All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Jan. 2, 2024 – Japan Airlines Flight 516 collided with Japan Coast Guard Plane at Haneda Airport, Tokyo.
In a transcript of communications between the air traffic control tower and both the JAL jet and the Coast Guard plane, it appeared that the commercial flight was given permission to land while the Coast Guard aircraft was told to “taxi to holding point” just next to the runway.
Officials were trying to learn why the Coast Guard plane ended up on the runway.
In video footage of the JAL plane’s landing, it appeared to be lined in flames as it plunged down the runway
Yet the fuselage withstood the flames pouring from the engines for the 18 minutes that passed between the plane’s touchdown, at 5:47 p.m., and the moment the last person left the aircraft, at 6:05
Safe evacuation of 367 passengers (379 with crew) came down to a relative absence of panic.
Japan Airlines said that 15 people had been injured in the evacuation, none critically
5 of 6 crew members on the Coast Guard aircraft, a Bombardier Canada DHC-8-315, most likely died “in the actual impact itself” when the two planes collided, given that the Coast Guard propeller plane was much smaller than the passenger jet.
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
“Stable doors slamming, but a – very cautious – feel of shift at all levels, nations?” –Felicity Arbuthnot, January 4, 2024
An Education Department official who volunteered for President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign announced his resignation Wednesday over the administration’s support for Israel’s “indiscriminate violence” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the latest sign of growing dissent within the U.S. government.
“It should go without saying that all violence against innocent people is horrific,” Tariq Habash, a Palestinian American who worked as a policy adviser in the Education Department’s Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, wrote in his resignation letter. “I mourn each and every loss, Israeli and Palestinian.”
“But I cannot represent an administration that does not value all human life equally. I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives, in what leading human rights experts have called a genocidal campaign by the Israeli government,” Habash continued. “I cannot be quietly complicit as this administration fails to leverage its influence as Israel’s strongest ally to halt the abusive and ongoing collective punishment tactics that have cut off Palestinians in Gaza from food, water, electricity, fuel, and medical supplies, leading to widespread disease and starvation.”
Habash is the second administration official—and the first political appointee—to resign over the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s attack on Gaza, which has killed more than 22,000 people in less than three months. Josh Paul, who worked in the State Department for more than 11 years, resigned in protest less than two weeks after Israel began its latest bombing campaign in Gaza following a deadly Hamas-led attack.
Internal backlash against the Biden administration’s decision to arm and provide diplomatic cover for the Israeli government has grown steadily over the course of the nearly three-month war, with staffers at the State Department, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and even Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign voicing opposition to the president’s unpopular approach.
On Wednesday, 17 current Biden campaign staffers released an open letter imploring the president to cut off unconditional aid to the Israeli military, use his leverage to push for an immediate and permanent cease-fire, and “take concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this conflict.”
“Complicity in the death of over 20,000 Palestinians, 8,200 of whom are children, simply cannot be justified,” reads the letter, which was signed anonymously. “Only with an end to violence can we achieve a real and lasting peace that upholds the right to self-determination, safety, and freedom for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
Attorneys have warned that Biden administration officials, including the president himself, could face legal consequences for supporting genocide in the Gaza Strip. The administration is currently fighting a lawsuit aiming to enjoin it from providing any additional support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
In an appearance on MSNBC following his resignation, Habash said he believes many officials within the Biden administration feel the way he does about the president’s support for Israel’s assault—and they are becoming increasingly vocal as the humanitarian disaster in Gaza spirals further out of control.
“We’ve seen hundreds of State Department officials sign onto numerous dissent cables that were leaked,” Habash said. “We’ve seen USAID officials, we’ve seen White House staff, we’ve seen interns, we’ve seen hundreds of officials across the administration from dozens of agencies. This is a pretty commonly held position by a lot of the biggest supporters of the president. And the majority of American voters support a cease-fire, but the president’s unwillingness to move on this policy is deafening and it hurts.”
[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.
Mass-casualty producing events create “reptilian” sparks of collective outrage that nullify critical thinking. Criminal military-intelligence operatives fabricate and enable such catastrophes, with a view to creating such outrage, together with false-attribution of blame, to wage pre-planned wars and genocides.
The killing of an Australian-Lebanese national Ibrahim Bazzi, his Lebanese wife Shorouq Hammoud, and his brother Ali Bazzi by the Israeli Defence Forces in a missile strike in southern Lebanon, has been an object exercise in selective outrage, selective ethical concern, and, generally speaking, selective morality.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken used emergency authority to approve the sale of $147.5 million of 155 mm artillery shells to Israel on 30 December, bypassing the standard congressional review for arms sales for the second time since the start of the war on Gaza.
Turkish foreign ministry spokesperson Oncu Keceli said in a statement that Ankara welcomes the South African case, which says Israel has violated its obligations under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The riddle of unhinged EU support for the Zelensky regime in Kyiv is now solved. Anyone inclined can unravel why the Germans, in particular, backstabbed Russia in the Minsk peace boondoggle. Lithium.
Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Approves CSL and Arcturus Therapeutics’ ARCT-154, the first Self-Amplifying mRNA vaccine approved for COVID in adults.
In the old mercantilism, again, the representative firm was a joint stock corporation, the chartered companies; they received their monopolies from the sovereign; there were many shareholders; they were adventurers, etc. I saw similarities with the gigantic multinational corporations, also similarities in the sense that the centre, the head office, is in control of a variety of locations, and again how control over communication is so central to the organization of both of the old chartered companies and the modern multinational corporations.
The thrust of Webb’s research was confirmed in 1998 when a CIA inspector general’s report acknowledged that the CIA had worked with suspected drug runners while supporting the Contras in Nicaragua
I learned this year that the White House had targeted me personally with a “Be On the Lookout” alert to CDC, Twitter, Facebook, DHS and the Department of the Census. The latter, of course, has all of my personal information. I was vertiginous with shock — and fear — when I found this out, but I did not back down.
Perhaps the most-hyped event of the year, Ukraine’s much-anticipated spring/summer counteroffensive was NATO’s version of the German Ardennes offensive of December 1944 – a last-gasp effort to throw all remaining reserves into a desperate attempt to score a knock-out blow against an opponent who had seized the strategic initiative.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
The killing of an Australian-Lebanese national Ibrahim Bazzi, his Lebanese wife Shorouq Hammoud, and his brother Ali Bazzi by the Israeli Defence Forces in a missile strike in southern Lebanon, has been an object exercise in selective outrage, selective ethical concern, and, generally speaking, selective morality.
The strike took place on a home in the neighbourhood of Al-Dawra in the town of Bint Jbeil, said to belong to the Bazzi family. On paper, the case demands investigation, explanation, even reparation. But the Australian government has pounced on an opportunity to ignore the killing of Ibrahim and his wife – both civilians and intending to head back to Sydney – and focus on the background of Ali Bazzi instead.
In his December 28, 2023 press conference, the Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus noted “the announcement made by Hizballah claiming links to one of the Australians killed. We are seeking to establish facts.” The context to essentially excuse the killings is then sketched: “Hizballah is a listed terrorist organisation under Australian law”; there was “daily military activity in southern Lebanon, including rocket and missile fire, as well as airstrikes”; Australians in Lebanon should leave “while commercial options remain available.”
On Ali’s connections, Dreyfus could make much of a terrorist link that, were it to be confirmed, would make the killings, more generally, less egregious. “It’s an offence [for] any Australian to cooperate with, to support, let alone to fight with, a listed terrorist organisation like Hizballah.” But – and here Dreyfus was not drawn – it is not an offence for Australians to serve in the armed forces of a foreign country under Part 5.5 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth).
Naturally, this would depend on the country in question, and the amoral calculus used when deciding that nonsense called the “national interest”. Australians serving with the IDF is entirely permissible, despite that army’s obliteration of Palestinian civilians in a most cavalier interpretation of international law; Australians serving with their opposite numbers are criminals, buccaneering agents who deserve what they get.
Reserves Captain Lior Sivan, an Australian who served as an IDF tank commander, was killed on December 19 in a Hamas ambush. When news was made public of this fact, his love of Israel and personal attributes splashed the media outlets. Here was a noble human beaming with noble courage, to be garlanded and celebrated. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) sent its “condolences to his family during this difficult time and stand ready to provide consular assistance.”
When news came of the slain trio in Bint Jbeil, two civilians were forgotten in favour of the supposedly blighting attributes of the alleged Hezbollah fighter.
“Of course,” stated Dreyfus, “there are examples in the past of Australians having had links with Hizballah. One of the reasons why the Australian Government has listed Hizballah, in both its arms, as a terrorist organisation, is because of the potential links to Australia and Australians.”
And what of the destruction of civilian life in this conflict, with thousands of instances of it in Gaza, and a rising toll in Lebanon? The Australian government, Dreyfus insisted, had “consistently called for civilian lives to be protected and we have consistently raised our concerns about the risk of this conflict spreading.”
Peter Cronau, a veteran ABC producer and investigative journalist, makes the point about the relevant processes that need to take place: an investigation followed by the laying of charges; the collection of forensic evidence by the Australian Federal Police and Australian Defence personnel from the Australian embassy in Lebanon; the gathering of evidence “regarding who issued the orders, selected the targeting, and who fired the weapon, using all the intelligence and resources available to Australian officers working at Pine Gap base.”
The role of Pine Gap, a primarily US-run satellite surveillance base located to the southwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, is potentially critical, given its role in furnishing geolocation data to Washington and, in some cases, its allies regarding distant military operations. Targeting data for drone strikes, for instance, has been something of a favourite.
Cronau’s suggestions are credible, and invoking links with Hezbollah by Dreyfus are expedient forms of dismissal. Similar steps of investigation and inquiry were, after all, taken in attempting to identify who and what was used in the shooting down of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in July 2014. The downing of the flight resulted in the loss of 298 lives, including 38 Australians. Much ink and time was expended on identifying the allegedly relevant military personnel involved, the supply chain of the Buk-TELAR missile system, not to mention the repeated insistence on the part of the Australian government that action be taken against the Russian separatists and the Kremlin for their misdeeds.
Canberra proceeded to impose targeted financial sanctions and travel bans on four of the personnel.
“These sanctions,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong stated in a media release, “demonstrate the Australian Government’s ongoing commitment to hold to account those responsible for the downing of Flight MH17.”
For all this, Australian nationality is a soupy, thin concept. Its protections are limited, unreliable and arbitrary. When brandished with a certain political preference and bias, it is cherished, a convertible currency in the international stock exchange of diplomacy. We think of the Iranian-detained Australian-British national Kylie Moore-Gilbert who was, for reasons never fully explained, exchanged for a number of Iranian operatives jailed in Thailand over a miscellany of bungled assassination attempts against Israeli officials and targets. Rarely has an Australian Prime Minister, a Foreign Affairs minister, or DFAT, been so busy over the fate of one of their citizens.
We contrast such extravagant efforts with the treatment offered individuals as David Hicks or Mamdouh Habib, seen by the Australian political class as Islamic refuse (converted or born), and therefore deserving of torture and punishment by other powers. To that can be added death by missile strike, as well.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Incident: Cathay Pacific A35K Enroute on Dec 11th 2023, Captain Felt Unwell
By Simon Hradecky, created Thursday, Dec 14th 2023 19:38Z
A Cathay Pacific Airbus A350-1000, registration B-LXM performing flight CX-101 from Hong Kong (China) to Sydney,NS (Australia), was enroute at FL390 about 80nm northnortheast of Manado (Indonesia) and about 1360nm southsoutheast of Hong Kong, just having completed a step climb from FL370 to FL390, when the crew decided to turn around and return to Hong Kong due to the captain feeling unwell. The aircraft descended to FL380 and landed safely back in Hong Kong about 3:07 hours after the decision to turn around.
The airline reported the captain felt unwell prompting the return to Hong Kong. Another crew took over upon landing and brought the passengers to Sydney.
The occurrence aircraft remained on the ground in Hong Kong for about 3 hours, then departed again and reached Sydney with a delay of about 9 hours.
*
Pilot Incapacitations and Deaths on Duty in 2023
Dec. 11, 2023 – Cathay Pacific Flight CX101 (HKG-SYD) from Hong Kong to Sydney – Captain felt unwell, crew turned around and returned to Hong Kong, landed safely 3 hr later
Dec. 5, 2023 – Ryanair Flight RK-8528 (STN-OZZ) from London Stansted, UK, to Ouarzazate, Morocco – pilot felt unwell, crew diverted to Faro, Portugal, landed safely 30 min
Nov. 29, 2023 – American Airlines Flight AA755 CDG-PHL, from Paris, France, to Philadelphia, PA, pilot had a seizure and collapsed in the cockpit.
Nov. 26, 2023 – Ryanair Flight FR-3472 (LTN-RZE) from London Luton, UK to Rzeszow (Poland) on Nov.26, 2023, one of the pilots became incapacitated, plane diverted to Krakow and landed safely
Nov. 20, 2023 – Air Transat Flight TS-186 (YYZ-PUJ) from Toronto, Canada to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic – pilot became incapacitated and was replaced by a pilot passenger
Oct. 30, 2023 – Jet2 Flight LS-1711 (MAN-DLM) Manchester (UK) to Dalaman (Turkey) – First officer became incapacitated, pilot diverted aircraft to Budapest, landed safely
Sep. 24, 2023 – Austrian Airlines Flight OS-188 (STR-VIE) Stuttgart to Vienna The captain became incapacitated, first officer took control of aircraft
Sep. 23, 2023 – Alaska Airlines Pilot Death – 37 year old Captain Eric McRae died suddenly in his hotel room during layover, was to fly that morning
Sep. 22, 2023 – Delta Flight DL-291 (CDG-LAX) Paris to Los Angeles – Pilot became incapacitated, was taken to cabin for care, plane diverted to Minneapolis, pilot taken to hospital
Aug. 27, 2023 – Air Canada Flight AC348 (YVR-YOW) Vancouver to Ottawa, one of the pilots felt ill and became incapacitated 50 min before landing in Ottawa.
Aug. 17, 2023 – IndiGo Flight (NAG-PNQ) Nagpur to Pune, India, 40 year old Pilot Manoj Subramanium died after collapsing at the boarding gate, about to board.
Aug. 16, 2023 – Qatar Airways Flight QR579 (DEL-DOH) Delhi to Doha, Qatar, 51 year old pilot collapsed as a passenger inflight and died, plane diverted to Dubai.
Aug. 14, 2023 – LATAM Flight LA505 (MIA-SCL) Miami to Santiago, Chile – 2 hours into 8hr flight, 56 year old Captain Ivan Andaur collapsed and died in the lavatory – plane diverted to Panama City!
Aug. 9, 2023 – United Airlines UAL1309 (SRQ-EWR) Sarasota to Newark, pilot had a heart attack and lost consciousness in flight
Aug. 7, 2023 – TigerAIR Flight IT237 (CTS-TPE) Sapporo to Taipei, copilot had a medical emergency after landing plane in Taipei
July 19, 2023 – Eurowings Discover Flight 4Y-1205 (HER-FRA) Heraklion to Frankfurt, pilot incapacitated, first officer took control, landed safely
July 16, 2023 – Small plane – 2006 Piper Meridian, flying from Westchester NY, crashed at Martha’s Vineyard Airport after pilot had medical emergency upon final approach and passenger took control of the plane and attempted a landing. Pilot, 79 year old Randolph Bonnist, died later in hospital.
June 7, 2023 – Air Canada Flight ACA692 (YYZ-YYT) Toronto to St.John’s, First Officer became incapacitated, deadheading Captain assumed duties
June 4, 2023 – Small plane – Cessna Citation N611VG flying Tennessee to Long Island, fighter jets spotted pilot slumped over in cockpit unconscious, plane crashed and all onboard died
May 11, 2023 – HiSKy Flight H4474 (DUB-KIV) Dublin to Chisinau (Moldova), 20 min after liftoff pilot became “unable to act”, plane diverted to Manchester
May 4, 2023 – British Charter TUI Airways Flight BY-1424 (NCL-LPA) Newcastle to Las Palmas Spain pilot became ill, plane diverted back to NCL.
May 3, 2023 – Air Transat and Air Canada Pilot Eddy Vorperian, age 48, died suddenly during layover in Croatia
April 21, 2023 – Easyjet Flight U2-6469 (LGW-AGA) London Gatwick to Agadir, Morocco, first offer became incapacitated, diverted to Faro, Portugal.
April 4, 2023 – United Airlines Flight 2102 (BOI-SFO) – captain was incapacitated, first officer was only one in control of the aircraft.
March 25, 2023 – TAROM Flight RO-7673 TSR-HRG diverted to Bucharest as 30 yo pilot had chest pain, then collapsed
March 22, 2023 – Southwest Flight WN6013 LAS-CMH diverted as pilot collapsed shortly after take-off, replaced by non-Southwest pilot
March 18, 2023 – Air Transat Flight TS739 FDF-YUL first officer was incapacitated about 200NM south of Montreal
March 13, 2023 – Emirates Flight EK205 MXP-JFK diverted due to pilot illness hour and a half after take-off
March 11, 2023 – United Airlines Flight UA2007 GUA-ORD diverted due to “incapacitated pilot” who had chest pains
March 11, 2023 – British Airways (CAI-LHR) pilot died of heart attack in crew hotel in Cairo before a Cairo to London flight (name & age not released)
March 3, 2023 – Virgin Australia Flight VA-717 ADL-PER Adelaide to Perth flight was forced to make an emergency landing after First Officer suffered heart attack 30 min after departure.
Military Pilot Incapacitations and Deaths
Aug. 18, 2023 – US Army Aviation Center (Alabama) student pilot went into cardiac arrest behind the controls midflight (Aug.18, 2023), Instructor landed plane – pilot was dead for 18 minutes!
July 19, 2023 – 37 year old US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Andrew James Lingenfelter, of Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, died on July 19, 2023 after battle with Pancreatic Turbo Cancer
June 17, 2023 – 33 year old US Air Force Staff Sgt. Kory Wade – a medical logistics technician with the 48th Rescue Squadron at Arizona’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, was found dead June 17, 2023
May 9, 2023 – United Airlines and US Air Force Pilot Lt. Col. Michael Fugett, age 46, died unexpectedly at his home
Recent Pilot Deaths (Not on Duty)
Dec. 5, 2023 – Volaris (El Salvador) Pilot – 30s year old Jose Espinal – El Salvador Pilot for Volaris (El Salvador), Air Jazeera Airways (Kuwait) and former VECA & TACA Airlines, died suddenly on Dec.5, 2023.
Nov. 16, 2023 – Air India Pilot Death – 37 year old Air India Pilot Captain Himanil Kumar had cardiac arrest at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport during training
Oct. 18, 2023 – Austrian Airlines Pilot Death – 43 year old Christian Zimmerebner, AUA Austrian Airlines Pilot and member of Dorfgastein mountain rescue, diedsuddenly on Oct.18, 2023 due to “serious illness”
May 2023 – 4 Singapore Airlines pilots died suddenly in May 2023
April 13, 2023 – Phil Thomas, graduate of Flight Training Pilot academy in Cadiz, Spain (FTEJerez) died suddenly.
March 17, 2023 – 39 year old Westjet Pilot Benjamin Paul Vige died suddenly in Calgary
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Al Mayadeen’s sources reported on Sunday that a drone belonging to Iraqi resistance factions targeted the Kharab al-Jir US occupation military base in the countryside of al-Hasakah in Syria with two shells.
Our correspondent also mentioned that the Rmelan US occupation base in northeastern Syria came under a drone attack. Later, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack.
Earlier on Saturday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced that it had targeted, using drones, the Harir US occupation base in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Erbil in response to the ongoing massacres committed by the Israeli entity against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
In a statement, the Iraqi Resistance emphasized that this operation is part of its ongoing strategy to Resist the US occupation forces in Iraq and the region, vowing to continue “strikes against the enemy’s strongholds.”
Moreover, Al Mayadeen’s sources revealed that in Syria, the US occupation base in the Conoco oil field was targeted with five rockets, while the one in al-Omar oil field was targeted with seven.
The Iraqi Resistance has consistently affirmed its commitment to targeting the US occupation due to Washington’s support for the Israeli occupation and its pivotal role in the ongoing aggression against the Gaza Strip. The Resistance has warned Washington repeatedly that its bases in Syria and Iraq are legitimate targets as long as the war on Gaza continues.
In the past week, the Islamic Resistance announced carrying out several separate operations against the US occupation bases, including the al-Shadadi, Kharab al-Jir, and Conoco bases in Syria.
It is noteworthy that since the launch of operations in October, US occupation military bases across Syria and Iraq have come under over 110 attacks.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Featured image: A picture taken on April 2, 2018, shows a general view of a US occupation military base in al-Asaliyah village, between the city of Aleppo and the northern town of Manbij. (AFP File Photo)
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken used emergency authority to approve the sale of $147.5 million of 155 mm artillery shells to Israel on 30 December, bypassing the standard congressional review for arms sales for the second time since the start of the war on Gaza.
A State Department spokesman said on Friday that
“given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer.”
Earlier this month, Blinken used the same emergency process to approve the sale of 14,000 tank shells, worth more than $106 million, to Israel.
The emergency sale of artillery shells comes as Israel’s military intensifies its bombing campaign in Gaza.
Earlier this week, on Christmas Eve, Israeli forces bombed the Meghazi camp, killing 86 Palestinians in one strike.
Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levyexcused the death toll by telling Sky News the army had used an “incorrect munition.”
But he refused to apologize for the loss of life and did not say what type of munition was used, despite being pressed several times by Sky News presenter Niall Paterson.
Israel has regularly used 2,000 lb US-made bombs to target residential neighborhoods in Gaza.
Continued instances of this sort cast doubt on the sincerity of the White House’s rhetoric calling for Israel to refrain from killing Palestinian civilians in such huge numbers.
Josh Paul, a former State Department arms expert who resigned in protest in October, toldThe Washington Post that Blinken’s decision to rush these unguided munitions enables Israel to continue the type of operations in Gaza that have “led to so many Palestinian civilian deaths.”
“This is shameful, craven, and should frankly turn the stomach of any decent human being,” he said.
A Washington Post analysis found that Israel’s war against Gaza has been more devastating than any other 21st-century conflict.
International outrage continues in response to the Israeli bombing campaign, with South Africa invoking the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice the same day Blinken approved the additional weapons sale.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Featured image: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Oct. 12, 2023. – Secretary Antony Blinken on X
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Mass-casualty producing events create “reptilian” sparks of collective outrage that nullify critical thinking.
Criminal military-intelligence operatives fabricate and enable such catastrophes, with a view to creating such outrage, together with false-attribution of blame, to wage pre-planned wars and genocides.
Fabricated mass-casualty producing events satisfy the Helgelian dialectic of Problem Reaction Solution.
This appears to be the case with the October 7 “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm”. Zionist/Western operatives seeking to “wipe Gaza off the map” first needed to engineer global outrage by creating the conditions for a mass-casualty producing event, such as the one on October 7 2023. This catastrophe was in turn used as a pretext for the current Western/Zionist perpetrated genocide happening now in the West Bank and in Gaza.
Notwithstanding the fact, as explained by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, that
“Israel can not claim self-defense against a threat that emanates from the territory it occupies — from a territory that is kept under belligerent occupation,” (1) many censored facts about the October 7 castastrophe strongly suggest Zionist implication with a view to realizing “Option C” , a diabolical plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky explains that
“The ultimate objective is not only to exclude Palestinians from their homeland, it consists in confiscating the multi-billion dollar Gaza offshore Natural Gas reserves, namely those pertaining to the BG (BG Group) in 1999, as well the Levant discoveries of 2013.” (2)
Consider the following largely-censored facts.
First, Israeli media has admitted that a significant number of Israeli citizens were killed by Israeli forces on that fateful day — by Apache helicopters firing missiles and machine guns, and by IDF tanks. The logic of the Hannibal Directive as described by Max Blumenthal points to apparent Israeli military decisions to kill both hostages and hostage-takers alike with a view to foiling hostage-taking operations. In fact, released hostages have testified that they were more fearful of their IDF “rescuers” than of their captors.
Second, large contingents of Israeli ground forces, fully armed and equipped, were following apparent “stand down” orders, near the perimeter of the military operation. Video commentators suggest a lack of leadership, but more likely the confusion and apparent inaction were by design. Importantly, “compartmentalization, plausible deniability and stacked purposes” are emblematic of successful false flag operations. Very few of the actors involved have a clear overall picture of the scope and scale of the entire operation.
Finally, the apparent Israeli “security lapses” which enabled the entire operation seem contrived. Manlio Dinucci poses a question to which nobody seems to have an adequate answer: “How is it possible that Mossad, considered one of the most efficient Secret Services in the world, did not realize that Hamas was preparing its attack?” (3).
Certainly, nothing justifies the current genocide that Israel is now committing against Palestinians. But accumulating evidence about the circumstances of the October 7 “precipitating event” make the Israeli crimes even more odious, more vile.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
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. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.
Featured image: Wounded Palestinian children, are taken to hospital after Israeli attacks in Khan Yunis, Gaza on December 23, 2023 [Belal Khaled/Anadolu Agency]
The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Turkey has officially backed South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which accuses the state of genocide in its ongoing war on Gaza.
Turkish foreign ministry spokesperson Oncu Keceli said in a statement that Ankara welcomes the South African case, which says Israel has violated its obligations under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
“Israel’s murder of more than 22,000 Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom were women and children, in Gaza for nearly three months should not go unpunished in any way,” Keceli said.
“Those responsible for this must be held accountable before international law,” he continued, adding: “We hope that the process will be completed as soon as possible.”
South Africa filed the case last month and wants an order calling on Israel to halt its military operations in the besieged enclave.
It said such an order is “necessary in this case to protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people”.
“Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” South Africa’s application said.
Interim Injunction
South Africa has requested that the ICJ declare “on an urgent basis that Israel is in breach of its obligations in terms of the Genocide Convention, should immediately cease all acts and measures in breach of those obligations and take a number of related actions”.
Keceli said Turkey also expects that the court will issue an interim injunction ordering Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza, adding that Ankara would follow the implementation of such a decision.
War broke out in Israel and Gaza on 7 October, when Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups launched an attack on Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis and other nationals, according to the government death toll.
Meanwhile, Israel has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians in its aerial bombing campaign and ground assault, with the majority killed being women and children, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Israel’s military forces have targeted many types of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, residential neighbourhoods, ambulances, and mosques.
Entire neighbourhoods in the besieged enclave have been completely levelled.
The UN’s Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court define genocide as acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
Legal experts, UN officials, and more than 800 scholars have already warned that Israel is potentially committing genocide against Palestinians.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
The riddle of unhinged EU support for the Zelensky regime in Kyiv is now solved. Anyone inclined can unravel why the Germans, in particular, backstabbed Russia in the Minsk peace boondoggle. Lithium.
Energy Monitor’s parent company, GlobalData, recently released a report showing that Europe’s biggest lithium reserves lie in the Donbass region of Russia. The former Ukrainian Shevchenkivske field in the Donetsk region and the Kruta Balka block in the Zaporizhzhia region are now part of Russia. These reserves add tremendously to Russia’s humongous Lithium deposits (now 1.5M metric tons) and solidify the country’s top ten position globally. If we consider other BRICS nations’ reserves, including China (2M metric tons), EU industry is at a leverage point.
What’s most significant about this is that the EU, and Germany in particular, desperately need the rare mineral to manufacture green energy technologies such as wind turbines, electric vehicles, and a wide variety of electronic devices. This text from the Critical Minerals Thematic Intelligence Report overview is telling:
“Critical minerals are key to transitioning to a low-carbon world. There are over 70 countries globally that have set net-zero targets and pledged to lower their emissions. However, these widespread measures for a greener future are straining natural resources, especially the minerals required to produce energy transition technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels…”
The report goes on to reveal how these rare minerals are monopolized by just a few regions and how supply chain problems affect their recovery and distribution. In short, if Europe does not procure more Lithium, the energy transition EU President Ursula von der Leyen toots her horn about every other day will either be delayed or made unfeasible because of demand shortages.
While the United States, Australia, and a few Latin American countries hold the lion’s share of Lithium reserves, EU access to these supplies will be expensive. In addition, the U.S. and these emerging nations will surely use the biggest part of their reserves for domestic needs.
The demand (need) for European Lithium supply is so intense, German CDU MP Roderich Kiesewetter came right out and admitted the Russia-Ukraine conflict is all about the 500,000 tons or more of the mineral under the ground of the Donbass region. Kiesewetter said, “The European Union supports Ukraine because of lithium deposits in the Donbass.” The politician also took note of the Donbass being part of Russia now, means Berlin’s dependence on Moscow.
Kiesewetter, a retired colonel, is also suggesting that Germany provide Zelensky’s regime with the highly accurate Taurus cruise missiles, which have a 500km range. The Swedish/German air-launched missile carries a 1,100-pound warhead and is essentially a bunker-buster type weapon. The missiles would be far more useful for Zelensky’s remaining Nazi battalions than a few rusty old Leopard tanks. What the MP’s statements mean, however, is that Germany and the EU intend on taking Ukraine’s vast resources by force now. The Euromaidan Coup only got the Western elites’ feet in the door, and now the singular order has few options left since the failed Ukraine offensive.
The EU commissars are in the process of slitting their own throats. Just the other day, the commission passed another round of sanctions aimed at Russia’s luxury diamond exports to the bloc. This will not affect the average EU citizen, but the upper-middle class and the wealthy will have to fork over more Euros to get pretty round diamonds. The Americans (or British) blowing up the gas pipelines, the potential for grain shortages in the EU, and other key minerals Russia and nations friendly to her export begin to take their toll on an already shaky confederation of member states.
Consider what EU member states manufacture and export to elevate their GNP. In the lists here, you’ll click on two vital exports. Cars and/or refined petroleum are vital to every country. Cars are, by far, the biggest import and export commodities. So, when these autos finally go electric, just imagine how desperate EU industry and consumers will be for Lithium! The Europeans will flounder if forced to import quantities of this strategic mineral from distant sources that have their own batteries to make. If there is a WWIII over the Russia/Ukraine situation, I am sure we’ll be able to name it “The Great Lithium War.”
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Phil Butler is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
On December 10, 2004, the body of journalist Gary Webb, 49, was discovered in his home near Sacramento after a moving company worker found a note posted to his front door that read: “Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance.”
In the late 1990s, Webb had written a series of stories for the San José Mercury News, which provided the basis for his book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998).
In it, Webb detailed how the explosion of crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles during the 1980s was sparked by two Nicaraguan émigrés, Danilo Blandón and Norwin Meneses, who sold huge amounts of cocaine to raise funds for a CIA-backed rebel army—the Contras.
Webb was a Pulitzer Prize winner whose “Dark Alliance” series went viral in the early days of the internet. It caused a firestorm that led to the resignation of CIA Director John Deutch after he was grilled by angry Black activists at a meeting in L.A.[2]
Webb’s story had traced how cocaine was shipped into San Francisco and distributed in L.A. after Blandón and Meneses sold it to a street dealer from South Central named “Freeway” Ricky Ross.
Through this connection, “Freeway Rick” became a crack kingpin, using his contacts with L.A.’s Crips and Blood street gangs to help distribute crack to many other cities across the country.
Webb had first heard about the story after receiving a tip from the girlfriend of a drug dealer against whom Blandón was testifying.
In his lead paragraph, Webb wrote that “a Bay Area drug ring had funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency” which was in league with “Uzi-toting ‘gangstas’ of Compton and South-Central L.A.”
The thrust of Webb’s research was confirmed in 1998 when a CIA inspector general’s report acknowledged that the CIA had worked with suspected drug runners while supporting the Contras in Nicaragua.[3]
The corruption Webb exposed led all the way to the White House and President Reagan via his aide, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who was coordinating, under Reagan’s orders, the illegal supplying to the Contras of weapons that were purchased with profits from the cocaine being smuggled into the U.S. and distributed around the country by criminals in league with the CIA.
Because of the far-reaching implications, Webb became the target of what Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair called “one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist’s competence in living memory.”
The Mercury News’s top editor, Jerry Ceppos, ultimately buckled, and threw Webb to the wolves, deleting the website and penning a letter of apology to the readers for the “Dark Alliance” series.[5]
Webb was in turn banished to a small Mercury News bureau in Cupertino, California, south of San Francisco—125 miles from his home and family in Sacramento—and forced to write stories normally assigned to cub reporters. His career was effectively destroyed and he would never again get a job with a daily newspaper.
Webb stood by his research, nevertheless, and continued to expose corruption as a freelance journalist. His final publication unearthed the strategic use of video games by the Pentagon as a method of indoctrination and recruitment of teenage boys.
In a tribute to Webb, Robert Parry, the founder of Consortium News, wrote that Webb’s death marked “an exclamation point” on a “sorry era of journalism that began with the rise of Ronald Reagan and saw the gradual retreat—under right-wing fire—of what had once been Washington’s Watergate/Pentagon Papers watchdog press corps.”
Since these words were written, things have only gotten worse, with the media helping to advance the Russia Gate conspiracy theory while promoting scurrilous allegations against Russia that have helped mobilize public support for the war in Ukraine.
All the more reason to honor Webb and the uncompromising journalistic integrity that he stood for.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). He can be reached at: [email protected].
Notes
Webb’s friends said that there is no way he would have taken his own life: He loved life and loved his kids. His cause of death was changed to “single gunshot wound” when people began to question how or why a man would shoot himself in the face twice. This represented a concentrated effort to cover up the nature of Webb’s death. After Webb died, he was immediately cremated thereby destroying forensic evidence of the gunshot wounds.
Webb’s book was endorsed by Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) who said that“the time I spent investigating the allegations of the Dark Alliance series led me to the undeniable conclusion that the CIA, DEA, DIA and FBI knew about drug trafficking in South Central Los Angeles. They were either part of the trafficking or turned a blind eye to it, in an effort to fund the contra war. . . . This book is the final chapter on this sordid tale and brings to light one of the worst official abuses in our nation’s history.”
Associated Press journalists Robert Parry and Brian Barger had earlier reported that Contra groups had “engaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua.”
Alexander Cockburn wrote at CounterPunch that “squadrons of hacks, some of them with career-long ties to the CIA, sprayed thousands of words of vitriol over Webb and his paper, the San Jose Mercury News, for besmirching the Agency’s fine name by charging it with complicity in the importing of cocaine into the U.S.” NBC’s Andrea Mitchell characteristically branded Webb’s story as a “conspiracy theory.”
Ceppos went on to receive an award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his “superior ethical conduct” in handling the aftermath of the series and, in 1999, was promoted to vice president for news at Knight-Ridder.
Featured image: Gary Webb with his exposé about the CIA and crack. [Source: educateinspirechange.org]
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Nov. 27, 2023 – Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Approves CSL and Arcturus Therapeutics’ ARCT-154, the first Self-Amplifying mRNA vaccine approved for COVID in adults
“historic approval of the world’s first Self-Amplifying messenger RNA (sa-mRNA) COVID-19 Vaccine”
CSL and Arcturus Therapeutics announced Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) granted approval for ARCT-154, a self-amplifying mRNA (sa-mRNA) COVID-19 vaccine for initial vaccination and booster for adults 18 years and older.
“Self-amplifying mRNA technology has the potential to be an enduring vaccine option,” said Nobel laureate Dr. Drew Weissman,”I look forward to seeing this next generation mRNA technology protect many from COVID-19 and possibly other harmful infectious diseases.”
The approval is based on positive clinical data from several ARCT-154 studies, including an ongoing 16,000 subject efficacy study performed in Vietnam as well as a Phase 3 COVID-19 booster trial, which achieved higher immunogenicity results and a favorable safety profile compared to a standard mRNA COVID-19 vaccine comparator. Initial study results have been published in MedRxiv and are expected to be published in a peer-reviewed journal by the end of the year.
CSL’s vaccine business, CSL Seqirus, one of the largest influenza vaccine providers in the world, partnered exclusively with Meiji Seika Pharma for distribution of the sa-mRNA COVID vaccine, ARCT 154, in Japan.
“We are proud of the role that Arcturus has played in this collaboration to develop and validate the first approved sa-mRNA product in the world,” said Joseph Payne, Chief Executive Officer of Arcturus Therapeutics (San Diego, CA)
What Are Self-amplifying mRNA Vaccines?
“Replicons encode their own replication machinery to boost their copy numbers directly after administration in target cells”
“Replicon RNA additionally encodes viral replicase genes. These genes allow the rapid amplification of the mRNA. The self-amplifying viral genes originated from viruses, for example, alphaviruses and flaviviruses”
VACCINE: “ARCT-154 consists of a replicon based upon Venezuela equine encephalitis virus in which RNA coding for the virus structural proteins has been replaced with RNA coding for the full-length spike (S) glycoprotein of the SARS-CoV-2 D614G virus, an early variant of the ancestral strain containing a single point mutation, encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles. 100 µg active ingredient, stored in vials at -20°C or lower, was dissolved in 10 mL sterile saline immediately before use and 0.5 mL doses containing 5 µg were administered by intramuscular injection in the deltoid.”
“allows host cells to make copies of the vaccine mRNA, increasing the amount of protein produced with lower doses of administered mRNA”
“accelerated approval” = we initiated the present accelerated, integrated phase 1/2/3a/3b study, designed following EMA, FDA and WHO guidance, to evaluate the safety, reactogenicity, immunogenicity, and efficacy of ARCT-154.
We present the first study results up to three months after the first vaccination of human volunteers with this novel vaccine
90% had at least one adverse event after 1st dose (most mild)
“overall systemic AEs and local reactions were less frequent in recipients of ARCT-154 than licensed mRNA vaccines”
“A parallel study in Japan has shown that in adults fully immunized with mRNA vaccines, mainly BNT162b2, as primary vaccine, the immune response to a booster dose of ARCT-154 was superior to that of a booster dose of BNT162b2 when measured as neutralizing antibodies”
“ARCT-154 is most likely to be used as a booster dose, rather than for primary immunization, to enhance and broaden the level of immunity against circulating variants”
ARCT-021 was generally well tolerated up to the 7.5 μg dose.
The 10 μg dose was associated with more local and systemic solicited AE, including grade 3 severity
There appeared to be a dose-related trend for ≥grade 2 lymphopenia with 0%, 25%, 26.5%, 30.0%, and 40.0% of participants affected at the 1.0, 3.0, 5.0, 7.5, and 10 μg dose levels, respectively. Onset of lymphopenia occurred within 24 h after injection and resolved uneventfully, generally within a day.
“Once administered, the expression of these molecules can last for a longer period.” Therefore, companies can expect to save costs by manufacturing lower volumes, while also reducing the dose burden for patients. Lower doses could also translate to fewer potential side effects.
The production of RNA vaccine candidates is fast and an influenza vaccine candidate was reported to have been produced in only 8 days [8].
“there is no risk of mRNA integrating into the host genome [9]. mRNA is non-infectious and only transiently present in cells due to its degradation by host cell RNases”
No safety studies or biodistribution studies available for the Arcturus LNPs.
sa-mRNA is much larger (due to the additional replication machinery sequences) up to 3 times larger.
“which leads to challenges during production, such as increased product-related impurities during synthesis and lower binding capacities in chromatography steps due to its larger size.”
any faulty sa-mRNA once injected, will be amplified in the cell, leading to higher concentrations of faulty proteins.
most saRNA vaccines are based on the genome of the positive-sensed alphaviruses Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV), Sindbis virus (SINV), or Semliki Forest virus (SFV)(shown below)
For the construction of saRNA vaccines, the alphavirus structural proteins are replaced by the antigen gene (spike protein for COVID-19 Vaccines)
no indication of how much “amplified mRNA” you’re producing
no indication of how much spike protein you’re producing
The viral replicase first uses the positive sense genome as template to synthesize complementary negative sense RNA which subsequently serves as template for the synthesis of genomic and subgenomic plus-strand RNA.
The subgenomic RNA is produced in excess of the viral genome [24].
This process leads to high and sustained levels of antigen expression relative to conventional mRNA.
RNA self-amplification in transfected cells also leads to cellular exhaustion, immune stimulation through dsRNA intermediates and a host cell antiviral response leading to apoptosis.
In many ways, this process mimics a viral infection and leads to enhance antigen-specific B and T cell responses [75,88]
“it remains necessary to elucidate how long RNA amplification and antigen expression continues [70].
After administration of a luciferase saRNA, expression returned to baseline levels after one month [113].
Moreover, in theory, if the saRNA expresses budding-competent viral glycoproteins, it might be released in vesicles, leading to transfer of the saRNA to additional cells [114]. This should be taken into consideration for the safety evaluation of saRNA vaccines.
“saRNAs and taRNAs are produced like mRNAs from a DNA template by in vitro transcription and the addition of a cap structure.”
“several approaches to circumvent innate immune activation can be applied; however, for sa/taRNA vaccines, nucleoside modifications will be lost during the amplification step and will be of less benefit”
In contrast to mRNA vaccines, the intracellular RNA amplification results in dsRNA and thus a stronger activation of innate immune responses. RNA can be recognized by multiple pattern-recognition receptors including TLR3, TLR7, etc.
The resulting signaling cascades lead to the production of type I interferons (IFN) and pro-inflammatory cytokines [24].
Although the innate response has an adjuvant effect which can promote the specific immune response, it can also induce RNA degradation and thereby reduce antigen expression [132].
Strategies to reduce the IFN activation have been described for saRNA vaccines
Pfizer has admitted that its product sheds resulting in “environmental exposure” through inhalation or skin contact.
But if you’re exposed to a small quantity of Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine, via LNP/mRNA or exosome/mRNA, it will not vaccinate you.
Your immune system destroys it.
But what if you’re exposed to shedding of a SELF-AMPLIFYING mRNA?
Then theoretically, that mRNA could make unknown quantity of copies of itself in your body for an entire month, and that might be just long enough to cause permanent internal damage.
This risk has not been studied.
Summary
Japan has approved the world’s first COVID-19 self-amplifying sa-mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine.
Here are some of the problems with this technology:
lower mRNA dose but higher amounts of spike protein and same side effect profile as Pfizer mRNA. The benefit? Lower production costs for big pharma.
Arcturus uses its own Lipid Nanoparticles (LNPs), similar to Pfizer’s – but there are no biodistribution or safety studies available.
These LNPs will still deliver foreign pseudouridine modified sa-mRNA all over the body, across the blood-brain barrier and placenta barrier
turns your body into a spike sa-mRNA & spike protein producing factory, instead of just spike protein factory
You still also get DNA plasmid contamination
sa-mRNA is 3 times as long as Pfizer mRNA (due to extra code for its own replication machinery), which means higher risk of impurities during manufacturing
DNA contamination could be even more severe since purification will be even more difficult
uses genome of the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) for replication machinery
increased risk of getting faulty sa-mRNA sequences which will then be amplified in your body, produce mutant proteins with unknown consequences.
sa-mRNA is amplified inside cells to unknown quantities for up to a month (that’s because the original sa-mRNA is pseudouridine modified but the copies made inside your cells are not)
fidelity of the sa-mRNA amplification is unknown and untested
you produce unknown quantities of spike protein
you produce unknown quantities of mutated spike proteins and unknown non-spike proteins
Japanese study by Oda shows same side effect profile as Pfizer COVID-19 boosters (this is a bad sign)
they can produce RNA vaccine candidates rapidly, and an influenza vaccine candidate was reported to have been produced in only 8 days (also a bad sign)
studies claim there is no risk of mRNA integrating into host genome with no evidence to back that up
creates dsRNA intermediates which stimulate an immune response, the effects of which (and side effects) are not fully understood.
SHEDDING becomes much more dangerous with a self-amplifying mRNA.
Someone who is shed on may start producing unknown quantities of sa-mRNA for a period of around a month which could cause permanent damage.
Finally, if an entire sa-mRNA is integrated into the genome, then you will be amplifying spike mRNA (and producing spike protein) indefinitely.
No long term safety studies done.
This self-amplifying mRNA technology sounds like an even bigger disaster than what we’ve experienced with Pfizer & Moderna COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines.
Not interested.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
***
This New Year weekend, 2024, Kari Polanyi Levitt’s who celebrated here 100th birthday in June of last year is now in her one hundred and first year.
While Kari’s health is fragile, she remains firm in her incisive understanding and analysis of world events, committed to national sovereignty and fundamental human rights.
She constitutes a powerful voice in the understanding and analysis of US hegemony and the global political economy.
Her first book published in 1970 entitled, Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada, predicted with foresight more than half a century ago, what is happening today.
“First published in 1970, Silent Surrender helped educate a generation of students about Canadian political economy. Kari Polanyi Levitt details the historical background of foreign investments in Canada, their acceleration since World War II, and the nature of intrusions by multinational corporations into a sovereign state”.
More than 50 years later, this was her message to Canadians:
“Well, yes, I think those of us who were concerned about the way in which Canadian business was selling themselves out to American multinationals, we were concerned that it would lead to a loss of sovereignty.
“And I think it has. It has happened. We have less sovereignty than we had some time ago.” (Kari Polanyi Levitt, June 30, 2021)
Long Live Kari Polanyi Levitt
*
This interview with Prof. Andrew Fischer was first published in December 2018.
***
Kari Polanyi Levitt is Emeritus Professor of Economics from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She was born in Vienna in 1923 to the well-known intellectual Karl Polanyi, and grew up there during the famous years of Red Vienna. She was educated in England before and during World War II, obtaining her BSc in Economics and the Farr Medal in Statistics from the London School of Economics in 1947. Following 10 years of engagement in trade union research in Toronto, she obtained her MA in Economics from the University of Toronto in 1959 and an appointment in the Department of Economics at McGill University in 1961, where her particular teaching interests were in Techniques of Development Planning and Development Economics. She has inspired generations of students with the vision she has continued to advance for six decades.
Kari has been involved in the field of development economics since its origins, as a student of several of the pioneers of the field and later as one of its pioneers herself, within the more radical tangents of structuralist development economics. Her important contributions to the field include her groundbreaking work with Lloyd Best in the late 1960s on developing the Plantation Economy paradigm, republished as Essays on the Theory of Plantation Economy (Best and Polanyi Levitt, 2009) and her seminal book, Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada (Polanyi Levitt, 1970), which galvanized the political Left in Canada, her adopted country.
She has maintained a continuous relationship with the University of the West Indies (UWI) since her first contact there in 1960, including collaboration with Alister McIntyre and Lloyd Best. She has also served as Visiting Professor at UWI on several occasions and was appointed the first George Beckford Professor of Caribbean Political Economy from 1995 to 1997, where she compiled The George Beckford Papers (Beckford and Polanyi Levitt, 2000). A collection of her writings on Caribbean issues was published as Reclaiming Development: Independent Thought and Caribbean Community (2005), and a collection of her writings on her father and on contemporary economic development as From the Great Transformation to the Great Financialization (2013).
Kari is a founding member of the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (CASID), which has awarded an annual essay prize in her honour since 2000. Together with Mel Watkins, she was the first recipient of the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize from the Progressive Economics Forum of Canada in 2008 and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies in the same year. She is the Honorary President of the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy, established in 1988 and based at Concordia University in Montreal. She was also inducted into the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2004 as an honorary member.
*
Andrew Fischer (AF): How did you get into development economics? As a young student during the war years, were you initially interested in development economics?
Kari Polanyi Levitt (KPL): No. During the war, the London School of Economics campus was relocated to Cambridge. All of the senior LSE staff were in London running the war effort — Lionel Robins, Professor Paich, Professor R.G.D. Allen — they were not in Cambridge. So we had enemy aliens and colonials as lecturers. The enemy aliens were people like Hayek and Mannheim, and Nicky Kaldor of course, Europeans with heavy accents. They had British passports, but they were not really British, so they were not in the inner circles of the Establishment running the war. Arthur Lewis was actually the only colonial. He was the first black person ever to be employed by London University. So the School was fascinating; it was really wonderful for us as students. We had the freedom of the city of Cambridge: we could live anywhere we wanted, and we could attend Cambridge University lectures; I could listen to Joan Robinson, Maurice Dobbs … Keynes was not there — he was in London running the war, so I never heard Keynes lecture.
Arthur Lewis gave the introductory lectures on economics at LSE. He drew this graph showing the marginal product of labour and the wage rate. He showed employment would be increased by reducing the wage rate. I gathered up all of my courage and decided to talk to him after the lecture. I said, ‘Sir, excuse me, but I don’t believe that. Before the war, we had 3 million unemployed and they couldn’t get employment at any wage’. So he asked my name and he said, ‘Miss Polanyi, I assume that you have come here to study the science of economics. When you have mastered it, you may return and we will discuss the matter’. [Kari laughs.] You know, he had quite a high pitched voice, he was quite thin at that time, and he looked hungry. Later he became quite portly.
In the second year he gave a class that made an important impression on me. He was obviously writing a textbook and he was giving us the chapters as he was writing it. It was an economic survey from 1919–39, and that is where I first learned about the declining terms of trade of the countries producing agricultural products, Latin America and the Caribbean. But he also presented an account of Hitler’s Germany — and of Russia, England, and the colonies.
But I myself was not at all interested in developing countries, or colonies. I was going to be a labour economist. I wanted to service the labour movement. I worked during two summer vacations in factories and during another summer we made a famous survey on the nutritional state of the British working population, for the Ministry of Food. This survey was done over several years. The result, if nutrition is measured by weight according to height, was that nutrition improved during the war. I also used to offer my help to the Labour Research Department, an independent labour research unit. When I was called up for National Service, I got my first real job, with the Amalgamated Engineering Unit in the research department, on recommendation from the Labour Research Department.
When the war was over, I went back to the LSE to finish my undergraduate degree. In 1947, I found myself in Canada. Joe [Levitt], my fiancé, had arranged for me to enrol in the Master’s programme at the University of Toronto and to be a teaching assistant. I was very disappointed with the University of Toronto. I found it a dull and depressing place, although I enjoyed teaching a course on English economic history.
I left the university and presented myself at a factory called Acme Screw and Gear Company in Toronto. Of course I lied about my qualifications, never told them I had been to university or anything, and I got a job there. I was there for a year and thoroughly enjoyed the life. So, okay, I am now in the labour movement … but when colleagues discovered I was ‘wasting my time’ in a factory, they offered me employment with the United Electrical Union Labour Research Department. Later I worked for the Mine, Mills and Smelter Workers Union, as a journalist. There I had to produce a 16-page tabloid every month. I enjoyed the work. Eventually I decided I would enrol in graduate studies at the University of Toronto and that is when I became interested in development economics.
AF: How did you become interested?
KPL: The first time I came across that literature was in the 1950s. Because I had a strong mathematics background, I became interested in making input-output tables for inter-industry modelling. Professor Keirstead at the University of Toronto came from the Maritimes [in Canada] and had connections with Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, and he got me jobs in the summer working for them. I did one study for them on migration. Then I got interested in doing work for them on regional economic planning, for the so-called underdeveloped provinces of Canada, the maritime region — regional underdevelopment. That got me interested in starting to do regional input-output tables and I developed that when I came to McGill [in Montreal]. So, I came to development economics also through my interest in planning and applying that to regional economic underdevelopment.
AF: Was that around the time that you first started going to Jamaica?
KPL: I started at McGill in 1961, right after Jamaica. Professor Keirstead was a friend of Arthur Lewis. He spent a sabbatical in Jamaica with his wife and undertook to do some studies for what was then the Federal Government of the West Indies. So he sent for a student, which ended up being me. I arrived in Jamaica in 1960. I arrived right in the middle of the Federal Government of the West Indies: it started in 1958 and collapsed in 1962.
Alistair McIntyre was teaching in Jamaica at that time. The campus of the University of West Indies [UWI] was dominated by expatriate British. In economics, Alistair McIntyre was one of the few West Indians and Lloyd Best had just been hired, as a junior fellow, at the Institute of Social Economic Research. He was supposed to be making estimates of national income for the small islands, but that did not match his interests, and being Mr Best, he decided he would follow his interests. I do not blame him, but his interest was in West Indian history.
AF: So then you started working with him around that time?
KPL: Well, that is when I met him … but I was interested in planning techniques. I knew more about techniques than about the substance, of course. So we thought we would do something together. He had gone to Guyana and then, when he came back in 1964, we started what became the Plantation Model.
At McGill, I couldn’t teach development because another professor was teaching that, so I taught a course in planning techniques. I managed to supply Statistics Canada with quite a few students. McIntyre, in particular, kept sending me students, to supervise their graduate work at McGill.
AF: You were also writing Silent Surrender during that time?
KPL: I was approached by Charles Taylor,[1] who was a colleague, to write a position paper for the NDP [New Democratic Party]2 on the issue of foreign ownership. We are talking about the early 1960s. Charles Taylor was a possible candidate for the leadership of the NDP and his candidature was being pushed by David Lewis, who was the leader of the party. (David Lewis was the father of Stephen Lewis and grandfather of Avy Lewis, who is married to Naomi Klein.) That brought me to an NDP convention. The NDP was not interested in getting involved with anything that was too radical sounding — the NDP was quite conservative.
I said, yes, I was interested because the majority opinion in the NDP was that foreign ownership was not a problem. If it was good for economic growth then whatever was done with the economic growth was another issue. The first thing I did was to distinguish between portfolio and direct investment. The argument had been simply about foreign investment, but we got onto this thing about the effect of the branch plant, and of the sale of so many Canadian companies to American companies. This had a dynamic effect because I was then asked to meet, for a whole weekend, with the national executive of the NDP. The book Silent Surrender really came out of that.
But then when I met Lloyd, I became interested in the plantation economy. There was a relationship, in a sense, between Canada, as a country that was increasingly dominated by the whole subsidiaries and branch plants of foreign companies, and the Caribbean, which was a typical case of islands involved in multinational mining and extractive activity in oil and bauxite. We wrote some interesting things together. It was Lloyd who persuaded me to publish what I had by 1968, in the New World Quarterly,[3] under the title of ‘Economic Dependence and Political Disintegration: The Case of Canada’. And that began a kind of new existence. It was reprinted by Cy Gonick and at the time it became a minor sensation in Canada, until I was approached by Macmillan of Canada.
Then I got help, both from the NDP but particularly from Eric Keirens. Eric was a remarkable fellow, very independent minded. He was a capitalist, he was a former president of the Montreal stock exchange, and at McGill he was a professor of commerce. He became a close friend and he gave me a lot of good material for Silent Surrender because he really believed in the independence of Canada. He did not like the Americans buying up all of these companies, or the Canadians who were sending out everything to the Americans. Eventually, I had a book. Silent Surrender was finished in 1969, published in 1970. The publisher sent a copy to be evaluated by an economist at University of Toronto, who rejected it; he said this was political and not economics, it was ideological, it was whatever. But the publisher liked it and so the publisher asked if I knew someone else who I could send it to, and I said, send it to Mel Watkins. So they sent it to Mel and the rest is history. He just loved it and wrote the introduction for it.
Meanwhile, Lloyd had been at McGill from 1966 to 1968. We got some money from UNIDO for a project called ‘Export-propelled growth and industrialization in the Caribbean’. He left to go back home in 1968 and in 1969 there was a possibility I could go to Trinidad to continue work with him on the completion of this plantation economy model. Actually, CIDA [the Canadian International Development Agency, which was going to fund her] tried to block me, by getting UWI to say that they no longer wanted someone working in social sciences. However, by that time, my good friend William Demas, who had been long-time economic advisor to Dr William [Eric William, the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago and author of Capitalism and Slavery (1944)], knowing that I had wanted to come to Trinidad and was preparing to do so, said, well, would you consider coming to develop the data base for the next 5-year plan? So, I agreed. For that he got support from the IMF. I finally went there in 1969 with money from the IMF, technical assistance. The IMF didn’t have any problem with me — all of the problems I had originated in Ottawa. I guess they went back to the issues of Sir George Williams,[4] the black writers’ conference, and a whole lot of West Indian politics here in Montreal.
From 1969 to 1973 I was going back and forth and we really did amazing work. We worked with a team of young graduates from UWI and with statisticians from the Central Statistical Office. We developed a very innovative Trinidad and Tobago system of national accounts, based on what was then the new UN system of national accounts, but modified to make it conform to the structure of a petroleum economy. In 1973 that was terminated abruptly, because of the political situation there.
AF: Can you elaborate on the Plantation Economy?
KPL: I think it is important because most of my work has been done with regard to the Caribbean or with regard to world history. The Caribbean has been so important in terms of what we call the international framework, within which the plantation economy existed and continues to exist. There are four aspects of the world, of the external environment, in which the plantations were organized. To my mind, the four points continue to be very useful for understanding the structure of international trade and investment, and the shifting political spheres of influence.
The four aspects are: the division of the world by the Pope between Spain and Portugal, one east, one west; the navigation acts, the lines of communication; of course, the division of labour between primary commodities and manufactures; and finally the importance of what we call the metropolitan exchange standard. The fourth in particular remains important to this day, with the whole debate about the continuing importance of the American dollar as reserve currency in spite of the relative decline of the United States.
You know, it was a dramatic way of emphasizing that what we have in the English-speaking Caribbean — well, in all of the islands, even in the small ones — does not approximate an economy as described in textbooks of economics. The representative firm, as [Alfred] Marshall called it, is not the family-owned enterprise, but the subsidiary of a foreign company with extractive activity. We had in mind the petroleum industry of Trinidad, the bauxite of Jamaica, for example. So then, in looking at this and the historical path, it led to the plantation, which was set up by foreign capital with the express purpose of utilizing African labour to produce a commodity of high value for international markets. Then we explored the internal organizations of the plantations, the relation between planter and merchant. That is, the relationship between the organization of the production and the organization of the distribution, the finance, the access to markets, etc. — what in Marxist language would be the sphere of circulation, and the predominance of the sphere of circulation over the process of production.
AF: Which is the inverse of the basic Marxist understanding of capitalist development.
KPL: It is also the inverse of economics in general, because very much of classical economics is about the real economy. In fact, Keynes’s principal quarrel with what he called the classics was because they ignored money. So they ignored the sphere of circulation.
AF: Much of modern economics continues to ignore money in that sense.
KPL: Indeed. I mean, this nonsense about the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics is an effort to ignore money. Of course, people have to be confronted with the fact that, in historic terms, the great divide — between North and South, or between West and East, or however you wish to put it — really began with the industrial revolution in Britain and did not begin to take off until the early 19th century. However, this was not only due to huge spurts of growth in Europe and its offshoots, as [Angus] Maddison calls them, being the United States, Canada, Australia. It was also due to the negative reduction in growth in India, and particularly in China in the 19th century, which the Chinese now regard as their great humiliation.
Moreover, the three centuries that preceded the industrial revolution were enormously important because the really existing capitalism happened in the relatively small nations on the Atlantic periphery of the Eurasian continent: Spain, Portugal, France, The Netherlands and England. It did not happen in the more ancient civilization of China, or of India, or of the whole Hellenic Mediterranean region. It’s a big historical question. It could have, but it did not happen in the great empires. It happened in these rather small and rather recent nation states. This really existing capitalism from Western Europe came together with the voyages of discovery, the conquest of the Americas. If we consider these three centuries, 1500 to 1800, that mercantilist era was characterized by what I call commerce and conquest, trade and war. The war was almost entirely maritime. Historians talk about perpetual trade and war in the Caribbean.
What happened with the Renaissance — with the voyages of Vasco da Gama and then Columbus — is that these European states extended their territory to embrace all of the Americas. If Western Europe had not been able to expand to embrace all of the Americas, they would not have been the power that they became. An interesting example is The Netherlands. The Dutch were so successful, they built the first great commercial empire that went from the Baltic to the spice islands of Indonesia, and they established Amsterdam as the premier financial centre of Europe, but with the small population they had, they couldn’t carry it any further.
Trade and war were there in the traditions of these countries of Western Europe that became the predominant metropolitan powers, from the beginning. From the beginning, there was expansion and conquest. And so, the relationship of trade and warfare, commerce and conquest, and the element of centres and peripheries, were all there from the get-go in the Western capitalist countries, before industrial capitalism. One could talk not about two globalizations but about three, to think of the expansion from the beginning.
It then continued with the better-known free trade imperialism, and the empires, in the latter part of the 19th century, the conquest of Africa and Asia, etc. As our friend Eric Hobsbawm writes, quite correctly, without the previous mercantile colonial system, the revolution in the spinning industry in Britain, British textiles, would not have had markets to sell their rather poor cotton products. They could be sold only in the colonial trade, they could not be sold otherwise. So the old mercantilist order that was dissolved somewhat with the coming of free trade in England and in Europe had served the purpose of providing the original markets, including India of course, where British cotton goods were sold by the East India company, and Britain put enormous tariffs against the importation of Indian cotton — a well-known story.
AF: And you derived these insights from your work on the Plantation Economy?
KPL: I think there is also something to be learnt from the structure of the early chartered companies, in terms of what I call the symbiotic relationship between the political authority, the monarch, and the merchant in the accumulation of territory and wealth, and the way the chartered companies were made into almost autonomous entities. The sovereign granted monopoly rights to merchant companies to establish exclusivist relations with foreign rulers in Asia and Africa. They were given the power to build ports and forts, dispense justice, and so forth. I make the comparison with the multinational corporations, which I call the new mercantilism.
That line of thinking leads us to another important similarity, and that is the emphasis on the importance of who controls communication. In the work that we did on the Plantation Economy, the merchant had superior power over the planter. The chartered companies were large and powerful business enterprises compared with the multitude of producers whose access to metropolitan markets they controlled. The merchant had control of the market overseas, in the metropole, the source of much of the capital, the actual control over the means of transportation. The producers — the planters — were in a subsidiary position. The merchant sold the goods and also supplied the inputs and could take his cut.
Today, with the information revolution, we are seeing enormous structures of power accrue to those who control channels of communication. But even before we had the phenomenon of the Amazons, the Googles, etc., in the production chains, which we are very familiar with, it was very very clear that the control and the profit accrue principally to the platform that organizes the chain. The producers, the capitalists as much as the workers who produce the various inputs that are assembled, etc., are in a subordinate position to those who are controlling this whole process. The deindustrialization that has happened in the Western countries has created big problems but it has not impoverished these countries in terms of GDP (for lack of a better measure). They have gained in various kinds of fees and profits and interest, and other kinds of incomes, and have moved towards the top of the income distribution. We know about the unfavourable distribution. But the control of channels of communication, what used to be the navigation acts in the mercantilist system, is something that has carried right through to the present: communication gives control. Information technology today has been greeted positively, obviously with some good reason, but it has some very big issues regarding power.
Hence, from the very origins of European hegemony, we see the predominance of metropolitan finance over production in the peripheries, in contrast with the predominance of production over finance in the centre. Viewed from the periphery, merchants remained central. They distributed and sold the products of the emerging English industrial system in colonial markets, and the sugar and other commodities of the slave plantations in international markets. Merchants controlled the channels of international commerce, including finance, insurance and shipping.
These aspects supported the establishment of European hegemony throughout these centuries. The evolution of capitalism needs to be understood in light of these 300 years of mercantilist conquest and unequal trade, which transformed the peripheries and integrated them into the production networks of the centre in various differentiated ways before the advent of industrial capitalism. There was no radical break between mercantilism and English capitalism from the perspective of the periphery. US capitalism also shows a similar continuity, although the major innovation of US corporations was to merge production with distribution.
AF: So the Plantation Economy helped you understand economic development more generally?
KPL: Yes, but you see, the Plantation Economy was also something special, in a sense unique to the Caribbean. Of course, plantations have been set up in other countries. Interestingly, a colleague of mine has been doing research on the fact that when the planters were compensated for the loss of their slaves, at the time of emancipation, many of them, with connections within the British empire, established plantations in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and so forth. But those were not based on slave labour.
When we developed this idea, in the 1960s, those were very different times, they were times of radical social political movements. We had in Trinidad, in 1970, what was called a black power revolution, an uprising. So the political idea that in some ways not very much has changed since the days of the slave plantation was something that people could sense.
AF: You have argued that modern capitalism is returning to its mercantilist origins and you have drawn parallels to the Plantation Economy. Can you explain?
KPL: This is what some people have called extractive imperialism. In my book Silent Surrender, there is a chapter called ‘From the Old Mercantilism to the New’. In the old mercantilism, again, the representative firm was a joint stock corporation, the chartered companies; they received their monopolies from the sovereign; there were many shareholders; they were adventurers, etc. I saw similarities with the gigantic multinational corporations, also similarities in the sense that the centre, the head office, is in control of a variety of locations, and again how control over communication is so central to the organization of both of the old chartered companies and the modern multinational corporations.
AF: And you were writing this already in the late 1960s …
KPL: Yes. And it is still relevant today — more so than ever I think. I was working on Silent Surrender, which was on the effects of the multinational corporations on host countries in the developed world, the US–Canada relationship, at the same time as I was working on plantation economies with Lloyd Best, so I have always seen the connections. People have found it strange that I would see any similarities between American companies buying up Canadian industries and what is going on in the islands of the Caribbean.
And we are now seeing a certain regression of capitalism to these mercantilist origins in the capitalist heartlands in the US, the UK and even in continental Europe. This regression is commonly referred to as ‘financialization’, meaning the growing dominance of finance and commerce over production. This is best seen in terms of the concentration of power in multinational corporations, which increasingly do not directly produce anything but, instead, organize production and distribution. Hence, production has become increasingly subservient and subordinated to commerce through subcontracting and outsourcing in various ways, and through proprietary arrangements and monopsonistic structures of buyers vis-à-vis producers. This is a very different reality from that of industrial capitalism in its heyday and from the descriptions of firms in typical microeconomics textbooks. It can be seen as a certain type of degeneration of capitalism in comparison to the age when industrial capitalism was based on innovation in production rather than innovation in financial and proprietary arrangements, which is why we call it a predatory form of capitalism.
However, the mercantilist origins of this predatory capitalism are best viewed from the peripheries. This is in contrast to the common approach that views such predatory capitalism as somehow a perversion from the idealized classical forms of capitalism that emerged in Europe on the basis of the primacy of productive innovation over commerce. The early mercantilist origin of capitalism in the peripheries sheds light on the continuity of commerce over production, especially but not only in these peripheries, from slavery to the emergence of transnational corporations as a form of ‘new mercantilism’ controlling commerce in the peripheries. At both ends of the historical spectrum, the imbalance of power relations in international trade is rooted in this imbalance of commerce over production, whereby production in peripheries is subservient to commerce controlled by mercantilist or new mercantilist corporations. It is for this reason that Marxist models of capitalists exploiting labour are not very appropriate for understanding the economic dependency and exploitation of countries that are incorporated as peripheries into the international capitalist system.
Rather, it is quite tenable to suggest that the future of the capitalist centres can be seen in the history of the peripheries. For instance, those of us working on the Caribbean used to think that the short view was a peculiarity of the Plantation Economy, whereas now a similar short view has become generalized to the economies of the centres, such as in the US and the UK. This short view is the view of commerce: when prospects look good for your export crop, you borrow and expand; when times turn bad, you have no resources to diversify, so you stay in the same staple crop and you borrow to try to maintain your standard of living; when borrowing is no longer possible, you mortgage your land; when that is no longer possible, you consume capital. In the days of slavery, consuming capital meant overworking and starving your slaves. In contemporary times, it means laying off public servants and reducing public expenditures on education and health, which is equivalent to consuming the human capital of a population.
AF: If I recall correctly, you have said that the first application of scientific methods of organizing labour was on the slave plantations. Do you think this influenced Adam Smith?
KPL: What I said is that a plantation with 3,000 slaves implied an industrial organization that makes Adam Smith’s pin factory look miniscule in terms of the division of labour. It was mind blowing, when I was taken in Jamaica, somewhere not too far from Antigua Bay, to the Good Hope Plantation, which had 3,000 slaves. I mean, how do you organize something like that? You are going to have people who will be rebellious, run away to the hills, and the organization and the accounting, and all the different aspects of that operation … We are talking about the late 18th century, and what you had in Britain at the time was largely artisanal industry, nothing was organized on a big scale. Possibly on a physical scale, such as the sheep pasture, but not in terms of labour.
What I said, which my colleague Lloyd Best did not like to hear, did not agree with, is that I thought that the production of sugar on slave plantations was in every sense a capitalist operation, organized with European capital, with the exception of the labour regime, which was not wage labour but slave labour. But the labour power embodied in these human machines was valued, the amount of work that could be extracted from them, according to their size and age and health, was estimated, and so on. So it seems to me to be obvious that this preceded the more scientific management of production in English agriculture.
Marxist definitions tend to define capitalism as private ownership of property and wage labour. But if you look at capitalism in terms of the production of something for the sheer purpose of selling it at a profit, then the plantations have major attributes of tropical agrarian-style capitalism. They also constituted the first major investment of capital in an overseas location for this purpose.
In the case of the English colonies, as I have noted, there are also remarkable similarities between these particular characteristics and the English agricultural revolution and the role played by English oligarchic landed classes, the same landed classes whose younger sons were sent to the colonies and became part of the planter classes. The plantocracy and the English landed oligarchy are largely the same families, the same people.
This long view highlights how the Caribbean slave plantations were, in many respects, at the genesis of capitalism and the plantations were entirely capitalist enterprises; the sole difference with the modern factory system lay in the fact that the labour was unfree. Indeed, the slave trade only derived its profitability from the profitability of the slave plantations. Sugar was the largest single import of Britain, constituting close to one-quarter of the value of all British imports in the 18th century. At the same time, the capitalist agriculture that was evolving in Britain was often developed by the same families that were involved in the Caribbean slave plantations. This synergy of mercantilism remains a hugely underemphasized, if not ignored, aspect in the Eurocentric debates on the origins of capitalism in Northwest Europe, which usually focus on internal causes such as agrarian transformations in the English countryside rather than the more global commercial origins of these transformations.
AF: How does this relate to a similar emphasis of production in early development economics?
KPL: The fact that really existing capitalism happened in the relatively small nations on the Atlantic periphery of the Eurasian continent accounts for the fact that GDP per capita in Western Europe — in all the statistics, the Maddison estimates — was significantly higher than in Eastern Europe, and remains so to this day. Now, what is Western Europe? It borders the Atlantic, it has special relationships with different areas of the world.
So, when we come to the [early] development economists and the importance of people like Gerschenkron, Rosenstein Rodan, they were living in regions of the world that were backward in relation to Western Europe. Gerschenkron was of course Russian (born in the Ukraine) and much of his work was done on the rise of Tsarist Russia.
AF: ‘Backward’ is not a very popular term these days … can you clarify?
KPL: Well, backward, absolutely, backward. Economically underdeveloped. Economically backward. At the time of the Russian revolution in 1917, this is a country hugely dominated by a peasantry, with some cities, with some industrial establishments, actually mostly with foreign capital, and some modern technology. This is part of the story of the Russian revolution and the Soviet Communist Party, which considered itself to be a vanguard party based on the working class, but the working class was extremely small, in relationship to a vast peasantry, and they came into conflict, of course. The whole history of the early decades of the Soviet revolution was really about conflicts between the peasantry and the prevailing regime that was based on urban and industrial regions.
Gerschenkron and others understood the problems of economic underdevelopment because they could understand it in terms of their own countries in relation to Western Europe. Thinkers like Arthur Lewis came from the colonies and so also had this perspective, but what is not so obvious and perhaps not so well understood is the relationship within Europe, of East Europe to the West. Europe is deeply divided in that way.
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Andrew M. Fischer ([email protected]) is Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, and member of the editorial board of Development and Change. His most recent book, Poverty as Ideology (Zed, 2018), was awarded the International Studies in Poverty Prize by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and by Zed Books. He received his BA and MA in Economics from McGill University in Canada, and his PhD in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. He has been involved in development studies or developing countries for over 30 years.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
I want to share some scenes from the last few months of my life, as my last letter to you of 2023. I will end this letter with a request for you to please, for the New Year, upgrade your subscription to “paying,” if you possibly can.
I don’t like to whine. I try never to show weakness, fatigue or fear in public. That is a point of pride. But it is also strategic, as the bad guys want to see us weak and fearful.
That said, I need to be honest with you about what my daily life can be like. This disclosure matters in our relationship as writer and readers in an intimate community, and I want you to know some of these truths, as we head into 2024.
Two months ago, I emerged from my hotel room in a Southeastern town, where I had flown to deliver a lecture. I was dressed, and ready to present, and mulling over my lecture notes. I was delivering a new speech, and that act in itself is demanding; it requires a high level of focus.
I was met at the end of the hallway, to my surprise, by two strange men. They introduced themselves as retired NYPD detectives, showed me their IDs, and said that they had been sent by the lecture venue to escort me to the location, as the venue had received a credible threat against the evening’s event.
I called Brian; he spoke to the men, and he let me know that it was OK for me to get into their car. In the back seat of the car, I checked that they were armed, and they confirmed that they were. They explained as calmly as possible that another speaker had received the threat, in response to his op ed about the Middle East in a national paper the day before. That speaker had subsequently called in sick to the event. I don’t blame the speaker; but at the same time, I realized with some dismay that therefore the person who had been targeted was not going to be at the venue — while instead I, alone, would be speaking, and that the threat was still active. This did not comfort me. I tried to stay calm as well though, at least outwardly.
We got to the hotel. The armed security agents escorted me, with my front and back protected, into the rear of the building. As in several famous stories that ended violently, we wove our way past the kitchen areas, past the behind-the-scenes staffers, past the workers leaning against the walls on break. We entered the lecture hall from the rear. The security agents showed me the podium; they showed me the exit door hidden by the curtain at the rear of the stage. They instructed me to get down behind the podium if there was a disturbance in the audience, and to try to reach the exit door if I could. Then they took their places at the back of the hall, to observe the crowd that filed in.
Usually Brian escorts me for my security. This time he couldn’t. As a result, in these circumstances, I was quite frightened.
Nonetheless I got up, gave my speech, and answered questions. I managed to deliver my message, which was about the annihilation of humanity as recorded in the Pfizer documents, which our WarRoom/DailyClout team of researchers has documented. My speech was also a message about fighting for liberty. I got through it all, and the crowd was supportive.
I was escorted at the end of the evening by the security agents, and once again taken into the hotel by the rear entrance. The agents walked me right to the door of my room. I was then alone and unguarded. Brian had taught me how to secure a hotel room door from within, and I did so. But I was not comfortable.
When it was all over, I was glad that I had remained a professional, and I felt proud that I delivered our message to that audience under those conditions. But I cannot say this was an easy night for me.
It took a toll.
But I kept telling the truth for you.
*
In Rochester, NY, later that Fall, I was on the podium with a range of distinguished speakers, including my extraordinary COO Amy Kelly, and a moderator, at Shannon Joy’s wonderful freedom event.
I was escorted that time by an active duty local detective, a highly competent woman. She showed me her firearm and assured me that she would be watching over me at all times. She did so.
Nonetheless, while we were onstage, a woman in the audience suddenly stood up. She started shouting at us, and made a fast beeline toward the stage. The excellent security team moved quickly to head her away from us. But the woman approached us faster than they could intercept her, til she was not five feet away from us, and she kept screaming obscenities and insults.
I did not know if she was armed — she was certainly unstable. I looked toward the podium to see if I could get behind it in time if needed.
She was ultimately escorted out by the security team.
I carried on, and we carried on, and it was a highly successful day.
And we kept on telling the truth to you.
*
Weekly, I will get threats. Brian has a second full-time job checking them out, evaluating their severity, and engaging in “counter-stalking”, his specialty, to keep me safe. Each time, though, if the threats are serious, I have to hear the threat and process the violence of someone’s bizarre imagination. I am already a survivor of violence; and this process, which is part of normal security best practices for a public figure, is very difficult and traumatic for me — each and every time.
And yet I press on and I keep writing for you.
*
I learned this year that the White House had targeted me personally with a “Be On the Lookout” alert to CDC, Twitter, Facebook, DHS and the Department of the Census. The latter, of course, has all of my personal information. I was vertiginous with shock — and fear — when I found this out, but I did not back down.
I escalated my efforts to tell you the truth.
*
Two weeks ago I was on a train. A creepy-looking woman, a national of a country that is at war with us, sat down across the aisle from me. I had that intuitive sense in relation to her that raised the hair on the back of my neck.
She asked if I had a phone charger. I lent her my charger, not thinking quickly enough or with enough caution. She tried to chat with me; I responded in monosyllables til she subsided.
After far too long, she returned my charger.
At the weekly security meeting with our high-level cybersecurity team, I confessed that this had happened, thinking that I was being ridiculously paranoid in even mentioning it. Our cybersecurity consultant asked at once, “Was it a standard white charger?” I said yes. He explained that now chargers can be produced — that looklike standard white ones — but that suck all of the data out of your phone; and he told me to get the charger to him to examine.
This really happened.
I was startled and horrified, and felt personally invaded, but I did not back down.
I kept telling you the truth.
*
We got bombarded with a hacking attempt. Our superb cybersecurity team caught it and ultimately protected us, but it took us all eight hours of work, on a day when we all had many other commitments, to address this effort to upend our digital structures. Among the alarming aspects of the attack was that someone had physically telephoned a vendor central to our digital life, and pretended to be me. Again, I was startled and appalled, especially when we learned that the attack had originated in St Petersburg, Russia.
But I pressed on in telling you the truth, and so did my heroic team.
*
Weekly, if not daily, I have to deal with incoming emails trying to trick or compromise me, in an effort to secure a public embarrassment for us, or legal trouble. The emails may purport to be from someone suffering from a vaccine-induced illness, asking for my medical advice. Of course each time I have to put in writing that I am not a medical doctor so cannot advise, because if I do not create that paper trail, I could get charged with practicing medicine without a license. Others who contact me try to trick us into running something of theirs with an error included it, so that, as once happened, Reuters and AP can immediately jump on the error, and try to create a global scandal. Some who contact me will try to trick me by substituting a real bio with a prank bio at the last minute, as Ken Klippenstein, a young investigative reporter whose work I had, at his boss’ request, consistently championed in the past, did to me during “lockdowns.”
We are now in a world that I do not recognize professionally, in which even reporters such as this one, with jobs at The Nation and The Intercept, lie to their colleagues — colleagues from whom they have sought and accepted professional support – when they are driven by corrupt allegiances. As a result of this kind of infantile harassment, we spend hours every day checking people’s bios.
We receive fake offers to advertise questionable or legally regulated products — offers designed to compromise us if we were to accept them. We spend hours researching the laws regarding various products.
People offer to send us tissue samples to which they do not have legal rights, from what they say are their dead children; we need to word our answers carefully and consult attorneys for the most minute exchange of this kind, so that we cannot be entangled in “lawfare.” This defensive communication with the outside world is literally constant, and is incredibly costly.
At the same time, at the same time, I try to write these essays for you — from the purest, most open place in my heart, and stay not-guarded and not-embittered.
It is very difficult to do both.
As a result of this constant, tiresome, treacherous and childish targeting, we (and I especially) have a full-time second job evading these cynical snares, even while trying to research, write and polish my own essays and reportage here for you; even while facing the rigors of writing and covering breaking news stories that legacy news and opinion sites no longer cover.
It is very hard for a writer to plumb the depth of her own soul, as good writing requires, let alone do the excellent reporting we do, under these conditions of continual harassment.
*
A woman who appears to be suffering from a detachment from reality, who used to be a distinguished intellectual, and whose extended family is funded by the vaccine industry, wrote a whole book attacking me. This book confronts me, with its perverse manipulation of an image of my own face on the cover, in every bookstore into which I walk. It contains passages that claim I said things — disturbing things – that I did not say. To my knowledge, I have never met or spoken to this woman. Her book has sections that meditate on the murder of “the doppelganger” — and it is I who am designated as her “doppelganger.” The New York Times ran an op ed including those passages. The Paper of Record also illustrated the piece with an image of an animal that appears to be a wolf, being strangled, and bleeding at the mouth.
*
It is one thing to fight the opposition. We know who the Forces of Darkness are now, and while it is difficult to carry on my creative work for you here under their constant harassment and efforts at intimidation, I can do that. I am a patriot, and I am now, willingly or not, a pretty seasoned warrior. I can fight the opposition til the end of my life.
But it is demoralizing to be targeted from within, and the freedom movement itself is going through a time now of fracturing, with bad behavior escalating in a few quarters; and with false suggestions hurled about by a few irresponsible people, including against me, and with random insults leveled; and with nasty, pointless sniping from some quarters at our tireless and often selfless efforts. If I were a member of the “deep state”, one recent baseless epithet, for example, I would not face threats every single week, I must assume.
It is hard to wake up to work long hours every day motivated by love and care not only for you and your families but also for those who are supposed to be on the right side of history with us, at a time when a few of our own compatriots are now behaving in ways so far below the high calling of our cause.
It is hard to face fire from two directions at once.
*
The targeting is only going to get more serious — as we continue to help to reveal and topple the evildoers — and sometimes I wonder if I should or can even continue. I was not trained to do this.
I am not a soldier. I wanted to be a professor. I trained for eight years to teach Victorian poetry.
I wanted to be a purely a writer and an academic.
It is tempting to retreat from the fray, to step back from the risk and madness, and to go back forever to the luxury of what I always wanted most; a contemplative, inward-looking intellectual life.
But that means abandoning you, and our kids’ generation, and this collective fight.
I won’t do it.
But I do need your help.
One added stressor to all of the stressors above, is money. As I have written before, being a national if not global target is expensive, in terms of resources and labor. Every threat requires the hours of attention from my in-house security consultant. Every cyberthreat requires a cybersecurity team’s advice. We received lawyers’ bills for $80,000 for the LA-based legal action against Pfizer, and a lawyer’s bill for $25,000 accompanied the drafting of the Election Integrity bill that we will soon bring to statehouses to keep elections clean in 2024. A lawyer’s bill for $10,000 was the price of our Ohio-based lawsuit against Pfizer and the Biden administration. We have a six- figure lawyers’ bill for all the due diligence we do to make sure we are always impeccable – because we have integrity, and also because “lawfare” is one primary way members of the freedom movement get toppled or dragged off course.
Though DailyClout is doing well, thanks to many of you, these are huge burdens, for which it is difficult to plan. When we have to pay our lawyers unexpectedly, or have other immense financial burdens, your financial help by subscribing for money to this Substack makes my work elsewhere, often without pay, possible.
I now have 81,078 subscribers altogether, for which I am very grateful; however, only 3,577 of these are paying subscribers.
As I have said before, I am trying hard not to put up a paywall, because so many of you tell me how meaningful Outspoken is to you, and because I know what it is to be so broke that $70 a year extra, requires a second thought.
But for those of the 77,000-plus free subscribers who can afford to upgrade to becoming my
paying subscribers, please, please do.
You will be taking a huge burden of stress off of my already stressed daily life, in this fight for our children’s future in a free world; and you will allow me to serve my team without facing undue financial conflicts and anxiety.
I also feel that we are a community, and when those of you who can support me, do, it heartens me materially in the struggles ahead.
Forgive me for letting you know what some days are really like.
I will go back to showing no weakness or fear, and at the same time crafting essays for you as beautifully and truly as I can, in 2024.
Back to combat in 2024, I hope with your help. And back to beauty, and love, and joy, and protecting all the things that make up civilization — all the things that demons in human guise are trying to extinguish.
But I do feel that we are friends, and fellow soldiers, so I wanted to be brutally frank with you just this one time, about the real state of the battlefield.
Thank you truly for coming on this journey with me, my beloved brothers and sisters.
Health, happiness, peace and freedom to you, in 2024. And thank you for helping me, if you can, to sail this fragile ship together into the dawn.
Warmly,
Naomi Wolf
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
In the closing days of 2023, the Biden Administration once again announced a large military aid package for Ukraine, this time a “mere” quarter of a billion dollars. Without a new authorization of funds from Congress, it is said to be the last bit of money left over from the more than $100 billion already authorized by Congress for the proxy war with Russia through Ukraine.
President Biden’s request for an additional $100 billion to spread around Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan was rejected by a Congress eager for its winter break, and with each passing day it looks like it’s going to be harder to push it through. Poll after poll show that Americans are increasingly opposed to more of their money being spent on the neocon’s lost-cause war to overthrow Putin in Russia.
For example, a recent Fox News poll revealed that more than 60 percent of Republican voters do not want any more money sent to Ukraine. As we enter an election year, it’s probably safe to predict that Republican candidates will be wary of crossing the wishes of the clear majority of voters.
That is why the Biden Administration has been desperately trying to re-frame its request for more Ukraine war money as anything but a request for more Ukraine war money. For example, they even brought back the old discredited “domino theory” used to justify US actions in the Vietnam war. If we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, Biden said in December, then he will keep going into western Europe where we will be forced to fight him there.
On the one hand, supporters of the Ukraine war warn that Russia is about to reconstitute the Soviet empire in Europe, while at the same time the same people tell us Russia is out of missiles and on its last leg. One more infusion of US money will end the “Russian threat” once and for all. Both of these things cannot be true at once. In fact, neither of them is true.
But still the Administration, much of Congress, and an insatiable military-industrial complex keep selling the lies.
Last month Secretary of State Antony Blinken inadvertently revealed what exactly all the spending for war is about when he stated that as much as 90 percent of the aid for Ukraine is actually spent in the United States. The money is used “to the benefit of American business, local communities, and strengthening the US defense industrial base,” he said in an interview. In other words, the money “for Ukraine” is actually a massive welfare program for well-connected military contractors back home.
As we begin the year 2024, we need to home in on the real threat to the United States. It is not Russia or China or Iran. The true threat is closer to home: it is a corrupt system that bleeds the country dry to fight imaginary enemies while enriching the military-industrial complex.
For the New Year, Congress should resolve to end the stranglehold of the military-industrial complex by reining in out-of-control military spending. Members should simply vote “no” on military spending bills until they are drafted to benefit the American people rather than the Beltway elite. I don’t hold out much hope of this happening in the short run, but it only takes a few dedicated Members to make a real difference.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
David Munro, the brilliantly gifted director and producer of 20 of John Pilger’s 50 films and documentaries once wrote to him, “You opened my eyes and I thank you, since when they’ve never been shut.” No one knew Pilger better than Munro and their friendship continued even after Munro moved on to other personal projects, with John saying, “We never exchanged a harsh word.”
In the 23 years since his closest collaborator died, countless thousands of people who have watched Pilger’s films or read his books and articles have felt exactly that same sentiment of gratitude. Pilger was a brilliant communicator, a tireless reporter and researcher with an unparalleled record of near half century on the ground exposing the lies and cruelties of the West’s most powerful regimes, led by the United States, and their impact on people of the Global South.
Pilger’s Australian background and his early homes in journalism from Reuters and for 23 years at the Mirror, through ITV’s World In Action to latterly, the little-known Consortium News and CounterPunch, gave him a free-wheeling outsider status in UK journalism.
Original, brave, taking great personal risks, and extremely hard working, Pilger was never in the mainstream press pack. Perhaps it was partly because he was too famous and his high profile stoked jealousy. He won or was shortlisted for multiple BAFTAs and Emmy awards and in 1967 and and 1979 was journalist of the year.
In the 1960s he spent eight years between Vietnam and the US as the Mirror’s star writer. They were times of hectic intensity for any journalist. In Vietnam Pilger immersed himself in the catastrophe of the Vietnamese people under US bombing and the destruction of life, livestock and countryside by the poison of Agent Orange. In the US the stories were in the violence against the civil rights movement and the assassinations of US leaders heralding change, such as Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. He looked back on Vietnam decades later as a “farce full of lies”. At the time it felt like an intolerable level of injustice and pain for people without a voice, who he, with the luck of being a journalist, would speak for.
Palestine and Cambodia
That was one pillar of the life experience which marked him indelibly as a young journalist. The second was staying happily on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1960s, but gradually seeing “the dehumanisation of Palestinians”. His 1977 film, Palestine Is Still The Issue, took on the great injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and made him notorious.
Their historical adviser was a then little-known Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, now the best known of academics on the subject in Britain. An industry enquiry ensued, and did not support the critiques. That truthful film, and the 2002 follow up with the same name earned John great and lasting respect in a much wider world.
Michael Green, then chairman of Carlton Communications and producer of the film, publicly disowned the 2002 film in a devastating and utterly unfair critique. Green set a tone which much of the mainstream media would use to harass Pilger throughout his career. “It was one-sided, it was totally unrealistic, but it was John Pilger….it was factually incorrect, historically incorrect,” he wrote as the Board of Jewish Deputies, Conservative Friends of Israel in Britain and the Israeli state responded with outrage to a serious film made by a careful and professional team.
The first two of his four Cambodia films, Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia and Cambodia Year One, made with Munro and screened in 1979 and 1980, were revelatory of the horrors of Pol Pot’s rule and its aftermath and were very highly praised. The first helped raise £45m aid for starving Cambodians. But a 1980 visit with the films to the powerful distribution networks in the US gave Pilger a hard lesson. The executives were excited by the searing Khmer Rouge footage, but “no one wanted to show how three US administrations had colluded in Cambodia’s tragedy,” he later explained. And in the most bitter moment of this experience, at PBS the most liberal and independent of them all, the producer turned him down with, “your films would have given us problems with the Reagan administration – sorry.”
Image: John Pilger in 2011 at Southern Cross University (Credit: SCU Students Media)
Two more great films in Asia followed in the 1990s – The Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy and Inside Burma: Land of Fear. Pilger’s 1994 reportage and commentary on the former Portuguese colony of Timor Leste (until 1975), updated in 1998, was a particular highlight, a focus on a place shamefully unknown in the West throughout an Indonesian invasion and brutal military occupation which ended in 1999. When it was shown late at night on ITV the company received an unprecedented deluge of phone calls from the public.
Another decade, another war and another continent followed with Paying The Price: Killing the Children of Iraq (2000). Besides that heartbreaking film, Pilger was by then writing copiously and speaking for the anti-war movement in the UK, fired by opposition to the US-led Gulf War and then the Iraq war which, following western and UN economic sanctions, destroyed one of the Arab world’s best supporters of Palestine, and one of its most educated and culturally significant countries.
Kate Hudson, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, describes Pilger as “a remarkable and incisive speaker on the anti-nuclear question, exposing decades of lies and hypocrisy about the impacts of nuclear testing and nuclear colonialism, in a profound and accessible fashion.”
Anticipating History
Three films show Pilger’s capacity for anticipating history. In 2004, Stealing a Nation, on Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands, showed a virtually unknown corner of British colonial history: people displaced, successive UK government lies, the UK judiciary’s selective blind eyes. Eighteen years later, in February 2019, the International Criminal Court found the UK’s colonial authority no longer legal in Diego Garcia. In 2016, The Coming War on China foreshadowed one of today’s world’s most dangerous political preoccupations. And, The Dirty War on the NHS made in 2019 gave a preview of today’s realities in the UK.
Over the decades, showings of his films in the British Film Institute’s largest cinema sold out, the showing always followed by a host of questions and his fans mobbing him on the way to the private reception. He wrote in UK papers and magazines across the board from the New Statesman via The Guardian to The Express, and later many more outlets across the world. His dozen books, including his expose of Australia’s political corruption and genocidal history in A Secret Country, have long lives.
Paul Rogers, Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, said this week, “John was hugely effective in his extensive work on the realities of war and especially the often hidden social costs. To this add his numerous revelations involving western governments and interests that were so readily covered up. Then there is his consistent support for Julian Assange who had himself been so effective in revealing so many secrets of the war in Iraq.”
For all his fame, Pilger was a rather private man embedded in tight loyalties to friends and his happy 30-year partnership with Jane Hill, a magazine journalist, and his beloved children Zoe and Sam. Many friends and acquaintances had their books and films endorsed generously and their lives enriched by John taking time for them. I remember many such occasions, one random night 23 years ago, for instance. We went to the Royal Court theatre in London because they had really wanted to have his opinion on a Palestine play, but had not liked to ask him for his time. He enjoyed himself, gave generous praise and modestly said he was honoured to have been invited.
In recent years John’s active support of Assange alienated him further from sections of the UK press who had long taken distance from Assange. And some of Pilger’s written judgements against mainstream opinion on complex world issues such as the real responsibility for the use of chemical weapons in Syria – with scientists taking opposing views – brought him harsh criticism. That modern war was very different from the on-the-ground reporting which had made his name. He was accused of being pro-Assad or pro-Putin. But Pilger never backed power in his life. And, like everyone, he made mistakes such as on Russian responsibility for the 2018 poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury. Other journalists who wanted to shoot him down for his politics and his campaigning brilliance could never touch his decades of telling truth to power.
Role Model
It is a fitting honour that The British Library holds the archive of Pilger’s huge work, accessible for history. New generations will learn there so much about the world seen from places like Nicaragua, Palestine, Cambodia, Timor Leste and Vietnam at firsthand, and also discover Washington decision-making in an unvarnished light.
One hot day in July 2005 perfectly sums up John’s life choices and reflects the very best of the private man who was my kind and loyal friend in hard times for four decades. That day his priority was attending a modest gathering in Jubilee Gardens by the river Thames far from any limelight. It was a memorial for the remaining veterans of the International Brigades, young volunteers fighting fascism from 1936 to 1939 in Spain, now all in their 80s and older. John read a poem to one of them, George Green, by his son who was four when his father was killed. Then he spoke of his debt to his late close friend Martha Gellhorn, the legendary American journalist of World War Two who was reporting in Spain in 1938. He read from one of her dispatches, saying that her experience taught him, “about moral courage, about speaking out, breaking a silence”. To the small group of elderly veterans in the red berets of their service, he said, “I thank you, and your fallen comrades, for what you did for us all, and for your legacy of truth and moral courage.”
In an echo of those sentiments, after Pilger’s death, professor Paul Rogers described him as “a role model of rare value”.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Victoria Brittain worked at The Guardian for many years and has lived and worked in Washington, Saigon, Algiers, Nairobi, and reported from many African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries. She is the author of a number of books on Africa and was co-author of Moazzam Begg’s Guantanamo memoir, Enemy Combatant, author and co-author of two Guantanamo verbatim plays, and of Shadow Lives, the forgotten women of the war on terror. Her most recent book is Love and Resistance, the films of Mai Masri.
Featured image: John Pilger, photographed in 2006, whose decades in journalism included Reuters and 23 years at the Mirror, then ITV’s World In Action (Wikicommons)
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
With roughly 90% of Gaza residents displaced and seeking safety from Israel’s bombardment and ground attacks, crowding into shelters in cities including the already densely populated Rafah, humanitarian agencies warned Tuesday that the spread of disease and the risk of starvation are showing no signs of slowing down in the blockaded enclave.
A week after the World Food Program (WFP) warned that about “half of Gaza’s population is starving,” the United Nations organization’s chief economist said Tuesday that less than three months into Israel’s relentless assault, the territory appears to meet at least one of the criteria for famine.
About 20% of the population faces an “extreme lack of food,” Arif Husain toldThe New York Times.
“I’ve been to pretty much any conflict, whether Yemen, whether it was South Sudan, northeast Nigeria, Ethiopia, you name it,” Husain told the newspaper. “And I have never seen anything like this, both in terms of its scale, its magnitude, but also at the pace that this has unfolded.”
Skipping meals, particularly among adults caring for children, has become “the norm” in Gaza, the WFP said on social media.
𝗙𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸: Everyone in #Gaza is hungry! Skipping meals is the norm, and each day is a desperate search for sustenance.
People often go the entire day and night without eating. Adults go hungry so children can eat.
Experts on Gaza’s humanitarian crises—which gripped the enclave even before Israel began bombing Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ attack in October—are among those suffering, the Times reported, with International Crisis Group analyst Azmi Keshawi telling the newspaper that he is one of thousands of displaced people who has to go searching daily for sustenance to feed his family.
“Our daily nightmare is to go hunt for food,” Keshawi, who is sheltering with his family in a tent on a street in Rafah, told the Times. “You cannot find flour. You cannot find yeast to make bread. You cannot find any kind of food—tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, eggplant, lemon, orange juice.”
Human Rights Watch said last month that Israel is using starvation as a method of warfare—a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The lack of nourishment has put residents at heightened health and safety risks as many are sleeping out in the open without adequate clothing or blankets to keep out the elements, as colder winter weather arrives.
Along with the growing hunger crisis, the United Nations has been monitoring the spread of communicable diseases and healthcare workers’ inability to adequately care for people due to Israel’s blockade and refusal to allow in adequate aid.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that there have been 179,000 cases of acute respiratory infections; 136,400 cases of diarrhea—the second-leading cause of death among young children worldwide—in children under age five; and 55,400 cases of scabies since mid-October.
The organization said Gaza is at “imminent risk” of more disease outbreaks.
The severe overcrowding of cities and shelters, where displaced people have the use of one toilet for every 700 people on average, has contributed to the rapid spread of illnesses.
“Gazans can die very easily now because of the diseases spreading,” Tamara Alrifai, director of external relations at the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom on Tuesday. “Originally a home for around 280,000 people, over the last few weeks, about a million additional people came into Rafah and that explains that visual element of extremely crowded shelters but also extremely crowded spaces around the UNRWA shelters.”
"Gazans can die very easily now because of the diseases spreading"@TamaraAlrifai tells @Channel4News that disease is spreading among the overcrowded shelters and packed streets of Rafah in southern📍#Gaza, one of the most crowded places on the planet. pic.twitter.com/0TbhZhCslJ
Dr. Guillemette Thomas, a medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, told the Times that Israel is now allowing 120 aid trucks at most into Gaza each day. For weeks no shipments were allowed in, and desperately needed fuel did not reach Gaza until late November. Before the bombardment and blockade, many Gazans relied on aid that was brought in by 500 trucks per day.
Despite Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s proclamation on October 9 that he was ordering a “complete siege on the Gaza Strip” with “no electricity, no food, no fuel” allowed in for its residents, who he referred to as “human animals,” Israel continues to claim that it is not blocking aid or targeting civilians. The government has claimed Hamas is diverting aid deliveries, an accusation that UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini called “baseless.”
At least 22,185 people have been killed and at least 57,000 have been injured in Gaza since Israel began its bombardment, with an additional 7,000 people reported missing or presumed to be buried under rubble.
Last week, the UNRWA posted a video on social media showing people desperately trying to reach an aid convoy in Gaza City.
#Gaza is just weeks away from #Famine People are desperate and hungry To prevent famine, more, much more food + other basics must be allowed in ➕safe access, ➕ a humanitarian #Ceasefire_In_Gaza_ so we can deliver aid Thx @cnni for the video 🙏 https://t.co/gdG1hsxIdS
“Gaza is just weeks away from famine,” said the agency. “People are desperate and hungry. To prevent famine, more, much more food and other basics must be allowed in.”
The group also reiterated its call for a humanitarian cease-fire to allow aid deliveries and protect civilians.
[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
The year 2023 was a banner year for change, underscoring the reality of a world transforming away from American hegemony toward the uncertainty of a yet-to-be-defined multilateral reality. This transformation was marked by many events – here are the five most important ones.
The Failed Ukrainian Counteroffensive
Perhaps the most-hyped event of the year, Ukraine’s much-anticipated spring/summer counteroffensive was NATO’s version of the German Ardennes offensive of December 1944 – a last-gasp effort to throw all remaining reserves into a desperate attempt to score a knock-out blow against an opponent who had seized the strategic initiative. Any sound military analyst could have predicted the inevitability of a Ukrainian defeat – one cannot responsibly speak of launching a frontal assault on a heavily defended, well-prepared defensive position using forces who are neither equipped, organized, or trained for the task.
The amount of delusion surrounding Ukrainian and NATO expectations only underscores the desperation that underpinned their cause – the West’s support of Ukraine was always of a superficial nature, where domestic politics trumped global reality. The ignorance of those who believed Ukraine could pierce the Russian defenses was easily matched by those who thought that a Moscow Maidan movement could be created through the combined impact of economic sanctions and a forever war against Ukraine.
The counteroffensive is the manifestation of the Russophobia that has gripped the collective West, where ignorance trumps fact, and delusion supersedes reality. The failed NATO/Ukrainian counteroffensive, far from weakening Russia, proved to be the incubator for the birth of a more powerful, confident, and resilient Russia that will no longer allow itself to be classified as a second-class citizen in the world community.
October 7: The Israel-Hamas War
On October 6, 2023, Israel was sitting on top of the world. It had cowed the administration of US President Joe Biden into forgetting about a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem. Instead, it embraced the vision of a greater Israel, which glossed over the continued theft of Palestinian land through unchecked support for illegal Israeli settlements by focusing on the broader geopolitical benefits of normalized relations between Israel and the Gulf Arab states. The Israel Defense Forces were the best military in the region, backed by an intelligence and security establishment possessing a legendary reputation for knowing everything about all potential enemies.
Then came October 7 and the Hamas surprise attack.
All talk of Israeli-Arab normalization is finished. The IDF is being embarrassed by Hamas and defeated by Hezbollah. The Israeli intelligence service has been exposed as an empty shell whose greatest accomplishment is an AI-assisted targeting system that facilitates the killing of Palestinian civilians.
The new reality of the Middle East is now shaped by two related issues – the necessity of a Palestinian state and the inevitability of a strategic Israeli defeat. The paths toward resolving each of these issues will not be easy ones to follow, and they may unfold over the span of years rather than months, but one thing is certain – this new geopolitical reality would not have been possible without the events of October 7.
Africa: The Sahel Revolt
In the span of three years, Françafrique, or the post-colonial French-dominated sphere of influence in the Sahel region of Africa, has gone from serving as the springboard for the projection of French-led American and EU efforts to project military power in an attempt to defeat the forces of Islamic insurgency, to being humiliated and defeated at the hands of nationalists who overthrew traditional pro-French governments and replacing them with anti-French military juntas. Starting with Mali in 2021, then Burkina Faso in 2022, and finally Niger in 2023, the collapse of the Sahel component of Françafrique has been as dramatic as it has been decisive. There was seemingly nothing France nor its supporters could do to reverse the tide of anti-French sentiment in the region. In the end, the threat of outside military intervention to change the July 2023 coup in Niger collapsed in the face of a unified collective defense posture taken by the three former French colonies.
The dramatic eviction of France from the region was matched by the emergence of a new regional power – Russia. The rise of the new tripartite regional alliance between Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger coincided with a more assertive Russian foreign policy, which looked to form common cause with an Africa still straining from the bonds of post-colonial existence manifested in geopolitical relationships like those formed under Françafrique. The Russian approach was borne out in the success of last summer’s Russian-African Summit, held in St. Petersburg, and the growing economic and security relationships between Russia and many African states – including Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, that have emerged since. The Russian tricolor flag, it seems, has replaced that of France as the most influential symbol of foreign involvement in that region.
BRICS
In 2022, China hosted the 14th Summit of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South African economic forum best known by the acronym formed from the first letters of its five-nation membership – BRICS. At that summit, BRICS aspired to greatness but was unable to accomplish anything more than talk about the creation of a so-called “currency basket” designed to challenge the global supremacy of the US dollar and speak wistfully about the possibility of opening its membership to other nations.
Then came the 15th BRICS Summit, held in South Africa. From a forum possessing unrealized potential, BRICS exploded upon the international scene as a multi-lateral competitor to the American singularity, a viable challenger to the US-imposed “rules-based international order” that had dominated global geopolitical discourse since the end of the Second World War. The events that helped propel BRICS front and center on the stage of global relevance represented a perfect storm, so to speak, of geopolitical calamity – the defeat of the collective West at the hands of Russia in Ukraine, the collapse of Françafrique in the Sahel, and the increasing dominance of China on the global economic reality.
The South African-hosted BRICS Summit proved to be the perfect counterpoint to the combined pathos of the G-7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, and the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. In Japan and Lithuania, western impotence was on full display for the world to see. In sharp contrast, the virility of the BRICS phenomenon provided a multilateral alternative that proved to be attractive to many nations, including the six that were accepted into BRICS as part of its expansion strategy (Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, although Argentina withdrew its membership package following the election of Javier Milei as president in December 2023), and the fourteen other nations who have formally submitted applications to join in 2024, when Russia takes over the chairmanship. BRICS has surpassed the G7 in terms of collective economic clout, and the geopolitical influence of its collective membership is such that it will exceed both the G7 and NATO forums in terms of overall international relevance in the years to come.
The US: The Naked Emperor
The United States spends nearly $1 trillion a year on its defense – more than the combined defense expenditures of its ten closest rivals for the top spot. This money funds the strategic nuclear deterrence force and the conventional military power projection potential of the US. Given the enormous sums involved, one would anticipate that the dominance of US military power worldwide would be unmatched. Curiously, this is not the case.
By spending a fraction of what the US does for similar services, Russia has overtaken the United States when it comes to strategic nuclear forces. The US needs a major upgrade to its nuclear triad – the land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles and manned bombers – that comprise its nuclear strike capabilities. While replacement systems are in the works, it will take more than a decade to get these systems online, and the cost of doing this will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars – or more, given the history of US defense industry inefficiencies and cost overruns.
Russia, meanwhile, has begun putting advanced missiles into service – missiles designed to defeat US missile defenses, along with new submarines and manned bombers. Traditional venues used by the US to offset Russian strategic advances, such as arms control, are no longer available due to short-sighted US policies that rejected arms control for the potential of achieving a strategic nuclear advantage. The script, so to speak, has been flipped, and it’s now the US that finds itself on the short end of the atomic power equation. This disadvantageous position will be even further exacerbated by the growth of China’s strategic nuclear force, which is in the process of expanding from possessing some 400 nuclear weapons to matching the US and Russia’s 1,500 deployed warheads.
The US used to maintain a conventional military force structure capable of fighting two-and-one-half wars simultaneously – one in Europe, one in Asia, and a holding action in the Middle East until victory was achieved in one of the first two theaters, and forces could be redeployed. Today, the US, by trying to maintain a global presence that mirrors that of the Cold War, is unable to fight and win a single major conflict. It has maxed out its conventional potential in Europe, deploying some 100,000 troops in support of NATO, which has allowed its combined military combat potential to atrophy to the point that no NATO nation has a viable military capability. The collective impotence of NATO is on display in Ukraine, where a Russian army is in the process of defeating a NATO-trained and equipped Ukrainian military.
In the Pacific, the US is facing the fact that it lacks sufficient military power to defend Taiwan in the face of any potential Chinese military operation. There have been advances in the accuracy and lethality of Chinese stand-off weapons, including new advanced hypersonic missiles, which, in theory at least, could overcome US air defense systems that protect the centerpiece of American power projection – the aircraft carrier battlegroup. This weakness is not just limited to any potential conflict with China—the US Navy has deployed carrier battlegroups off the coast of Lebanon, in the Persian Gulf, and to the Red Sea, where they have been prevented from engaging in any decisive military intervention out of fear that missiles fired by Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthi of Yemen could damage or sink the most visible symbol of American military power today.
With a budget of nearly $1 trillion, one would expect the US to be parading itself worldwide via a military second to none in terms of capabilities and lethality. Instead, the US has been exposed as an emperor with no clothes whose nakedness is a source of embarrassment on a global stage that had grown accustomed to the finery and pageantry of American military power. The humiliation of the US Navy at the hands of the Houthi is but the most recent manifestation of a trend exposing US military weakness. This trend will only expand in 2024.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.
We at Global Research extend our best wishes to everyone for 2024!
A new year has come yet our mandate is one and the same: to focus on the unspoken truth.
The burgeoning Palestinian solidarity despite of Zionist propaganda is a textbook example of the impact of independent reporting on truth-telling. It is through this that we remain grateful to our authors who take courage in the midst of threats and smears.
As you may already know, Global Research is 100% reader-supported. We are a no holds barred entity. Will you donate to our publication and enable us to continue with our mission?
Global Research also welcomes submissions of news and feature articles. Click here to read the submission guidelines.
Furthermore, because disinformation and censorship operate alongside one another, your support in conducting any or all of the following is paramount to our online reach:
Forwarding the daily Global Research Newsletter and/or your favorite Global Research articles to your family, friends, and respective communities;
Using the various instruments of online posting and social media to “spread the word.” Click the “like” and “share” buttons on our articles’ pages for starters. Help keep our articles circulating; and
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
A series of advertisements dehumanizing and calling for violence against Palestinians, intended to test Facebook’s content moderation standards, were all approved by the social network, according to materials shared with The Intercept.
The submitted ads, in both Hebrew and Arabic, included flagrant violations of policies for Facebook and its parent company Meta.
Some contained violent content directly calling for the murder of Palestinian civilians, like ads demanding a “holocaust for the Palestinians” and to wipe out “Gazan women and children and the elderly.” Other posts, like those describing kids from Gaza as “future terrorists” and a reference to “Arab pigs,” contained dehumanizing language.
“The approval of these ads is just the latest in a series of Meta’s failures towards the Palestinian people,” Nadim Nashif, founder of the Palestinian social media research and advocacy group 7amleh, which submitted the test ads, told The Intercept. “Throughout this crisis, we have seen a continued pattern of Meta’s clear bias and discrimination against Palestinians.”
7amleh’s idea to test Facebook’s machine-learning censorship apparatus arose last month, when Nashif discovered an ad on his Facebook feed explicitly calling for the assassination of American activist Paul Larudee, a co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement.
Facebook’s automatic translation of the text ad read: “It’s time to assassinate Paul Larudi [sic], the anti-Semitic and ‘human rights’ terrorist from the United States.” Nashif reported the ad to Facebook, and it was taken down.
The ad had been placed by Ad Kan, a right-wing Israeli group founded by former Israel Defense Force and intelligence officers to combat “anti-Israeli organizations” whose funding comes from purportedly antisemitic sources, according to its website. (Neither Larudee nor Ad Kan immediately responded to requests for comment.)
Calling for the assassination of a political activist is a violation of Facebook’s advertising rules. That the post sponsored by Ad Kan appeared on the platform indicates Facebook approved it despite those rules. The ad likely passed through filtering by Facebook’s automated process, based on machine-learning, that allows its global advertising business to operate at a rapid clip.
“Our ad review system is designed to review all ads before they go live,” accordingOpens in a new tab to a Facebook ad policy overview. As Meta’s human-based moderation, which historically relied almost entirely on outsourced contractor labor, has drawn greater scrutiny and criticism, the company has come to lean more heavily on automated text-scanning software to enforce its speech rules and censorship policies.
While these technologies allow the company to skirt the labor issues associated with human moderators, they also obscure how moderation decisions are made behind secret algorithms.
Last year, an external audit commissioned by Meta found that while the company was routinely using algorithmic censorship to delete Arabic posts, the company had no equivalent algorithm in place to detect “Hebrew hostile speech” like racist rhetoric and violent incitement. Following the audit, Meta claimed it had “launched a Hebrew ‘hostile speech’ classifier to help us proactively detect more violating Hebrew content.” Content, that is, like an ad espousing murder.
Incitement to Violence on Facebook
Amid the Israeli war on Palestinians in Gaza, Nashif was troubled enough by the explicit call in the ad to murder Larudee that he worried similar paid posts might contribute to violence against Palestinians.
Large-scale incitement to violence jumping from social media into the real world is not a mere hypothetical: In 2018, United Nations investigators foundOpens in a new tab violently inflammatory Facebook posts played a “determining role” in Myanmar’s Rohingya genocide. (Last year, another group ran test ads inciting against Rohingya, a project along the same lines as 7amleh’s experiment; in that case, all the ads were also approvedOpens in a new tab.)
The quick removal of the Larudee post didn’t explain how the ad was approved in the first place. In light of assurances from Facebook that safeguards were in place, Nashif and 7amleh, which formally partners with Meta on censorship and free expression issues, were puzzled.
Curious if the approval was a fluke, 7amleh created and submitted 19 ads, in both Hebrew and Arabic, with text deliberately, flagrantly violating company rules — a test for Meta and Facebook. 7amleh’s ads were designed to test the approval process and see whether Meta’s ability to automatically screen violent and racist incitement had gotten better, even with unambiguous examples of violent incitement.
“We knew from the example of what happened to the Rohingya in Myanmar that Meta has a track record of not doing enough to protect marginalized communities,” Nashif said, “and that their ads manager system was particularly vulnerable.”
Meta’s appears to have failed 7amleh’s test.
The company’s Community Standards rulebook — which ads are supposed to comply with to be approved — prohibit not just text advocating for violence, but also any dehumanizing statements against people based on their race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality. Despite this, confirmation emails shared with The Intercept show Facebook approved every single ad.
Though 7amleh told The Intercept the organization had no intention to actually run these ads and was going to pull them before they were scheduled to appear, it believes their approval demonstrates the social platform remains fundamentally myopic around non-English speech — languages used by a great majority of its over 4 billion users. (Meta retroactively rejected 7amleh’s Hebrew ads after The Intercept brought them to the company’s attention, but the Arabic versions remain approved within Facebook’s ad system.)
Facebook spokesperson Erin McPike confirmed the ads had been approved accidentally.
“Despite our ongoing investments, we know that there will be examples of things we miss or we take down in error, as both machines and people make mistakes,” she said. “That’s why ads can be reviewed multiple times, including once they go live.”
Just days after its own experimental ads were approved, 7amleh discovered an Arabic ad run by a group calling itself “Migrate Now” calling on “Arabs in Judea and Sumaria” — the name Israelis, particularly settlers, use to refer to the occupied Palestinian West Bank — to relocate to Jordan.
According to Facebook documentationOpens in a new tab, automated, software-based screening is the “primary method” used to approve or deny ads. But it’s unclear if the “hostile speech” algorithms used to detect violent or racist posts are also used in the ad approval process. In its official response to last year’s audit, Facebook said its new Hebrew-language classifier would “significantly improve” its ability to handle “major spikes in violating content,” such as around flare-ups of conflict between Israel and Palestine. Based on 7amleh’s experiment, however, this classifier either doesn’t work very well or is for some reason not being used to screen advertisements. (McPike did not answer when asked if the approval of 7amleh’s ads reflected an underlying issue with the hostile speech classifier.)
Either way, according to Nashif, the fact that these ads were approved points to an overall problem: Meta claims it can effectively use machine learning to deter explicit incitement to violence, while it clearly cannot.
“We know that Meta’s Hebrew classifiers are not operating effectively, and we have not seen the company respond to almost any of our concerns,” Nashif said in his statement. “Due to this lack of action, we feel that Meta may hold at least partial responsibility for some of the harm and violence Palestinians are suffering on the ground.”
The approval of the Arabic versions of the ads come as a particular surprise following a recent report by the Wall Street JournalOpens in a new tab that Meta had lowered the level of certainty its algorithmic censorship system needed to remove Arabic posts — from 80 percent confidence that the post broke the rules, to just 25 percent. In other words, Meta was less sure that the Arabic posts it was suppressing or deleting actually contained policy violations.
Nashif said, “There have been sustained actions resulting in the silencing of Palestinian voices.”
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
The Israel-Gaza conflict is invigorating a global protest movement against the state of Israel which is seeing various manifestations. From an economic standpoint, Israel can be seen as vulnerable in terms of global supply lines, potentially at the mercy of sanctions and complete isolation. Both imports and exports are of concern.
In just over two months, the aggression destroyed more than what was seen as a result of the battle in Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol, or the Allied bombardment of Germany during World War II and killed more people than the fight against ISIS.
Israel’s over 75 days of bombing of 2.3 million Gazans, while denying access to water, food, medicine and fuel and no escape from the slaughter, undeniably meets the criteria for genocide. Urge members of the United Nations to invoke the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice to charge Israel with the crime of genocide in Gaza.
Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who previously made headlines with a series of provocations, urged illegal Israeli settlers to settle in Gaza as he said Palestinians, who have been already devastated by relentless Israeli attacks and an inhumane blockade but refused to leave despite the violence, should be evicted from their homes.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of premeditated mass murder unleashing a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of 21st century U.S. war propaganda, casting a new enemy, and target – China.
Israeli officials are on edge as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) faces mounting pressure to charge Israel with genocide in the Gaza Strip, following a petition by South Africa, reported Israeli media.
Since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7, the Gaza Strip has been a focal point for the movement against imperialism worldwide. Zionism has been a colonial project since its founding during the late 19th century in Western Europe.
Know that the arch priest Netanyahu, recently quoting the ‘Bible’ in justification, with others using words like ‘animals’, dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, rendering another Auschwitz etc. has been calling for the destruction of Iran for over a decade. And the Iranians know this, and know too that WW3 and wide annihilation by nuclear fission is minutes away.
The compilation of relevant Global Research articles focusing on several underlying causes of excess deaths was first published by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.
The Houthis are going to prevent Israel-bound commercial ships from reaching Israeli ports as long as Israel prevents food, water and medicine from reaching Palestinians in Gaza. If Israeli leaders want to end the blockade, they need to stop killing Palestinians and end the siege. This is the simple, moral solution to the current crisis in the Red Sea.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
The Wall Street Journal highlighted that by mid-December, the Israeli occupation forces had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions, and shells on the Gaza Strip.
According to the newspaper,
“Nearly 70% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed.”
The WSJ‘s assessment is based on an analysis of satellite imagery of the Gaza Strip and other advanced remote sensing techniques.
The report emphasized that
“the bombing has damaged Byzantine churches and ancient mosques, factories and apartment buildings, shopping malls and luxury hotels, theaters and schools,” adding that “much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair.”
For the past two months, Israeli airstrikes have caused significant destruction in the #Gaza Strip, particularly in the densely populated northern region, which prompted #Palestinians to evacuate.
Moreover, the newspaper pointed out that only eight out of 36 hospitals in the Strip can accommodate patients.
“The word ‘Gaza’ is going to go down in history along with Dresden and other famous cities that have been bombed,” the WSJ quoted Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has written about the history of aerial bombing, as saying.
This comes as the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced that the number of Palestinians killed since the start of the Israeli aggression has risen to 21,672 martyrs, in addition to over 56,000 injuries.
According to the Ministry, the Israeli occupation forces committed 14 massacres in a single day, resulting in 165 martyrs and 250 injuries.
Israeli Bombing of Gaza Most Destructive in Recent History: Experts
Analysts who spoke to the Associated Press, on December 22, described “Israel’s” war on Gaza as currently among the bloodiest and most devastating in recent history.
In just over two months, the aggression destroyed more than what was seen as a result of the battle in Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol, or the Allied bombardment of Germany during World War II and killed more people than the fight against ISIS.
Meanwhile, an analysis of new satellite imagery and video footage by The New York Times on December 15 revealed that at least six cemeteries were desecrated and destroyed by “Israel” during its invasion of northern Gaza.
One satellite image displayed damaged graves in parts of the Tunisian cemetery in Gaza’s al-Shujaiya neighborhood, where heavy combat is focused. Armored vehicles were seen on top of where those graves once were, indicating the cemetery’s use as a temporary military set-up.
On December 6, an article published by the Financial Times revealed that the damage caused by “Israel’s” bombing campaigns in the Gaza Strip has approached the UK and US’s years-long bombing of German cities in the Second World War.
Rober Pape, a US military historian and author of Bombing to Win, told FT that Gaza like Dresden, Hamburg, and Cologne “will also go down as a place name denoting one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns.”
On November 21, 42 days into the aggression on Gaza, satellite data imaging showed that “Israel’s” bombing of Gaza leveled most of northern Gaza, severely damaging more than half of the structures and big swathes of whole neighborhoods.
Social media videos, images from reporters, and images from the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) themselves have depicted a shattered landscape, a report by the Financial Times revealed.
The complete size of the damage has been calculated using radar signals received by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
American militarism has many authors. From lawmakers on Capitol Hill and policy makers in the executive branch to the defense industry and its army of lobbyists, many in Washington and beyond have an interest, whether political or financial (or both), in keeping the Pentagon’s coffers overstuffed and the global U.S. military machine humming.
Unfortunately America’s fourth estate doesn’t do a very good job of keeping an overly militaristic U.S. foreign policy in check. On the contrary, it too is a key pillar that buttresses America’s dependence on aggression abroad. Looking back at much of the mainstream media’s national security coverage this past year — from Ukraine and Gaza to China and the military industrial complex — 2023, with few exceptions, was no different.
The War in Ukraine
Mainstream media failures in covering the war in Ukraine this year ranged from seeming to downplay questions about who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline and ignoring key flashpoints that could have expanded the conflict into a direct U.S. war with Russia.
But back in June, the New York Times’ Paul Krugman provided a window into how many top journalists and pundits view U.S. foreign policy more broadly, and the war in Ukraine specifically: through the lens of American exceptionalism. Krugman used the D-Day anniversary this year to lament that Americans and other Western democracies weren’t sufficiently supportive of Ukraine’s war against Russia, saying then that if the country’s counteroffensive fails (which by now it has), “it will be a disaster not just for Ukraine but for the world.”
As RS noted at the time, Krugman’s argument “follows a problematic pattern among many in the media whose historical reference point will always be World War II and in turn believe the United States can apply that experience to any other world problem no matter how dissimilar or unrelated it is, or whether even a military solution is required.” Of course there were many calling for a more diplomatic approach to ending the war then and the evidence six months later suggests they were right.
A month before Krugman’s article, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and Anne Applebaum published a lengthy article running along the same themes. The piece was based largely on an uncritical relay of an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that crescendos to a call for taking back Crimea — a maximalist military objective that most sober observers believe to be unachievable — and overthrowing Putin, all in the name of a global struggle between good and evil. Except, as QI’s Anatol Lieven pointed out then, most of the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way.
“It is not that people in these countries approve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Lieven wrote in RS. “It is that they do not perceive such a huge difference between the regional hegemonic ambitions and criminal actions of Russia and the global ones of the United States; and they are thoroughly sick of having their opinions and interests ignored by Washington in the name of an American moral superiority that actual U.S. policies in their parts of the world have repeatedly belied.”
The China Boogeyman
This year kicked off with a turn-it-up-to-11 media hyperventilation about the infamous Chinese spy balloon that, according to the Pentagon at least, turned out to never have spied. But the incident was indicative of how Washington and the mainstream media generally deal with U.S. policy toward China: freak out first and maybe — just maybe — ask questions later.
CBS’s flagship news magazine 60 Minutes is a primary offender of this approach. Back in March, 60 Minutes ran a lengthy piece seemingly aimed at scaring Americans about the size of China’s navy and about the U.S. is lagging behind — classic China threat inflation that is common in Washington. Except the navy officers 60 Minutes interviewed didn’t see it that way, and neither did experts RS interviewed about the segment.
“The U.S. Navy appears to believe it’s ready to take on China,” RS reported then, adding, “[b]ut lawmakers who stand to benefit from hyping the China threat don’t. And that in a nutshell is the military-industrial-complex, or in this case, the military-industrial-congressional-media-complex.”
Back in August, an NBC Nightly News segment perfectly illustrated how the mainstream media, perhaps inadvertently, builds public support for confrontation with China. The segment hyped a fairly routine, if even U.S. prompted, Russian and Chinese military exercise in international waters off the coast of Alaska. NBC News presented the event as a five-alarm fire. However, experts, and even the U.S. military, didn’t think it was that big of a deal.
The War in Gaza
If anything can represent how mainstream U.S. media has, for the most part, covered the tragic Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s response, it’s this headline from CNN on December 6:
The “man in military fatigues” was of course an Israeli soldier, which CNN later acknowledged. But the episode is emblematic of a general problem of mainstream media leaning in on the Israeli narrative of the conflict, which prevents Americans more generally from getting a full understanding of the conflict, including not just legitimate Israeli claims but also Palestinian concerns about the occupation and the prospects of a future state. That in turn leads to the promotion of misguided notions like support for Palestinian rights equaling support for Hamas.
Roots of the Problem
We also saw many instances this year of why, in part, an American exceptionalist view of U.S. foreign policy tends to guide mainstream U.S. media coverage. First, news outlets often publish essays and opinion pieces arguing for a more militaristic American posture by writers who are funded by foreign governments or the defense industry. Most often — as was the case this year with the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Bloomberg, for example — those potential conflicts are not disclosed.
Second, there are other media outlets that are openly underwritten by titans of the defense industry. And once again this year, we saw the potential impacts of those investments. For example, one particular November article in Politico — whose foreign policy coverage is sponsored in part by Lockheed Martin — uncritically relayed baseless concerns from the Pentagon that it was running out of money, a notion that one military spending expert told RS “doesn’t hold water.”
*
The examples above from this year are part of just a small sample of how mainstream media outlets generally cover U.S. foreign policy. There are exceptions of course but the incentives to feed the stream of militarism are far greater than the forces against it. Will 2024 be any different?
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Ben Armbruster is the Managing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He has more than a decade of experience working at the intersection of politics, foreign policy, and media. Ben previously held senior editorial and management positions at Media Matters, ThinkProgress, ReThink Media, and Win Without War.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
Introductory Note
Global Research has endorsed the Code Pink Petition which invokes the UN Genocide Convention. Below is the full text. Click here to sign the Petition.
“The fact that a person [e.g. Israeli, U.S.soldiers, pilots] acted pursuant to order of his [her] Government or of a superior does not relieve him [her] from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him [her].”
Let us make that “moral choice” possible, to enlisted Israeli, American, and NATO servicemen and women.
Let us call upon Israeli and American soldiers and pilots to sign the Petition, “disobey unlawful orders” and “abandon the battlefield” as an act of refusal to participate in a criminal undertaking against the People of Gaza.
—Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 3, 2024
*
Charge Israel with Genocide at the International Court of Justice!
by
CODEPINK
Israel’s over 75 days of bombing of 2.3 million Gazans, while denying access to water, food, medicine and fuel and no escape from the slaughter, undeniably meets the criteria for genocide. Urge members of the United Nations to invoke the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice to charge Israel with the crime of genocide in Gaza.
South Africa is the first country to institute proceedings against Israel for the crime of genocide in Gaza, let’s push other countries to follow their lead!
Sign our petition here to UN ambassadors and embassy staff from Algeria, the Palestinian Authority, Pakistan, Turkey and other countries and UN parties expressing outrage at Israel’s bombardment of 2.3 million imprisoned Gazans.
Dear United Nations Signatory to the UN Genocide Convention:
We urge your country to immediately invoke the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to stop Israel’s annihilation and genocide in Gaza. South Africa already launched this case on December 29, giving your country an opportunity to follow its lead.
Over 22,000 dead, 51,000 wounded, 1.9 million uprooted.
Our heart aches for Gaza.
Your UN mission, government leaders and populace have rightfully expressed outrage at Israel’s bombing of hospitals, clinics, apartments, UN refugee centers and escape routes, disproportionately killing civilians, many of them children in Gaza’s densely packed coastal strip.
We ask your country to take the next step–to file a request with the International Court of Justice (World Court) to investigate and charge Israel with the crime of genocide.
Under the UN Convention on the Prohibition and Punishment of Genocide, the crime of genocide is defined as acts perpetrated to bring about the physical destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
Israel’s imposition of collective punishment on Gaza, relentlessly bombing civilians, denying an imprisoned population water, food, medicine and fuel – making life unlivable–meets the criteria for the crime of genocide.
If after an investigation, the ICJ (World Court) concludes that Israel should be prosecuted for the crime of genocide, the UN General Assembly–even if the US and Israel kick and scream– can pressure the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israel for the crime of genocide in Gaza.
If a majority of the world’s nations call for a ceasefire, yet fail to press for prosecution of Israel – what is to stop Israel from ethnically cleansing all Palestinians? For that matter, what is to stop other nations from repeating the same horror?
We, the undersigned, urge you to join South Africa and invoke the Genocide Convention to demand Israel be charged and prosecuted.
Take Israel to court for turning Gaza into a graveyard for children.
STOP the genocide!
Sincerely,
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Israeli officials are on edge as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) faces mounting pressure to charge Israel with genocide in the Gaza Strip, following a petition by South Africa, reported Israeli media.
“A senior legal expert has warned IDF (Israeli army) brass, including Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, that there is real danger that the court will issue an injunction calling on Israel to halt its fire, noting that Israel is bound by the court’s rulings,” Israeli daily Haaretz wrote on Monday.
Lawyers have already begun preparing to deal with the complaint, and a hearing on the matter will be held at the Foreign Ministry on Monday, it added.
The newspaper said that according to international legal experts,
“the proceeding may cement claims of genocide against Israel, and thus lead to its diplomatic isolation and to boycott or sanctions against it or against Israeli businesses.”
South Africa’s petition alleges Israel’s “indiscriminate use of force” and accuses it of crimes against humanity, the newspaper said.
According to the petition, this step is necessary to protect the Palestinians from “further irreparable damage.”
“South Africa further requested that the court order Israel to allow Palestinians removed from their homes in the Gaza Strip to return to them; to stop depriving them of food, water and humanitarian aid; to ensure that Israelis are not inciting to genocide and punish those who do; and to allow an independent investigation of its actions,” according to Haaretz.
Israel, denying the claims despite its months of attacks taking nearly 22,000 lives and its harsh blockade on the Gaza Strip, accuses South Africa of a “blood libel” and asserts cooperation with a group calling for its destruction.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who previously made headlines with a series of provocations, urged illegal Israeli settlers to settle in Gaza as he said Palestinians, who have been already devastated by relentless Israeli attacks and an inhumane blockade but refused to leave despite the violence, should be evicted from their homes.
“We must promote a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s residents,” Israel’s firebrand National Security Minister Ben-Gvir said Monday.
Israel unilaterally withdrew the last of its troops and settlers in 2005, ending a presence inside Gaza that began in 1967 but maintaining near complete control over the territory’s borders.
The government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not officially suggested it has any plans to evict Gazans or to send Jewish settlers to the territory since the current war broke out on Oct. 7.
But Ben-Gvir argued that the eviction of Palestinians and the re-establishment of illegal Israeli settlements “is a correct, just, moral and humane solution.”
“This is an opportunity to develop a project to encourage Gaza’s residents to emigrate to countries around the world,” he told a meeting of his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit, or “Jewish Power” party.
Hamas dismissed Ben-Gvir’s proposal as a “daydream.”
“You will not find a way to implement it in the face of our resilient, steadfast Palestinian people and their heroic resistance,” the Palestinian resistance group said in a statement.
Ben-Gvir’s comment came the day after far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also called for the return of illegal Israeli settlers to Gaza, equally saying Israel should “encourage” the territory’s approximately 2.4 million Palestinians to leave.
Smotrich said that for Israel to “control the territory militarily for a long time, we need a civilian presence.”
Both Ben Gvir and Smotrich live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, considered illegal under international law.
Hamas on Sunday had also condemned Smotrich’s comments as a “vile mockery and a war crime.”
Israel’s ongoing aerial attacks and ground invasion in Gaza have killed at least 21,978 people in the blockaded enclave, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry.
With incessant Israeli attacks targeting civilian infrastructure, 85% of people in the besieged Gaza Strip have been internally displaced, according to the United Nations.
The main focus of fighting is now in central areas south of the wetlands that bisect the Strip, where Israeli forces have ordered civilians out as their tanks advance.
Tens of thousands of people fleeing the huge Nuseirat, Bureij and Maghazi districts of central Gaza were heading south or west Thursday into the already overwhelmed city of Deir al-Balah along the Mediterranean coast, crowding into hastily built camps of makeshift tents.
Virtually all residents have been driven from their homes at least once and many forced to flee several times. Only a handful of hospitals are still functioning.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Featured image: Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visits Al-Aqsa, 3 January (Social Media) via MEE
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Hundreds of thousands of people gathered for an event titled “Mercy for our martyrs, support for Palestine, curse on Israel” in mosques during the morning prayers to join a procession organised by Türkiye’s NGO TUGVA and National Will Platform.
The event involved the participation of 308 non-governmental organisations (NGOs). After the morning prayers at Hagia Sophia Mosque, Eminonu New Mosque, Sultanahmet Mosque, and Suleymaniye Mosque on Monday, the participants rallied in the mosque courtyards, offering prayers for the martyrs and Palestinians who lost their lives in Israeli attacks.
The participants assembled in Hagia Sophia Square after the prayers and chanted slogans such as “Martyrs never die, the homeland will not be divided,” “Collaborator traitors will be held accountable, killer Israel will be held accountable,” “Killer Israel, get out of Palestine,” “Our blood, our lives sacrificed for Al Aqsa,” and “Greetings to Hamas, resistance will continue.”
The Youth and Sports Minister Osman Askin Bak, former Turkish parliament speaker Mustafa Sentop, and the president of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for the Dissemination of Knowledge and a member of the High Advisory Board of TUGVA, Bilal Erdogan, were among the participants.
Prayers were also offered for the 12 Turkish soldiers killed in the Claw-Lock Operation zone in northern Iraq and for those killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza.
After the prayers, the participants began marching towards the Galata Bridge, carrying signs in Turkish, Arabic, and English.
In pictures: Hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life gather on Istanbul's iconic Galata Bridge to call for a permanent ceasefire in Palestine's Gaza pic.twitter.com/2UJWaipUAy
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Featured image: Demonstrators also condemned a PKK attack that martyred 12 Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq weeks earlier. / Photo: AA
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
If demography is destiny, as Auguste Comte tells us, then economics must be current, pinching reality. The Israel-Gaza conflict is invigorating a global protest movement against the state of Israel which is seeing various manifestations. From an economic standpoint, Israel can be seen as vulnerable in terms of global supply lines, potentially at the mercy of sanctions and complete isolation. Both imports and exports are of concern.
Israel, however, has been spared any toothy sanctions regime over its conduct in Gaza. If anything, the Biden administration in Washington has been brightly enthusiastic in sending more shells to the Israeli Defence Forces, despite Congressional reservations and some grumbling within the Democratic Party. This has made such figures as Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who has a long-standing association with the health system in Gaza, wonder why the wealthy states of the West exempt Israel from financial chastisement while economically punishing other powers, such as Russia, without reservation. “Where are the sanctions against the war crimes of Israel?” he asks. “Where are the sanctions against the occupation of Palestine? Where are the sanctions against these abhorrent attacks on civilian healthcare in Gaza?”
The retaliatory initiative has tended to be left to protests at the community level, typified by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement created in 2005. The war in Gaza, however, has resulted in a broader efflorescence of interest. Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems have become specific targets of international protest. On December 21, a global coalition of groups under the umbrella of Progressive International took a day of action against the country’s largest arms company, drawing attention to the tentacular nature of the enterprise in the US, UK, Europe, Brazil and Australia.
Restricting the docking of Israeli shipping at ports, notably from ZIM Integrated Shipping Services, has also presented an opportunity to the protest movement. Actions have been organised as far afield as Australia where “Block the Boat” measures have taken place. During the early evening of November 8, several hundred protesters flocked to the entrance of Melbourne’s international container terminal. On catching sight of a ZIM-branded shipping container, the protestors staged a blockade lasting till the morning of the next day. A similar action was repeated in Sydney on November 11, involving several hundred protestors holding the line on the shores of Port Botany and delaying the arrival of a ZIM vessel.
The assessments that followed the protest were mixed. Zacharias Szumer, writing in Jacobin, admits that such blockades, on their own, “are unlikely to cause a major dint in ZIM’s bottom line.” That said, he is confident enough to see it as part of a globalised effort which “can cumulatively make a difference.”
Then came the sceptical voices who felt that these actions fell dramatically short of substance and effect, a product of righteous, ineffectual tokenism. An anonymous contribution to the New Socialist, purporting to be from one of the protestors, went so far as to call the “Block the Boat” strategy misguided, since it never actually entailed blocking vessels. The promotional materials for the events “indicated that the purpose was actually to say somebody should ‘Block the Boats’, and to ‘call for’ a boycott – a message addressed to ZIM and Albanese.” The writer, clearly agitated, also took issue with the choice of locations (they “weren’t conducive to disruption”) and the “suspiciously rigid, and convenient” timing of the rallies.
Short of these efforts, it is precisely the absence of responses at the highest levels that has precipitated a more global reaction that is upending the order of things. Beyond the protests of activists, community groups, and the more generally outraged come the more direct, state-sponsored measures that have rattled financiers, the carriers and the operators. The crisis in the Red Sea, for instance, where Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels (Ansar Allah), are putting the brakes on international shipping, is the stellar example. While the measure initially began on November 14 to target Israeli-affiliated merchant shipping, largescale operators have not been spared. “Unlike previous piracy related events in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden this is a sophisticated military threat and requires a very sophisticated response,” states a briefing note from Inchcape Shipping Services.
The disruptions are significant, given that 30 percent of all container ship traffic passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen, the point where both the Red Sea and Indian Ocean meet. The actions and threats by the Houthis have seen various oil and gas companies reroute their tankers. Decisions are even being made to suspend shipping through that route in favour of the safer, though costlier and longer route via the Cape of Good Hope. Insurance premiums are also on the rise.
The Egyptians are also raising fees for those using the Suez Canal for the new year. In an October announcement, the SCA promised an increase of between 5-15%, effective from January 15, 2024. The measure is applicable to a fairly comprehensive list of vessel categories, including crude oil tankers, petroleum product tankers, liquefied petroleum gas carriers, containerships and cruise ships.
On December 20, Malaysia, as if heeding the “Block the Boat” protests, announced that it would be preventing Israeli-flagged cargo ships from docking at the country’s ports. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the decision in a statement, with a specific reference to ZIM.
“The Malaysian government decided to block and disallow the Israeli-based shipping company ZIM from docking at any Malaysian port.” Such sanctions were “a response to Israel’s actions that ignore basic humanitarian principles and violate international law through the ongoing massacre and brutality against Palestinians.”
Malaysia also announced, in addition to barring ships using the Israeli flag from docking in the country, the banning of “any ship on its way to Israel from loading cargo in Malaysian ports.”
Blockade, barring, embargo, constriction – all these measures are familiar to the Israeli security establishment as it seeks to strangle and pulverize the Gaza Strip. While closing ports to Israeli shipping is modest in comparison to starving and strafing an entire population, it is fittingly reciprocal and warranted. The Israel campaign against Gaza, and Palestinians more generally, is no longer a local, contained affair.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
Incisive article by the late John Pilger on the dangers of nuclear war, first published on August 8, 2022.
***
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of premeditated mass murder unleashing a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of 21st century U.S. war propaganda, casting a new enemy, and target – China.
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open.
At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite.
I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then I walked down to the river where the survivors still lived in shanties.
I met a man called Yukio, whose chest was etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.
He described a huge flash over the city, “a bluish light, something like an electrical short”, after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. “I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead.”
Nine years later, I returned to look for him and he was dead from leukemia.
“No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin” said a New York Times headline on September 13, 1945, a classic of planted disinformation. “General Farrell,” reported William H. Lawrence, “denied categorically that [the atomic bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity.”
Only one reporter, Wilfred Burchett, an Australian, had braved the perilous journey to Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing, in defiance of the Allied occupation authorities, which controlled the “press pack”.
“I write this as a warning to the world,” reported Burchett in the London Daily Express of September 5,1945. Sitting in the rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter, he described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries who were dying from what he called “an atomic plague”.
For this, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared. His witness to the truth was never forgiven.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an act of premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of America’s war propaganda in the 21st century, casting a new enemy, and target – China.
During the 75 years since Hiroshima, the most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and to save lives.
“Even without the atomic bombing attacks,” concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, “air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. “Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that … Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war [against Japan] and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
The National Archives in Washington contains documented Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the U.S. made clear the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including “capitulation even if the terms were hard”. Nothing was done.
The U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the U.S. Air Force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. Stimson later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the [atomic] bomb”.
Stimson’s foreign policy colleagues — looking ahead to the post-war era they were then shaping “in our image”, as Cold War planner George Kennan famously put it — made clear they were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the [atomic] bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the atomic bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.”
The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Harry Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.
The “experiment” continued long after the war was over. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States exploded 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific: the equivalent of more than one Hiroshima every day for 12 years.
The human and environmental consequences were catastrophic. During the filming of my documentary, The Coming War on China, I chartered a small aircraft and flew to Bikini Atoll in the Marshalls. It was here that the United States exploded the world’s first Hydrogen Bomb. It remains poisoned earth. My shoes registered “unsafe” on my Geiger counter. Palm trees stood in unworldly formations. There were no birds.
Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site Marshall Islands. (UNESCO)
I trekked through the jungle to the concrete bunker where, at 6.45 on the morning of March 1, 1954, the button was pushed. The sun, which had risen, rose again and vaporised an entire island in the lagoon, leaving a vast black hole, which from the air is a menacing spectacle: a deathly void in a place of beauty.
The radioactive fall-out spread quickly and “unexpectedly”. The official history claims “the wind changed suddenly”. It was the first of many lies, as declassified documents and the victims’ testimony reveal.
Gene Curbow, a meteorologist assigned to monitor the test site, said, “They knew where the radioactive fall-out was going to go. Even on the day of the shot, they still had an opportunity to evacuate people, but [people] were not evacuated; I was not evacuated… The United States needed some guinea pigs to study what the effects of radiation would do.”
Like Hiroshima, the secret of the Marshall Islands was a calculated experiment on the lives of large numbers of people. This was Project 4.1, which began as a scientific study of mice and became an experiment on “human beings exposed to the radiation of a nuclear weapon”.
The Marshall Islanders I met in 2015 — like the survivors of Hiroshima I interviewed in the 1960s and 70s — suffered from a range of cancers, commonly thyroid cancer; thousands had already died. Miscarriages and stillbirths were common; those babies who lived were often deformed horribly.
Unlike Bikini, nearby Rongelap atoll had not been evacuated during the H-Bomb test. Directly downwind of Bikini, Rongelap’s skies darkened and it rained what first appeared to be snowflakes. Food and water were contaminated; and the population fell victim to cancers. That is still true today.
I met Nerje Joseph, who showed me a photograph of herself as a child on Rongelap. She had terrible facial burns and much of her was hair missing. “We were bathing at the well on the day the bomb exploded,” she said. “White dust started falling from the sky. I reached to catch the powder. We used it as soap to wash our hair. A few days later, my hair started falling out.”
Lemoyo Abon said, “Some of us were in agony. Others had diarrhoea. We were terrified. We thought it must be the end of the world.”
U.S. official archive film I included in my film refers to the islanders as “amenable savages”. In the wake of the explosion, a U.S. Atomic Energy Agency official is seen boasting that Rongelap “is by far the most contaminated place on earth”, adding, “it will be interesting to get a measure of human uptake when people live in a contaminated environment.”
American scientists, including medical doctors, built distinguished careers studying the “human uptake”. There they are in flickering film, in their white coats, attentive with their clipboards. When an islander died in his teens, his family received a sympathy card from the scientist who studied him.
“Baker Shot”, part of Operation Crossroads, a U.S. nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in 1946. (U.S. Defense Dept.)
I have reported from five nuclear “ground zeros” throughout the world — in Japan, the Marshall Islands, Nevada, Polynesia and Maralinga in Australia. Even more than my experience as a war correspondent, this has taught me about the ruthlessness and immorality of great power: that is, imperial power, whose cynicism is the true enemy of humanity.
This struck me forcibly when I filmed at Taranaki Ground Zero at Maralinga in the Australian desert. In a dish-like crater was an obelisk on which was inscribed: “A British atomic weapon was test exploded here on 9 October 1957”. On the rim of the crater was this sign:
WARNING: RADIATION HAZARD
Radiation levels for a few hundred metres
around this point may be above those considered
safe for permanent occupation.
For as far as the eye could see, and beyond, the ground was irradiated. Raw plutonium lay about, scattered like talcum powder: plutonium is so dangerous to humans that a third of a milligram gives a 50 percent chance of cancer.
The only people who might have seen the sign were Indigenous Australians, for whom there was no warning. According to an official account, if they were lucky “they were shooed off like rabbits”.
The Enduring Menace
Today, an unprecedented campaign of propaganda is shooing us all off like rabbits. We are not meant to question the daily torrent of anti-Chinese rhetoric, which is rapidly overtaking the torrent of anti-Russia rhetoric. Anything Chinese is bad, anathema, a threat: Wuhan …. Huawei. How confusing it is when “our” most reviled leader says so.
The current phase of this campaign began not with Trump but with Barack Obama, who in 2011 flew to Australia to declare the greatest build-up of U.S. naval forces in the Asia-Pacific region since World War Two. Suddenly, China was a “threat”. This was nonsense, of course. What was threatened was America’s unchallenged psychopathic view of itself as the richest, the most successful, the most “indispensable” nation.
What was never in dispute was its prowess as a bully — with more than 30 members of the United Nations suffering American sanctions of some kind and a trail of the blood running through defenceless countries bombed, their governments overthrown, their elections interfered with, their resources plundered.
Obama’s declaration became known as the “pivot to Asia”. One of its principal advocates was his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who, as WikiLeaks revealed, wanted to rename the Pacific Ocean “the American Sea”.
Whereas Clinton never concealed her warmongering, Obama was a maestro of marketing. “I state clearly and with conviction,” said the new president in 2009, “that America’s commitment is to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
Obama speaks about 60 years of the U.S.-Australian alliance in Darwin, Australia, Nov. 17, 2011. (Sgt. Pete Thibodeau/Wikimedia Commons)
Obama increased spending on nuclear warheads faster than any president since the end of the Cold War. A “usable” nuclear weapon was developed. Known as the B61 Model 12, it means, according to General James Cartwright, former vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that “going smaller [makes its use] more thinkable”.
The target is China. Today, more than 400 American military bases almost encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to South-East Asia, Japan and Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, as one U.S. strategist told me, “the perfect noose”.
The Unthinkable
A study by the RAND Corporation – which, since Vietnam, has planned America’s wars – is entitled War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable. Commissioned by the U.S. Army, the authors evoke the infamous catch cry of its chief Cold War strategist, Herman Kahn – “thinking the unthinkable”. Kahn’s book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a plan for a “winnable” nuclear war.
Kahn’s apocalyptic view is shared by Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an evangelical fanatic who believes in the “rapture of the End”. He is perhaps the most dangerous man alive. “I was CIA director,” he boasted, “We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses.” Pompeo’s obsession is China.
The endgame of Pompeo’s extremism is rarely if ever discussed in the Anglo-American media, where the myths and fabrications about China are standard fare, as were the lies about Iraq. A virulent racism is the sub-text of this propaganda. Classified “yellow” even though they were white, the Chinese are the only ethnic group to have been banned by an “exclusion act” from entering the United States, because they were Chinese. Popular culture declared them sinister, untrustworthy, “sneaky”, depraved, diseased, immoral.
An Australian magazine, The Bulletin, was devoted to promoting fear of the “yellow peril” as if all of Asia was about to fall down on the whites-only colony by the force of gravity.
As the historian Martin Powers writes, acknowledging China’s modernism, its secular morality and “contributions to liberal thought threatened European face, so it became necessary to suppress China’s role in the Enlightenment debate …. For centuries, China’s threat to the myth of Western superiority has made it an easy target for race-baiting.”
In the Sydney Morning Herald, tireless China-basher Peter Hartcher described those who spread Chinese influence in Australia as “rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows”. Hartcher, who favourably quotes the American demagogue Steve Bannon, likes to interpret the “dreams” of the current Chinese elite, to which he is apparently privy. These are inspired by yearnings for the “Mandate of Heaven” of 2,000 years ago. Ad nausea.
To combat this “mandate”, the Australian government of Scott Morrison has committed one of the most secure countries on earth, whose major trading partner is China, to hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American missiles that can be fired at China.
The trickledown is already evident. In a country historically scarred by violent racism towards Asians, Australians of Chinese descent have formed a vigilante group to protect delivery riders. Phone videos show a delivery rider punched in the face and a Chinese couple racially abused in a supermarket. Between April and June, there were almost 400 racist attacks on Asian-Australians.
“We are not your enemy,” a high-ranking strategist in China told me, “but if you [in the West] decide we are, we must prepare without delay.” China’s arsenal is small compared with America’s, but it is growing fast, especially the development of maritime missiles designed to destroy fleets of ships.
“For the first time,” wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “China is discussing putting its nuclear missiles on high alert so that they can be launched quickly on warning of an attack… This would be a significant and dangerous change in Chinese policy…”
In Washington, I met Amitai Etzioni, distinguished professor of international affairs at George Washington University, who wrote that a “blinding attack on China” was planned, “with strikes that could be mistakenly perceived [by the Chinese] as pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma [that would] lead to nuclear war.”
In 2019, the U.S. staged its biggest single military exercise since the Cold War, much of it in high secrecy. An armada of ships and long-range bombers rehearsed an “Air-Sea Battle Concept for China” – ASB – blocking sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and cutting off China’s access to oil, gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.
It is fear of such a blockade that has seen China develop its Belt and Road Initiative along the old Silk Road to Europe and urgently build strategic airstrips on disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands.
In Shanghai, I met Lijia Zhang, a Beijing journalist and novelist, typical of a new class of outspoken mavericks. Her best-selling book has the ironic title Socialism Is Great! Having grown up in the chaotic, brutal Cultural Revolution, she has travelled and lived in the U.S. and Europe. “Many Americans imagine,” she said, “that Chinese people live a miserable, repressed life with no freedom whatsoever. The [idea of] the yellow peril has never left them… They have no idea there are some 500 million people being lifted out of poverty, and some would say it’s 600 million.”
Modern China’s epic achievements, its defeat of mass poverty, and the pride and contentment of its people (measured forensically by American pollsters such as Pew) are wilfully unknown or misunderstood in the West. This alone is a commentary on the lamentable state of Western journalism and the abandonment of honest reporting.
China’s repressive dark side and what we like to call its “authoritarianism” are the facade we are allowed to see almost exclusively. It is as if we are fed unending tales of the evil super-villain Dr. Fu Manchu. And it is time we asked why: before it is too late to stop the next Hiroshima.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist and filmmaker based in London. Pilger’s Web site is: www.johnpilger.com. In 2017, the British Library announced a John Pilger Archive of all his written and filmed work. The British Film Institute includes his 1979 film, “Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia,” among the 10 most important documentaries of the 20thcentury. Some of his previous contributions to Consortium News can be found here.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7, the Gaza Strip has been a focal point for the movement against imperialism worldwide.
Zionism has been a colonial project since its founding during the late 19th century in Western Europe.
In 1979, the Camp David Accord was signed between the then leaders of the settler-colonial State of Israel and the Egyptian government.
From the mid-1950s under the leadership of President Gamel Abdel Nassar to the 1973 October War led by the successor to Nassar, Anwar Sadat, Egypt had been on the frontline against Zionism. After the June 1967 war, the Israeli government seized the Sinai Desert in Egypt, the Golan Heights in Syria while expanding the occupation to the West Bank and Gaza.
The Camp David Accord was a controversial move by the Egyptian regime of Sadat. In fact, it cost the president his life in an assassination during early October 1981. The Accord was viewed as a betrayal of the Palestinian national liberation movement along with the legitimate claims of neighboring states to their land and sovereignty.
Today the siege on Gaza is threatening the very existence of the Camp David Accord as well as other “normalization” agreements between Tel Aviv and regional states. The bombing and ground offensive by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza has prompted mass demonstrations throughout West Asia, Africa and the world.
The Zionist state is attempting to drive out the entire Palestinian population from the Gaza Strip in order to remake the territory in its own image alongside Washington and Wall Street. Forcing the Palestinians into Egypt will make the façade of Camp David unsustainable.
Biden during the initial phase of the intensified struggle, deployed aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean. Now the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Bab-al-Mandab strait have been further militarized by U.S. imperialism. Yemen and its resistance Ansar Allah forces have challenged other regional states to take militant action against Israel and consequently the U.S. The Red Sea and other contiguous waterways connect West Asian and African states including Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and Egypt. The expansion of the war on Palestine in the present period can only be blamed upon the Biden administration and its allies around the globe.
Even within the United States, the level of activity related to Palestine solidarity has grown exponentially over the last several years. University campuses, urban street corners and transportation hubs are often overtaken by hundreds and even thousands of activists demanding a ceasefire and the disinvestment of U.S. economic interests from the Zionist state.
The administration of President Joe Biden has lost even more electoral support due to the continuing military, economic and diplomatic assistance providing by Washington for the ongoing genocide against Palestinians. A recent poll by the Cable News Network (CNN) indicated that the White House has a 63% disapproval rating. The dismal performance of Biden is not solely a result of his aid in facilitating the genocide against Palestinians. Nonetheless, the U.S. position against a ceasefire has isolated the administration on a global scale.
Repeatedly the U.S. has voted against a ceasefire within the United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly. The AU member-states historically have defended Palestine. However, in recent years the settler-colonial Zionist state has reestablished diplomatic relations with many African governments. Although the masses of Africans are overwhelmingly in favor of the Palestinian cause, the neo-colonial dominated regimes are opportunistic in their approach to foreign policy.
Those who have continued their alliance with the Palestinians are playing a significant role on the continent and indeed internationally. The Republic of South Africa led by the African National Congress (ANC) has maintained a decades-long relationship with the Palestinian liberation movement. It has been the result of South Africa’s foreign policy which has kept the Israeli government out of the proceedings of the AU as observers.
The AU Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat after generating much consternation by making a unilateral decision to admit Tel Aviv as observers in the AU summits, did issue a strong statement in opposition to the genocidal onslaught by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza. Nonetheless, the South African government led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, is taking a legal case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for their genocidal campaign in Gaza since early October.
South Africa has also sent packing the Israeli ambassador to Pretoria. This is in conjunction with actions taken by South American states Colombia, Bolivia and Chile in breaking diplomatic relations or withdrawing ambassadors. These developments illustrate again the waning influence of the U.S. in the Global South.
Alliance of Sahel States Turn Against French Imperialism
Since the July 26 revolution in Niger, the anti-French sentiment in West Africa has become even more pronounced. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are taking a stand against the decades-long policy of subservience to Paris on a diplomatic, economic and military level.
West Africa security pact signed
French diplomatic personnel and security forces have been ordered by the new military-dominated administrations, at the aegis of the masses, to withdraw from Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. Despite the attempts by Paris and Washington to engineer a proxy war between the pro-western elements within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the National Council for the Safeguarding of Our Homeland (CNSP) government in Niger, the majority of political tendencies have strongly objected.
[The military governments of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali are supported by the U.S. GR editor]
These events in West Africa during 2023 reveal a burgeoning consciousness related to imperialism and its machinations. The U.S. soon began to walk back the condemnations of the CNSP and attempted to distance itself from the French government of President Emmanuel Macron. The Pentagon utilizes Niger as an outpost for the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) which staffs drone stations inside the country.
Niger women delegation to Abuja
A state encompassing one of the largest uranium deposits in the world will continue to be a coveted area for western states seeking to control strategic metals and minerals. Moreover, if the pattern which has surfaced in the Sahel continues, the more precarious the imperialists will find their status.
What events in the Sahel region illustrate is that the people in West Africa are inclined against war. The internal conflicts are often by-products of the neo-colonial system. The fragmentation inherited from imperialist domination has continued its violent character well into the 21st century.
African Solutions to African Problems
The peace initiative in Ethiopia during 2022 sponsored by the Republic of South Africa and the Republic of Kenya averted a direct military intervention by U.S. imperialism in the Horn of Africa. This process must be replicated in Sudan, Cameroun, Somalia, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), etc. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) are now being reintegrated into Ethiopian society.
Although the current resolution of the Federal Ethiopian-Tigray war does not mean that other sectional conflicts in Ethiopia are settled, the peace agreements signed in Pretoria and Nairobi do portend much for other unresolved internal and regional disagreements which have become violent. If the UN peacekeeping operations in recent years proved ineffective then there is the need for a rethinking of national and geopolitical strategies for guaranteeing unity and stability.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has emphasized the need to have internal problems resolved through the framework of the AU. This quest will require the African states, progressive parties and mass organizations to unite around a program of anti-imperialism and unification. There is much invested by the western industrialized states in the ongoing divisions and underdevelopment of AU member-states.
In order for the institutionalization of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to become operational, social stability and peace must reign. However, peace and stability to be sustainable will require the advent of a just and equitable society.
Consequently, as has been enunciated in the Sahel states allied against French neo-colonialism, unity will come about through a process of political renewal and a united front against outside interference. Inevitably, a major battle against imperialism will be waged with mass backing from the workers, farmers and youth.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
John Pilger, whose books, films and articles informed generations of people eager to cut through official narratives and propaganda on the Palestinian question; U.S. wars executed in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere; the one it plans for China; the state of public medicine in Britain; the treatment of aborigines in his native Australia and a host of other critical public issues, has died in London at 84.
Pilger, a recipient of numerous awards, including winning British journalist of the year twice, was a member of Consortium News‘ board of directors and in October was awarded with CN‘s Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award.
Tributes have already begun to pour in.
John Pilger stood as a towering figure in the realm of true journalism, possessing a profound understanding of the significance of the WikiLeaks ideal. His resounding voice was among the most potent advocates for putting an end to the injustices faced by Julian Assange. He… pic.twitter.com/Y5ql8Yn0xM
Our dear dear John Pilger has left us. He was one of the greats. A consistent ally of the dispossessed, John dedicated his life to telling their stories and awoke the world to the greatest injustices. He showed great empathy for the weak and was unflinching with the powerful.… https://t.co/4ENQMwq5Ospic.twitter.com/L986CI3MlJ
— Stella Assange #FreeAssangeNOW (@Stella_Assange) December 31, 2023
This is extremely sad news and millions around the world will feel they lost somebody special. To his family and to Australia his loss will be felt most keenly of all. A great journalist, a fine man, a tower of strength has fallen. #JohnPilgerRIP
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Featured image: John Pilger in his film, Palestine Is Still the Issue (johnpilger.com)
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Airman Drowned After Heart Attack at Training Exercise, Records Show
An airman who was found dead during an Air Force training exercise in June died by drowning after an apparent heart attack, in what authorities ruled as an accident, according to civilian medical and law enforcement records obtained by Air Force Times.
Staff Sgt. Kory Wade, 33, a medical logistics technician with the 48th Rescue Squadron at Arizona’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, was reported missing June 14 at Roosevelt Lake — a vast manmade body of water that hosts military search-and-rescue drills.
The airman’s disappearance prompted a three-day search by local, state and federal authorities that ended when his body was recovered from the lake June 17.
The Air Force announced Wade’s death the same day but has not disclosed further details about the circumstances.
“Wade was a model airman and consummate professional,” 355th Wing Commander Col. Scott Mills said in a statement at the time. “He will be deeply missed.”
Dec. 11, 2023 – Cathay Pacific Flight CX101 (HKG-SYD) from Hong Kong to Sydney – Captain felt unwell, crew turned around and returned to Hong Kong, landed safely 3 hr later
Dec. 5, 2023 – Ryanair Flight RK-8528 (STN-OZZ) from London Stansted, UK, to Ouarzazate, Morocco – pilot felt unwell, crew diverted to Faro, Portugal, landed safely 30 min
Nov. 29, 2023 – American Airlines Flight AA755 CDG-PHL, from Paris, France, to Philadelphia, PA, pilot had a seizure and collapsed in the cockpit.
Nov. 26, 2023 – Ryanair Flight FR-3472 (LTN-RZE) from London Luton, UK to Rzeszow (Poland) on Nov.26, 2023, one of the pilots became incapacitated, plane diverted to Krakow and landed safely
Nov. 20, 2023 – Air Transat Flight TS-186 (YYZ-PUJ) from Toronto, Canada to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic – pilot became incapacitated and was replaced by a pilot passenger
Oct. 30, 2023 – Jet2 Flight LS-1711 (MAN-DLM) Manchester (UK) to Dalaman (Turkey) – First officer became incapacitated, pilot diverted aircraft to Budapest, landed safely
Sep. 24, 2023 – Austrian Airlines Flight OS-188 (STR-VIE) Stuttgart to Vienna The captain became incapacitated, first officer took control of aircraft
Sep. 23, 2023 – Alaska Airlines Pilot Death – 37 year old Captain Eric McRae died suddenly in his hotel room during layover, was to fly that morning
Sep. 22, 2023 – Delta Flight DL-291 (CDG-LAX) Paris to Los Angeles – Pilot became incapacitated, was taken to cabin for care, plane diverted to Minneapolis, pilot taken to hospital
Aug. 27, 2023 – Air Canada Flight AC348 (YVR-YOW) Vancouver to Ottawa, one of the pilots felt ill and became incapacitated 50 min before landing in Ottawa.
Aug. 17, 2023 – IndiGo Flight (NAG-PNQ) Nagpur to Pune, India, 40 year old Pilot Manoj Subramanium died after collapsing at the boarding gate, about to board.
Aug. 16, 2023 – Qatar Airways Flight QR579 (DEL-DOH) Delhi to Doha, Qatar, 51 year old pilot collapsed as a passenger inflight and died, plane diverted to Dubai.
Aug. 14, 2023 – LATAM Flight LA505 (MIA-SCL) Miami to Santiago, Chile – 2 hours into 8hr flight, 56 year old Captain Ivan Andaur collapsed and died in the lavatory – plane diverted to Panama City!
Aug. 9, 2023 – United Airlines UAL1309 (SRQ-EWR) Sarasota to Newark, pilot had a heart attack and lost consciousness in flight
Aug. 7, 2023 – TigerAIR Flight IT237 (CTS-TPE) Sapporo to Taipei, copilot had a medical emergency after landing plane in Taipei
July 19, 2023 – Eurowings Discover Flight 4Y-1205 (HER-FRA) Heraklion to Frankfurt, pilot incapacitated, first officer took control, landed safely
July 16, 2023 – Small plane – 2006 Piper Meridian, flying from Westchester NY, crashed at Martha’s Vineyard Airport after pilot had medical emergency upon final approach and passenger took control of the plane and attempted a landing. Pilot, 79 year old Randolph Bonnist, died later in hospital.
June 7, 2023 – Air Canada Flight ACA692 (YYZ-YYT) Toronto to St.John’s, First Officer became incapacitated, deadheading Captain assumed duties
June 4, 2023 – Small plane – Cessna Citation N611VG flying Tennessee to Long Island, fighter jets spotted pilot slumped over in cockpit unconscious, plane crashed and all onboard died
May 11, 2023 – HiSKy Flight H4474 (DUB-KIV) Dublin to Chisinau (Moldova), 20 min after liftoff pilot became “unable to act”, plane diverted to Manchester
May 4, 2023 – British Charter TUI Airways Flight BY-1424 (NCL-LPA) Newcastle to Las Palmas Spain pilot became ill, plane diverted back to NCL.
May 3, 2023 – Air Transat and Air Canada Pilot Eddy Vorperian, age 48, died suddenly during layover in Croatia
April 21, 2023 – Easyjet Flight U2-6469 (LGW-AGA) London Gatwick to Agadir, Morocco, first offer became incapacitated, diverted to Faro, Portugal.
April 4, 2023 – United Airlines Flight 2102 (BOI-SFO) – captain was incapacitated, first officer was only one in control of the aircraft.
March 25, 2023 – TAROM Flight RO-7673 TSR-HRG diverted to Bucharest as 30 yo pilot had chest pain, then collapsed
March 22, 2023 – Southwest Flight WN6013 LAS-CMH diverted as pilot collapsed shortly after take-off, replaced by non-Southwest pilot
March 18, 2023 – Air Transat Flight TS739 FDF-YUL first officer was incapacitated about 200NM south of Montreal
March 13, 2023 – Emirates Flight EK205 MXP-JFK diverted due to pilot illness hour and a half after take-off
March 11, 2023 – United Airlines Flight UA2007 GUA-ORD diverted due to “incapacitated pilot” who had chest pains
March 11, 2023 – British Airways (CAI-LHR) pilot died of heart attack in crew hotel in Cairo before a Cairo to London flight (name & age not released)
March 3, 2023 – Virgin Australia Flight VA-717 ADL-PER Adelaide to Perth flight was forced to make an emergency landing after First Officer suffered heart attack 30 min after departure.
Military Pilot Incapacitations and Deaths
Aug. 18, 2023 – US Army Aviation Center (Alabama) student pilot went into cardiac arrest behind the controls midflight (Aug.18, 2023), Instructor landed plane – pilot was dead for 18 minutes!
July 19, 2023 – 37 year old US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Andrew James Lingenfelter, of Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, died on July 19, 2023 after battle with Pancreatic Turbo Cancer
June 17, 2023 – 33 year old US Air Force Staff Sgt. Kory Wade – a medical logistics technician with the 48th Rescue Squadron at Arizona’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, was found dead June 17, 2023
May 9, 2023 – United Airlines and US Air Force Pilot Lt. Col. Michael Fugett, age 46, died unexpectedly at his home
Recent Pilot Deaths (Not on Duty)
Dec. 5, 2023 – Volaris (El Salvador) Pilot – 30s year old Jose Espinal – El Salvador Pilot for Volaris (El Salvador), Air Jazeera Airways (Kuwait) and former VECA & TACA Airlines, died suddenly on Dec.5, 2023.
Nov. 16, 2023 – Air India Pilot Death – 37 year old Air India Pilot Captain Himanil Kumar had cardiac arrest at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport during training
Oct. 18, 2023 – Austrian Airlines Pilot Death – 43 year old Christian Zimmerebner, AUA Austrian Airlines Pilot and member of Dorfgastein mountain rescue, diedsuddenly on Oct.18, 2023 due to “serious illness”
May 2023 – 4 Singapore Airlines pilots died suddenly in May 2023
April 13, 2023 – Phil Thomas, graduate of Flight Training Pilot academy in Cadiz, Spain (FTEJerez) died suddenly.
March 17, 2023 – 39 year old Westjet Pilot Benjamin Paul Vige died suddenly in Calgary
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
The fascist – “The sub-human/untermensch who delights in crushing the life out of humans.”
I think of Yehudi Menuhin in his art, of Archbishop Romero, of Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and of the millions who put self second. And of those truth tellers who strove but who were set aside and kept away from the distracted, ill informed and semi-conscious populations.
John Pilger left this ‘veil of tears’ last Saturday. (image right)
The BBC, the ZBC, records it but shunned broadcasting his words and film. (1)(2)
October 7th of 2023, the ‘break out’ from the largest concentration camp ever created, is reported as pivotal in this culmination of elemental evil now seen via Al Jazeera.
Just as Zionist evil swells ever larger in the other remnants of Palestine – ‘East’ Jerusalem and the ineptly called ‘West Bank’. Journalists, doctors, paramedics are ‘eliminated’ along with whole families, one recently numbering 70.
These sacrifices, this infinite negation of the sanctity of life, is neatly done at arms length by Hariri style ‘AI’, appropriately named by the Israel High Command as Gospel and Alchemist. (3).
But the goading of a captive but resistant native population has been there in the Land of Milk and Honey since about 1885 when the first Zionists started ‘settling’ and dispelling Palestinian land workers from that fertile land.
Is this four year long Operation Barbarossa of the German fascists rolled up into weeks the zenith of Zionist goading for an even greater evil?
Know that the arch priest Netanyahu, recently quoting the ‘Bible’ in justification, with others using words like ‘animals’, dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, rendering another Auschwitz etc. has been calling for the destruction of Iran for over a decade. And the Iranians know this, and know too that WW3 and wide annihilation by nuclear fission is minutes away. (4)
As Turkey is washed down with wine in the disintegrating ‘western’ societies, a dear child is crushed to death or shredded every ten earthly minutes in Gaza.
Some lie there at this minute, alive – limbs trapped with concrete dust in the lungs. The most terrible and terrifing crucifixion.
In Gaza with a population of 70,000 during WW2, an oasis on the Via Maris 2000 years ago. My friend, the late Eyad Serraj, doctor and psychiatrist, told me how as a young boy he ran through trees, with birds in their boughs to a sparkling sea. There was the glint of fish. He would not have foreseen thousands and thousands fleeing into Gaza by boat and by road in the ‘cleansing’ of 1948 – continued right up to this second. (5)
But have not smaller Barbarossas and Babi Yars (6) been going on – continuously since those 50 million were heaped on altars in the second ‘war to end wars’.
As Pilger often said, the US has bombed over 30 nations since WW2 and usually with the support of the other two members of the actual axis of evil – the UK and ‘Israel’. The latter named itself in its Knesset the ‘Jewish State’ – a total denial of humane bases in Judaism.
So the infinite crimes of those who have gripped ‘Israel’ with its pseudo-democracy and its burgeoning ‘parties’ have been going on and been rained down on civilians since Nuremberg One by other armies (image below).
The ‘land of the free’ predominates, with a ‘defence’ expenditure and its Raytheons, Boeings etc exceeding the total of next 9 nations in rank. The 50,000 tank ’rounds’ being hurried to ‘Israel’ by the walking corpse and ‘rapturist’ Biden is the most recent.
.
.
The abyss of ‘mutually assured destruction yawns’. Fallujah (7), Sirte, My Lai (8), East Timor, Panama, Chile/Allende, etc etc etc pass by.
Memory of milliseconds aided by an execrable press and broadcast media; electronic noise via the cell phone first distracting and then washing the ‘mind’.
The only way to stop this Gadarene rush into a black hole within a wondrous universe is to bring the present criminals, and those like Anthony Charles Lynton Blair who have escaped so far, is to indict them, judge them – and punish them. Only then might the hands of further Hitlers, Stalins and Kissingers (9) be stilled.
So let this ‘still beautiful world’ gain joy through light and love, through justice under international laws – all written and never realised.
How was Nuremberg One set going, with 8 Nazis later hung, and a similar number of Japanese war criminals. The rope or incarceration – together and for life the choices for those who tortured, maimed and killed so many millions of loved ones?
It was the London Agreement arising out of the Potsdam Conference – the US, the UK of course, France and the USSR. The latter, with its sacrifice of 25 million soldiers and civilians forgotten as the present fascist alliance supports a comedic dictator in an effort to ‘Balkanise’ Russia with its vast mineral resources and land mass. (10)
Note the dates!
Hiroshima – August 6th 1945
London Agreement setting up Nuremberg – August 8, 1945
Nagasaki – August 9th 1945 (11)
“The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, …”
Thus was fascism set to continue, having started with the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’, the Conquistadores and other European ‘white skins’. It fits that Holocaust Day Memorial – funded by the UK government with £500,000, does not include ‘Little Boy’ and Fat Man’ on Japan. (12)
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
This article was originally published on David Halpin.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Ten miles away from Heathrow airport, slotted between a golf club and the M25, lies a family business that’s been running for almost a century. In many ways, Martin-Baker is a British engineering success story, making £72m profit last year.
Its speciality, ejection seats, can be found in the cockpits of most Western fighter jets, serviced by a thousand staff at sites across the world. “The sun never sets on Martin-Baker,” its website muses, in a nod to the former British Empire.
Outside the company’s HQ in Buckinghamshire, an electronic screen keeps a tally of how many pilots have safely ejected from its seats. “Lives saved to date: 7715”, it boasts. Yet less well publicised is how many lives the company is likely to have endangered.
That question is particularly poignant now, because the company supplies seats to Israel’s air force, which is pummeling Gaza with genocidal intensity. Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy, who studied at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, says the air force has hit more than 22,000 targets in the narrow coastal strip – exceeding the number America used in an entire year of operations in Afghanistan.
More than 10,000 children have died in Israel’s bombardment, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a rate without precedent in modern warfare. The frequency of such sorties means the aircraft involved are guzzling through inventories of spare parts, as engineers race to service the jets that are more complex than F1 cars.
The jewel in the crown of Israel’s air force are several dozen state-of-the-art F-35s, made by US arms giant Lockheed Martin and a myriad of subcontractors. Crucial to their continued operation will be the ejection seats with their explosive cartridges.
Martin-Baker’s stand at an arms fair in London. (Photo: Phil Miller / DCUK)
The Pentagon, which hugely subsidises Israel’s military, handed Martin-Baker a contract to provide these cartridges last September, of which around half a million dollars was to cover work with Israel.
Such a safety feature has proved surprisingly temperamental, and had war broken out last summer these planes might have missed out. Its squadron was grounded for a week in August 2022 due to a problem with the ejection cartridges.
The fault, which was first found in the US, centred on Martin-Baker’s part of the plane. The firm said the error was “traced back to a gap in the manufacturing process, which was addressed and changed.”
Although the incident was swiftly resolved, it highlighted the fragility of the plane’s supply chain, which involves at least 79 companies in Britain, who between them ensure “15 percent of the value of every F-35 is made in the UK”.
Martin-Baker has at least one engineer based around Nevatim air base, where Israel stations its F-35s and the UK military has sent a cargo flight in recent weeks.
Other manufacturers are scattered across the US and Europe, providing activists and lawyers in different jurisdictions with potential avenues to halt supplies reaching Israel. The Dutch affiliate of Oxfam has filed a lawsuit in the Netherlands, where NATO has an F-35 regional supply hub, in a bid to stop spare parts bound for Tel Aviv.
Success could hinge on whether Dutch officials can prove the arms exports will not fuel war crimes in Gaza. A similar dilemma faced British authorities two decades ago, when the UK implemented an embargo on key components for Israel’s military. It included parts for ejection seats on Israel’s 140 F-4 Phantom jets, which were only available from Martin Baker.
A repeat of such a principled stance seems unlikely from Rishi Sunak’s government, which has pledged unequivocal support for Israel. Defence secretary Grant Shapps would probably want to be even more deeply involved.
“We have provided no offensive military weapons to Israel during this conflict, and in fact our exports to Israel on military grounds are actually quite low, I think a figure of something like £48 million last year, which is not a very significant amount of money.”
Britain would, he said, “only be providing defensive materials, or materials which might help with the recovery of hostages,” during the conflict in Gaza. As Shapps views the airstrikes on Hamas as Israeli self-defence – however many civilians are hit – then components for the F-35 are likely to keep flowing.
Indeed, to halt the trade would be to snub one of Britain’s most privileged industries. Martin-Baker and Israeli arms firms all exhibited at the UK-government sponsored DSEI arms fair that was held in London a month before the latest war in Gaza began. Danny Gold, an Israeli general in charge of research and development, was a keynote speaker.
General Gold gushed about how Israel could send swarms of drones over an urban area which “sense the enemy, expose the enemy, connected to layers of other European fighter aircraft” and drew on “of course a lot of AI” for their target acquisition.
The Israeli military’s experimental use of artificial intelligence is key to its system of Habsora, (“The Gospel”), which automatically generates targets faster than was humanly possible. A former Israeli intelligence officer told the magazine +972 that this AI system has turned Gaza into a “mass assassination factory.”
Martin-Baker did not respond to a request for comment from Declassified as to whether it had any concerns about supplying goods or services to Israel’s air force, in light of the situation in Gaza.
However when Declassified met its representative Tony Gaunt at DSEI, he was relaxed about the company’s ejector seats ending up in Saudi aircraft, which have also been blamed for killing children. “We sell to BAE Systems who provide it [to Saudi]. So they then determine the end user,” he said cheerfully. The ejection seats, which cost upwards from £150,000 each, were “a very cool product”.
A growing number of British people appear to differ. Last week, four factories in the UK were blocked by protesters, in most cases because they supplied parts for the F-35. Martin-Baker escaped their ire this time, but its sleepy site in Buckinghamshire may not always be ignored.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Phil Miller is Declassified UK’s chief reporter. He is the author of Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes. Follow him on Twitter at @pmillerinfo
Featured image: Israel receives its first F-35 jet at Nevatim air base. (Photo: US Embassy)
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
The Houthis are going to prevent Israel-bound commercial ships from reaching Israeli ports as long as Israel prevents food, water and medicine from reaching Palestinians in Gaza. If Israeli leaders want to end the blockade, they need to stop killing Palestinians and end the siege. This is the simple, moral solution to the current crisis in the Red Sea.
Over the weekend, Houthi fighters launched attacks on two more commercial ships despite the presence of US warships patrolling the area. The primary target was the Maersk Hangzhou that was swarmed by small boats filled with Houthi militants who fired small arms weapons at the sailors on board. US Naval helicopters were sent to the scene and sunk three of the boats killing all of the crew.
Sometime later, the Maersk Hangzhou was attacked again in the southern part of the Red Sea. It was hit by a missile that was launched from a location on Yemen’s coastline. Following the attack, the Hangzhou made a Mayday call requesting assistance from Naval ships operating in the area. According to one account: “The vessel is reportedly seaworthy and there are no reported injuries.”
It’s worth noting that Maersk had ordered a complete suspension of all commercial ships passing through the Red Sea just two weeks ago on December 15. Maersk had only reluctantly agreed to resume sailing because leaders at the Pentagon had assured them that they would be safe. On December 19, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin launched a multi-national maritime task-force, named Operation Prosperity Guardian, that was supposed to protect commercial ships in Red Sea from Houthi missile and drone attacks. The incidents that occurred this weekend prove that Austin’s coalition is a failure. And Maersk has tacitly admitted it is a failure by pausing all sailing through the Red Sea for the next 48 hours. We expect that the “pause” will be indefinitely extended until the issue is resolved, which is unlikely to be anytime in the near future.
The decision to create a naval task force –that will ostensibly protect “freedom of navigation” in the Red Sea– is as foolish and reckless a policy as anything we’ve seen since the decision to invade Iraq. No one in the region has any misgivings as to why the US initiated the policy. The United States is forcefully expressing its full support for Israel’s sadistic war on the Palestinian people. That is the widely held perception, and that is the truth. The Biden administration has made no attempt to talk to the Houthis nor have they put any restrictions on Israel’s behavior. (No “red lines”) The only thing one can construe from Biden’s approach is that he has decided to entirely abandon the pretense of being an “impartial broker” on matters involving the Middle East, and opted instead to be an active participant in the hostilities on Israels side. In short, Operation Prosperity Guardian has nothing to do with “freedom of navigation”. It is the deployment of US military assets to further the Zionist aspiration of ethnically cleansing historic Palestine in order to create Greater Israel. The US has now joined Israel in its attempt to make that objective a reality.
The continued support of the United States, Britain and other EU countries for Israel's crimes is not something that can be hidden from the eyes of any impartial viewer and erased from the historical memory of nations!#ISISraelpic.twitter.com/nQOZbooOV9
As we mentioned earlier, the Houthis have agreed to end their attacks on commercial traffic in the Red Sea if Israel simply stops military operations long enough to deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. This is not only a reasonable request, it’s a policy that is supported by the vast majority of nations and people around the world. Surprisingly, the Houthis are alone in taking positive, concrete steps to see that the policy is implemented. They have courageously put their own lives at risk for an oppressed people with who they have almost no direct contact. Their actions reflect the sincerity of their beliefs and a commitment to principle. It should surprise no one that they are so widely admired. Here’s more background from an article at Aljazeera:
If the task of Operation Prosperity Guardian were to be defined narrowly, only to prevent hits on merchant ships, it could be performed using the centuries-old principle of sailing in convoys with the protection of warships. In a convoy, slow, defenseless commercial cargoes sail in several columns at precisely defined distances from each other — led, flanked and tailed by fast warships that can take on any threat….
But every strategy has its limitations. A convoy is big and cumbersome, extending for miles to give behemoth ships a safe distance from each other and to enable them to maneuver if needed. Whatever the protective measures taken, huge tankers and container carriers – longer than 300 metres (984 feet) – still present big targets….
Their escorts, even if well-armed, carry a limited number of missiles and must plan their use carefully, allowing for further attacks down the shipping lane and ultimately leaving a war reserve for the defense of the ship itself. Once they expend some of the missiles, they need to replenish them – a task that is possible at sea but done much more quickly and safely in a friendly port out of reach of Houthi missiles.
To clear the critical 250 nautical miles (463km) along the Yemeni coast leading to or from the Bab al-Mandeb strait, advancing at assumed 15 knots (28kmph) — as convoys always sail at the speed of the slowest units — ships would be exposed to even the shortest-ranged Houthi missiles and drones for at least 16 hours.” Analysis: In the Red Sea, the US has no good options against the Houthis, Aljazeera
This brief excerpt illustrates the obvious shortcomings of the Pentagon strategy. A large naval escort will only create a more target-rich environment for Houthi missile launchers. Besides –as we’ve already seen with the Maersk Hangzhou incident– the strategy doesn’t work. The proximity of US warships does not deter Houthi attacks nor will it assure freedom of navigation. The plan is neither economically feasible nor militarily practical. (Note: How long will the US be able to provide a naval flotilla to escort commercial ships carrying I-pods and Hula Hoops to market?)
And let’s not ignore the Houthis impressive offensive power either. Check it out:
The Houthi missile threat is now known to be high, and their arsenal is substantial. Naval planners must be worried by their ability to mount concentrated prolonged attacks simultaneously from several directions. (Aljazeera)
So why would the US engage in such a costly strategy if they knew that it was bound to fail?
Perhaps, failure is the goal, because failure moves the conflict further up the escalatory ladder and closer to a regional war that is sought by the Washington neocons and their puppet-master allies in Israel. Here’s more from Aljazeera:
Every admiral would tell his political superiors that military necessity would call for attacks on Houthi missile infrastructure on the ground in Yemen: fixed and mobile launch sites, production and storage facilities, command centres and whatever little radar infrastructure there exists. A proactive response to the missile threat, in other words, to destroy the Houthi ship-targeting capability, rather than the reactive one limited to shooting missiles down as they come in.
In theory, attacks against Houthi missile infrastructure could be based on satellite and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) reconnaissance and carried out by missiles launched from the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and armed drones from distant land bases. But the only realistic chance at meaningful success would require the use of combat aircraft, bombers based on the two US Navy nuclear carriers in the region.
Attacks against targets in Yemen would have a clear military justification. But they would also carry a clear political risk: that of the West, particularly the US, being seen in the Arab and Islamic world as actually entering the Gaza war on the side of Israel. After all, the Houthis say their attacks on Red Sea ships are aimed at getting Israel to end the war.
Aware of the perils of such a development that could easily cause the conflict to spread, the US has tried to tread carefully, engaging with regional powers, and sending messages that it wants no escalation. (Aljazeera)
The US “wants no escalation”?
Nonsense. Are we expected to believe that the Pentagon hasn’t gamed this out and already knows the outcome? But, how could that be if –as the authors says– “military necessity would call for attacks on Houthi missile infrastructure on the ground in Yemen: fixed and mobile launch sites, production and storage facilities, command centres and… radar infrastructure.” In other words, they fully expect an escalation that will lead to more destruction, more bloodshed and a deeper commitment of military resources. If that isn’t a persecution for a broader regional war, then what is?
BREAKING:
⚡Another ship attacked by the Houthis in the Red Sea
And when shelling (or bombing) of Houthi positions on the ground doesn’t work (and it did NOT work in the 9 year-long war with Saudi Arabia) then Washington will be forced to send in the ground troops. But first, Biden will have to use US warships as ‘sitting ducks’ so they are hit by Houthi missiles which will generate the mass-hysteria needed to dupe the American people into another disastrous war in the Middle East.
By the way, since Denmark’s Maersk announced it was planning to resume transit through the Red Sea (on December 24) there has been another Houthi missile attack on a container ship named the MSC United on December 26. This latest incident could persuade Maersk that sailing the Red Sea is still not safe and that it would be wiser to reroute its ships around the Horn of Africa until the hostilities cease. We’ll have to wait and see what Maersk does. (Note– This was written a day before the Houthi attack on the Maersk Hangzhou.)
In any event, the damage inflicted on commercial shipping has been nothing short of breathtaking. Take a look at this excerpt from an article at Bloomberg:
Half of the containership fleet that regularly transits the Red Sea and Suez Canal is avoiding the route now because of the threat of attacks, according to new industry data.
The tally compiled by Flexport Inc. shows 299 vessels with a combined capacity to carry 4.3 million containers have either changed course or plan to. That’s about double the number from a week ago and equates to about 18% of global capacity.
The diverted journeys around Africa can take as much as 25% longer than using the Suez Canal shortcut between Asia and Europe, according to Flexport. Those trips are more costly and may lead to higher prices for consumers on everything from sneakers to food to oil if the longer journeys persist…. The figures show the scale of the mounting maritime disruption after Houthis launched more than 100 attacks on commercial ships in the past month….
Containership arrivals were down 87%, gas tankers about 30% and car carriers about 25%. It’s a similar picture for Suez Canal transits, which were down about 45% between Dec. 22 and Dec. 26 for vessels heading south, according to Clarksons….
“While the US-led coalition might appear successful militarily, it might not be sufficient for major shipping companies to resume Red Sea transits,” said Gerard DiPippo, senior geo-economic analyst with Bloomberg Economics. “The longer the Houthi attacks continue, the more pressure the US will face to go on the offensive, which risks regional escalation.”299 Containerships Reroute to Avoid the Red Sea, Doubling in Number from Last Week, Bloomberg (from gcaptain)
Are the American people aware of the damage that’s being caused by our blanket support of Israel? And these disruptions will likely balloon by many orders of magnitude once the US goes on the offensive and launches a war on the Yemeni mainland. Then we’ll see commercial shipping in the Red Sea grind to a standstill.
Bottom line: The strategy of escorting commercial ships through the Red Sea has clearly failed. For all practical purposes, Operation Prosperity Guardian is kaput. We must assume that the Pentagon is conjuring up a more aggressive strategy that will involve greater risks and potentially a wider war. Simply put, the Houthis are now regarded as a threat to America’s vital interests as designated in Biden’s 2022 National Security Strategy. Here’s the relevant excerpt:
….the United States will not allow foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East’s waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al Mandab, nor tolerate efforts by any country to dominate another—or the region—through military buildups, incursions, or threats.”
There it is in black and white. The Houthis now represent a clear and present danger to US national security. That is no different than an explicit declaration of war, which is why we think this conflict will escalate very quickly from this point on, shifting from a defensive posture to aggressively bombarding Houthi military positions in Yemen to, finally, the deployment of US Special Forces and ground troops to Yemen itself. (“boots on the ground”) Team Biden has put the US on the fasttrack to a catastrophic war on the Arabian peninsula, a war that will push Arab leaders into the arms of Russia and China, a war that will strengthen anti-American alliances and exacerbate geopolitical divisions, a war that will deepen America’s isolation and the steady erosion of its moral authority, and a war that terminate the unipolar moment and the waning “American Century.”
Wouldn’t it be easier to simply ask Israel to stop its bloody rampage?
Britain has assisted Israel's genocidal war on Gaza through logistics, intelligence, and arms deliveries.
It is now part of the US coalition to punish Yemen for its courageous stand with Palestine
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
John Pilger, who has died of pulmonary fibrosis aged 84, was a journalist who never shirked from saying the unsayable. Across half a century, in newspapers and in his documentary films – many for ITV, but later also in the cinema – he became an ever stronger voice for those without a voice, and a thorn in the side of those in authority.
He was a fervent critic of US and British foreign policy. In 2006, on a panel at Columbia University, New York, to discuss Breaking the Silence: War, Lies and Empire, Pilger asserted that “journalists in the so-called mainstream bear much of the responsibility” for the devastation and lives lost in Iraq, by not challenging and exposing “the lies of Bush and Blair”.
Image: John Pilger at work at the Daily Mirror in 1976. Photograph: Fairfax Media/Getty Images
The impact of Pilger’s journalism was enormous. In 1979, he entered Cambodia after the Vietnamese had thrown out Pol Pot and the murderous Khmer Rouge. In a report that took up much of the first half of the Daily Mirror, he revealed that possibly more than two million people, from a population of seven million, had died as a result of genocide or starvation, while another two million faced death from food shortages or disease.
Haunting images of emaciated children, and doctors battling to save lives, were subsequently seen in Pilger’s documentary Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia, which was watched in 50 countries by 150 million viewers, and won more than 30 international awards.
Displaying his talent for putting a human tragedy into a political context, he laid part of the blame on the US, which had secretly and illegally bombed Cambodia, creating the turmoil that allowed Pol Pot to seize power. Also, said Pilger, western governments were unwilling to give substantial aid to those now running Cambodia for fear of displeasing the US, which had been defeated in the Vietnam war only four years earlier.
Pilger’s reporting helped to raise $45m in relief and earned him a second journalist of the year title in the British Press Awards (the previous one was for his dispatches from Vietnam) and the United Nations media peace prize. Over the next decade, he continued to return to Cambodia and report on the power politics. He himself survived an ambush after being put on a Khmer Rouge death list.
From his first ITV documentary, in 1970, Pilger made waves. In The Quiet Mutiny, for Granada Television’s World in Action current affairs series, he broke the story of the disintegration of morale among US troops in the Vietnam war – and reported that some officers were being killed by their own soldiers.
Following a complaint by the US ambassador in London, the ITA – then commercial television’s regulator – rapped Granada over the knuckles, setting the tone for future battles with Pilger over questions of balance and impartiality.
His ITV series Pilger (1974-77), made by ATV, looked into many controversial subjects in Britain, Pilger’s adopted country after he left his native Australia in 1962. He reported on 98 uncompensated thalidomide victims, NHS cuts, racism, poverty and the treatment of children with learning disabilities. Abroad, he went undercover to interview Czech dissidents.
Throughout this time, the ITA’s successor, the IBA, insisted that his films should be introduced on screen as a “personal view” rather than objective reporting. Pilger described David Glencross, the regulator’s chief programme officer, as “commercial television’s chief censor” and regarded the IBA’s calls for objectivity, balance and impartiality as “code for the establishment view of the world, against which most perspectives are measured”.
Nelson Mandela and John Pilger in 1995. Photograph: ITV/Shutterstock
Pilger said he looked at politics from the ground up, and he enjoyed the support of Richard Creasey, who became ATV’s head of documentaries and negotiated with Glencross the right to screen films without the “personal view” label. Nevertheless, when ATV became Central Independent Television and Pilger tackled the language used to promote nuclear weapons in his 1983 documentary The Truth Game, the IBA insisted that a “balancing” programme be made by someone else (it turned out to be Max Hastings) before it could be screened.
Pilger was one of the first journalists to return to Vietnam after the war, and among his other films of the period were Do You Remember Vietnam (1978), and Heroes (1981), for which he took five disabled American war veterans back to former combat zones to reflect on what he described as a war fought “in the cause of nothing”.
However, his claims in Cambodia: The Betrayal (1990) about the SAS training Khmer Rouge guerrillas in the 1980s led Pilger and Central to lose a libel action.
Many of his documentaries exposed human rights abuses. At great personal risk, Pilger and his regular director, David Munro, entered countries run by military dictatorships. In Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy (1994), he interviewed eyewitnesses to genocide by the occupying Indonesian regime in East Timor and revealed an unreported massacre. In Inside Burma: Land of Fear (1998), he uncovered the generals’ torture.
For Apartheid Did Not Die (1998), Pilger interviewed Nelson Mandela and caused discomfort to both white and black South Africans by describing a new “economic apartheid” that kept many black people in poverty.
When Pilger made Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror(2003), he unravelled the background to 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, highlighting “hypocrisy” by the US and British governments. He opened with the words: “This film is about the rise and rise of rapacious imperial power and a terrorism that never speaks its name because it is our terrorism.”
Similar themes emerged in The War on Democracy (2007), about US interference in Latin American countries, and The War You Don’t See (2010), a chronicle of reporting from the frontline made with the director Alan Lowery, another regular collaborator. “Why do many journalists beat the drums of war regardless of the lies of governments?” Pilger asked.
Among more than 60 documentaries, Pilger also made Stealing a Nation(2004), on the British government expelling the population of the Chagos Islands, in the Indian Ocean, in the 60s so that the US could set up a military base there.
But a constant subject of Pilger’s films over almost 40 years, beginning in 1976, was his homeland and the treatment of Indigenous Australians. Most significantly, he made The Secret Country: The First Australians Fight Back (1985), the bicentenary trilogy The Last Dream (1988) and Utopia (2013), telling the story of his great-grandparents’ arrival in Australia as convicts, Aboriginal poverty and deaths in police custody, and the stolen generations of mixed-heritage children taken from their families.
John Pilger in Sydney, the city of his birth. Photograph: GTV/Shutterstock
Pilger was born in Sydney, to Elsie (nee Marheine), a teacher, and Claude Pilger, a carpenter. He attended Sydney Boys’ high school and won medals as a swimmer. In 1958 he joined Australian Consolidated Press, working on the Sydney Sun, and then the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.
He freelanced in Italy before moving to Britain in 1962 and becoming a subeditor with the Reuters news agency. A year later, he joined the Daily Mirror as a subeditor, then a reporter noted for his investigative journalism, descriptive writing and tireless campaigns.
Roaming the world, he was banned from South Africa by the apartheid regime in 1967 and was standing metres away when Robert F Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles the following year. He left the Mirror in 1985 and wrote for other papers, including the Guardian. He was a supporter of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The ferocity of rightwing criticism of his views indicated the effectiveness of his journalism.
Among dozens of honours, Pilger received an Emmy for Cambodia: The Betrayal, and, in 1991, Bafta’s Richard Dimbleby award.
His 1971 marriage to the journalist Scarth Flett ended in divorce. He is survived by his partner of more than 30 years, Jane Hill, a magazine journalist, a son, Sam, from his marriage, and a daughter, Zoe, from a relationship with the journalist Yvonne Roberts.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
*
John Pilger’s legacy will live.
Global Research will be featuring in the next few days several of his most important writings.
This article focussing on media propaganda was first published on August 22, 2023, is John Pilger’s edited version of an address to the Trondheim World Festival, Norway, on 6 September, 2022.
In an address to the Trondheim World Festival in Norway, John Pilger charts the history of power propaganda and describes how it appropriates journalism in a ‘profound imperialism’ and is likely to entrap us all, if we allow it.
***
In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer.
She told me that the ‘patriotic messages’ of her films were dependent not on ‘orders from above’ but on what she called the ‘submissive void’ of the German public.
Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked. ‘Yes, especially them,’ she said.
I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies.
Of course, we are very different from Germany in the 1930s. We live in information societies. We are globalists. We have never been more aware, more in touch, better connected.
Are we? Or do we live in a Media Society where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered according to the needs and lies of state and corporate power?
The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top ten media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled.
In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries.
The extent and scale of this carnage is largely unreported, unrecognised; and those responsible continue to dominate Anglo-American political life.
In the years before he died in 2008, the playwright made two extraordinary speeches, which broke a silence:
‘US foreign policy,’ he said, is ‘best defined as follows: kiss my arse or I’ll kick your head in’.
It is as simple and as crude as that. What is interesting about it is that it’s so incredibly successful.
It possesses the structures of disinformation, use of rhetoric, distortion of language, which are very persuasive, but are actually a pack of lies. It is very successful propaganda. They have the money, they have the technology, they have all the means to get away with it, and they do.’
In accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pinter said this:
‘The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America.
It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.’
Pinter was a friend of mine and possibly the last great political sage – that is, before dissenting politics were gentrified. I asked him if the ‘hypnosis’ he referred to was the ‘submissive void’ described by Leni Riefenstahl.
‘It’s the same,’ he replied.
‘It means the brainwashing is so thorough we are programmed to swallow a pack of lies. If we don’t recognise propaganda, we may accept it as normal and believe it. That’s the submissive void.’
In our systems of corporate democracy, war is an economic necessity, the perfect marriage of public subsidy and private profit: socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor. The day after 9/11 the stock prices of the war industry soared. More bloodshed was coming, which is great for business.
Today, the most profitable wars have their own brand. They are called ‘forever wars’: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and now Ukraine. All are based on a pack of lies.
Iraq is the most infamous, with its weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist.
Nato’s destruction of Libya in 2011 was justified by a massacre in Benghazi that didn’t happen. Afghanistan was a convenient revenge war for 9/11, which had nothing to do with the people of Afghanistan.
Today, the news from Afghanistan is how evil the Taliban are – not that Joe Biden’s theft of $7billion of the country’s bank reserves is causing widespread suffering. Recently, National Public Radio in Washington devoted two hours to Afghanistan – and 30 seconds to its starving people.
At its summit in Madrid in June, Nato, which is controlled by the United States, adopted a strategy document that militarises the European continent, and escalates the prospect of war with Russia and China. It proposes ‘multi domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitor. In other words, nuclear war.
It says: ‘Nato’s enlargement has been an historic success’.
I read that in disbelief.
A measure of this ‘historic success’ is the war in Ukraine, news of which is mostly not news, but a one-sided litany of jingoism, distortion, omission. I have reported a number of wars and have never known such blanket propaganda.
In February, Russia invaded Ukraine as a response to almost eight years of killing and criminal destruction in the Russian-speaking region of Donbass on their border.
In 2014, the United States had sponsored a coup in Kyiv that got rid of Ukraine’s democratically elected, Russian-friendly president and installed a successor whom the Americans made clear was their man.
In recent years, American ‘defender’ missiles have been installed in eastern Europe, Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, almost certainly aimed at Russia, accompanied by false assurances all the way back to James Baker’s ‘promise’ to Gorbachev in February 1990 that Nato would never expand beyond Germany.
Ukraine is the frontline. Nato has effectively reached the very borderland through which Hitler’s army stormed in 1941, leaving more than 23 million dead in the Soviet Union.
Last December, Russia proposed a far-reaching security plan for Europe.
This was dismissed, derided or suppressed in the Western media. Who read its step-by-step proposals? On 24 February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy threatened to develop nuclear weapons unless America armed and protected Ukraine. This was the final straw.
On the same day, Russia invaded – according to the Western media, an unprovoked act of congenital infamy. The history, the lies, the peace proposals, the solemn agreements on Donbass at Minsk counted for nothing.
On 25 April, the US Defence Secretary, General Lloyd Austin, flew into Kyiv and confirmed that America’s aim was to destroy the Russian Federation – the word he used was ‘weaken’. America had got the war it wanted, waged by an American bankrolled and armed proxy and expendable pawn.
Almost none of this was explained to Western audiences.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is wanton and inexcusable. It is a crime to invade a sovereign country. There are no ‘buts’ – except one.
When did the present war in Ukraine begin and who started it? According to the United Nations, between 2014 and this year, some 14,000 people have been killed in the Kyiv regime’s civil war on the Donbass. Many of the attacks were carried out by neo-Nazis.
Watch an ITV news report from May 2014, by the veteran reporter James Mates, who is shelled, along with civilians in the city of Mariupol, by Ukraine’s Azov (neo-Nazi) battalion.
In the same month, dozens of Russian-speaking people were burned alive or suffocated in a trade union building in Odessa besieged by fascist thugs, the followers of the Nazi collaborator and anti-Semitic fanatic Stephen Bandera. The New York Times called the thugs ‘nationalists’.
‘The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment,’ said Andreiy Biletsky, founder of the Azov Battaltion, ‘is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.’
Since February, a campaign of self-appointed ‘news monitors’ (mostly funded by the Americans and British with links to governments) have sought to maintain the absurdity that Ukraine’s neo-Nazis don’t exist.
Airbrushing, a term once associated with Stalin’s purges, has become a tool of mainstream journalism.
In less than a decade, a ‘good’ China has been airbrushed and a ‘bad’ China has replaced it: from the world’s workshop to a budding new Satan.
Much of this propaganda originates in the US, and is transmitted through proxies and ‘think-tanks’, such as the notorious Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the voice of the arms industry, and by zealous journalists such as Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald, who labeled those spreading Chinese influence as ‘rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows’ and called for these ‘pests’ to be ‘eradicated’.
News about China in the West is almost entirely about the threat from Beijing.
Airbrushed are the 400 American military bases that surround most of China, an armed necklace that reaches from Australia to the Pacific and south east Asia, Japan and Korea. The Japanese island of Okinawa and the Korean island of Jeju are loaded guns aimed point blank at the industrial heart of China. A Pentagon official described this as a ‘noose’.
Palestine has been misreported for as long as I can remember. To the BBC, there is the ‘conflict’ of ‘two narratives’. The longest, most brutal, lawless military occupation in modern times is unmentionable.
The stricken people of Yemen barely exist. They are media unpeople. While the Saudis rain down their American cluster bombs with British advisors working alongside the Saudi targeting officers, more than half a million children face starvation.
This brainwashing by omission has a long history. The slaughter of the First World War was suppressed by reporters who were knighted for their compliance and confessed in their memoirs. In 1917, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, C.P. Scott, confided to prime minister Lloyd George:
‘If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow, but they don’t know and can’t know.’
The refusal to see people and events as those in other countries see them is a media virus in the West, as debilitating as Covid. It is as if we see the world through a one-way mirror, in which ‘we’ are moral and benign and ‘they’ are not. It is a profoundly imperial view.
The history that is a living presence in China and Russia is rarely explained and rarely understood. Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler. Xi Jinping is Fu Man Chu. Epic achievements, such as the eradication of abject poverty in China, are barely known. How perverse and squalid this is.
When will we allow ourselves to understand? Training journalists factory style is not the answer. Neither is the wondrous digital tool, which is a means, not an end, like the one-finger typewriter and the linotype machine.
In recent years, some of the best journalists have been eased out of the mainstream. ‘Defenestrated’ is the word used. The spaces once open to mavericks, to journalists who went against the grain, truth-tellers, have closed.
The case of Julian Assange is the most shocking. When Julian and WikiLeaks could win readers and prizes for the Guardian, the New York Times and other self-important ‘papers of record’, he was celebrated.
When the dark state objected and demanded the destruction of hard drives and the assassination of Julian’s character, he was made a public enemy. Vice President Biden called him a ‘hi-tech terrorist’. Hillary Clinton asked, ‘Can’t we just drone this guy?’
The ensuing campaign of abuse and vilification against Julian Assange – the UN Rapporteur on Torture called it ‘mobbing’ — brought the liberal press to its lowest ebb. We know who they are. I think of them as collaborators: as Vichy journalists.
When will real journalists stand up? An inspirational samizdat already exists on the internet:
Consortium News, founded by the great reporter Robert Parry, Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone, Mint Press News, Media Lens, Declassified UK, Alborada, Electronic Intifada, WSWS, ZNet, ICH, Counter Punch, Independent Australia, the work of Chris Hedges, Patrick Lawrence, Jonathan Cook, Diana Johnstone, Caitlin Johnstone and others who will forgive me for not mentioning them here.
And when will writers stand up, as they did against the rise of fascism in the 1930s?
When will film-makers stand up, as they did against the Cold War in the 1940s?
When will satirists stand up, as they did a generation ago?
Having soaked for 82 years in a deep bath of righteousness that is the official version of the last world war, isn’t it time those who are meant to keep the record straight declared their independence and decoded the propaganda?
The urgency is greater than ever.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Now that our revels are ended, the holiday celebrations and feasts, if one had them, just a dream melted into thin air, our hungers perhaps richly satiated temporarily or not, our visions project us into a new year in which we hope to realize in a not insubstantial way the images we see before the canvases of our inner eyes.
Former US President George W. Bush, former BritishPrime Minister Tony Blair, and tag along bore, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, remain at large, despite their respective countries wagging fingers of disapproval at authoritarian regimes for defying the rules-based international order. Never a more fitting trio in terms of abusing international law could you find.
Development is a highly contentious concept because it has a variety of interpretations from different actors and interests that are involved. Dominant discourses and practices in development have placed a high emphasis on linear, economic models. These linear, economic models are characterized by policy prescriptions such as free trade, privatization, de-regulation and individual freedom.
It is not through “negotiations” with Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Biden, both of whom are responsible for “crimes punishable under International Law” that we will be able to put an end to the genocidal attack against the People of Palestine.
Attorney and human rights defender Stella Assange—the wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is jailed in the U.K. while battling his extradition to the United States—called Pilger “one of the greats.”
The Israeli army has destroyed more than 200 archaeological and ancient sites out of 325 that were registered across besieged Gaza in the course of its devastating onslaught since October 7, authorities in the enclave said.
BAFTA winner Pilger was renowned for countless investigations, particularly into the plight of Aboriginal Australians, American and British foreign policy and the ulterior motives of big business. A towering figure in his field, never afraid to express controversial views, Pilger is understood to have been battling illness since early 2023.
The United Nations General Assembly, in 1948, passed UN Resolution 194 that resolved the right of Palestinians to return to their traditional homes and live in peace with their neighbors. The forcibly evicted Palestinians, and their descendants ever since have held, among their most prized possessions, the sacred keys that once opened the doors to all their homes from which they were originally evicted by the Global Zionist Jewry.
We have seen since the latter part of 2023, the horrific repercussions of controlled and uncontrolled mass murder being perpetrated on men, women and children in the Gaza strip. We have witnessed, in US and European cities, the escalation of deranged individuals shooting dead whoever happens to get in their line of fire.
Jenny Mortensen was diagnosed with leukemia on Oct. 14, 2023 but died less than a month later due to internal bleeding and blood clots which caused strokes.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
When war criminals can daub canvasses in blithe safety, rake in millions of dollars in after dinner speeches and bore governments to death with their shoddy words of wisdom, the world is not so much as it should be, but merely as it is. Former US President George W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and tag along bore, former Australian Prime Minister JohnHoward, remain at large, despite their respective countries wagging fingers of disapproval at authoritarian regimes for defying the rules-based international order. Never a more fitting trio in terms of abusing international law could you find.
In 2003, this culpable troika sneered, ignored and soiled such international institutions as the United Nations, the rule of law, the legacy of the Nuremberg trials, and a number of conventions, by invading Iraq. The country, weakened and crippled by years of sanctions, leaving its hospital system crushed with bulky lists of dead children (all worthwhile, according to the late former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright), was apparently a mortal threat to Western civilisation.
The Baathist regime, led by Saddam Hussein, was purportedly armed to the teeth with a doomsday inventory of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) that he was bound to use at any given moment against freedom loving types in Washington, London and Canberra. (It is true he had previously had such weapons, much of it supplied by Western arms corporations with the blessing of intelligence agencies such as the CIA.) He had, apparently, refused to disarm, obdurate in the face of United Nations weapons inspectors. And he had flirted with those evil representatives of cataclysmic eschatology, al-Qaida, despite being hostile to such millenarian groups. The report card, spottier than ever in the shadow of the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States, suggested that he had to go. The results: lusty sectarian violence, a catastrophically devastating, often imbecilic occupation by US-led forces, the seeds of emboldened fundamentalism, the offshoot movements such as Islamic State, and multigenerational trauma.
With another new year beckoning, the Australian National Archives have released approximately 240 cabinet papers from 2003 on the decision-making process behind a number of policy decisions. A few snippets are offered regarding road to war. Cabinet’s National Security Committee had kept an eye on developments in Iraq, though the released materials do little to reveal what, precisely, took place in conversations between Howard and Bush.
In September 2002, one document notes how “cabinet noted an oral report by the prime minister on his discussion with the president of the United States on the American position in relation to efforts by Iraq to secure and maintain weapons of mass destruction.” A fortnight later, the then-foreign minister Alexander Downer, is noted as furnishing cabinet with an “oral report” regarding “developments” regarding the proposed UN Security Council resolution on the Saddam regime’s “possession of, and attempts to secure or maintain, weapons of mass destruction, and on the prospects for passage of the resolution”. That such oral revelations were not accompanied by thick, detailed submissions, is telling about the obedient, inevitable train of thinking afflicting the Howard government. A war, started by Washington, would come, and Canberra would be along for the ride.
By March 2003, Howard was demanding action. He informed members of his cabinet that Bush had issued Saddam with an ultimatum of thuggish import.
“Saddam Hussein and his sons,” the US president stated, “must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing.”
Howard was drunk with intelligence assessments from the United States, including such claims that Iraq had put out feelers for yellowcake in Niger. Couple this with such stretched confections as non-state terrorist actors, hankering for WMD spoils from sponsor states, and the prime minister was swooning. In 2013, his cringeworthy apologia given to the Lowy Institute reflected on the fictitious Niger angle as “unmistakable” in its “strength”. Had it been accurate – a sly way of escaping the prosecutor’s legal brief – and Saddam “left in place, only to provide WMDs to a terrorist group, for use against the US, the Administration would have failed in its most basic responsibility to protect the nation.” When crooks of state are found out, they tend to cite public duty as appropriate justification.
As far as legality for any military intervention outside the formal channels of authorisation of a UN Security Council, Howard was armed with a memorandum signed by a first assistant secretary from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and his equivalent from the Attorney-General’s Department. Fantastically and irresponsibly, the cod ordinary advice suggested that Australian involvement in an invasion would be entirely legal, given the Saddam regime’s recalcitrance in not allegedly complying with previous Security Council resolutions. It seems that the public servants in question, instead of offering a panoramic view about the pitfalls of a dangerous adventure in the Middle East, were merely keen to satisfy the bloodletting urges of their political paymasters.
The cabinet minute from March 18, 2003 showed agreement from the Attorney-General with the spurious reasoning of the first assistant secretaries. It also noted that the Australian Governor-General, Peter Hollingworth, holder of that old office of the British empire as the monarch’s representative, had been consulted. Approval from him, however, was not mandatory.
Cabinet, won over with no evident demurral, and previously buttered up by oral reports, approved the measure to commit Australia to another failed military mission of murderous, bungling incompetence. The United States would receive no resistance in getting its pound of Australian flesh for an illegal enterprise, and the Australian public, many of whom had participated in some of the largest anti-war demonstrations the country had ever seen, would be ignored.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]
Featured image: Australian Prime Minister John Howard responds to a reporters question during a joint press conference with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld in the Pentagon on Feb. 4, 2003. Howard and Rumsfeld met earlier discuss a range of bilateral security issues including the situation in Iraq. DoD photo by R. D. Ward. (Released)
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Legendary Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilgerdied Saturday at the age of 84—news that was quickly met with a flood of tributes from fellow reporters, friends, and fans of his impactful work.
“It is with great sadness the family of John Pilger announce he died yesterday 30 December 2023 in London aged 84,” says a statement shared on his social media Sunday. “His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was simply the most amazing and loved dad, grandad, and partner. Rest in peace.”
His son Sam Pilger said Sunday that “he was my hero.”
My Dad died yesterday. I am heartbroken, but also so very proud and grateful to have had such an amazing Dad. He was my hero. https://t.co/kjNE7DAcME
Born in Bondi, New South Wales, Pilger relocated to the U.K. in the 1960s, where he went on to work for the Daily Mirror, ITV’s former investigative program “World in Action,” and Reuters.
He covered conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Biafra, and was named journalist of the year in 1967 and 1979. Pilger had a successful career in documentary filmmaking, creating more than 50 films and winning a number of accolades.
“His last film, The Dirty War on the National Health Service, was released in 2019 and examined the threat to the NHS from privatization and bureaucracy,” the newspaper noted. “It was described by The Guardian‘s film critic Peter Bradshaw as ‘a fierce, necessary film.'”
British Member of Parliament Claudia Webbe, an Independent who represents Leicester East, declared Sunday that
“he was a fearless challenger of imperialism and colonialism and used his talents behind the camera to expose genocide and war crimes, including the deceit of mainstream media. His documentaries are epic and are required viewing for a more civilized world.”
Fellow MP Jeremy Corbyn, a former Labour leader who now serves Islington North as an Indepedent, said:
“I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of John Pilger. John gave a voice to the unheard and the occupied: in Australia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, East Timor, Palestine, and beyond.”
“Thank you for your bravery in pursuit of the truth—it will never be forgotten,” Corbyn added.
The U.K.-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament said that
“CND is saddened to hear about the death of the great John Pilger. He blazed a trail for so many through his work as a journalist, filmmaker, and anti-war campaigner. Rest in peace.”
Legendary political activist, John Pilger, has sadly passed away age 84.
His vast works & campaigning against war and imperialism will be forever remembered in the history of global movements toward justice and liberation. pic.twitter.com/Z5ViVJCZWh
Attorney and human rights defender Stella Assange—the wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is jailed in the U.K. while battling his extradition to the United States—called Pilger “one of the greats.”
“A consistent ally of the dispossessed, John dedicated his life to telling their stories and awoke the world to the greatest injustices,” she said. “He showed great empathy for the weak and was unflinching with the powerful. John was one of Julian’s most vocal champions but they also became the closest of friends. He fought for Julian’s freedom until the end. “
“‘We are all Spartacus if we want to be,’ he wrote in his last published piece,” she noted. “This was John, challenging us until the end. Let’s always seek to rise to the challenge. Thank you, dear friend.”
Honoring the veteran journalist as “a ferocious speaker of truth to power, whom in later years tirelessly advocated for the release and vindication of Julian Assange,” WikiLeaks contended that “our world is poorer for his passing.”
John Pilger (1939-2023): “Julian Assange has become enemy number one…he should be hero number one. Because if we lose Assange and @Wikileaks then we lose a whole strata of freedom. We stop questioning.”
Australian journalist Peter Cronau proclaimed that “a giant of journalism has left us—John Pilger, a heroic truth-teller. Banned by much of the mainstream media, his amazing work is his great permanent legacy.”
Cronau praised him for “calling to account the intelligence agencies, the generals, and the governments alike that run the world their way” while also “giving voice to the unheard, the Indigenous, the poor, the occupied, the displaced—and giving hope, courage, and solidarity to the international family of activists.”
Pilger was “such a strong role model to so many journalists especially in Australia—a country he loved, but whose media shunned him for his relentless uncompromising stand against imperialism and Australia’s slavish obedience to it,” he added. “Telling the seldom-heard ‘people’s history,’ his books and films inform our democracy, and it was a pleasure to have had the chance to have worked with him.”
British journalist Johnathan Cook said that “John Pilger was an inspiration to young journalists like myself. For decades, he managed to publish searing reports, even in establishment media, that exposed the lies justifying the brutalities of Western foreign policy. We need his voice now more than ever.”
Mark Curtis, director and co-founder of Declassified U.K., shared a link to Pilger’s website and said that ” I cannot believe John has gone. His lifetime’s work is a treasure—look at his filmography and articles to remind yourself. “
“A towering figure. Irreplaceable. Authentic and committed. Someone to look up to. Fearless,” Curtis concluded. “Thank you, John. Farewell, friend.”
[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.
Featured image: Journalist John Pilger addresses a crowd of Julian Assange supporters demanding his release in London on August 11, 2021. (Photo: Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Development is a highly contentious concept because it has a variety of interpretations from different actors and interests that are involved. Dominant discourses and practices in development have placed a high emphasis on linear, economic models. These linear, economic models are characterized by policy prescriptions such as free trade, privatization, de-regulation and individual freedom.
Despite the promise of global prosperity, these prescriptive policies have had a disastrous impact on fragile economies, social livelihoods of people and the environment in the Global South. Consequently, scholars have sought to articulate alternative approaches to development that encapsulate gender equality, harmony between people and their environment and empowerment of indigenous populations.
Critical scholarship has attempted to re-claim the intervention of an active developmental state in providing social services to populations; amidst growing controversy that globalization has eroded the national autonomy of welfare states. Additionally, critical scholarship has advocated for a shift from the ‘politics of critique’ to a ‘politics of pragmatism’ that merges market values with social policy. These alternative approaches to development represent an ideological crisis in which there is no coherent stance against the dominant, neo-liberal paradigm.
The purpose of this review is to critically assess the alternatives to development approaches and debates proposed by Milford Bateman and Ha Joon Chang, James Ferguson and Eduardo Gudynas in their respective academic journal articles.
Dominant approaches to development have sought to increase women’s access to opportunities in order to alleviate gender inequality in domestic and public spheres.
However, gender inequality continues to be a persistent challenge because power hierarchies between men and women remain unchallenged. Alternative approaches to development also contradict the interests of women through generalizations and stereotypical representations in discourse. Bateman and Chang (2012) argue that microfinance has become prominent because it promotes poverty alleviation in the Global South through access to loans for small business development.
Microfinance does not have a positive impact on human and sustainable development because it locks people and communities into a perpetual cycle of poverty. It also undermines women’s empowerment because most of the profits are placed in the hands of the economic and political elite. The approach of the scholars stems from a Marxist interpretation of social institutions.
Marxists assert that social institutions are controlled by the dominant, social classes and as a result, it is extremely difficult for poor and powerless groups to change the political and social arrangements of society (Peet and Hartwick, 2015). Women are among the poor and powerless groups in society because social institutions dictate gender ascribed spheres, roles and expectations, which often limit their potential and agency. It must be noted that access to opportunity does not equate to equity. Furthermore, it does not equate transforming existing power hierarchies and relations between men and women.
The scholars have used a ‘gendered’ lens in examining the failures of the microfinance model in the Global South but they did not incorporate an intersectional approach in examining women’s persistent poverty and vulnerability to exploitation. Women are treated as a homogenous category in which their precarious experiences of oppression and exploitation are all similar (Mohanty, 1998).
There are factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, social class, geographic location and sexual orientation that make the issue of women’s exploitation a more complex one for interpretation and analysis. The assumptions cannot be generalized. Moreover, the arguments reflect flawed representations of women. Women are portrayed as powerless victims who are incapable of successfully negotiating with multiple patriarchies in order to ensure individual and collective survival in the developing world.
This representation of women stems from a position of patriarchal power in knowledge production. The discourse on women’s experiences with microfinance institutions in the Global South is primarily shaped by male economists with “expert knowledge”. There is an existing academic literature that challenges these stereotypical representations of women in third world countries who have been clients of microfinance institutions. Although women were vulnerable to loan delinquency, they have used organizational tactics in India’s and Bangladesh’s self-help groups (SHGs) to control the interest rates on borrowing in order to prevent high debts (Kalpana, 2015). These case studies did not negate the fact that microfinance institutions undermine women’s empowerment and poverty alleviate. They reinforced the assertion that women are not passive agents to structures that promote inequities and exploitation.
Gudynas (2011) also highlights the subject matter of gender equality in his discussion on ‘Buen Vivir’ (“good living”). He discusses that ‘Buen Vivir’ embodies feminist values but indigenous traditions have disregarded the importance of women’s agency. Similar to Bateman and Chang, Gudynas is attempting to include women’s experiences in the indigenous, alternative approach to development. His argument validates the fact that even within marginalized communities; women remain at the bottom of the social pyramid because of prevailing gender ideologies about their roles and status in society.
Bateman and Chang are over-reliant on demonizing the neo-liberal approach to poverty alleviation and its empowerment of the poor. On the other hand, the greatest limitation of Gudynas on this subject matter is that he is over-reliant on idealizing ‘Buen Vivir’. His de-politicization of social organizations and groups is detrimental to his analysis because all social organizations and groups are governed by politics.
Alternative approaches to development have sought to transform the position of communities that are marginalized to the positions of experts.
These communities use indigenous technical knowledge to define development in a manner that suits the peculiarity of their experiences as opposed to dominant models that emphasize a singular path to development- modernity.
Gudynas (2011) discusses that the community is inextricably connected to a social and ecological concept in which there is harmony between indigenous people and nature. Western development sees people and the environment as separate entities because most of the focus is on material well-being and modernity. Gudynas constantly critiques the concept of modernity because it sees development primarily in terms of success in economic indicators and this often excludes other important notions of development such as people’s empowerment, well-being and their interaction with the environment.
His approach to the debate draws on both post-colonial and post-development approaches in which the political, social and economic arrangements of the Global South are products of prevailing imperial encounters, beliefs and practices. In addition,he creates a space on the margins in which there is a greater appreciation of local knowledge and its role in transforming development (Escobar, 1995). While indigenous populations are critical actors in re-defining the notions of development from a peculiar standpoint, the harmonious relationship between communities and nature is also a Western, romanticized representation of indigenous populations. Therefore, instead of expounding on the ways in which indigenous technical knowledge is essential to all-encompassing definitions of development, Gudynas problematizes his own critique of dominant, Western approaches.
Bateman and Chang examine the potential impact of indigenous technical knowledge on the environment and the development of the Global South. Their conceptualization of community and environment are quite different from Gudynas. Gudynas (2011) defines the environment as a natural space. It is in sync with indigenous communities that have a non-materialistic and spiritual understanding of it.Bateman and Chang (2012) define communities as poor people in the developing countries while the environment is the land which is used for subsistence farming.
They assert that microfinance has adverse effects on rural development because it ignores local knowledge that is used to ensure environmental preservation. They recommend that local family farms have the potential to use technology such as irrigation schemes to create rural employment opportunities, enhance productivity and protect nature. These debates help to de-mystify the popular belief that development agencies and industrialized countries can provide expert knowledge on policy issues in the third world. People in the third world are capable of crafting their own their solutions to challenges that are peculiar to them. This narrative derives from the participatory approach to development which affirms that people are central actors to development (Chambers, 1994).It also seeks to shift the power from decision making in conference rooms located in metropolitan centres to decision making at the grassroots level.
These arguments are noteworthy in the post-development debate but the scholars have limited their definition of the environment and its benefits to an economic conceptualization. As a result, the debate returns to dominant discourses which stress the success of economic indicators. Gudynas is extremely critical of this on-going, pattern in post-development debate where criticisms of Western postulations on development often lead to a revival of these postulations in alternative options. He calls this a ‘zombie category of development’ but unfortunately, Gudynas, Bateman and Chang are culprits of reviving zombie categories of development.
Critical scholarship in international development has extensively opposed the implementation of neo-liberal policies in developing countries. The common conclusion from this scholarship is that the dominant, neo-liberal orthodoxy does not protect the interests of poor, marginalized communities in the developing world. While this is not entirely wrong, there are emerging perspectives that advocate for a pragmatic use of neo-liberalism in which market values are merged with social policies in order to ensure equity, sustainability and prosperity for all.
They are also alternative positions that call for a renewal of an active developmental state that will provide social services for populations because global governance institutions and other non-state actors represent the interests of the economic elite. These alternative positions sometimes intersect and run contrary to each other because there is no precise definition and criteria of evaluation for development. Ferguson (2009) debates that critical scholarship should desist from blaming ‘neoliberalism’ as the malevolent force that is responsible for the persistent poverty and underdevelopment of nations. He believes that there should be a pragmatic use of neo-liberalism. He cites the example of the Basic Income Grant (BIG) in South Africa as a method to alleviate poverty and empower poor individuals.
Ferguson utilizes a post-structuralist approach to development in which he draws on Foucault’s conceptualization of neo-liberalism as a technique of governmentality. Governmentality seeks to uncover the ways in which people are governed.The Basic Income Grant (BIG) cannot be limited to a simplistic assumption about neo-liberalism but it is a development project that draws on both market principles and welfare state values to alleviate poverty through less state intervention.
The developers of the basic income grant assume that when people have the greater individual freedom to participate in markets, their overall well-being will be improved. This assumption is similar to the microfinance model and its role in poverty alleviation. The intent behind microfinance is to provide greater autonomy to poor individuals through access to loans for small business development. Ferguson makes an astute observation that when the state has the responsibility to provide social services for populations, it places people into the categories of “deserving poor and undeserving poor”.
This creates more problems than solutions because the state performs the role of segregating, existing marginalized groups in societies. Therefore, the basic income grant and microfinance models are advantageous in the sense that they promote the intervention of non-state actors which includes, the communities themselves, to chart their own destinies through access to economic opportunities. Both models also allow people to participate in markets in order to improve their material well-being and other indicators of development such as greater access to education, health care and nutrition. However, the difference between both models is that the basic income grant is accessed through cash transfers to people while the microcredit is accessed through an application of loans from microfinance institutions.
Despite these advantages, Bateman and Chang (2012) commit the predictable conclusion of critical scholarship by affirming that the neo-liberal idea behind the microfinance model is hindering the development of countries in the Global South. They believe that ‘neo-liberalism’ is a malevolent force that is responsible for wreaking havoc on economies, social livelihoods and the environment. They did not specify the aspects of neo-liberalism that they are critiquing. However, they propose that active development states are alternatives that can counter the neo-liberal model on poverty alleviation. This is a one-sided, simplistic approach to analysing complex, development issues that extends beyond competing ideologies.
Ferguson (2009) rightfully points out that globalization processes have created new actors such as non-governmental organizations in development, which are equally capable of providing social services for populations. This means that states are no longer dominant actors in the current context of international development. Thus, this makes the alternative options of Bateman and Chang impractical and unviable. The impractical and unviable nature of alternative options provided by Bateman and Chang is similar to the propositions of Gudynas in ‘Buen Vivir’. Gudynas (2011) posits that the concept of ‘Buen Vivir’ moves away from modern, Western culture and offers a multi-cultural approach to development.
It is also an evolving concept that means different things in different contexts. While the conceptualization of plurality is essential in meeting diverse needs and interests in development, it is also impractical to measure the progress of a multi-scalar and evolving concept. The arguments of the scholar are also contradicts his key arguments because while he purports that this alternative to development moves away from Western culture, there are ideas that are borrowed from Western culture.
The post-development debate from Ferguson’s perspective provided new insights for analysis but definite, alternative solutions to dominant models and discourses are still inconclusive. The discussions of Bateman and Chang, Ferguson and Gudynas reflect an ideological crisis in the field of development where there is no coherent stance against the dominant, neo-liberal paradigm. Development is also remains a contentious, evolving and multi-dimensional concept.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Tina Renier is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Sources
Bateman, M. and Chang, H.J. (2012). Microfinance and the illusion of development: From hubris to nemesis in thirty years. World Economic Review, 1(1), pp. 13-26.
Chambers, R. The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal. World Development , 22 (7), pp. 953-969.
Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the third world. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Ferguson, J. (2009). The uses of Neo-liberalism. Antipode, 41(S1), pp. 166-184.
Gudynas, E. (2011). Buen Vivir. Today’s tomorrow. Development, 54 (4), pp. 441-447.
Kalpana, K. (2015). Economic Entitlements via Entrepreneurial Conduct? Women and Financial Inclusion in Neo-liberal India. Journal of World Systems, 21 (1), pp. 51-65.
Mohanty, C. (1998). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30, pp. 61-88.
Peet, R. and Hartwick, E. (2015). Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments and Alternatives. Guildford Publications Inc. Chapter 5.
This incisive article by Pierre-Henri Bunel, a former member of France’s Military Intelligence, initiallypublished by Global Research in 2005, sheds light on the nature of Al Qaeda, an intelligence construct used by Washington to destabilize and destroy sovereign countries, while sustaining the illusion of an outside enemy, which threatens the security of America and the Western World.
What is the meaning in Arabic of Al Qaeda? القاعِدة
According to Major Pierre-Henri Bunel:
It’s “The Base”, namely the Computer Database of the Islamic Mujahideen ( Reagan’s “Freedom Fighters”) recruited by the CIA.
“When Osama bin Laden was an American agent in Afghanistan, the Al Qaida Intranet was a good communication system through coded or covert messages.
The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this.”
The above statement by Major Bunel, was confirmed by the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook (shortly before his passing) in a pointed article in The Guardian:
“Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by Western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. (Robin Cook, The Guardian, July 8, 2005, see also archive, emphasis added)
.
Ronald Reagan meets the Mujahideen in the Oval Office (1980s)
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 27, 2023
* * *
Al Qaeda: The Data Base
by
Pierre-Henry Bunel
Excerpts from World Affairs Quarterly
I first heard about Al-Qaida while I was attending the Command and Staff course in Jordan. I was a French officer at that time and the French Armed Forces had close contacts and cooperation with Jordan . . .
Two of my Jordanian colleagues were experts in computers. They were air defense officers. Using computer science slang, they introduced a series of jokes about students’ punishment.
For example, when one of us was late at the bus stop to leave the Staff College, the two officers used to tell us:
‘You’ll be noted in ‘Q eidat il-Maaloomaat’ which meant ‘You’ll be logged in the information database.‘ Meaning ‘You will receive a warning . . .’
If the case was more severe, they would used to talk about ‘Q eidat i-Taaleemaat.‘ Meaning ‘the decision database.’ It meant ‘you will be punished.’ For the worst cases they used to speak of logging in ‘Al Qaida.’
In the early 1980s the Islamic Bank for Development, which is located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, like the Permanent Secretariat of the Islamic Conference Organization, bought a new computerized system to cope with its accounting and communication requirements. At the time the system was more sophisticated than necessary for their actual needs.
Image right: Major Bunel
It was decided to use a part of the system’s memory to host the Islamic Conference’s database. It was possible for the countries attending to access the database by telephone: an Intranet, in modern language. The governments of the member-countries as well as some of their embassies in the world were connected to that network.
[According to a Pakistani major] the database was divided into two parts, the information file where the participants in the meetings could pick up and send information they needed, and the decision file where the decisions made during the previous sessions were recorded and stored.
In Arabic, the files were called, ‘Q eidat il-Maaloomaat’ and ‘Q eidat i-Taaleemaat.’ Those two files were kept in one file called in Arabic ‘Q eidat ilmu’ti’aat’ which is the exact translation of the English word database.
But the Arabs commonly used the short word Al Qaida which is the Arabic word for “base.” The military air base of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is called ‘q eidat ‘riyadh al ‘askariya.’ Q eida means “a base” and “Al Qaida” means “the base.”
In the mid-1980s, Al Qaida was a database located in computer and dedicated to the communications of the Islamic Conference’s secretariat.
In the early 1990s, I was a military intelligence officer in the Headquarters of the French Rapid Action Force. Because of my skills in Arabic my job was also to translate a lot of faxes and letters seized or intercepted by our intelligence services . . .
We often got intercepted material sent by Islamic networks operating from the UK or from Belgium.
These documents contained directions sent to Islamic armed groups in Algeria or in France. The messages quoted the sources of statements to be exploited in the redaction of the tracts or leaflets, or to be introduced in video or tapes to be sent to the media.
The most commonly quoted sources were the United Nations, the non-aligned countries, the UNHCR and . . . Al Qaida.
Al Qaida remained the data base of the Islamic Conference. Not all member countries of the Islamic Conference are ‘rogue states’ and many Islamic groups could pick up information from the databases. It was but natural for Osama Bin Laden to be connected to this network. He is a member of an important family in the banking and business world.
Because of the presence of ‘rogue states,’ it became easy for terrorist groups to use the email of the database.
Hence, the email of Al Qaida was used, with some interface system, providing secrecy, for the families of the mujaheddin to keep links with their children undergoing training in Afghanistan, or in Libya or in the Beqaa valley, Lebanon.
Or in action anywhere in the battlefields where the extremists sponsored by all the ‘rogue states’ used to fight. And the ‘rogue states’ included Saudi Arabia. When Osama bin Laden was an American agent in Afghanistan, the Al Qaida Intranet was a good communication system through coded or covert messages.
Meet “Al Qaeda”
Al Qaida was neither a terrorist group nor Osama bin Laden’s personal property
. . . The terrorist actions in Turkey in 2003 were carried out by Turks and the motives were local and not international, unified, or joint. These crimes put the Turkish government in a difficult position vis-a-vis the British and the Israelis. But the attacks certainly intended to ‘punish’ Prime Minister Erdogan for being a ‘toot tepid’ Islamic politician.
. . . In the Third World the general opinion is that the countries using weapons of mass destruction for economic purposes in the service of imperialism are in fact “rogue states”, specially the US and other NATO countries. Some Islamic economic lobbies are conducting a war against the ‘liberal” economic lobbies. They use local terrorist groups claiming to act on behalf of Al Qaida. On the other hand, national armies invade independent countries under the aegis of the UN Security Council and carry out pre-emptive wars. And the real sponsors of these wars are not governments but the lobbies concealed behind them.
The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this.
But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the ‘TV watcher’ to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money.
(emphasis added by GR)
***
Comment by Wayne Madsen
French officer Maj. Pierre-Henri Bunel, who knew the truth about “Al Qaeda”, the CIA’s data base.
In yet another example of what happens to those who challenge the system, in December 2001, Maj. Pierre-Henri Bunel was convicted by a secret French military court of passing classified documents that identified potential NATO bombing targets in Serbia to a Serbian agent during the Kosovo war in 1998.
Bunel’s case was transferred from a civilian court to keep the details of the case classified. Bunel’s character witnesses and psychologists notwithstanding, the system “got him” for telling the truth about Al Qaeda and who has actually been behind the terrorist attacks commonly blamed on that group.
It is noteworthy that the Yugoslav government, the government with whom Bunel was asserted by the French government to have shared information, claimed that Albanian and Bosnian guerrillas in the Balkans were being backed by elements of “Al Qaeda.”
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
“Standing there I wondered how much of what we had felt on the bridge was just hunger. I asked my wife and she said, ‘I don’t know, Tatie. There are so many sorts of hunger. In the spring there are more. But that’s gone now. Memory is hunger.” – Ernest Hemingway,A Moveable Feast
***
Now that our revels are ended, the holiday celebrations and feasts, if one had them, just a dream melted into thin air, our hungers perhaps richly satiated temporarily or not, our visions project us into a new year in which we hope to realize in a not insubstantial way the images we see before the canvases of our inner eyes.
What can we do, how create the new when we are such stuff as dreams are made of?
To escape the period that ends every sentence, every year, every life, one only needs winged words to take flight, to shimmer in the ascending iridescent light.
My wanderlust has taken me to scores of countries, I imagine, glimmering destinations that have inflamed me with images of satisfaction, but I have never kept an exact count since numbers bore me and my imagination forbids it.
“To a child who is fond of maps and stamps / The universe is the size of his immense hunger,” wrote Charles Baudelaire in Le Voyage in 1859.
When I was young and collected stamps of all the exotic places that I hoped to visit, what did I know of desire? Then it seemed satiable, as when I finished one book after another, and placed them neatly on a shelf, as if to say, now that is done – for now. Now the books are different, so too each piece of edible writing that disappears out the backdoor of my days. Today, those tangible little colored stamps on Air Mail envelopes are rarely seen, and so young potential voyagers usually dream digitally as little is left to their imaginations. Their dreams are mass-produced, but their hunger is real. My hunger is still immense.
But the desire to travel, like all hunger, is only satisfied for a while. It is insatiable once it bites you. Every time you are on your way away, you wonder if this voyage will be the last one where you find what you are looking for, even when you don’t know what that is.
You close your eyes, spin the globe, and place a finger to find where you might vacate the old for the new. You hope to return with photographs and memories, knowing secretly that they fade with your days. Perhaps you think you will be like Odysseus, who at the end of his Odyssey has just returned home after twenty years and killed all the suitors who have been hitting on his wife Penelope, but then he shockingly tells her that he must be off again for new wanderings: “Woman, we haven’t reached the end of our trials,” he says, as they then proceed to their great olive tree-trunked bed with its mighty roots. It is a short hot rest before he is off again.
Why? What is his destination? What are ours? Where are we all going?
“One morning we set out, our brains aflame, / Our hearts full of resentment and bitter desires, / And we go, following the rhythm of the wave, / Lulling our infinite on the finite of the seas:”
In 1946 the French poet, Jacques Prévert, asked an analogous question, one that haunts us still, as we contemplate the corpses piling up in Gaza and around the world, victims of ruthless smiling jackals with polished faces. His poem “Song in the Blood” asks,
“There are great puddles of blood on the world/where’s it all going all this spilled blood/is it the earth that drinks it and gets drunk . . . . No the earth doesn’t get drunk . . . . it turns and all living things set up a howl . . . . it doesn’t stop turning/ and the blood doesn’t stop running/ where’s it all going all this spilled blood/murder’s blood . . . war’s blood/misery’s blood . . . .”
When I was young and in the early years of my blooming, my blood running down another road, I would watch a television show called “Adventures in Paradise.” I would always watch it alone on a small television set that I had in my bedroom, won, as I recall, by some member of my large family on a TV game show. It starred a handsome actor named Gardner McKay, who would sail the South Pacific on his schooner Tiki, looking for romance and adventures in every port. My only memory of the shows is of the boat sailing the beautiful and exotic waters, accompanied by stirring music. These images kindled the romantic in me, some hunger that I could not then name. It was pure fantasy, of course, but it took me to places I had never been but thought enticingly fulfilling. Each show was a new stamp in motion, just as were the many movies I would attend by myself during my teen years that took me to Italy, France, Greece, Russia, and so many other places. But my hunger persisted.
Years later I would read an obituary of Gardner McKay in The New York Times where I learned that after a three-year run of the show, McKay refused to renew his contract with Twentieth Century Fox nor star in a movie with Marilyn Monroe, despite her personal pleas, because he hated the celebrity game where his photo had appeared on the cover of Life magazine as “a new Apollo.” He left for the Amazon rainforest where for two years he worked as an agronomist’s assistant, before moving to France and then Egypt, eventually settling back in the U.S.A. with his wife, where he became a writer. He was a Baudelaire who didn’t self-destruct.
“But the true voyagers are only those who leave / Just to be leaving; hearts light, like balloons, / They never turn aside from their fatality / And without knowing why they always say: ‘Let’s go!’”
In a fascinating essay, “On Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinema,” written in 2012 and included in his new book, Tricks of the Light: Essays on Art and Spectacle, Jonathan Crary notes that Jean-Luc Godard, the French-Swiss filmmaker who died in 2022, maintained that Baudelaire’s poem, Le Voyage, anticipated cinema and its effects.
“Its general evocation of the boredom and bitterness of experience in a flattened, disenchanted world,” writes Crary, “describes the conditions for new kinds of journeys or dislocations that can occur without movement in space, in its figuration of an apparitional screen on which images and memories are projected.”
Connecting the political history of the period from 1859 to today, it is necessary, maintains Crary, to view it as inseparable from “the intertwined history of the camera arts.” This analysis, which I think is very accurate, is not a call to despair; it is rather the opposite: “. . . Godard implies that each generation must wage its own battle against historical amnesia from the lived conditions of its unique historical vantage point, and that this struggle necessitates the remaking of the techniques and language available to it.”
Here we are today saturated with images, moving and still, a world where digital media, photographs and film in all their manifestations dominate most people’s consciousnesses. But the paradoxical mystery of this development, as Crary notes, is revealed in Godard’s film, Histoire(s) du cinema, wherein Baudelaire’s poem Le Voyage is continuously recited. As the film travels along, the poet’s words about the disillusionment of actual voyages is recited contrapuntally, as if to suggest that the most ancient of human arts – the poetic voice (“Sing in me, O Muse, and through me tell the story . . . . of that man . . . the wanderer”) – remains fundamental, even as technology develops new methods of image making and people travel through film.
One doesn’t have to share Godard’s view that Baudelaire’s poem was prophetically describing cinema to appreciate the rich possibilities of such a meditation at a time when the world seems entrenched in a media system that manipulates people’s minds in all directions simultaneously, carrying both meaning and its countermeaning, resulting in minds stuck at anchor, caught neurotically in dazed stasis.
“Godard’s larger suggestion here,” writes Crary, “is that the material basis for cinema, including projection, owes as much to the imaginative labor of poets and writers such as Baudelaire, Hugo, Zola, and Charles Cros as it does to any nineteenth-century traditions of applied science or mechanical bricolage.”
To escape the period that ends every sentence, every year, every life, one only needs winged words to take flight, to shimmer in the ascending iridescent light.
“We wish to voyage without steam and without sails! / To brighten the ennui of our prisons, / Make your memories, framed in their horizons, / Pass across our minds stretched like canvasses.”
So I sit here in a quiet room, not moving, yet moving still, traveling in words to an undiscovered country that I can’t see but hope will satisfy my immense hunger. We all have our ways but have a singular destiny. “And being nowhere can be anywhere,” as Baudelaire said, just as being somewhere can be everywhere.
“Must one depart? Remain? If you can stay, remain; / Leave, if you must. One runs, another hides / To elude the vigilant, fatal enemy,. / Time! There are, alas! those who rove without respite,”
So let Ernest Hemingway, who had one of his heroes, Jake Barnes, say nearly a hundred years ago, “Cheer up, all the countries look just like the moving pictures,” have the penultimate words, again from A Moveable Feast:
It was a wonderful meal at Michaud’s after we got in; but when we had finished and there was no question of hunger any more the feeling that had been like hunger when we were on the bridge was still there when we caught the bus home. It was there when we came in the room and after we had gone to bed and made love in the dark, it was there. When I woke with the windows open and the moonlight on the roofs of the tall houses, it was there. I put my face away from the moonlight into the shadow but I could not sleep and lay awake thinking about it. We had both wakened twice in the night and my wife slept sweetly now with the moonlight on her face. I had to try to think it out and I was too stupid.
That makes two of us.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
This article was originally published on the author’s website, Behind the Curtain.
Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
The Israeli army has destroyed more than 200 archaeological and ancient sites out of 325 that were registered across besieged Gaza in the course of its devastating onslaught since October 7, authorities in the enclave said.
The Gaza Media Office said on Friday the sites include ancient churches, mosques, schools, museums and other different historical and archaeological sites and monuments.
“The ancient and archaeological sites destroyed by the army date back to the Phoenician and Roman ages; others date back between 800 BC and 1,400, while others were built 400 years ago,” it said in a statement.
The Great Omari Mosque, the Byzantine church in Jabalia, the Shrine of Al-Khadir in Deir al Balah city in central besieged Gaza, and the Blakhiya Byzantine cemetery [The Anthedon of Palestine], northwestern Gaza City were among the sites.
It noted that other sites were severely damaged, including the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church, the 400-year-old Al-Saqqa House and the Sayed al-Hashim Mosque, which is one of the oldest mosques in Gaza.
Deliberately Destroying Palestinian Heritage
Geneva-based rights group Euro-Med Monitor said on November 20 that Israel deliberately destroyed archaeological and historical monuments in besieged Gaza and accused it of “explicitly targeting Palestinian cultural heritage.”
Gaza is an ancient and historic city that came under the rule of several empires and civilisations, including ancient Egyptians [Pharaohs], the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines then the Islamic age, among others.
Since Hamas’ cross-border surprise blitz on October 7, Israel has continued relentless attacks on the blockaded enclave, killing at least 21,507 Palestinians — about 1% of Gaza’s population — and wounding 55,915, according to local health authorities. Thousands more bodies are feared to be buried in the ruins of obliterated neighbourhoods.
The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60 percent of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2.3 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicines.
The civilian deaths and the destruction in Gaza from the Israeli bombardment has caused a growing international outcry, and the United States’ international image has taken a beating over its continued backing for ally Israel.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Featured image: A view of the damaged historical Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church, where civilians took shelter, after Israeli air strike in Gaza City, Gaza on October 20, 2023. [Ali Jadallah] / Photo: AA
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
(I was informed by inside sources that Andrew suspected the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines as the cause of his pancreatic cancer)
Well, it is kind of awesome to write your own obituary. It’s not very often that someone has this opportunity. My symptoms initially manifested in November 2022 with relatively mild gastrointestinal issues. The doctors ran through their checklists and couldn’t find a root cause. Biopsies came back with no sign of malignancy, blood work returned completely normal, and weight loss stopped. It was at this point, Thanksgiving, I might have had a chance with the Whipple surgery. However, I was not a good candidate based on all the normal tests. In hindsight, I was probably already dead and doing a Whipple could have sped my demise (due to recovery complications).
By December, I had developed a cough. Looking back, the cough was the indicator that the cancer had spread to the lungs. It’s now July and I have seen and experienced much. I am thankful for the time I have received and I am thankful for everyone that has poured in their time to me and my family. We are truly blessed beyond measure.
Without further ado… here is my obituary:
Lieutenant Colonel Andrew James Lingenfelter, age 37, of Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, passed away on July 19, 2023 after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. Andrew was surrounded by loved ones who will continue to honor his legacy by living their lives to the fullest.
Andrew was born on January 27, 1986 to Kimberly Marie (Miller) and Burton Paul Lingenfelter in Plainview, Nebraska. After Andrew graduated from Plainview Public Schools in 2004, he went on to study at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln on an Air Force ROTC scholarship.
After graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering, he started his first job at Eglin Air Force Base as a 2nd Lieutenant, kickstarting a fourteen plus year career in Air Force Acquisitions.
In 2005, Andrew met Lindsey at Northeast Community College where they were both taking summer courses. Andrew and Lindsey went on to have four biological children, Samson, Rhett, Sawyer, and Helena, and one adopted child, Otto.
Andrew was passionate about airplanes and working on his commercial pilot’s license when diagnosed with cancer. He lived by the slogan on his favorite t-shirt: I’d rather be flying! Andrew was also infatuated with cooking meats on his Big Green Egg and was famous in all circles for smoked brisket, roasted leg of lamb, and pulled pork.
In 2011, Andrew earned a master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Florida. In 2016, Andrew earned a PhD in aeronautical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology.
Andrew loved his family and friends, the farm, food, flying, football, and fun – all the important f words. The doctor that delivered the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer told him it was the bad luck lottery of death – too young and zero risk factors. Andrew replied that it could be true, but he definitely had the good luck lottery of life with his relationships and accomplishments. Andrew won several Air Force awards for his research, papers, videos, and athletics and was proud to be lead snack officer at Wright Patt.
Andrew is survived by his children, Samson (15), Rhett (13), Sawyer (11), Helena (9), and Otto (6); his wife, Lindsey; his parents, Burton and Kimberly; his brother Luke (Kayla) of Overland Park, KS; his sister Mary (Tyler Abbenhaus) of Bloomfield, NE; his brother Benjamin (Alexis) of Overland Park, KS; his grandparents James and Sharon Miller of Hampton, NE; and many uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, and nephews.
Services will be held in Ohio at Beaver Creek UCC on Tuesday, July 25, 2023 at 11:00 AM with visitation from 5:00-7:00 PM on Monday, July 24, 2023. Celebration of life and burial will be in Plainview, Nebraska at the Plainview United Church of Christ on Friday, August 4, 2023 at 2:00 PM. A short graveside ceremony will be held in Plainview following the service, followed by a BBQ, in honor of Lieutenant Colonel Lingenfelter, lead snack officer. Both services will have a patriotic theme. Memorial donations may be made to the Wright Patterson Fisher House, an organization dear to Andrew and the Lingenfelter family.
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.tobias-fh.com for the Lingenfelter family.
*
Pilot Incapacitations and Deaths in Aug-Dec 2023
Dec. 5, 2023 – Volaris (El Salvador) Pilot – 30s year old Jose Espinal – El Salvador Pilot for Volaris (El Salvador), Air Jazeera Airways (Kuwait) and former VECA & TACA Airlines, died suddenly on Dec. 5, 2023.
Dec. 5, 2023 – Ryanair Flight RK-8528 (STN-OZZ) from London Stansted, UK, to Ouarzazate, Morocco – pilot felt unwell, crew diverted to Faro, Portugal, landed safely 30 min.
Nov. 29, 2023 – American Airlines Flight AA755 CDG-PHL, from Paris, France, to Philadelphia, PA, pilot had a seizure and collapsed in the cockpit.
Nov. 26, 2023 – Ryanair Flight FR-3472 (LTN-RZE) from London Luton, UK to Rzeszow (Poland) on Nov. 26, 2023, one of the pilots became incapacitated, plane diverted to Krakow and landed safely.
Nov. 20, 2023 – Air Transat Flight TS-186 (YYZ-PUJ) from Toronto, Canada to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic – pilot became incapacitated and was replaced by a pilot passenger.
Nov. 16, 2023 – Air India Pilot Death – 37 year old Air India Pilot Captain Himanil Kumar had cardiac arrest at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport during training.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
Featured image is from COVID Intel
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
John Pilger, the veteran Australian author and filmmaker known for his investigative journalism and documentaries, has died aged 84, according to his family.
Pilger’s family this morning posted to his social media accounts: “It is with great sadness the family of John Pilger announce he died yesterday 30 December 2023 in London aged 84. His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was simply the most amazing and loved Dad, Grandad and partner. Rest In Peace.”
His son, the journalist Sam Pilger, added on X: “My Dad died yesterday. I am heartbroken, but also so very proud and grateful to have had such an amazing Dad. He was my hero”.
BAFTA winner Pilger was renowned for countless investigations, particularly into the plight of Aboriginal Australians, American and British foreign policy and the ulterior motives of big business. A towering figure in his field, never afraid to express controversial views, Pilger is understood to have been battling illness since early 2023.
His Twitter bio reads: ‘It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.”
Pilger was born and grew up in Bondi, Sydney, Australia.
In his early years in the UK in the 1960s he worked for Reuters and the Daily Mirror, where he became chief foreign correspondent and reported from all over the world, covering numerous wars, notably Vietnam. In his twenties, he became the youngest journalist to receive Britain’s highest award for journalism, Journalist of the Year and was the first to win it twice.
In the U.S, he reported the upheavals there in the late 1960s and 1970s. He covered the marches following the assassination of Martin Luther King and was in the same room when Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968.
His work in South East Asia produced an iconic issue of the London Mirror, devoted almost entirely to his exclusive dispatches from Cambodia in the aftermath of Pol Pot’s reign.
His career in TV began on Granada’s World In Action in 1969, when he made the subversive film The Quiet Mutiny (1970), which revealed the shifting morale of American troops during the Vietnam War. He would go on to make numerous reports and documentaries for the BBC, ATV and ITV, among other broadcasters. Among many accolades was the Richard Dimbleby BAFTA award in 1991 and the Sydney Peace Prize.
Among dozens of acclaimed documentaries he made were Year Zero: The Silent Death Of Cambodia, The Secret Country, The Last Dream, Welcome To Australia, Utopia, Vietnam: Still America’s War, Do You Remember Vietnam?, Vietnam: The Last Battle, Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy, The War On Democracy and Palestine Is Still The Issue.
His celebrated non-fiction books include Heroes, Distant Voices, A Secret Country, Hidden Agendas, The New Rulers of the World and Freedom Next Time.
Martha Gellhorn the American novelist, journalist and war correspondent, previously said of Pilger:
“[He] has taken on the great theme of justice and injustice… He documents and proclaims the official lies that we are told and that most people accept or don’t bother to think about.
[He] belongs to an old and unending worldwide company, the men and women of conscience. Some are as famous as Tom Paine and William Willberforce, some as unknown as a tiny group calling itself Grandmothers Against The Bomb…. If they win, it is slowly; but they never entirely lose. To my mind, they are the blessed proof of the dignity of man. John has an assured place among them. I’d say he is a charter member for his generation”.
Writer Noam Chomsky previously described his work as “a beacon of light in often dark times. The realities he has brought to light have been a revelation, over and over again, and his courage and insight a constant inspiration.”
Pilger is survived by his son Sam and daughter Zoe, both of whom are writers.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support.
Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
The moment Kissinger’s last breath left his corpse, media commentators lost no time running out the gates, either singing songs of slavish praise about the “great liberal statesman” on one hand or composing devastating critiques of the bloodstained trail of tears Kissinger’s legacy left on the world.
Speaking on Israel’s future in 2012, Kissinger sent shockwaves of confusion through the world when he said, “in 10 years, there will be no more Israel.”
Why would Kissinger, a man who devoted such a major part of his life to the cause of Zionism, believe with certainty that Israel would no longer exist in 10 years? What was supposed to happen under a Hillary Clinton regime that would have resulted in Kissinger’s prediction unfolding in 2022?
Did Kissinger not want the Middle East stability he so often spoke so highly of?
His apparent dual support for Zionist empowerment on one hand and his belief in the impending destruction of Israel on the other is not a glitch in the matrix nor a contradiction in Sir Kissinger’s thinking. Rather, it represents two sides of one bloody program that ultimately involves purging the Holy Land of both Jews and Arabs.
Since Kissinger’s 2012 opinion provided such an important, ironic crack in the machinery of oligarchism, I’d like to take a moment to invite you to join me as we peek through this crack into a story that may take us as far back as Babylon…
‘Greater Israel’ as a British Imperial Project
In 1914, the man who later became Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizman, stated:
“Should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage a Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in 20 to 30 years a million Jews there-perhaps more; they would. . . form a very effective guard for the Suez/Canal.”
These words indicated a deeply underappreciated value that leading Jewish Zionists had for the British empire’s plans for global control over a century ago; these Zionists believed the empire could further their own plans for a Jewish state.
Lord Shaftesbury’s Zionist project was launched in 1839, the British Empire created the Palestinian Exploration Fund in 1865, and the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, joined the cause of convincing the world’s Jews to live in the desert, but the role of British intelligence’s hidden hand in shaping the state of Israel, as well as international fascism more broadly, is often ignored. [1]
“If, as it may well happen, there should be created in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish state under the protection of the British crown … [it] would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire.”
Additionally, Leo Amery was a close collaborator of pro-fascist Zionist leader Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky during the former’s management of British Mandate Palestine (1925-1929) and co-founder of the Jewish Legion, which Jabotinsky went on to control. More than a Zionist, Amery was a believer in Cecil Rhodes’ vision for “a Church of the British Empire.”
Amery stated of his peculiar religion: “The Empire is not external to any of the British nation. It is something like the Kingdom of Heaven within ourselves.” (Take note that the term “Kingdom of Heaven” was the name of the Templar Kingdom of Jerusalem, which will play a larger role in this story).
After leading the passage of anti-Jewish immigration laws in England in 1905 that prevented persecuted Russian Jews from coming to the UK, Balfour wrote in 1919 that Zionism would “mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb.”
Balfour saw the creation of Israel as one stone that could kill two birds by 1) providing an excuse to purge the Jews from Europe and 2) creating a perfect weapon for destabilization in the geopolitical pivot of Halford Mackinder’s Heartland and the cross-section of all major civilizational forces on the earth.
The Silk Road trade routes of the Han Dynasty were revived again under the Tang Dynasty and have historically played a major role in disrupting systems of global empire by encouraging trade, cooperation, and understanding around diverse cultures (in opposition to the Crusader agenda that has promoted ‘clash of civilizations’ ideologies).
In his book Der Judenstat, Theodor Herzl openly admitted this when he said:
“We should, there, form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should, as a neutral state, remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence.”
Herzl was clear that like his British Imperial (and typically antisemitic pro-fascist sponsors), he envisioned Israel’s borders to extend “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”
In the 1890s, Herzl was not yet settled on the specific location of the Jewish national homeland. William Eugene Blackstone, a devotee of John Nelson Darby, leader of a British sect called “The Plymouth Brethren,” sent him a voluminous report justifying Jerusalem as the only location ordained by God. This earned him the title of “the father of Zionism” by American Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis. In 1891, Blackstone drafted a memorandum dubbed “Palestine for the Jews,” which called for US leadership in establishing a homeland for the persecuted Jews of Russia. The memorandum was signed by 413 prominent Americans, including John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Supreme Court Justice Cyrus McCormick, the heads of dozens of major newspapers, the Speaker of the House, and many members of Congress.
The Plymouth Brethren Gnostic Overhaul of Christianity
The Plymouth Brethren were a gnostic sect of pseudo-Christians founded in 1829 by an agent of the British East India Company named Anthony Norris Groves. Groves was sent to the Ottoman Empire and then India in 1830 as an orientalist engaged in recruiting young elites to train in British universities while carrying out espionage under the banner of Christian missionary work. Groves was soon joined by John Nelson Darby (godson of Admiral Horatio Nelson and father of modern rapture theology).
Darby, who considered himself a prophet, conducted six tours of the US seeding his doctrine into dozens of gnostic cults. Each one taught followers to interpret Bible prophecy the same way. This obviously required sending all Jews to Palestine, at which point a “secret rapture” for believers would unfold—followed by a hellscape of pain for heathens left to burn under the fires of global war and the anti-Christ.
Of course, in 1856, Darby’s prophetic gifts taught him that Russia—then Britain’s dominant nemesis after the US—was the anti-Christ and that the Civil War was a sign of the End Times. Darby went so far as to encourage his American followers not to fight to save the union since that would go against God’s will (to blow up the universe). Instead, he believed they should wait like good passive sheep atop their barns to be beamed up to heaven.
Among those American Christian movements influenced (and even created by Darby and the Plymouth Brethren sect), we have Cyrus Scofield. His 1909 reference bible became the most popular in the US during the 20th century and drew heavily upon Darby’s works.
Darby’s influence can also be seen in the works of Charles Fox Parham (the founder of Pentecostalism), George Pember, (the originator of the ‘fallen Nephilim’ interpretation of demonology now advanced by the alien disclosure movement), Dwight Lyman Moody (founder Moody Bible College), and James Hall Brookes (founding father and president of the Niagara Bible Conference, which helped spread Dispensationalism across America).
In fact, the entire Christian Zionist movement of war-pushing, faith-healing, rapture-loving preachers from John Hagee to Benny Hinn and Pat Robertson all sit on foundations created by Darby’s Plymouth Brethren—not the Bible.
The 1826 Albury Conferences on Prophecy
The Plymouth Brethren emerged onto the scene in tandem with a tightly knit network of Anglican/Jesuit intelligence operatives who operated under the leadership of 1) Henry Drummond (financier and co-founder of the New Apostolic Church founded in 1834), 2) Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, and 3) John Nelson Darby (founder of the ‘Exclusive Brethren’ Plymouth Brethren and leader of the sect).
Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper was a follower of Henry Drummond, who devoted himself to the cause of “Premillennial Dispensationalism” soon after a series of conferences on prophecy were held between 1826 and 1830. They were dubbed “The Albury Conferences.”
These conferences, overseen by Drummond at a vast estate he purchased featuring 70 bedrooms in Surrey, England, included leading figures of London’s gnostic intelligentsia. This included occultists Robert Haldane and Sir Thomas Carlyle, both of whom went on to become 12 “apostles/prophets” of the New Apostolic Catholic Church created by Drummond and George Irving in 1830.
The Albury Conferences themselves were sparked by the rediscovery of the writings of the influential Jesuit Francisco Ribera (1537-1591) of Salamanca, who played a major role in the Council of Trent of 1545, which ensured never-ending wars between Catholics and Protestants. This council and its Jesuit controllers are sometimes called ‘the counter-reformation.’
A Jesuit Sleight of Hand Sets the Stage for Zionism
Ribera’s primary task was to create an intellectual argument in opposition to the Protestant affirmation that the end times were now (i.e. 545) and that the Whore of Babylon described in the Book of Revelation was the Catholic Church. Ribera’s solution was simple: make the case why the events of Revelation were neither in the present nor in the past (the majority of Christians at the time believed that the subject of the “Whore of Babylon” was Nero’s Rome). Rather, he argued, they were to take place at some distant moment in the future.
Moreover, in his 500-page treatise In Sacrum Beati Ioannis Apostoli, & Evangelistiae Apocalypsin Commentari, Ribera explained that the signs of the end times would only occur when the temple of Solomon, destroyed in 70 CE during the first Roman Jewish War, was rebuilt (additionally implying the restoration of Jews to their homeland). Ribera’s writings became known as the Futurist School of Pre-Millennial Dispensationalism, from which arose such modern perversions of Christian-Zionism, Rapture theology, and the diverse array of End Times Cultists of Christian and Jewish brands in our modern era.
By the early 17th century, Ribera’s writings had fallen into obscurity. They were only rediscovered when S.R. Maitland (Keeper of Manuscripts for the Archbishop of Canterbury) found himself working in the Vatican archives. Maitland believed the Jesuitical concepts were revolutionary, and they inspired him to write books on the antichrist and End Times in the form of An Inquiry into the Grounds of the Prophetic Period in Daniel and St, John (1826), A Second Inquiry (1829), and An Attempt to Elucidate the Prophecies Concerning Anti Christ (1830).
Perhaps most importantly, Ribera’s eschatology lent itself to the geopolitical aims of a British Empire struggling to 1) prevent the spread of independence movements across the world that followed America’s lead and 2) maintain a system of global enslavement with India, Russia, Egypt, China, and the Ottoman Empire as prime targets.
The obvious danger of the renewal of Silk Road routes of cooperation connecting these ancient civilizational states would be a disaster for the British Empire’s ambitions to become a New Roman Empire retaining control through divide-to-conquer tactics.
Dozens of End Times cults splintered off from this source. Various prophets like Edward Irving (founder of the Irvingites), John Dowie (founder of Zion Illinois), John Darby (founder of Exclusive Brethren), Charles Parham (founder of Pentecostalism), Joseph Smith of the Mormons, and Dwight L. Moody (founder of Moody Bible College) created occult societies masquerading as “Christian” movements.
The thread tying these new sects together tended to revolve around 1) rapture interpretations of the Bible, 2) the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land, and, in most cases, 3) the rebuilding of Solomon’s Temple.
Were these actions to occur, it was taught by those with ‘special gnostic knowledge,’ the apocalyptic End Times would be invoked. The dual origins of Christian Zionism and End Times rapture theology are found here—not in the Bible.
The Fraud of British Israelism
It is also noteworthy that many of these “apostolic” cult creators were also devotees of “British Israelism,” which claimed that the 10 lost Tribes of Israel actually settled in Britain, and the British Royal family was directly descended from the House of David—the ‘secret children’ of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Films such as Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and the popular book Holy Blood Holy Grail made these actual beliefs of the oligarchy into articles of popular mythology in the minds of plebian consumers.
Most people watching King Charles III sprinkled with water from the River Jordan during his coronation had no idea what insane symbolism was occurring. In the mind of Charles and the broader oligarchy he represents, this ritual symbolizes Charles as the blood heir to the throne of Christ himself.
The choice to carry a metallic globe and cross symbolizing his divine right to rule the entire globe as prima inter pares (first among equals)—a symbol of the Holy Roman Emperor—should also not be ignored (see image below).
In 1834, British Israelite Henry Drummond stated that “The majority of what was called the religious world, disbelieved that the Jews were to be restored to their own land, and that the Lord Jesus Christ was to return and reign in person on this earth.”
The Logic of England’s Use of Zionism
In January 1839, Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper wrote an article in the London Quarterly Review commonly referred to as the first public call for the restoration of the Jews in Palestine:
“The soil and climate of Palestine are singularly adapted to the growth of produce required for the exigencies of Great Britain; the finest cotton may be obtained in almost unlimited abundance; silk and madder are the staple of the country, and olive oil is now, as it ever was, the very fatness of the land. Capital and skill are alone required: the presence of a British officer, and the increased security of property which his presence will confer, may invite them from these islands to the cultivation of Palestine; and the Jews, who will betake themselves to agriculture in no other land, having found, in the English consul, a mediator between their people and the Pasha, will probably return in yet greater numbers, and become once more the husbandmen of Judaea and Galilee. (Cited in Victoria Clark, Allies for Armageddon, p.67)
In 1840, Lord Palmerston (Lord Cooper’s cousin and British Foreign Secretary) echoed this proto-zionist outlook in a letter to the British ambassador to Constantinople:
“There exists at the present time among the Jews dispersed over Europe, a strong notion that the time is approaching when their nation is to return to Palestine… It would be of manifest importance to the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return and to settle in Palestine… I have to instruct your Excellency to recommend to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine.”
In 1853, Shaftesbury wrote to then-Prime Minister Aberdeen describing Syria as “a country without a nation, which should be matched to a nation without a country… Is there such a thing? To be sure there is. The ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!”
Shaftesbury recognized the need to map Palestine (which also involved finding the location of Solomon’s Temple) in preparation for this vast project. To this end, he worked closely with his cousin Lord Palmerston and the Prince of Whales (later King Edward VII) to create the Palestinian Exploration Fund in 1865.
Templars, Mithra, and the Roots of the Palestinian Exploration Fund
This project was been put into motion a little earlier, when in 1862, Queen Victoria’s son, Prince Edward Albert, led an expedition to Palestine. The first secretary of the Palestinian Exploration Fund (PEF), Walter Besant, described the importance of the King’s venture to the Holy Land in his work Twenty-One Years Work in the Holy Land(1886):
“Hitherto the opportunity for such systematic research has been wanting. It appears now to have arrived. The visit of HRH the Prince of Wales to the Mosque at Hebron has broken down the bar which for centuries obstructed the entrance of Christians to that most venerable of the sanctuaries of Palestine; and may be said to have thrown open the whole of Syria to Christian research.”
The fact that Walter Besant of the Palestinian Expedition Fund was the brother-in-law of Annie Besant, leader of the international Theosophy movement, should raise some alarm bells since it has been noted that John Nelson Darby infused his translations of the Bible with language and terms only being used by the Theosophists.
The Templars were a mercenary cult established by Cistercian grand strategist Bernard of Clairvaux in 1118 CE. They were officially called “The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon.” Not living up to their aspirations of poverty, this order of elite Christian mercenaries soon became the dominant financial empire across Europe and the Mediterranean sphere. It oversaw a network of Mithraic mystery cults throughout the world stretching from Russia to Europe, England, and the Middle East.
In fact, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which reigned from 1099-1291, was frequently managed by the Templars and ranged widely in size during several bloody Crusades against the Muslims. An animation of the Kingdom can be seen here:
The Kingdom’s flag can be seen here:
The Jerusalem crosses became affiliated with the Templars before the order was dissolved (at least publicly) and appeared on the insignia of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, established as a papal knighthood in 1098. It currently has 30,000 official members under an Order not too dissimilar in structure to Jesuit Generals[3]. Keep in mind that this papal knighthood was established 20 years before the founding of the Clairvaux’s Templars.
According to the sect’s website, the Knighthood of the Holy Sepulchre is devoted to “absolute fidelity to the Popes” and seeks to “sustain and aid…the Catholic Church in the Holy Land.” In Freemasonic fashion, the Order is organized around a Grand Master and a chain of command of obedience down to the lower degrees.
In 1222, Francis of Assisi (ordained as the environmentalist’s saint) established a subdivision of his Franciscans dubbed “The Order of Penitent Brothers and Sisters.” Like its later incarnation in the Jesuits, the order was arranged around a general and featured an outward (exoteric) practice of strict Benedictine asceticism (this involved self-flagellation).
This order became known as the Franciscan Minorite Order and selected for themselves a very peculiar emblem.
This is important to keep in mind since the Prince of Whales Albert Edward celebrated his 1862 arrival in the Holy Land by engraving a tattoo featuring the Templar crosses on his arm. The Templar headquarters in Jerusalem were found in the elaborate crypts built under the Al-Aqsa Mosque (the supposed location of Solomon’s Temple) and are the source of much speculation. The likelihood of a Mithraic temple as part of a network of thousands scattered across the Holy Land and Europe is the most attractive hypothesis this author has yet seen.
Working directly under Prince Albert Edward was Sir Charles Warren, chief of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) and First Grand Master of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, which was established in 1886. The Quatuor Coronati (Four Crowns) was the first archeology lodge devoted to mapping out the Middle East and ultimately rebuilding Solomon’s Temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE.
Additional aims of the lodge and Palestinian Exploration Fund involved locating the ark of the covenant and holy grail. The geopolitical benefits of mapping the Middle East for the British High Command (as well as mapping out the tribal relations of Arabs living there under the manipulation of British orientalists) were obvious.
The entire field of ‘Biblical Archeology’ was created—and continues to be shaped—by the Quatuor Coronati. Upon founding the PEF, Warren stated that it was designed with the avowed intention of “gradually introducing the Jews, pure and simple, who are eventually to occupy and govern this country.”
In 1886, Sir Charles Warren was appointed the chief commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, where he was assigned to protect the Prince of Whales’ ritualistic murder of prostitutes across London in a famous unsolved case called “Jack the Ripper.” Warren worked with Plymouth Brethren member Sir Robert Anderson, head of Scotland Yard, to sabotage the investigation into the masonic ritual murder of prostitutes across London. These murders most likely occurred at the hand of Prince Albert Edward’s eldest son Prince Albert Victor. The 2001 Hollywood film From Hell, starring Johny Depp, was but one of many films banalizing this grotesque chapter of history in the form of popular entertainment.
Another Plymouth Brethren cultist played an important role in British Mandate Palestine. Colonel Charles Wingate was a leading figure in Darby’s sect and ensured that his son, Colonel Orde Wingate, would follow in his father’s shoes as a deviant imperialist and Christian Zionist.
Orde Wingate worked closely with Christopher Sykes (son of Mark Sykes of Sykes-Picot fame) and was sent to British Mandate Palestine in 1935 to train Zionist paramilitary groups. He created a network of elite ‘Night Squads’ working in tandem with Jabotinsky’s Haganah paramilitary group.
As demonstrated by the pioneering work of Steven P. Meyer, Vladimir Jabotinsky was a British intelligence asset from Ukraine who was groomed in the Freemasonic Young Turk operation set into motion by Lord Palmerston and Giuseppe Mazzini in the 1840s. He was a Jewish fascist admirer who Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, called “Vladimir Hitler” due to his adoption of Nazi practices and his rabidly racist ethnonationalist attitude.
“The Jews are loyal to the Empire… Palestine is essential to our Empire- our Empire is essential to England- England is essential to world peace. We have the chance to plant here in Palestine and Transjordan a loyal, rich and intelligent nation, with which we can hold for us the key to world domination without expense or effort on our part.”
It is a notable irony that Col. Orde Wingate had two very influential “pro-Arab” Orientalist cousins: 1) E.G Browne (sponsor of Al-Afghani, the spiritual father of Salafiyyism) and 2) T.E. Lawrence, whose manipulation of Bedouin Hashemite tribes drove the British Empire’s first ‘Arab Spring’ against the weak Ottoman Empire during World War One.
British Mandate Palestine Grand Mullah Haj Amin frequently collaborated with British intelligence from Britain’s Cairo office, including the Muslim Brotherhood, to 1) assassinate moderate Arabs seeking economic cooperation with the Jews and 2) kill Jews to stoke revenge sentiments similar to the earlier program of keeping Protestant vs. Catholic wars ablaze in Europe.
British intelligence’s support of Islamist cults throughout the Arab world, from al-Afghani (founder of Salafyyism) to the Muslim Brotherhood, and their simultaneous support of the most fascist and violent Zionist ideologues should not be seen as contradictory in any way. Rather, this support is united by one firm principle: maintain global dominance for the Church of the British Empire.
Plymouth Brethren grand strategist George Hawkins Pember (1837-1910) is known as one of the most influential of Darby’s sect. His works on ancient mystery cults, Zionism, prophecy, and even alien interpretations of scripture have done an incredible amount of damage in shaping imperial strategic planning for over 150 years.
In his book The Antichrist, Babylon, and the Coming of the Kingdom, Pember laid out the challenge of interpreting what the ‘Whore of Babylon’ might be. This information is very important for anyone wishing to calculate the days until the End Times.
Pember followed the Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist line by extracting the cataclysmic events into the future. “It would seem, that Babylon must be rebuilt and become again the center of the world and the glory of kingdoms, as we have it represented in the eighteenth chapter of the apocalypse,” he wrote.
But who is this Babylon that must rise to power to usher in the End Times? Is it Russia? Is it the papacy? Is it the British Empire? Or is it something else?
As a devout Christian Zionist cut from the cloth of Palmerston, Churchill, or Eichmann, the answer is clear, according to Pember. In his book The Antichrist, Babylon, and the Coming of the Kingdom, he wrote:
“The wonder is that the restoration of Babylon has never yet been attempted…As soon, however, as Christendom is united in the form of the Ten Confederate Kingdoms, all jealousy will be at an end, and the great prize may then be seized for the common good. No doubt commerce will be the exciting motive: the civilized world will, perhaps, combine to build a great central emporium, which by their united exertions will quickly surpass all other cities, and finally become the capital of the Antichrist.”
Keeping in mind the role of the Plymouth Brethren and gnostic intelligence operatives of the Palestinian Expedition Fund in creating Zionism in the first place, let’s review once more the region proclaimed by Herzl, Jabotinsky, and other Greater Zionists as the divine land ordained by God’s covenant for the “chosen people”…
Herzl’s envisioned Greater Israel Empire
Today, the Anglo-Zionist project has grown from an aggressively demonic fetus to a vicious, full-grown monster. It appears intent on fulfilling a divine prophecy to recreate a new Babylon while provoking a war with literally every Arab neighbor surrounding them. The maps of Babylon 539 BCE and Herzl’s fantasy are eerily similar.
America’s nuclear arsenal will likely support Zionist ambitions to purge the land of Arabs, starting with Palestine and followed by Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and possibly Saudi Arabia, as outlined by the neo-con Clean Break Doctrine submitted to Netanyahu in 1996. But are all Americans (or even Israelis) happy about this scenario? Judging from the mass protests in the US against Netanyahu’s current war and the collapse of his support within Israel itself, the answer is no.
But do the voices of the people who will be exterminated in the wake of a global nuclear war have any influence over the decisions made by imperial ideologues marching about Washington, London, or Tel Aviv? That remains to be seen.
I would also pose the question: Is it at all possible that the forces that birthed the Zionist project may ultimately see their creation as a disposable pawn in the great game? Is it also possible that these same forces don’t even see the US as a permanent fixture of the “end of history” some imperialists wish to see emerge onto the scene? These are just a few questions to ponder.
With all of this in mind, it is worth revisiting Henry Kissinger’s 2012 prophecy that “in 10 years, there will be no more Israel.”
The Fall of Babylon 2.0?
“The Truth Concerning the Land is Revealed in Cabala. Jewish Mysticism (Cabala) militates for life in the Land of Israel. Rationalistic approaches to Judaism place no special value on the Land of Israel. In wars, national characters crystalize. Israel, as the universal reflection of mankind, benefits thereby. The heels of Messiah follow upon World Conflagration… At the hour of the downfall of Western civilization, Israel is called upon to fulfill its divine mission by providing the spiritual basis for a New World Order.” [emphasis added]
-Rabbi Abraham Isaac Cohen Kook, Greater Israel champion, End Times cultist, Chief Ashkenaz Rabbi for British Mandate Palestine (1919-1935)
The genie of Greater Israelism, as promoted by the likes of Theodor Herzl, Rabbi A.I Kook, and the army of gnostic Christian Zionist heirs of John Nelson Darby begging for a first strike onto Iran represents a level of zealotry and fanaticism that may spell disaster for much of humanity. Unlike most End Times cults that have stained this world, this one happens to possess a nuclear arsenal, and it is supported by raving hordes of rapture-believing Christian Zionists in America hungry for Armageddon.
A strange collusion of the Jesuit-run papacy of Pope Francis and the Anglican Church of the eco-Crusader King Charles III has united on multiple fronts. This includes Lynn Forester de Rothschild’s Council for Inclusive Capitalism under the banner of the World Economic Forum. Additionally, why did Pope Francis (who took the name from the Templar-connected Francis of Assisi) choose to give shards of the cross upon which Jesus died (so it is claimed) as a coronation gift to a man who is a British Israelite who probably believes himself to be a blood heir to Jesus himself?
For that matter, why did Prince William’s wife, Kate Middleton, present her second baby to the world dressed in an outfit made famous by accused satanist and pedophile Roman Polanski in the film Rosemary’s Baby (featuring the story of a woman who is impregnated by a satanic cult leader and gives birth to the anti-Christ)?
This cult is also operating in a world shaped in large measure by a collapsing hegemon sitting atop a systemic financial meltdown that may make the 1929 depression look like a cakewalk.
Kissinger’s Role
Sir Henry Kissinger played an instrumental role in converting the US from a republic that aspired to uphold liberty to a nation fully committed to empire under the control of a techno-feudal priesthood.
It is important to keep in mind that throughout his long and destructive life, Kissinger cannot really be accused of being a cause of anything. Rather, he was always an instrument enslaved to a higher agency far beyond him. He was perhaps a fully witting agent—and thus all the more reprehensible than the many lower auxiliaries of technocracy who are ignorant of the evil they represent… but he was a slave nonetheless.
As a prized student of Rhodes Scholar William Yandall Elliot (who served as a guru to a nest of sociopathic young men at Harvard), Kissinger’s devout misanthropy, idealization of oligarchism, and spiritual devotion to systems of stasis were recognized by his handlers. He soon found himself working for the director of the CIA’s Office of Psychological Strategy Board in 1952, where he was brought into the inner sanctum of global intelligence operations.
Rhodes Scholar William Yandall Elliot surrounded by a few of his leading disciples: Sir Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, and Pierre Trudeau
Kissinger’s star rose quickly as he was made a member of the Round Table’s American think tank in 1956—The Council on Foreign Relations—and was soon brought into the Rockefeller Commission’s 1956 study group on America and the New World Order (named ‘Prospects for America’). There, he worked closely with Rhodes Scholar Dean Rusk and American fascist Henry Luce. This was soon followed by admission to the Bilderberg Group in 1957, where he went on to lead its steering committee.
Like his Rhodes Scholar mentor earlier, Kissinger found his own protégé in the form of a young sociopath named Klaus Schwab, whom he taught at a CIA-sponsored program at Harvard. Kissinger wasted no time setting the stage for the post-industrial era of deregulation, nation-stripping, and war as he brought the new Trilateral Commission into reality alongside David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
During his time as secretary of state and national security advisor, Kissinger worked closely with George Schultz in removing the US dollar from the fixed exchange rate gold reserve system, ensuring that what was once a viable industrial capital system would become a speculative weapon of mass destruction.
Once this was achieved, Kissinger’s work in orchestrating the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and broader oil shocks that resulted in a US dollar pegged to the price of OPEC oil was a cakewalk [5]. Kissinger’s next step in drafting the NSSM-200 program, transforming America’s foreign policy from a pro-industrial growth orientation toward “population control,” was another step into hell.
But were any of these policies designed to serve the interests of America or even Israel or Saudi Arabia in the long term?
Were any of these policies designed to serve any nation, or were they all simply different elements to the same abstract painting of chaos that he served on behalf of a higher agency?
What agency could that be if not American or Israeli or Saudi?
Kissinger’s Devotion to the British Empire Means More Than You Think
“Many American leaders condemned Churchill as needlessly obsessed with power politics, too rigidly anti-Soviet, too colonialist in his attitude to what is now called the Third World, and too little interested in building the fundamentally new international order towards which American idealism has always tended. The British undoubtedly saw the Americans as naive, moralistic, and evading responsibility for helping secure the global equilibrium. The dispute was resolved according to American preferences- in my view, to the detriment of postwar security… The disputes between Britain and America during the Second World War and after were, of course, not an accident. British policy drew upon two centuries of experience with the European balance of power, America on two centuries of rejecting it.
“Where America had always imagined itself isolated from world affairs, Britain for centuries was keenly alert to the potential danger that any country’s domination of the European continent-whatever its domestic structure or method of dominance-placed British survival risk… Britain rarely proclaimed moral absolutes or rested her faith in the ultimate efficacy of technology, despite her achievements in this field. Philosophically she remains Hobbesian: She expects the worst and is rarely disappointed. In moral matters Britain has traditionally practiced a convenient form of ethical egoism, believing that what was good for Britain was best for the rest…. In the nineteenth century, British policy was perhaps the principal factor in European system that kept the peace for 99 years without a major war ….”
Perhaps most revealing was his description of his own role as secretary of state when he described his relationship with the British Foreign Office:
“The British were so matter-of-factly helpful that they became a participant in internal American deliberations, to a degree probably never practiced between sovereign nations… In my White House incarnation then, I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American State Department… It was symptomatic”.
For those who may not be aware, Kissinger’s recruitment to William Yandall Elliot’s Round Table operation in Harvard, his allegiance to the Round Table movement’s Chatham House operation in London and New York (dubbed “The Mothership” by Hillary Clinton), and his words above are nothing less than an admission of allegiance to a new Templar order.
The secret society that Cecil Rhodes established in his last will and testament as “a Church of the British Empire,” modeled on “The Jesuit Constitution” was explicitly based on the Grail Myths of the Knighthood of the Round Table. These were designed in the 13th century to promote the Templar-managed Crusades and the reconstruction of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem.[6]
As even Scottish Rite Grand Master Albert Pike stated in 1871, the Jesuit Order was itself a reconstructed and more disciplined Templar Order. In his Morals and Dogma, he wrote:
“The Templars were unintelligent and therefore unsuccessful Jesuits. Their watchword was, to become wealthy, in order to buy the world. They became so, and in 1312 they possessed in Europe alone more than nine thousand seignories. Riches were the shoal on which they were wrecked. They became insolent, and unwisely showed their contempt for the religious and social institutions which they aimed to overthrow. Their ambition was fatal to them.”
It was, after all, the Jesuit influence on the 1545-1563 Council of Trent that both fueled the flames of never-ending religious wars across Europe and established the foundations of Christian Zionism and the End Times cults of our modern-day.
Whether it was the British Empire that created political Zionism as part of the Great Game as Winston Churchill, Lord Shaftesbury, or Lord Balfour believed, or whether Jewish cabalistic bankers were attempting to create a Greater Israel capital for a New World Order as Herzl, Vladimir Jabotinsky, or Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook likely believed…it may not matter which imperial monstrosity is wagging the tail: both may be destined to the same fate that befell the first Babylon over two millennia ago.
Perhaps Kissinger knew what this new age of Babylon would involve… but he’s too busy dealing with other problems at this moment.
One thing is certain: the thing calling itself ‘the antichrist’ has been very angry with something very special within Christianity, Judaism, and Islam for a very long time. It’s time to rediscover what that is before the End Times cult Kissinger served achieves its final act.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
[1] According to evidence available on record, Theodor Herzl was many things, but his own man was likely not one of them. His rise to prominence from a low-level journalist in 1893 to the leader of global Zionism within three years is unprecedented and doesn’t happen without vast institutional patronage. Additionally, his connection to Colonel Goldsmid (head of London’s Maccabee movement) from 1894 to 1904 is one of many important red flags of higher influences interfacing with Herzl. Colonel Goldsmid played a role in the Boer War alongside the new Round Table movement and was also the overseer of the British Empire’s Jewish colonial project in Argentina, which is no small thing. The Jewish colonial projects overseen by the British Empire in Argentina—like the Uganda scheme proposed by Chamberlain later (and submitted by Herzl to the World Zionist Congress in 1903)—was an indirect way of corralling international Jews from across Russia and Europe into controlled zones of British imperial domain that would serve as gateways towards a final Palestinian Zionist infusion. Ultimately, the empire’s success in sparking World War One and undermining the Ottoman Empire sped things up and made these stepping stones unnecessary. The fact that Herzl was also an antisemite who saw great practical use in antisemitism to make Europe and Russia unliveable for the Jews is a big red herring. It places him in conjunction with the intelligence agencies (often occult-theosophical) throughout the secret police operations of the Russian, French, Prussian, and British empires that coordinated the Dreyfuss Affair fiasco in France and the Protocols of Zion forgeries in Russia and their translations across the English world.
[2] In 1954, Egypt and the United Kingdom signed an agreement over the Suez Canal and British military basing rights. It was short-lived. By 1956 Great Britain, France, and Israel concocted a plot against Egypt aimed at toppling Nasser and seizing control of the Suez Canal, a conspiracy that enlisted the Muslim Brotherhood. The British went so far as to hold secret meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood in Geneva. According to author Stephen Dorril, two British intelligence agents, Col. Neil McLean and Julian Amery (Leo Amery’s son), helped MI6 organize a clandestine anti-Nasser opposition. Julian Amery would be directly linked to the Gladio networks. In Stephen Dorril’s book MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations he writes, “They [McLean and Amery] also went so far as to make contact in Geneva…with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, informing only MI6 of this demarche which they kept secret from the rest of the Suez Group [which was planning the military operation via its British bases by the Suez Canal]. Julian Amery forwarded various names to [Britain’s Foreign Secretary].” The full story can be found in Dorril, Stephen. (2000) MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations. The Free Press, New York p. 356, 629 and Chung, Cynthia, (2022) Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set, Canadian Patriot Press p. 286
[5] Under his careful watch, oil prices increased 400% during the 1973 OPEC crisis. This has been acknowledged to have played a big role in driving the 1973-79 inflation. But as researcher William Engdahl demonstrated in his 1992 A Century of War, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had more of a role in manufacturing this crisis from scratch by keeping hundreds of tankers replete with petrol from being unloaded in the US and facilitating the 400% interest rate increase with the assistance of several high-level oil ministers in the Middle East beholden to Kissinger. In recent years, Saudi Arabia’s OPEC minister at the time of the crisis corroborated Engdahl’s research stating: “I am 100 per cent sure that the Americans were behind the increase in the price of oil. The oil companies were in real trouble at that time, they had borrowed a lot of money and they needed a high oil price to save them.”
[6] See From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston, Cambridge University Press, 1920
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
United Nations Resolves Palestinians Have the Right to Return and Live in Peace
The United Nations General Assembly, in 1948, passed UN Resolution 194 that resolved the right of Palestinians to return to their traditional homes and live in peace with their neighbors. The forcibly evicted Palestinians, and their descendants ever since have held, among their most prized possessions, the sacred keys that once opened the doors to all their homes from which they were originally evicted by the Global Zionist Jewry.
Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the National Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, has vowed Islam will ultimately save the West from slavery to global Zionism.
But it’s long past any remote notion of a ‘high time’ coming, since the Zionist Jewish citizenry of Israel and the collective world should already have long since woken up to the unvarnished truths about the hideous nature of Global Zionism that, since 1948, has become one of the main suppliers of weapons of mass destruction that has encouraged other nations, throughout all the hemispheres of the earth, who’ve since ‘been poisoned, corrupted and encouraged by Israel’s war armaments industry to use against their own people and neighbors.
One could argue that Global Zionist Israel, like its main ally the United States of America, and their war armament offsprings, like Israel Weapon Industries, Israel Aerospace Industries, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Technologies, since their inceptions, have all been drug pushers of war and hate that, since their earliest inceptions, have served as constant banes on humanity that have turned the entire planet and its human denizens into a veritable hell-hole.
One especially-critical, pressing, still unresolved world matter, in particular; is: how and why Palestine originally was allowed to be illegally occupied by Zionist Israeli’s terrorist forces seventy-five years ago, and; how and why world leaders, the United States in particular, collectively avoided doing anything to prevent or resist it from happening; only incentivize and financially enable it to continue to do so for their own global goals of conquest and domination.
Another still unanswered question is: how and why the non-stop occupation by ever-greater numbers of anti-Palestinian Zionist settler-colonist Jewry have-been allowed to continue, in spite of one UN resolution after another to the contrary, to push the Palestinian people into every smaller Bantustans of their former homelands, that has now led to the existing life and death war in Gaza for both Palestinians and Israeli Jews that since has turned into an unspeakable mass genocide against the Palestinians.
It’s patently clear that unless the genocide is soon stopped, it will most assuredly lead to either the complete extermination of the Palestinian peoples or their complete eviction from their original homelands; with Israel’s crystal-clear intent that once the Palestinians leave, they will never again have any right to ever return; with the additional outrage that many capitalistic governments in the world, led by the woeful, despicable leadership of the United States and its allies in the United Nations will, no doubt, refuse to support any type of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanction) Movement to stop the genocide of innocent Palestinian men, women, children and infants; even at the risk of allowing the war to turn into a regional or worldwide conflict between the entire Arab and Western Worlds, with unknown and unpredictable implications.
Zionism from the Beginning Has Been About Creating a Fascist State
To learn some of the unvarnished truths about the real insidious origins of Israel’s Zionism and how this cancerous travesty against humanity first began, one can do no better than choose as a starting point, if the world is to avoid the impending tragedy that awaits, by listening to Asa Winstanley and Norma Barrows-Friedman’s interview of Tony Greenstein, author of “Zionism During the Holocaust”.
Greenstein extensively documents the historical collaboration of the Zionists on a continuum spanning early 20th century Nazism to Winston Churchill and England’s Labor Party; while revealing the reality that Zionism never had a problem with anti-semitism because its main goal was primarily to build a 100% fascist Zionist state in Palestine
Greenstein points out how Zionist Israel continued this dialectic by actively collaborating after WWII with far-right fascist regimes in the Southern Hemisphere like: Guatemala; Nicaragua, Paraguay, Chile and Argentina, as well as elsewhere throughout the world-. Greenstein exposes in the process the fact that the goal of Zionist Israel all along has unequivocally been to create a 100% Zionist Jewish State that never intended to include the Palestinians.
Chris Hedges Review of the Genocide Being Committed in Gaza
For anyone who wants a clear, concise and comprehensive overview of what is currently happening on the ground in Gaza they can do no better than listen intently to the Pulitzer Prize-winning-author and journalist Chris Hedges, who was a foreign journalist for the New York Times and served as its Middle East Bureau Chief for fifteen years.
Hedges was a close friend of Alina Margolis-Edelman, who was part of the armed resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in WWII when the Nazi had sealed 400,000 Polish Jews inside the Warsaw Ghetto, not unlike Hamas and the Palestinians sealed in Gaza. Here husband, Marek Edelman, was the deputy commander of the uprising and the only leader to survive the war.
The trapped Jews died by the thousands, like the Palestinians, from starvation, disease and Nazi violence. When the Jews began to be transported to the extermination places, the resistance fighters fought back as Hamas now is doing in Gaza. None ever expected to survive either in Warsaw or in Gaza.
Edelman, after the war condemned Zionism as a racist ideology, used to justify the theft of Palestinian land. He sided with the Palestinians and supported their armed resistance.
Like Edelman who thundered against Israel’s appropriation of the Holocaust to justify its reprisals of the Palestinians, Chris Hedges thunders against the Zionist’s false claim that they, too, have the same right to exist on their stolen lands of the Palestinians as do the Palestinians, themselves.
Hedges points out that the war in Gaza isn’t against Hamas per se, but against every Palestinians man, women, child, infant and new born because the intent of Zionism is to erase the very idea of Palestine, as well as the idea of Palestinians, themselves, as a people. Hedges points to the fact that its coded within the very DNA of Zionism and White Western Imperialism.
Zionism, from its inception, was intended to be a pure state of ideological Zionism, with no One State or Two State Solution ever intended, other than a Third State Solution where the Palestinians, en masse, were to be shipped off somewhere in the Sinai Desert to Jordan, Lebanon or Egypt.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
The writer Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American writer who originally was a Criminology student working in one of America’s local police departments. For decades, Irwin has sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by a host of environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting world philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.
Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a spiritual odyssey among the native peoples of North America that has led to numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & the U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; the many violations constantly being waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul. The author and his wife are long-time residents on the North Shore of British Columbia.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Litigating against countries is the stuff of esoteric delight for international lawyers. Such matters become yet more complex when it comes to claims of genocide or broader crimes against humanity. Accusations, however motivated, are always easy to make. Proving them in a court of law is quite another proposition. International law remains a terrain of punctures and potholes, rather than smooth lines and fine paving. Working around those punctures is a skill worthy of prize and praise.
The ongoing flattening, mauling and extirpation of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s armed forces has drawn interest from jurists and litigants. The potholes and punctures, in that sense, seem to be filling up. It’s hard not to see why, when you have such startlingly grotesque admissions as those from Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, a chief spokesman for the IDF, that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”
Then come such background briefs as those from retired Colonel Pnina Sharvit Baruch, former director of the wing celebrated for advising IDF commanders about complying with the rules of war. A dive into the short overview from Baruch makes for grim reading. The aim, not method, is what matters, namely, the destruction of Hamas.
“Without achieving this goal, Hamas will succeed in de facto denying Israel the exercise of its sovereignty in the areas adjacent to the border with the Gaza Strip. In light of this significant military advantage, even if many civilians in Gaza are harmed during the attacks, this is not necessarily excessive incidental damage and therefore would not be disproportionate attacks that are illegal.”
Mass murder can thereby be excused.
Leonard Rubenstein, a professor of practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was sufficiently troubled by such reasoning to suggest that Israel had “asserted a theory of justifiable conduct in war that, contrary to this body of [humanitarian] law, elevates claims of military necessity in achieving the war’s aims over protection of civilians, particularly in a just war.”
In the international community, a number of actions are testing the waters of legality regarding Israel’s novel view of waging what is increasingly looking like a war of ghoulish extermination. In November, the New York Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a suit on behalf of Palestinian human rights groups, US citizens with relatives in Gaza and Palestinians in Gaza arguing that the Biden administration had been complicit and failed to prevent “the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide”. It notes the language of various Israeli government figures that demonstrate “clear genocidal intentions” while deploying “dehumanizing characterizations of Palestinians, including ‘human animals’”.
That same month, South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti, according to Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, expressed the view that an investigation of “the situation in the state of Palestine” should take place. Khan accordingly declared that an investigation into the events in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank from March 2021 was duly expanded to include “the escalation of hostilities and violence since the attacks that took place on October, 2023.” Despite Israel not being a member of the ICC, the prosecutor called “upon all relevant actors to provide full cooperation with my office.”
South Africa has decided to test the validity of Israel’s methods of war in Gaza through the offices of the International Court of Justice, a body of feeble, if acceptable dignity. On December 29, Pretoria filed an application regarding, in the words of the relevant press release, “alleged violations by Israel regarding the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide […] in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” The application makes the claim that “acts and omissions” by the Israeli government “are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”.
It further claims that
“the conduct of Israel – through its State organs, State agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence – in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of the obligations under the Genocide Convention.”
The application instituting proceedings gives more detail to the South African case, noting such alleged genocidal acts as “killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”
South Africa requests a number of provisional measures in its ICJ application, namely, that Israel immediately suspend military operations in and against Gaza; ensure all its military or irregular units under the state’s control “take no further steps in furtherance of the military operations” aforementioned; “desist from the commission of any and all actions within the scope of Article II” of the Genocide Convention (killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group); intentional infliction upon the group of conditions “calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”; and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”.
The response from Israel was hardly one of chastened reflection. Its government rejected “with contempt the blood libel by South Africa in its application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).” The Israeli Foreign Ministry scorned the South African claim as lacking any “factual and judicial basis and is a despicable and cheap exploitation of the court.” Pretoria was, in effect, “collaborating with a terror group that calls for the destruction of Israel.”
In some ways, South Africa, with its historically thick layering of scar tissue regarding racial hatred, segregation, policing and administrative detention may be better suited than most in understanding the zealots prosecuting the war in Gaza. Far from proving a blood libel, the case may turn out to be something of a bloody revelation.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
We have seen since the latter part of 2023, the horrific repercussions of controlled and uncontrolled mass murder being perpetrated on men, women and children in the Gaza strip.
We have witnessed, in US and European cities, the escalation of deranged individuals shooting dead whoever happens to get in their line of fire.
We see – and increasingly directly experience –a break down in civilised patterns of law and order; responsible governance within and without supranational bodies, national parliaments, educational institutions, national health services and hospitals, transport systems, banking, the media, and indeed, in too many cases within families themselves. Amounting to general disassociation with basic moral values.
We also see how giant corporations and banks continue to swallow-up smaller businesses and turn their workers into less than human robotic slaves, unwittingly and wittingly supporting a world exclusively devoted to self agrandissement through the twin totems of power and money.
We increasingly recognise that a whole generation, growing-up in a soulless era of materialistically driven, selfish and often aggressive behaviour patterns, are in danger of falling easy victims to EMF digitalised communications technologies that offer an escape route into a virtual reality world – having little or no connection with an ‘earthed’, meaningful and genuinely human existence.
Many see all this and much more – and yet feel paralysed from changing direction within their own lives. Feel spellbound by the top-down centralised program that stands behind the relentless degradation of human rights, basic freedoms, privacy and justice.
In spite of much valuable information being available to those who care to search for it, there remains a lack of awareness that we are living in ‘a program’. Within an agenda whose ends are 100% antithetical to sentient, caring human beings and to the vital ecological diversity of the planet.
Continuing to participate in this program while dismissing as ‘conspiracy theories’ information that reveals its origins to be a small cabal of ruthless exponents of a ‘New World Order’ and a ‘Great Reset’, is to be in denial of the gift of basic human intelligence.
For such people, only the arrival on one’s doorstep of a life altering shock, will induce an awakening.
But there are a quite rapidly growing number of decent human beings who are now recognising that the horrors which greet us in each morning’s media scan, add up to more than just arbitrary acts of spontaneous cruelty.
They recognise a line of continuity between the perpetration of one tragedy and another. One deliberate incitement of violence with another.They start to join the dots.
It is within this growing body of the partially aware that the New Year needs to bring with it a shift into taking responsibility for becoming fully aware – and taking the actions that, when enough engage in them, will bring about a crucial tipping point. A decisive shift in the energetic direction of our planet. A point where ‘we the people’ find our true sense of purpose, and follow it.
There are two key elements involved in turning around the existing ‘world order’: having a clear vision of what should replace it, and having the guts to go for it.
Within this is the need to continue to defend those basic values which have somehow endured up till now.
‘The vision’ is critical in order for further positive actions to be brought to life. Without vision driving aspiration, the goal cannot be reached. And the goal must be something which strongly appeals to the collective unconscious of mankind, not just at the conscious level.
What vision is capable of inspiring such a reaction?
It is said that ‘where attention goes energy flows’. So we must start with ourselves. We must each observe where it is that our attention goes – and whether this is genuinely life affirmative or essentially regressive – and then to be able to get control over it and firmly direct it towards truly meaningful ends.
When I use the word ‘ourselves’, it refers to individuals capable of discerning the nature of the reality we live in and also capable of acting on it, responsibly. This includes, where necessary, taking responsible non-egoic leadership.
Shockingly, this rules out a large proportion of the population of our planet; including those who still insist that that which is positively aligned with the search for clarity and truth, is the domain of trouble makers and conspiracy theorists.
So in assessing what element within society is able to adopt a vision capable of shifting daily life in a positive direction, we must conclude that this will be a small percentage of humanity.
However, small as it may be, if sufficiently fired-up, it has the power to bring about the fundamental shift of direction that is called for.
The sickness moving through society today is not just the expression of physical ailments. It is the expression of a profound imbalance manifesting within all aspects of life on earth. A disruption of planetary equilibrium.
This has been brought about, over many decades if not centuries, by placing a false emphasis within the core values of human education and aspiration. An emphasis skewed in favour of external material enrichment – of ‘having’ – rather than on discovering and fulfilling our true potential in body, mind and spirit: of ‘being’.
At the deepest level all humanity longs ‘to be’. Longing also for the sense of security experienced by realising one is under the guidance of an omnipotent and benign power offering unconditional love, regardless of one’s status in this world.
If this longing was recognised, respected and acted upon within the social, political, financial, legal, ecological and spiritual disciplines that form the core concerns of all people, we would solve the problems of humanity and indeed of the world, at one stroke.
It would mean the emphasis of all education would be the realisation of human aspirations set within the context of an overall pursuit of truth, justice and spiritual emancipation.
I have used a newly coined term ‘veritocracy’ (from the Latin ‘veritas’: truth) to describe this new state of existence – that which must replace the thoroughly worn-out socio-political institution called ‘democracy’.
A Veritocracy will embrace the pursuit of truth and justice as the central goal of social, political and economic life. It will mean the end of politics as we know it.
At the core of this vision lies a belief in the realisation of the as yet untapped powers we have inherited as a divine gift of our Creator.
An immeasurably valuable gift that we have failed to acknowledge and have therefore squandered in favour of false trails into unfulfilling realms of compromise and disaster.
I therefore offer the birth of Veritocracy as a vision to get 2024 off to the right start.
A vision that when put into effect will change all our lives from top to bottom, bottom to top. Will fundamentally readdress our sense of direction and set mankind on its true path of destiny.
A path that will ensure the rapid demise of those whose existence is fully devoted to preventing the glorious and unobstructable flowering of mankind.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Julian Rose is an organic farmer, writer, broadcaster and international activist. He is author of four books of which the latest ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind’ is a clarion call to resist the despotic New World Order takeover of our lives. Do visit his website for further information www.julianrose.info
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Dec. 23, 2023 – French Journalist 31 year old Clementine Vergnaud died on Dec. 23, 2023 after a 1.5 year battle with bile duct cancer.
Dec. 22, 2023 – 49 year old Ryan Minor, former OU baseball and basketball star, died after 1 year battle with Colon Cancer.
Dec. 10, 2023 – 29 year old reality TV star Anna Chickadee Cardwell died after 10 month battle with Stage 4 Adrenal Carcinoma.
Dec. 5, 2023 – DOCTOR DEAD – Thailand – 29 year old Dr.Krittai Thanasombatkul was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer in Oct. 2022 died on Dec. 5, 2023.
Dec. 4, 2023 – 46 year old Kelly Boening died suddenly after a few months battle with Stage 2 pancreatic cancer. Dx to death: few months.
Nov. 30, 2023 – NY – 40 year old Sophia Sheffer was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung cancer in Oct. 2023 & died on Nov. 30, 2023. Dx to death: 1 month.
Nov. 21, 2023 – Edmonton, AB – 42 year old Tyler Wilson died suddenly on Nov. 21, 2023 after a short battle with cancer.
Nov. 21, 2023 – Frederick, MD – 37 year old Kristin Brown died suddenly on Nov. 21, 2023 after a “short but courageous battle with cancer.”
Nov. 18, 2023 – CHILE – 42 year old Luis Larrain, a prominent LGBTQ rights activist, died on Nov. 18, 2023 after a battle with “aggressive” form of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, diagnosed Jan. 2023 “he had not responded to treatment.”
Nov. 18, 2023 – Sheffield, UK – 37 year old Matt Hardy died after a 2 year battle with cancer (Nov. 18, 2023).
Nov. 17, 2023 – 44 year old Dr. Brenda Dawn Nemeth, Red Deer Wellness Clinic Naturopathic Doctor died suddenly on Nov. 17, 2023 after a short battle with breast cancer.
Nov. 16, 2023 – 36 year old Freyja Hanstein founded the NHS-approved health app Wholesome World and was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2015. She died in her sleep on Nov. 16, 2023 after recurrence of her tumor.
Nov. 16, 2023 – Curitiba, Brazil, 44 year old journalist Kathya Pricyla Balan died Nov. 16, 2023 after a 4-month battle with Turbo Breast Cancer, Triple Negative, very common cancer after taking Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine.
Nov. 12, 2023 – CANADIAN PhD DEAD – 40 year old Dr. Omeed Owen Ghandehari, psychology professor at University of Regina, died suddenly on Nov. 12, 2023. “Donations to Canadian Cancer Society”.
Nov. 12, 2023 – Nov.12, 2023 – Cambridge, MH – Jenny Mortensen was diagnosed with leukemia on Oct. 14, 2023 but died less than a month later due to internal bleeding and blood clots which caused strokes.
Nov. 11, 2023 – 42 year old off-road racing legend Kyle Leduc died on Nov. 11, 2023 Although recently diagnosed with Stage 4 Head & Neck Cancer, his wife clarified that he died of cardiac arrest.
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
Featured image is from COVID Intel
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
The one waged by Israel in Gaza is called by the Washington Post “one of the most destructive wars of this century.” This war – implemented by Israel with the full support of the U.S. NATO and the EU – has so far left more than 20,000 Palestinians dead and 55,000 seriously wounded, most of whom will not survive as Israeli forces systematically destroy Gaza’s hospitals.
During 2023 a greater emphasis was placed upon the necessity for the majority of the world’s population to seek new avenues for economic development along with the resolution of diplomatic disputes and regional conflicts.
As this speech is still highly topical today, at the turn of the year 2023/2024 – including the deliberate reduction of the world’s population through the COVID mRNA vaccine – some of the speeches are reproduced verbatim below. They all revolve around the clear, universally recognised truth, which is binding for all people, “that man cannot or must not kill another under any circumstances and under no pretext whatsoever.”
Neo-liberalism continues to be a dominant political and economic ideology in international development because it is supported by global institutions, finance and influential ideologues. Nation-states are therefore assimilated into standardized policies through coercion or voluntary submission.
As the world looks forward to 2024, holiday celebrations are being overshadowed by humanity’s failure to halt the genocide in Gaza and the active complicity of the United States that enables it.
Drawing attention to the humanitarian tragedy in Palestine’s Gaza through the eyes of children, Türkiye’s Directorate of Communications has opened an art exhibit consisting of paintings and drawings by the children of Gaza.
Against Erasure (Haymarket Books) is a book, edited by Teresa Aranguren and Sandra Barrilaro, that presents a pictorial history of Palestinians. The photos refute the often-heard canard that Palestine was a land without people. More importantly, the historicity of the photos humanizes the Palestinians. It seems ludicrous to anyone familiar with Palestinians that they would require humanization.
Finance analysts free of moral scruple can point to Palantir with relish and note that 2023 was a fairly rewarding year for it. The company, which bills itself as a “category-leading software” builder “that empowers organizations to create and govern artificial intelligence”, launched its initial public offering in 2020.
Zionist Defense Forces (ZDF) are raiding cash machines (ATM), banks and exchange outlets in the occupied West Bank. They are stealing millions of dollars, under the pretext that the money is serving to finance resistance groups.
The stagnation of the war due to the arrival of winter and the lack of weapons and economic aid from the USA, would have provoked discouragement in the Ukrainian Army so it would be already brewing a peace agreement in Ukraine between the US and Russia that will try to be torpedoed by Zelensky, Britain and the Baltic States.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Introduction
In 1909, the Russian writer Lev Nikolayevich Count Tolstoy (1828-1910), a representative of non-violent resistance, gave a speech against war at the age of 80 (1).
As this speech is still highly topical today, at the turn of the year 2023/2024 – including the deliberate reduction of the world’s population through the COVID mRNA vaccine – some of the speeches are reproduced verbatim below. They all revolve around the clear, universally recognised truth, which is binding for all people, “that man cannot or must not kill another under any circumstances and under no pretext whatsoever” (2).
“Speech Against the War”
“Beloved brothers! We have gathered here to fight against war. (…).
In their hands (the hands of the rulers, R. H.) there are billions of money, millions of willing soldiers, in our hands there is only one means, but the most important means in the world – the truth. And therefore, however small our forces may seem in comparison with the forces of our opponents, our victory is as certain as the victory of the light of the rising sun over the darkness of the night.
Our victory is certain, but only on one condition – on the condition that we proclaim the truth and state it unreservedly, without any digression, without any concession, without any mitigation. This truth is so simple, so clear, so plausible, so binding not only for Christians but for every sensible person that it only needs to be proclaimed in its full meaning so that people can no longer go against it.
This truth is contained in its full meaning in what was said thousands of years before us in four words in the law that we call the law of God: Thou shalt not kill! This truth says that man cannot or must not kill another under any circumstances and under no pretence whatsoever. (…).
I would therefore like to propose to our Assembly that we write and publish an appeal to the people of all nations, especially Christian nations, in which we state clearly and straightforwardly what everyone knows but no one or almost no one says: Namely, that war is not, as men now pretend, a particularly valiant and praiseworthy cause, but that it is, like all murder, an abominable and sacrilegious act, not only for those who choose the military career of their own free will, but also for all those who devote themselves to it for fear of punishment or for the sake of selfish interests. (…).
We must say what everyone knows and only dare not say, we must say that no matter how different a name people give to murder, murder always remains murder – a sacrilegious, disgraceful act. (…). They will cease to see in war the service of the fatherland, heroism, the glory of war, patriotism, and will see what is there: the naked, sacrilegious act of murder. (…).
Those who practise sacrilege will be ashamed, but those who have persuaded themselves that they see no sacrilege in murder will now realise it, and will cease to be murderers. (…).
That is all I wanted to say. I would be very sorry if I had offended, insulted or aroused evil feelings in anyone. But it would be a disgrace for me, an old man of 80 years, who is liable to die at any moment, not to speak quite openly the truth as I understand it, the truth which I firmly believe is the only thing that can save mankind from the unfortunate tribulations that war produces and from which it suffers.” (3)
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Dr Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educationalist and qualified psychologist. After his university studies, he became an academic teacher in adult education. As a pensioner, he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and specialist articles, he calls for a conscious ethical and moral education of values as well as an education for public spirit and peace. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
(1) Tolstoy, Leo N. (1968). Speech against the war. Political pamphlets. Frankfurt am Main
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Drawing attention to the humanitarian tragedy in Palestine’s Gaza through the eyes of children, Türkiye’s Directorate of Communications has opened an art exhibit consisting of paintings and drawings by the children of Gaza.
“Bulletproof Dreams: Gaza Child Artists Exhibition” was opened in Istanbul Taksim Square on Friday with the participation of Türkiye’s First Lady Emine Erdogan and Turkish Communications Director Fahrettin Altun.
“We must be the voice of the Palestinian children whose most essential right, the right to life, has been taken away (by Israel),” the first lady said, stressing that Türkiye continues intensive efforts to put an end to Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians.
Erdogan stressed that since October 7, Israel has brought upon unprecedented pain upon the people of Gaza and that civilians, especially women and children, have been most affected by Tel Aviv’s atrocities.
Altun voiced the same sentiment as he vowed that Türkiye would never take a step back from voicing the truth, and would never give up defending the just cause of the innocent children who were killed.
“Israel’s cruelty can no longer be legitimised in any way. … These lines show beyond any doubt that Israel is fearlessly targeting children and the future of Palestine, committing grave war crimes and aiming for genocide,” the communications director stressed.
“We have to be the voice of Palestinian children, who are not sure whether they will see tomorrow, let alone the years to come, and make their suffering more visible,” says Turkish First Lady Emine Erdogan.
Depicting War and Destruction
The exhibition displays artworks from a collection initiated by journalist Abdullah Aytekin, who gathered 266 pieces created by children from Gaza, some of whom were killed by Israeli attacks.
The collection was based on a drawing by Mona, a 6-year-old girl from Gaza who witnessed her mother being killed by an Israeli rocket during the 2008-09 Gaza War and the subsequent massacre of 26 members of her family.
Covering a total area of 1350 square metres, “Bulletproof Dreams: Gaza Child Artists Exhibition” aims to raise the international community’s awareness of the trauma, pain and difficult conditions that Israel’s relentless attacks inflict on children.
In one section, the belongings of children who were martyred in the aftermath of Israel’s recent attacks are displayed amidst piles of rubble, depicting the war and destruction Tel Aviv brought upon innocent Palestinian lives.
There is also a special section for journalists and doctors who lost their lives in the Israeli attacks since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on October 7. Israeli attacks since then have killed at least 21,110 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 55,243 others, according to local health authorities.
Israel has left Gaza in ruins, with half of the coastal territory’s housing damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million people displaced within the densely populated enclave amid acute shortages of food and clean water.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
The one waged by Israel in Gaza is called by the Washington Post “one of the most destructive wars of this century.” This war – implemented by Israel with the full support of the U.S. NATO and the EU – has so far left more than 20,000 Palestinians dead and 55,000 seriously wounded, most of whom will not survive as Israeli forces systematically destroy Gaza’s hospitals.
Women and children account for 70 percent of the dead. About 2 million people, corresponding to 85% of the population, are displaced. Increasing at the same time are Israeli raids in the West Bank. Against this background, PM Netanyahu enunciates, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, as the first “prerequisite for peace” the need that “Hamas must be destroyed.”He stresses that “in destroying Hamas, Israel will continue to act in full compliance with international law.”
Netanyahu “forgets” the official statement he made in 2019:
“Anyone who wants to obstruct the creation of a Palestinian State must support Hamas and transfer money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy: to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
For years, in agreement with Israel, Qatar has sent hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to Gaza each month to support the Hamas government. A 40-page document, code-named by Israeli intelligence “Wall of Jericho,” shows that Israel knew for more than a year, in detail, the plan for the attack carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.It served Israel’s leaders to justify “one of the most destructive wars of this century,” the purpose of which was clear from the beginning: to wipe out the territories of the Palestinian State, massacring and deporting its entire population.
This was confirmed today by Paula Betancur of the UN High Commission for Human Rights:
“The Israeli military operation in Gaza aims to deport the civilian population en masse.”
The Israeli war to permanently wipe out the Palestinian State is part of the U.S.-NATO-EU strategy to maintain by war the control of a strategic region, the Middle East, in which the West is losing ground in the face of advancing political-economic projects, such as that of the BRICS, that are changing world assets.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
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.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
We bring to the attention of our viewers the following interview, recorded with Michael Lynk on January 28, 2020.
This conversation is significant as it took place in the evening following President Trump’s offered Israeli-Palestinian peace plan: “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.”
The plan was 180 pages long with a series of harsh requirements for Palestinians, and, in comparison, much milder concessions from Israel. In particular, at the Press Conference where it was announced, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed that Israel would be annexing Jordan Valley and the West Bank. In exchange, he would accept a halt on creating new settlements in areas on Palestinian territory (for four years.)
Palestinians, who were not even involved in developing the plan, rejected the proposal. More to the point, in recognizing annexed land as legal, it was taking the Israel-Palestine conflict a step backward. It does provide us with insights into the ongoing efforts by Netanyahu and his Likud Government to continue annexing more territory, by any effort possible, with full participation by the U.S.
Michael Lynk is an Associate Professor of Law at Western University in London, Ontario, and was at the time the special Rapporteur on Human Rights in occupied Palestine. He was giving a lecture in Winnipeg on the day of the announcement, devoted to law, justice and accountability in the endless occupation. He believes that no peace will be established in the region while international law continues to be ignored by Israel.
It is necessary to hear Professor Lynk’s conversation in order to fully understand what is at stake in the current situation Israel-Gaza War.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
During 2023 a greater emphasis was placed upon the necessity for the majority of the world’s population to seek new avenues for economic development along with the resolution of diplomatic disputes and regional conflicts.
A summit of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS-Plus) in Johannesburg resulted in the expansion of the organization and a renewed commitment to building alternative methods of international relations and trade.
Two other African states, Ethiopia and Egypt, were approved for admissions into BRICS, hence the suffix plus. Other members which joined were Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in West Asia while Argentina was admitted from South America joining Brazil.
The BRICS Summit in South Africa held between August 22-24 marked the 15th of such gatherings. Although there are different views and social systems operating inside the BRICS grouping, there is obviously strong agreement on the need to create new mechanisms for fair trade and the acquisition of credit on favorable terms.
During the final year of World War II, the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These institutions were ostensibly designed to provide capital for the reconstruction of Europe in the aftermath of the devastating war.
In later years of the 1960s and 1970s, the IMF and World Bank were utilized to capture the post-colonial states amid their efforts to build independent and sustainable societies. Many of these states inherited the unequal class structures and the dependent character of foreign relations with imperialism which were an essential part of the neocolonial system.
In the latest BRICS Summit, some of the observations and objectives were spelled out as follows:
“With the addition of six new members, BRICS now has 30 percent of the world economy within its collaboration, with a combined GDP of US$30.76 trillion. It also constitutes 40 percent of the world’s population. The necessity of expanding trade and investment among the BRICS member states and strengthening their relations was emphasized by the summit leaders. By 2050, leaders at the summit hope to account for 50 percent of the world’s GDP, which will fundamentally change the economic landscape.”
Obviously, if met, these goals would severely limit the ability of the Group of 7 countries to force their economic and political will upon the Global South. This growth in the proportion of the world’s GDP would occur as the internal contradictions within the western capitalist and imperialist states intensify.
The increasing exploitation of the working class and oppressed peoples inside the imperialist countries have prompted strikes and mass rebellions. In order to maintain the racist-capitalist system in Western Europe and North America, the repressive apparatus of the governments must rely on the security forces and legislative structures which provide a legal cover for the continuing expropriation of wealth from the majority.
Over the course of the year, in France, the United Kingdom and the U.S., millions of workers engaged in industrial actions aimed at regaining the lost household income and overall living standards sacrificed to the financial institutions, service and production facilities owners during the Great Recession of the first decade of the 21st century. At the same time the racism so prevalent in the western industrialized countries has sparked urban rebellions which have been costly in regard to property damage, injuries and deaths. Also, the influx of migrants from Africa, Asia and Latin America into the advanced capitalist states has aggravated the centuries-long existent discriminatory governance.
Despite its profound challenges, the AU member states are continuing to stride towards continental unity. Understanding this necessity, the 15th Summit in South Africa noted in its proceedings,
“[T]he BRICS summit members agreed to extend their support for an African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). The summit stressed the value of the political stability of the African continent in building market certainty. Leaders at the summit also explored potential ways and methods to strengthen communication and cooperation to expand AfCFTA. If successful, and if implementation moves ahead, such a move by the BRICS countries will help foster new dynamics of engagement, and on several other contemporary issues such as drug trafficking and terrorism…. The summit also discussed increasing population in BRICS countries and their increasing food security concerns. In order to improve food security, lower costs, and to achieve a carbon neutral economy, BRICS leaders favored the role of modern technology in advancing agriculture. They also hoped to make Africa a global food basket.”
Issues related to the building of a green economy based upon safe and renewable energy were an important element in the BRICS deliberations. Although the U.S. and other capitalist states attend the United Nations Climate Conference every year, their roles are far less than helpful towards the nations and territories of the Global South.
BRICS, through its exclusion of the Western capitalist governments, is capable of holding open and serious discussions on the challenges facing the emergent economies. There is no condemnation of the Russian Federation, the socialist Republic of Cuba, the People’s Republic of China, Republic of Zimbabwe, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and other governments which are considered principal adversaries of Washington, Brussels, London, Paris and other NATO capitals.
G77 Plus China: Majority Rule Will Come
Representing 80% of the world’s population, the Group of 77 plus the People’s Republic of China, held its summit in Havana, Cuba during mid-September. This gathering took place just prior to the 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
Cuba identifies as an African country within the Caribbean and Latin American geopolitical region which maintains close links to the continent. Cuba played a pivotal role in the total liberation of Southern Africa by providing military and political support to the national liberation movements in Angola, Namibia and South Africa.
In its final declaration the meeting in Cuba emphasized:
“On 16 September, the Summit of Heads of States and Governments of the Group of 77 (G77) and China adopted the Havana Declaration, which emphasized the importance of South-South and triangular cooperation in science, technology, and innovation. The Summit – attended by more than 100 delegations, including over 30 heads of state and government – was held to address the pressing development challenges faced by G77 member countries. The primary focus of the Summit was on the critical role of science, technology, and innovation in addressing these challenges and promoting sustainable development…. The Summit also gave renewed impetus to core development issues of the nations of the South, based on the contribution of science, technology and innovation, as well as defined practical actions to address the existing disparities between developed and developing countries and advocated for the fulfillment of international commitments in terms of Official Development Assistance, technology transfer and financing necessary for the development of the countries of the South.”
Such a declaration is quite meaningful to the AU member states, many of whom were in attendance in Havana. The Republic of Cuba, even though it has been subjected to a draconian blockade by the U.S. for more than six decades, has made tremendous progress in the fields of science and medical research.
These advancements have benefited the African continent on material and ideological levels. The concrete support for national liberation, socialist construction and assistance in treating the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in three West African states during 2014. Subsequently, during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuban healthcare workers were deployed to several African countries including South Africa and Angola. The examples provided by socialist Cuba reinforces the determination of other states to move in the direction of self-reliance.
Contemporary Pan-Africanism and the Imperatives of the AU
These important alliances such as BRICS and the G77 plus China are pointing the way for the African continent to take its proper leading role in the struggle against western hegemony. Imperialism has its origins within the Transatlantic slave trade and colonialism where it accrued profits and technological capacity resulting in the restructuring of the world system after the 15th century.
Neo-colonialism is the modern-day system of imperialist domination throughout Africa and other geopolitical regions of the Global South. It will take a broad-based movement spanning several continents to overthrow the existing exploitative world order.
As President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah articulated during the post-World War II period through the early 1970s, the genuine liberation of Africa will only be achieved through unification and socialist development. These objectives require the organization and mobilization of the more than 1.3 billion Africans on the continent and those scattered throughout the Diaspora.
This is the central task of the third decade of the 21st century. With the U.S. being the dominant neo-colonial power among other imperialist states, Washington and Wall Street must be confronted and neutralized in the efforts to bring peace, stability and prosperity to the peoples of the world.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
Neo-liberalism continues to be a dominant political and economic ideology in international development because it is supported by global institutions, finance and influential ideologues. Nation-states are therefore assimilated into standardized policies through coercion or voluntary submission. Hence, the academic contributions of Ha-Joon Chang (2008) and Japhy Wilson (2014) present critical perspectives on the gruesome effects of neo-liberal policy implementation in developing countries of the Global South and ex-communist states.
In ‘The Bad Samaritans’, Ha Joon Chang (2008) argues that the most fierce proponents of the free market paradigm are developed countries that utilized state protectionist policies in order to harness the potential of their incubator industries. He explains that free trade does not necessarily bring gain for all countries because developed countries dominate the world trade system through rules and institutions while poor countries lack resources and technology to protect their incubator industries from foreign competition.
On the other hand, Japhy Wilson (2014) in ‘Jeffrey Sachs: The Strange Case of Dr. Shock and Mr. Aid’examines the transformation of Jeffrey Sachs from an aggressive promoter of austerity measures to a charismatic advocate for international aid and philanthropy to alleviate poverty in the developing world. Wilson exposes the paradoxical nature of international development where Sachs promises resounding socio-economic success for states that implement neo-liberal policies but these policies have increased unrest, misery displacement and decline.
Neo-liberalism assumes that all countries can achieve economic growth and global prosperity through the implementation of standardized policies. However, the advocates of neo-liberal policies fail to acknowledge that countries possess different historical, political, social and economic experiences and this diversity, determine their level of influence and power in the global political economy. Hence, Chang utilizes historical analysis to challenge the neo-liberal orthodoxy because not only does it ignore the importance of a historical interpretation of socio-political and economic inequalities among states but rather, it manipulates the historical narrative to coincide with the interests of industrialized countries and institutions. This manipulation of history leads to misrepresentation and exclusion of the narratives that best define the experiences of poor countries. As a result, the actors that support the façade of neo-liberalism are referred to as ‘Bad Samaritans’.
The title is a blatant critique of the social hypocrisy that exists within the sphere of international development whereby industrialized countries such as Britain and the United States of America do not necessarily practice the ‘theoretical prescriptions’ they provide for poor countries. This is most evident where Chang (2008) posits, “while they were imposing free trade on weaker nations through colonialism and unequal treaties, rich countries maintained higher tariffs” (p.8). Chang’s proposition shows that the history of international development sets the stage for the continuity of persistent underdevelopment of poor countries and that unfair advantage in free trade is not a coincidental position but rather a systemically organized process. Thus, developed countries policy practice is extremely different from their ideological impositions on poor countries. Developed countries like the United States of America and Britain fomented economic development through robust, state protectionist policies and subsidies.
Similar to Chang, Wilson (2014) uses historical events, but within a pscyho-analytic framework, to illustrate the emergence and maturation of neoliberalism as an economic ideology and political tool. The economist, Jeffrey Sachs is both the protagonist and antagonist because he is playing an instrumental role in dictating standardized policies for all countries to conform to but these policies are antithetical to the development of the countries in which they have been implemented. Wilson challenges the free trade paradigm by demonstrating that the concept of free trade was not constructed around the values of fairness and social justice for all countries but the concept is about ‘adjusting and modernizing rapidly’ based on Western standards in the context of capitalist globalization. Nevertheless, the adjustment of countries to standardized prescriptions failed because the neo-liberal model applies a one-size fits all approach. Hence, Wilson argues, “the social consequences of the shock therapy in Russia where immediate and extreme where the sense of community and welfare services were lost, there was rapidly rising unemployment and real incomes were cut by forty-six per cent, effectively destroying the savings of ordinary Russians” (p.32). Wilson’s assertion validates the fact that development is not synonymous with economic indictors but there are other essential components such as the well-being and empowerment of citizens within the states.
While the freedom of markets is being strongly pursued, the freedom of citizens within states is at a greater risk. This encourages one to critically ask, does development embody the triumph and freedom of markets at the expense of state failure and the misery of humanity? Both authors were able to effectively capture the missing component from neo-liberal policies, which is a people-centred approach to development. Humans are equally important as markets and profits within states.
The notion of uneven development is further exacerbated through free trade because it does not necessarily produce mutual benefits for all countries. Free trade is also flawed because it ignores the role of power of states and their access to markets, technology, capital, the creation and management of regimes to fulfill national interests.
Chang opines that the losses of the losers are usually greater than the gains of the winners in international trade because developing countries are no longer able to protect their incubator industries through tariffs and subsidies due to foreign competition. This has severe economic and social ramifications for developing states and their citizens because there are weak or absent social welfare services available for those who have not benefitted from trade.
Chang points out, “the welfare state is very weak and sometimes virtually non-existent. As a result, the victims of trade adjustment do not get partially compensated for their sacrifices that they have made for the rest of society” (p.57). Wilson made similar propositions about the flaws of Sachs’economic advice on free trade implementation in countries but he used a practical country example to bolster the argument by zooming into the case of Bolivia. He states, “following trade liberalization and the abolition of subsidies, Bolivia’s peasant farmers were unable to compete with cheap food imports and agricultural production fell by 17% between 1985 and 1988” (p.20).
Although both authors examined the negative effects of free trade by giving, an example and explanation but they have failed to make deft connections between the loss of livelihoods and free trade, particularly Wilson. Wilson simply listed the numerous, disastrous effects without illustrating the complex inter-play between ‘high politics issues’ such as trade and ‘low politics issues’ such as the livelihoods of people, traditional sectors and the reason there is rapid urbanization, destruction of traditional sectors and the expansion of the informal economy. Chang gave a very clear explanation but he treated developing countries as a homogenous category without using specific case examples to solidify his critique of the free trade paradigm.
Despite these gaps in the authors’ arguments, it is reinforced that neo-liberalism betrays its objective of mutuality by offering the triumph of ‘monoculture’ in international development where the superior-inferior tug-o-war between developed and developing states continues. This lack of mutuality in international development is reinforced by the viewpoint of radical feminist scholar, Maria Mies (2014) who postulates, “the law of progress is always a contradictory one because progress for some means retrogression for others. Humanization for some means de-humanization for others and development of productive forces means underdevelopment and retrogression of others” (p.55).
Moreover, the proponents of neo-liberalism place high emphasis on the profits of markets rather than the lived experiences of people. As a result, the implementation of neo-liberal policies employs a top-down strategy instead of a participatory approach to development. A top-down strategy is associated with the implementation of neo-liberal policies because it helps to maintain the power of global capitalist organizations and influential individuals and it also assumes that only “academics” or “economists” are experts in alleviating development challenges. Wilson potently captures the myriad limitations of using a top-down strategy to alleviate poverty in the developing world. He shatters the uptopian images of Jeffrey Sachs bringing an ‘end to poverty’ in the village of Ruhiira in Uganda through the establishment of the Millennium Villages project. Using in-depth interviews with villagers, Wilson and his research team discovered that the most vulnerable community members were not benefitting the resources that the project is expected to provide because it ignored the socio-cultural, historical and political realities.
Consequently, the social class divisions and gaps between wealth and income distribution have been intensified. The most profound statement made by Wilson was, “but many of the poorest people I interviewed were not even aware that the project was due to end in 2015” (p.99).
This statement is extremely significant because it demonstrates that community people are treated as mere beneficiaries of a development project rather than instrumental stakeholders through inclusive participation. It also reveals that there is a hierarchal system of knowledge production where Western knowledge and expertise is seen as ‘superior and modern’ while the knowledge of community people is stereotypically viewed as ‘traditional and uncivilized’. It is these stereotypical notions and misrepresentations of the developing world and its people that underpin the top-down strategy of neo-liberal implementation. It can also be argued that the idea between the strategies is not new but rather, it is an extension of the modernization theory. The perspective has been discussed by scholars, Peet and Hartwick (2015) who explain, “Modernization theory, like conventional economics, has a class commitment to the rich elites-and that is why it merges so easily with neo-liberalism” (p.136). Thus, Wilson’s evaluation of Jeffrey Sachs’ project is quite accurate because the concept for the project is inspired by the five stages of the modernization theory.
Although Wilson’s strength was evaluating the impact of the Millennium Villages project on the lives and livelihoods of villagers, he still failed to delve deeper on important issues like the politics of land ownership and how it determines power and wealth in Ruhiira, Uganda. He quickly outlined the summary of his numerous findings, observed the issues through a social class lens and exerted a lot of his intellectual energies to prove that Sachs’ project is a massive failure. A social class lens is the ideal conceptual framework to use, when analyzing a complex issue such as the politics of land ownership. An intersectional approach would have made his discussion more academically rigorous and intriguing to his audience. For example, his observation that “the commercial farmer was the chairman of his local ‘Millennium’ agricultural group but the landless woman was not a member of the Millennium group and was never invited to any meetings (p.98).”The issue within this specific context is not exclusion based on social class only. It is exclusion based on social class, race and gender and these factors inextricably linked with the long political history of violence, exploitation and land dispossession in Uganda.
Like Wilson, Chang expresses disgust with the inherent biases and top-down strategy employed by organizations that strongly support the administration of neo-liberal policies. While Wilson is heavily reliant on dramatic spectacle, metaphors and sarcasm, Chang is reliant on the use of irony, questions and creative stories to challenge the dominant, top-down approach strategy. This is seen where he points out, “How on earth can the IMF and the World Bank persist for so long in pursuing the wrong policies that produce such poor countries?… on the other hand, there has been some window dressing moves, the IMF now calls structural adjustment programs the poverty and growth facility programme in order to show how much it cares about poverty but the contents of the programme have hardly changed than before” (p.18).
The main subject matters of both authors are that, despite the re-naming and reformation of institutions and prominent personalities in the development community, the ideology behind confronting with these issues remains the same. Therefore, international development is infiltrated with deception and betrayal of the interests of those who are most affected by social and economic crises. Chang’s astute criticisms are very commendable; given that he provides clear and balanced analysis of the issues using history and statistical evidence to validate growth records and the impact of neo-liberal policies on development. Nevertheless, his weaknesses lie in the fact that he limited his conceptualization of ‘Bad Samaritans’ to industrialized nations, ideologues and institutions that impose detrimental policies on developing countries while contradicting these proposed prescriptions.. ‘Bad Samaritans’ can also be interpreted as individuals who betrayed the interests of the oppressed by taking sides with those who justify gross inequalities, poverty and exploitation in developing countries and ex-communist states.
Jeffrey Sachs is a quintessential example of a bad Samaritan. Sachs came from a family background where the social conditions of the working class was an advocacy matter but through Westernized education, his original ideas on the centrality of people in development died and there werereplaced by the view that market triumphalism is the right and only way.
Chang provided practical solutions for developing countries in which they can use the East Asian success as a model. He proposed solutions such as: protecting infant industries through subsidies and tariffs, preserving some state owned enterprises and calling for developed nations to reform the international system in a manner that trade and other opportunities can be more beneficial to developing countries. However, there are flaws within these solutions because developed nations will never seriously alter their institutions to promote fairness because their meaning of development derives from the Darwinian concept of competition at any cost where the fittest survives and the weak is crushed. Furthermore, he used the East Asian success model but he fails to thoroughly examine the human development ramifications of high economic growth in countries such as Korea and Taiwan. Success in East Asia cannot be applied to the potential of success of countries in the African continent, other parts of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean because they are a variety of complex, peculiar and diverse factors that underpin their development.
Wilson fiercely criticizes Sachs for his deep faith in the success of a utopian, free market society where citizens will attain their aspirations based on hard work and private ownership but Wilson is also guilty of an obsession with a state-led, socialist model of development in countries. Criticisms only, whether constructive or destructive, are not sufficient to construct an alternative vision and model of development that can successfully challenge neo-liberal model of development. Neo-liberalism triumphs because it is backed by finance, knowledge production, celebrities and institutions.
Thus, neo-liberalism will continue to be a dominant model in international development because debates on alternatives remain fragmented and on the margins of global development.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Tina Renier is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Sources
Chang, H.J. (2008). Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. New York: Bloombury Press. pp. 8, 18 and 57.
Mies, M. (2014, 1986 orig.). Colonization and Housewifization, chapter three in Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. London: Zed Books. p.55.
Peet, R. and Hartwick, E. (2015). Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments and Altenatives. Third Edition. Guildford Publications Inc. p.136.
Wilson, J. (2014). Jeffrey Sachs: The Strange Case of Dr. Shock and Mr. Aid. London: Verso. pp. 20, 32, 98 and 99.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“2023 has been a challenge for Global Research, but we know 2024 will be no different. That’s why we need your support. Will you make a New Year donation to help us continue with our work?”
*
As the world looks forward to 2024, holiday celebrations are being overshadowed by humanity’s failure to halt the genocide in Gaza and the active complicity of the United States that enables it.
As the rest of the world condemns the massacre as a genocide and a crime against humanity, Israel and the United States stand isolated in their insistence that their atrocities are somehow justified by the indiscriminate violence committed during Hamas’s break-out from Gaza on 7 October.
On 8 December, the UN Security Council invoked article 99 for only the fifth time in UN history. Article 99 is an emergency provision that allows the secretary-general to summon the council to respond to a crisis that “threatens the maintenance of international peace and security”.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the security council that he had invoked article 99 to demand an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza because “we are at a breaking point”, with a “high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza”. The United Arab Emirates drafted a ceasefire resolution that quickly garnered 97 co-sponsors.
The World Food Programme reported that Gaza was on the brink of mass starvation, with nine out of 10 people spending entire days with no food. In the two days before Guterres invoked article 99, Rafah was the only one of Gaza’s five districts to which the UN could deliver any aid at all.
The secretary-general stressed that
“the brutality perpetrated by Hamas can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people… international humanitarian law cannot be applied selectively. It is binding on all parties equally at all times, and the obligation to observe it does not depend on reciprocity”.
Guterres concluded:
“The people of Gaza are looking into the abyss… the eyes of the world – and the eyes of history – are watching. It’s time to act.”
US Security Council Vetoes
UN members delivered eloquent, persuasive pleas for the immediate humanitarian ceasefire that the resolution called for, and the council voted 13 to one, with the UK abstaining, to approve the resolution.
But the one vote against, by the US, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, killed the resolution, leaving the council impotent to act as the secretary-general warned that it must.
This was the 16th US Security Council veto since 2000 – and 14 of those vetoes have been used to shield Israel and/or US policy on Israel and Palestine from international action or accountability.
While Russia and China have vetoed resolutions on a variety of issues around the world, from Myanmar to Venezuela, there is no parallel for the US’s extraordinary use of its veto primarily to provide exceptional impunity under international law for one other country.
The consequences of this veto could hardly be more serious. As Brazil’s UN ambassador, Sergio Franca Danese, told the council, if the US hadn’t vetoed a previous resolution drafted by Brazil on 18 October,
“How many more must die before this relentless assault is halted? 20,000? 50,000? 100,000?”
‘Israeli Myth-making’
After the US slammed the Security Council door in Palestine’s face on 8 December, the UN General Assembly took up an identical resolution on 12 December. The resolution passed by a vote of 153 to 10, with 33 more yes votes than a previous General Assembly vote in October. While General Assembly resolutions are not binding, they do carry political weight, and this one sent a clear message that the international community was disgusted by the carnage in Gaza.
On 13 December, the BBC spoke toRichard Dalton, former British Consul General in Jerusalem and ambassador to Libya and Iran, about the crisis and the US role in it.
“The US is weak,” Dalton said. “It hasn’t used any leverage so far. It is bleating about potential strategic defeat for Israel and criticism of indiscriminate warfare, but not backing that up in any way. Israel is reading the United States’ intentions quite differently [as a green light]. I am deeply pessimistic.”
“I think that one of the key difficulties for making peace is to roll back current Israeli myth-making,” Dalton continued. “We hear that it is not possible to find a partner for peace because the Palestinians want a state from the river to the sea. The conclusion that has been drawn from this in Israel is that it is they who should have the state from the river to the sea.
“It is time for a much more robust attitude by all Israel’s allies to make clear that the two-state solution requires fundamental change: more change in Israel than on the Arab side.”
As the death toll passed 20,000 and the UN human rights office published a report that Israeli forces had summarily executed at least 11 unarmed men in front of their families in Gaza City, diplomats at the UN Security Council spent the week before Christmas repeatedly postponing and rescheduling a vote on a new resolution that would be weak enough to avoid an Israeli-dictated US veto.
By Friday 22 December, they appeared to have found a formula that the US and Israel could accept – but other countries objected that it was too weak to make a difference. The resolution did not order an immediate ceasefire, and it would allow Israel to keep blocking life-saving aid.
Parallel ceasefire negotiations continued in Egypt, where Hamas refused to free any more Israeli hostages or prisoners of war before Israel ended the massacre, while Israel vowed only further escalation.
Genocide Convention
Another instrument the world can use to try to compel an end to the massacre is the genocide convention, which both Israel and the United States have ratified.
It only takes one country to bring a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the convention and, while cases can drag on for years, the ICJ can take interim measures to protect the victims.
On 23 January 2020, the court did exactly that, in a case brought by Gambia against Myanmar, alleging genocide against its Rohingya minority, after tens of thousands were killed, 740,000 had fled into Bangladesh and a UN-backed fact-finding mission found that the 600,000 who remained in Myanmar “may face a greater threat of genocide than ever”.
China vetoed a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Security Council, so Gambia, itself recovering from 20 years of repression under a brutal dictator, submitted a case to the ICJ under the genocide convention.
That opened the door for a unanimous preliminary ruling by the ICJ that Myanmar must prevent genocide against the Rohingya, as the genocide convention requires. Since its final ruling on the merits of the case might be many years away, the court ordered Myanmar to file a report every six months to detail how it was protecting the Rohingya, signalling serious ongoing scrutiny of Myanmar’s conduct.
So, will one country step up, as the Gambia did, to bring an ICJ case against Israel under the genocide convention? Activists are discussing that with a number of countries. Roots Action and World Beyond War have created an action alert that you can use to send messages to 10 of the most likely candidates (South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Jordan, Ireland, Belize, Turkey, Bolivia, Honduras and Brazil).
There has also been increasing pressure on the ICC to take up the case against Israel. The ICC has been quick to investigate Hamas for war crimes but has been dragging its feet on investigating Israel.
During a recent visit to the region, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan was prevented from entering Gaza by Israel, and he was criticised by Palestinians for visiting areas attacked by Hamas on 7 October but not visiting the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
After Ben Ferencz and others spent their lives campaigning for a court to enforce universal accountability for war crimes, this perpetuates a shameful pattern in which the ICC prosecutes only defendants from non-western countries.
Having It Both Ways
As long as the world is faced with the US’s tragic and debilitating abuse and non-recognition of institutions the rest of the world depends on to enforce international law, economic and diplomatic actions by individual countries may have more impact than their collective actions through the UN and international courts.
While about two dozen countries have never recognised Israel, Belize and Bolivia have also now severed ties with Israel over its assault on Gaza, while others – Bahrain, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Jordan, South Africa and Turkey – have withdrawn their ambassadors or diplomats.
Other countries are trying to have it both ways – condemning Israel publicly but maintaining their economic interests. At the UN Security Council, Egypt explicitly accused Israel of genocide and the US of obstructing a ceasefire. And yet Egypt’s long-standing partnership with Israel in the blockade of Gaza and its continuing role, even now, in restricting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza through its own border crossing, make it complicit in the genocide it condemns.
If Egypt means what it said in the Security Council, it must open its border crossings to all the humanitarian aid that is needed, end its cooperation with the Israeli blockade and reevaluate its obsequious and compromised relationships with Israel and the United States.
Qatar, which has worked hard to negotiate ceasefires in Gaza, was eloquent in its denunciation of Israeli genocide in the security council. But Qatar was speaking on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. Under the so-called Abraham Accords, the sheikhs of Bahrain and the UAE have turned their backs on Palestine to sign up to a toxic brew of self-serving commercial relations and hundred-million-dollar arms deals with Israel, while Saudi Arabia was until recently preparing to follow in their footsteps.
The UAE sponsored the 8 December resolution in the Security Council, where its representative declared:
“The international system is teetering on the brink. For this war signals that might makes right, that compliance with international humanitarian law depends on the identity of the victim and the perpetrator.”
And yet neither the UAE nor Bahrain has renounced their Abraham deals with Israel, nor their roles in the US’s “might makes right” policies that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East for decades.
Over a thousand US Air Force personnel and dozens of US warplanes are still based at al-Dhafra airbase in Abu Dhabi, while Manama in Bahrain, which the US Navy has used as a base since 1941, remains the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
One government that has followed through on its support for Palestine is the Houthi government of Yemen, which is enforcing a blockade of the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the south end of the Red Sea against Israeli ships and ships bound to or from Israel.
After it fired at, boarded or detained several ships, four of the five largest shipping firms in the world are rerouting their ships around the Horn of Africa to avoid mushrooming insurance premiums and dangers to their ships and crew.
Many experts compare apartheid Israel to apartheid South Africa. UN resolutions helped to bring down South Africa’s apartheid regime, but real change didn’t come until countries around the world embraced a global campaign to economically and politically isolate it.
The reason Israel’s die-hard supporters in the United States have tried to ban, or even criminalise, the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is precisely because boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel may be an effective strategy to help bring down its genocidal, expansionist and unaccountable regime.
US Alternate Representative to the UN Robert Wood told the Security Council that there is a “fundamental disconnect between the discussions that we have been having in this chamber and the realities on the ground” in Gaza, implying that only Israeli and US views of the conflict deserve to be taken seriously.
But the real disconnect at the root of this crisis is the one between the isolated looking-glass world of US and Israeli politics and the real world that is crying out for a ceasefire and justice for Palestinians. While Israel is killing and maiming thousands of innocent people with US bombs and howitzer shells, the rest of the world is appalled by these crimes against humanity.
The grassroots clamour to end the massacre keeps building, but global leaders must move beyond non-binding votes and toothless investigations to boycotting Israeli products, putting an embargo on weapons sales, breaking off diplomatic relations and other measures that will force Israeli and American leaders to roll back the myths and lies they have conjured up to weaponise their peoples’ fears and justify endless atrocities.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Nicolas J S Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Featured image: US Embassy in Jerusalem. Image: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs/ Flickr
Em 2023, o Ocidente foi incapaz de conter o avanço da multipolaridade. Apesar de continuar a agressão financeira contra a Rússia e fomentar o caos em várias regiões para evitar o processo de transição geopolítica, os EUA e seus aliados estão enfraquecidos no cenário mundial atual e não foram capazes de obter sucesso em seus projetos.
No campo de batalha russo-ucraniano, Kiev foi incapaz de alcançar qualquer vitória significativa ao longo do ano inteiro. Desde o final de 2022, o regime neonazista tem apostado na possibilidade de lançar uma grande “contraofensiva” na temporada de primavera-verão de 2023. De acordo com a mídia ocidental, este contra-ataque seria forte o suficiente para tomar de volta todos os territórios reivindicados por Kiev, incluindo a Crimeia.
Entretanto, as medidas ucranianas falharam absolutamente. As forças neonazistas foram incapazes de infligir danos às fortes linhas de defesa russas e por isso falharam em alcançar ganhos territoriais. O foco dos ucranianos mudou, então, do campo de batalha para a mídia, com o lançamento de uma série de ataques terroristas em territórios russos desmilitarizados, buscando mostrar à opinião pública ocidental que, pelo menos, estava a causar algum dano aos russos, justificando portanto o apoio militar contínuo.
As fortes capacidades de defesa e golpes precisos da Rússia, no entanto, frustraram os planos ucranianos mais uma vez e neutralizaram todas as incursões terroristas. No final, os ucranianos não tinham mais argumentos para disfarçar seus fracassos e publicamente admitiram que a contraofensiva não obteve sucesso. Como resultado, a situação nas linhas de frente se tornou ainda mais desvantajosa para as forças de proxy da OTAN. Com mais de um milhão e meio de ucranianos mortos – dezenas de milhares deles só na “contraofensiva” – e com perdas territoriais cada vez maiores, a Ucrânia já aparenta ser uma “batalha perdida” no Ocidente, com uma crescente opinião crítica ao apoio ao regime.
Alguns outros eventos militares relevantes também ocorreram em 2023, como uma nova guerra na região de Nagorno-Karabakh. Em Setembro, as forças do Azerbaijão lançaram uma série de ataques contra a resistência armênia na antiga república separatista e alcançaram uma rápida vitória militar, obtendo controle territorial completo sobre a região. Sem apoio da Armênia ou força militar suficiente para resistir à agressão do Azerbaijão, o governo separatista declarou a extinção da República de Artsakh, entregando formalmente o território a Baku.
Desde 2018, a Armênia é governada por um regime pró-Ocidente que a afastou da Rússia e a aproximou dos EUA e da UE. Os políticos locais foram levados a acreditar que com essa abordagem seria possível conter o avanço do Azerbaijão, mas na verdade conseguiram precisamente o contrário. A OTAN está interessada em gerar tanta instabilidade quanto possível no ambiente estratégico russo [e iraniano] e, portanto, encoraja o agravamento das crises no Cáucaso.
O cenário atual na região é tal que, de um lado, há forças do Azerbaijão apoiadas pelos turcos e, do outro, americanos e europeus que apoiam a Armênia. Ambos os lados partilham interesses antirrussos comuns e querem fazer da região uma zona de ocupação da OTAN. Neste cenário, Moscou apenas tenta evitar novos conflitos e trabalha diplomaticamente para que a paz entre as partes seja alcançada o mais rapidamente possível.
No entanto, foi no Oriente Médio que surgiram as maiores “notícias geopolíticas” do ano. Em Outubro, as forças da Resistência Palestina lideradas pelo Hamas lançaram uma incursão militar em áreas ocupadas ilegalmente por Israel. Chamada de “Operação de Inundação de Al Aqsa”, a ação teve sucesso em causar danos reais às forças armadas israelenses e aos colonos, mas provocou uma resposta brutal de Tel Aviv, com Netanyahu declarando guerra aos palestinos e lançando uma série de bombardeios que já mataram milhares de civis inocentes.
A brutalidade israelita, contudo, não foi suficiente para dar a vitória a Israel. Pelo contrário, no campo de batalha existe um cenário complicado em que as tropas sionistas sofrem para obter ganhos. Existem muitas dificuldades no terreno, principalmente devido ao fato de o Hamas manter uma rede complexa de túneis subterrâneos e conhecer o terreno local muito melhor do que os israelitas. Além disso, os tanques de Israel não conseguem circular facilmente devido à quantidade de destroços dos edifícios bombardeados, tornando as fricções mais favoráveis às guerrilhas palestinas.
Sofrendo pesadas perdas militares e simultaneamente matando milhares de civis, o governo sionista encontra-se numa situação de grave crise, tanto a nível interno como diplomático. Globalmente, Israel está isolado, obtendo o apoio de apenas alguns países ocidentais. Internamente, a pressão pelo impeachment é grande, com parte de suas forças armadas e do setor de inteligência aderindo à oposição.
Neste contexto regional, o governo Houthi do Iêmen mostrou solidariedade para com os palestinos através de uma declaração de guerra a Israel. Os Houthis têm conduzido operações no Mar Vermelho, dificultando o fluxo naval e prejudicando gravemente a economia israelense. Os EUA tentaram neutralizar o Iêmen lançando uma operação naval multinacional, mas a coligação ruiu antes mesmo de iniciar os combates, com os países europeus recusando-se a participar.
Também é importante observar como o Irã agiu neste cenário de crise no Oriente Médio. Os representantes de Teerã no chamado “Eixo da Resistência” atuam em profundo apoio à Palestina, como pode ser visto, por exemplo, no papel desempenhado pelo Hezbollah. A milícia libanesa lançou múltiplos ataques contra posições israelitas, prejudicando gravemente o sistema de inteligência sionista.
Na prática, é possível dizer que a crise no Oriente Médio prejudicou os planos de guerra americanos. Até recentemente, os EUA tinham uma estratégia clara para evitar a multipolarização da ordem mundial. O plano consistia em travar uma guerra por procuração contra a Rússia e um conflito direto com a China. Esperava-se que derrotasse a China e desgastasse a Rússia, mas nada disso aconteceu.
A Ucrânia revelou-se ineficiente em causar danos a Moscou e o Ocidente foi incapaz de gerar mais conflitos na região. As tentativas de mudança de regime para radicalizar as posições antirrussas falharam – como na Geórgia –, impedindo o surgimento de novos flancos. Os EUA também tentaram provocar uma guerra por procuração contra os russos na África, financiando grupos terroristas contra os governos revolucionários da antiga “Françáfrica”. Mas isto também está a falhar porque, em parceria com o Grupo Wagner russo, os governos locais alcançaram várias vitórias contra gangues apoiadas pelo Ocidente.
No mesmo sentido, a China não “mordeu a isca” e continuou a agir apenas diplomaticamente e economicamente, sem se envolver em qualquer conflito. E, no entanto, os palestinos – com o apoio iraniano – lançaram uma operação militar que forçou Washington a ignorar os seus planos anteriores e a concentrar-se no apoio a Israel. Com um forte lobby sionista nos EUA, há pressão para um apoio total a Israel, mesmo que isso signifique o fim da ajuda à Ucrânia ou dos planos anti-China.
Até Outubro, os EUA preparavam-se para lutar nas duas frentes. Agora, com o surgimento de um terceiro flanco, a situação tornou-se muito mais complicada. Washington não parece ter força suficiente para se envolver nos três conflitos ao mesmo tempo. Perante esta situação, resta saber se haverá vontade diplomática ou se os EUA optarão irracionalmente pela guerra total. Mas, em qualquer caso, o que está claro é que em 2023 o Ocidente revelou-se mais fraco do que nunca.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
I think of Yehudi Menuhin in his art, of Archbishop Romero, of Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and of the millions who put self second. And of those truth tellers who strove but who were set aside and kept away from the distracted, ill informed and semi-conscious populations. 
In the early 1980s the Islamic Bank for Development, which is located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, like the Permanent Secretariat of the Islamic Conference Organization, bought a new computerized system to cope with its accounting and communication requirements. At the time the system was more sophisticated than necessary for their actual needs.
So let Ernest Hemingway, who had one of his heroes, Jake Barnes, say nearly a hundred years ago, “Cheer up, all the countries look just like the moving pictures,” have the penultimate words, again from A Moveable Feast:
Dec. 10, 2023 – 29 year old reality TV star Anna Chickadee Cardwell died after 10 month battle with Stage 4 Adrenal Carcinoma.
Nov. 16, 2023 – 36 year old Freyja Hanstein founded the NHS-approved health app Wholesome World and was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2015. She died in her sleep on Nov. 16, 2023 after recurrence of her tumor.
