

February 16th, 2022 by Prof. Anatol Lieven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Afghanistan Funds Seized by Biden Administration

February 16th, 2022 by Abayomi Azikiwe

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

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

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

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

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

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

An article published by Newsweek on February 15 said:

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

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

The Deteriorating Humanitarian Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

Afghanistan crisis infographic (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from OffGuardian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Selected Articles: The COVID Mandates Are Leaving Europe

February 16th, 2022 by Global Research News

The COVID Mandates Are Leaving Europe. Is Freedom Winning?

By Joanna Miller, February 16, 2022

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

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

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, February 16, 2022

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

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

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 15, 2022

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

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

By Prof. Bill Willers, February 15, 2022

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

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

By David Hughes, February 15, 2022

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

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

By Pepe Escobar, February 15, 2022

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

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

By Shane Quinn, February 15, 2022

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

Doctor Who Discovered Omicron Variant Was Forced to Lie About Severity

By Martin Armstrong, February 15, 2022

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

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

By Jack Matlock, February 15, 2022

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

Anti-vaccine Mandate Protesters Occupy Streets Outside Australia Parliament

By TRT World, February 15, 2022

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

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The Nazis Globalist Liberals Prefer to Ignore

February 16th, 2022 by Sohrab Ahmari

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from Donbass Insider

The COVID Mandates Are Leaving Europe. Is Freedom Winning?

February 16th, 2022 by Joanna Miller

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

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

What mandates do we see in Europe?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are we seeing minor victories with the dropping of mandates?

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

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

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

But, what about Australia?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is going on?

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

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

A similar scene plays out in Canada.

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

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

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

What has happened to free speech?

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

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

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

People are fed up with these mandates.

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

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

Most of us cannot change policies or influence politicians…

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

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

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

Featured image is from The Organic Prepper

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

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

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

 

 

.

 

 

“La crisis mundial del Coronavirus 2020-2022:

Destruyendo la Sociedad Civil, Ingeniería económica,

Golpe de Estado Global y el Gran Reseteo”,

del Prof. Michel Chossudovsky.

.

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

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

 

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

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17:00 horas (Nueva York, Montreal)

***

Consulte el el Libro de Michel Chossudovsky en Inglés:

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

Otras referencias bibliográficas en Español:

La Bastilla 2.0: “Cambio de régimen real”:

Construyendo protesta y resistencia contra la Agenda COVID-19


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O poder e a revolta no Cazaquistão

February 16th, 2022 by Pedro Rocha Fleury Curado

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

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

Breve recuperação dos eventos

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

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

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

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

Uma guerra de facções políticas

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

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

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

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

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

Desigualdade e riqueza no Cazaquistão

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A tutela militar russa

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

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

Um abandono da política externa multivetorial?

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de Mexico (UACM)

Colegio de Humanidades

Conferencia, Debate y Presentación de Libro

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

Seminario de Geopolitico 

Invitacíon a la communidad universitaria y al publico en general

La Crisis Mundial del Corona Virus 2020-2022

Destruyendo la Sociedad Civil, Ingeniería económica,

Golpe de Estado Global y el “Gran Reseteo” 

Presentación por 

Dr. Michel Chossudovsky,

Profesor de economía, Universidad de Ottawa

Panelistas

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

Moderador:

Prof. Raul Villegas. Coordinador del seminario de Geopolítica.

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

14.oo horas (Los Angeles)

17.oo horas (Nueva York, Montreal)

***

Detalles sobre el Libro de Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

La Bastilla 2.0: “Cambio de régimen real”:

Construyendo protesta y resistencia contra la Agenda COVID-19

Archivo de artículos del Michel Chossudovsky  (español)

 

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Nel Donbass la miccia è accesa

February 15th, 2022 by Manlio Dinucci

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manlio Dinucci

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

Were these allegations ratified by the House of Commons?

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

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

 

Who Are the Criminals?

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

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

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

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

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

The Emergencies Act (1985)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms

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

Those rights are being encroached upon by the Trudeau government.

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

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

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

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


Appendix

Selected excerpts

For full text, click here.

National Emergencies

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

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

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

Construction

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

(a) altering the provisions of this Act; or

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Abstract

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Initial Denials that Children Will Be “Vaccinated”

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

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

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

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

In December 2020, the JCVI recommended that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from OffGuardian

The ROK Presidential Election and the Destiny of the Korean Peninsula

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

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

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

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

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

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

Historical Fight between Conservative South Korea and Liberal South Korea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Money commands public opinion

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were several huge uprising

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

Featured image is by Tim Meisburger of The Asia Foundation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to “Make Turkey Great Again”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crisscrossing Eurasia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The sun “rises again from the East”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

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***

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another key indicator is electricity output.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Featured image is from Armstrong Economics