Also on the group chat are Viviane Fischer, a business attorney and economist based in Berlin who is a regular participant on the Corona Committee; and Wolfgang Wodarg, a former German Member of Parliament for the Social Democratic Party who has been vocal in opposing the German government’s lockdown and vaccination measures.

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

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First published on September 13, 2021

This article is a followup on the Global Research’s 20^th Anniversary webinar (September 09, 2021), focusing on Agenda ID2020 and its implications being rolled out in front of our eyes.

Yet, for most people the implications are not visible.

For further details see the following articles by Peter Koenig:

The Coronavirus Vaccine: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”. Vaccination as a Platform for “Digital Identity” (28 June 2021)

Agenda ID2020 of the “One World Order”: The 101 to Understanding its Implications (17 August 2020).

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What is the Infamous Agenda ID2020?

Behind its development is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – with support of the Rockefeller Foundation – and others belonging to the sinister all-digitization, depopulation and eugenics agenda. 

It is an alliance of public-private partners, including UN agencies and civil society.

It’s an electronic ID-program that uses generalized vaccination against Covid-19 as a platform for digital identity.

It is an all-electronic ID – linking everything to everything of each individual (records of health, criminal, banking, personal and private, etc.), being managed by a state agency or in extremis, by the private sector. – Imagine – an insurance company or bank handling your private records, converted into an electronic and eventually “chipped” ID.

Privatization of your personal records may sound far-fetched, but the Swiss government tried to get a privatized Agenda ID2020 quietly past the people. But the people found out and launched a referendum against Agenda ID2020. The idea was rejected with a margin of 2:1 in July 2021.

What will happen next? – Will the Swiss Government respect the vote of the people, or following the mandate from the Deep Dark State above?

Germany, Austria and France – and probably others, implemented ID2020 through Parliament or by decree – most people have no idea.

Implementation of Agenda ID2020 links into – or emerged from – Klaus Schwab’s (WEF) infamous “Covid-19 – The Great Reset”- which, by the way, is available from Amazon (or was, when I last checked). If it has been taken off and censored, perhaps by the very author – it would be no surprise.

Video: Towards Digital Tyranny with Peter Koenig

Click here to link to bitchute version

World War III Scenario

In the meantime, we live literally in a WWIII scenario, where countries’ Constitutions are either outlawed, or simply overrun by dictatorial measures that advance so fast that civil movements are in many cases too late to intervene – simply because civil society – even the alert ones – haven’t noticed.

It happens silently.

Either by decree, or by coopted and / or coerced Parliaments. A sort of Health Martial Law is being implemented basically everywhere in the world, with emphasis on the west.

And most of the public at large has no idea.

The Rockefeller-Gates Funded WHO Sponsored Vaxx-Certificate Passport

The Gates and Rockefeller Foundations are financing WHO’s guidelines for a digital international Vaccination Certificate, also called “Vaccination Passport”.

Surprisingly or perhaps not so surprisingly, the international “Vaxx-certificate / passport” is not funded by WHO’s member countries, as one might expect, but by Gates and Rockefeller. That’s significant.

WHO has published and distributed to all member countries on 27 August 2021 the guidelines for the introduction of an international digital “Vaccination Certificate / Passport” – as well as Implementation Guidelines.

Joe Biden’s All-Vaxx Mandate

As an apparent consequence, the Biden Administration issued an all-vaxx mandate – requesting all enterprises with 100 or more employees, to demand tat their employees be vaccinated, or else. For non-compliance, huge fines are threatened. The same for the two million-plus government employees. In total, some 100 million Americans are affected by this draconian mandate. Biden follows the orders of Rockefeller et al.

This requirement will apply to over 80 million workers in private sector businesses, the White House said.  …

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will require COVID-19 vaccinations for workers in most healthcare facilities … This requirement will impact over 17 million healthcare workers at hospitals and other facilities that take these patients.  …

The administration will require that teachers and staff in Head Start Programs, Department of Defense schools, and Bureau of Indian Education-operated schools be vaccinated.

Biden will also call on all states to adopt vaccine requirements for all school employees.

Biden’s plan calls on entertainment venues like sports arenas, large concert halls, and others where large groups of people gather to require that patrons be vaccinated or show a negative coronavirus test in order to enter.  (Reuters, emphasis added)

The European Union (EU) and Switzerland

The Swiss and other EU countries also as a result of the WHO-issued vaxx-certificate / passport, mandate banning access to most indoor activities – including restaurants, gyms and cinemas – as of 13 September, without a vaxx-certificate.

This is totally against the Nuremberg Code (animal testing of drugs and vaccines before applying on humans) and contradicts all democratic Constitutions. Countries’ Constitutions worldwide are overrun and “disabled” by a tyranny that functions with enormous power – deadly threats and possibly highly seductive and corruptive rewards.

Never in memory of human history has such a worldwide dictatorship existed. It emerged in less than 12 months and has subjugated – I repeat myself – all 193 UN member countries, including the entire UN system at once.

The Vaccination Certificate / Passport may eventually be chipped into people’s bodies (Klaus Schwab, WEF, in a 2016 interview with Swiss TV Geneva – recently “erased” from internet). See this: Dr. Astrid Stueckelberger, former WHO: You are Being Chipped.

The Vaxx-certificate may form the basis for a worldwide digital identity registration.

As a parenthesis, both WHO vaxx-certificate financing foundations are headed by currently the world’s most visible eugenists – Gates and Rockefeller, using WHO to further their agenda.

Most of the WHO member states are not directly involved.

It should also be mentioned that the creation of WHO in 1948 was Rockefeller’s idea, with all the money he had accumulated with his Standard Oil hydrocarbon (mostly petrol and gas) monopoly, the creation and subsequent integration of WHO into the UN system was relatively “easy” – with “easy” in quotes. Money buys also the UN.

With WHO as part of the UN, an official UN institution is in charge of the world’s health – or diseases – exactly what eugenists want.

The World Bank is also an important player in this colossal criminal plan – because it hast the power over the poorer so-called „developing countries“ – to pressure them with ‚conditionalities‘ in return for financial support. The usual. The same as the IMF – their roles are essentially interchangeable.

WW III Scenario without Bombs and Guns

In brief, we are indeed living in a WWIII scenario – without bombs and guns, directed against all Humanity

An invisible – and never isolated – virus: Propaganda, the Fear Campaign and the “Vaccine” are their Weapons of Mass Destruction – WMD.

What these measures do – “Vaccination Certificate / Passport” for the jabbed – is to separate society into the “good ones”, the “vaccinated” ones; and the “bad guys”, those who are not vaccinated, do not intend to get the deadly jab, and thus, do not deserve the vaxx-certificate / passport.

According to the lie-mongering governments – all 193 UN member countries whose governments have been coopeted in a long preparation period – would like you to believe that the non-vaccinated are a danger for society.

This is nonsense, because according to the CDC, and repeated by the same UN member countries, jabbed people also transmit the virus. – What virus?

Separating society is an age-old war strategy (at least back to the Roman Empire) : “Divide et Impera” – “Divide and conquer” – so that the people divide and fight each other, instead of their common enemy – which in this fake covid-case are our very governments, all 193 UN member governments – at once.

Agenda ID2020 is the chief instrument for implementing the WEF’s Great Reset

Implementation Progress is advancing fast.

This is how:

According to the Fifth Column’s Spanish Research Team, about 90% or more of the “vaxx-fluid” in the mRNA-formula consists of Graphene. – Graphene is the secret of the Agenda ID2020 – which was patented by Gates with a (luciferian) patent No. 666.

Triple-six, 666, is also the chemical formula of graphene itself — 6 molecules attached in a ring, attached to other such rings. The symbol they’re using is 3 attached rings.

Graphene inoculated by the mRNA-injection, forms immediately a neural net in the brain. It is a one molecule thick net that spontaneously grows around the brain from the graphene contained in the vaxx.

Electromagnetic waves emanating from the soon millions of 5G / 6G antennas around the world, are supposed to convert humans into “transhumans” (term used by Klaus Schwab, in his interview with the Swiss-French TV in 2016. The internet link to the interview has since been “fact-checked” out.

This may explain the enormous time-pressure behind the vaxx-drive; because once you are injected with the mRNA-concoction you are affected in one way or another. Either your health is endangered, or as outlined by Klaus Schwab (video below) you may become a “transhuman” which can be manipulated by robots and /or Artificial intelligence (AI).

A shorter version of the video is available here (click video screen below)

 

The Deep State

So, you may ask: “Genocide” or “Slavery”? What do the elites – the Deep State – plan for us?

The elites are members or associates and adherents to the WEF and the WEF’s philosophy, the banking and corporate elites.

The answer is both.

Mortality and morbidity resulting from the mRNA-jabs coupled with “enslavement” or “trans-humanization”, for the survivors.

It’s all well thought out. Since over 70 years.

We may just hope that we are not too late in stopping this massive onslaught of

• genocide?
• digital trans-humanization, and
• transferring assets and capital from the lower and middle level of society to the top, by bankruptcies, joblessness, disease, and death by neglect and suicide. Already ongoing

“You are not Alone”

During the commenting and Q and A session of the Global Research webinar debate (September 9, 2021),  involving 245 participants, there were several desperate and abandoned sounding voices – what to do?

They have nobody to talk to.

They do not want the jab.

They realize it can be harmful and deadly.

If its not immediately “deadly”, it may have innumerable serious “side-effects” – health defects that may never be cured – and foremost, the mRNA-experimental gene-modifying inoculation may render both women and men infertile. The latter coincides with the eugenists’ agenda.

You are not alone – about half of the population of the western world have not been vaccinated.

They know the risks; they fear the risk of the injection, but they do not fear getting sick with Covid-19, alias SARS-CoV-2 – which, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s own words in a peer-reviewed scientific paper, is about comparable to a common flu (“Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted”, New England Journal of Medicine – NEJM, 26 March 2020). They fear the deadliness of the mRNA-injection.

You are not alone – there are millions, tens of millions, out there who feel the same way.

Start communicating with each other.

What we need is to overcome this crime of biblical proportions,

What we need is to develop a worldwide people’s solidarity movement integrating all sectors of society (between the vaxxed and the non-vaxxed) with the support of real law enforcement (police) and members of the military.

Once law enforcement officials (police) as well as members of the military realize that they and their families are also threatened, they will exercise their true role, which consists in defending the interests of the people, rather than those of proxy politicians and “criminal governments”, which have solely one Globalist goal. The latter consists in converting sovereign countries into a One World Order, ruled by a small extremely wealthy elite to the detriment of the surviving people which this elite intends to manipulate and transform with electromagnetic waves and the injected graphene oxide into “transhumans”.

We have to prevent their war strategy of “Divide et Impera” – “Divide and Rule” from taking hold. Instead, those who are “vaccinated” should unite with the non-vaccinated in solidarity to fight the common enemy.

We don’t have much time, but we can do it.

We can obliterate the thrust of Agenda ID2020 in a state of awakened solidarity.

In an elevated mindset. Not one of submission to the elite’s “diabolical agenda”, but one of elation, one of hope and light.

We shall overcome.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

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

Featured image is from Inga – stock.adobe.com

First published on MLK day 2018

As Martin Luther King’s birthday is celebrated with a national holiday, his death day disappears down the memory hole. Across the country – in response to the King Holiday and Service Act passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1994 – people will be encouraged to make the day one of service. Such service does not include King’s commitment to protest a decadent system of racial and economic injustice or non-violently resist the U.S. warfare state that he called “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.” 

Government sponsored service is cultural neo-liberalism at its finest, the promotion of individualism at the expense of a mass movement for radical institutional change.

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous,” warned Dr. King, “than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

How true those words. For the government that honors Dr. King with a national holiday killed him. This is the suppressed truth behind the highly promoted day of service. It is what you are not supposed to know. It is what Thomas Merton, as quoted by James W. Douglass, called The Unspeakable: “It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and officials declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.  It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his service.”

The word service is a loaded word; it has become a smiley face and vogue word over the past 35 years. Its use for MLK Day is clear: individuals are encouraged to volunteer for activities such as tutoring children, painting senior centers, or delivering meals to the elderly, activities that are good in themselves but far less good when used to conceal an American prophet’s radical message. After all, Martin Luther King’s work was not volunteering at the local food pantry with Oprah Winfrey cheering him on.

The Assassination

King was not murdered because he had spent his heroic life promoting individual volunteerism. To understand his life and death – to celebrate the man – “it is essential to realize although he is popularly depicted and perceived as a civil rights leader, he was much more than that. A non-violent revolutionary, he personified the most powerful force for a long overdue social, political, and economic reconstruction of the nation.” Those are the words of William Pepper, the King family lawyer, from his comprehensive and definitive study of the King assassination, The Plot to Kill King, a book that should be read by anyone concerned with truth and justice.

Revolutionaries are, of course, anathema to the power elites who, with all their might, resist such rebels’ efforts to transform society. If they can’t buy them off, they knock them off. Fifty one years after King’s assassination, the causes he fought for – civil rights, the end to U.S. wars of aggression, and economic justice for all – remain not only unfulfilled, but have worsened in so many respects. And King’s message has been enervated by the sly trick of giving him a national holiday and then urging Americans to make it “a day of service.” The vast majority of those who innocently participate in these activities have no idea who killed King, or why. If they did, they might pause in their tracks, and combine their “service” activities with a teach-in on the truth of his assassination.

Because MLK repeatedly called the United States the “greatest purveyor of violence on earth,” he was universally condemned by the mass media and government that later – once he was long and safely dead and no longer a threat – praised him to the heavens. This has continued to the present day of historical amnesia.

Educating people about the fact that U.S. government forces conspired to kill Dr. King, and why, and why it matters today, is the greatest service we can render to his memory.

William Pepper’s decades-long investigation not only refutes the flimsy case against the alleged assassin James Earl Ray, but definitively proves that King was killed by a government conspiracy led by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, Army Intelligence, and the Memphis Police, assisted by southern Mafia figures.

The Trial

This shocking truth is accentuated when one is reminded (or told for the first time) that in 1999 a Memphis jury, after a thirty day civil trial with over seventy witnesses, found the U.S. government guilty in the killing of MLK. The King family had brought the suit and Pepper represented them. They were grateful that the truth was confirmed, but saddened by the way the findings were buried by the media in cahoots with the government.

Pepper not only demolishes the government’s self-serving case with a plethora of evidence, but shows how the mainstream media, academia, and government flacks have spent years covering up the truth of MLK’s murder through lies and disinformation. Another way they have accomplished this is by convincing a gullible public that “service” is a substitute for truth.

But service without truth is a disservice to the life, legacy, and radical witness of this great American hero. It is propaganda aimed at convincing decent people that they are serving the essence of MLK’s message while they are obeying their masters, the very government that murdered him.

It is time to rebel against the mind manipulation served by the MLK Day of Service. Let us offer service, but let us also learn and speak the truth.

“He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery,” King told us, “Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth.”

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Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/

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).

We bring to the attention of Global Research readers, the full text of the legal procedure at the ICC regarding the “corona virus “vaccines”.

Please forward this text far and wide to ensure that it reaches millions of people Worldwide. Similar legal procedures should be initiated internationally.

First posted by Global Research on December 30, 2021

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International Criminal Court
Office of the Prosecutor
Communications
Post Office Box 19519
2500 CM The Hague
The Netherlands
EMAIL: [email protected]

Subject of complaint:

• Violations of the Nuremberg Code
• Violation of Article 6 of the Rome Statute
• Violation of Article 7 of the Rome Statute
• Violation of Article 8 of the Rome Statute
• Violation of Article 8 bis3 of the Rome Statute

Based on the extensive claims and enclosed documentation, we charge those responsible for numerous violations of the Nuremberg Code, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression in the United Kingdom, but not limited to individuals in these countries.

Perpetrators:

Prime Minister for the United Kingdom BORIS JOHNSON, Chief Medical Officer for England and Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government CHRISTOPHER WHITTY, (former) Secretary of State for Health and Social Care MATTHEW HANCOCK, (current) Secretary of State for Health and Social Care SAJID JAVID, Chief Executive ofMedicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) JUNE RAINE, Director-General of the World Health Organisation TEDROS ADANHOM GHEBREYESUS, Co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation WILLIAM GATES III and Co-chair of theBill and Melinda Gates Foundation MELINDA GATES, Chairman and Chief executive officer of Pfizer ALBERT BOURLA, Chief Executive Officer of AstraZeneca STEPHANE BANCEL, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna PASCAL SORIOT, Chief Executive of Johnson and Johnson ALEX GORSKY, President of the Rockefeller Foundation DR RAJIV SHAH, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) DR ANTHONY FAUCI, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum KLAUS SCHWAB, President of EcoHealth Alliance DR PETER DASZACK

Victim(s): THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

Applicants:

• Hannah Rose – Lawyer and human rights activist
• Dr Mike Yeadon – Qualified life science researcher with a degree in biochemistry in toxicology, and a research-based PhD in respiratory pharmacology, former Vice President and Chief Scientist of allergy and respiratory research at Pfizer
• Piers Corbyn – Astrophysicist and activist
• Mark Sexton – Retired Police officer
• John O’Looney – Funeral Director and activist
• Johnny McStay – Activist
• Louise Shotbolt – Nurse and human rights activist

Legal representation and election of domicile

The applicants will be represented for the purposes of this procedure by Hannah Rose

Email: [email protected]

Consequently, all subsequent correspondence shall be sent only to the email address given above. Any notification within the meaning of the Statute of the Court addressed in this way will be considered valid.

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This communication and complaint is provided to the office of the Prosecutor pursuant to the United Kingdom’s accession to the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations on October 4, 2000.

We have tried to raise this case through the local English police and the English Court system without success, we have been unable to even get the case registered either with the police or with the court after several attempts. The statute for the ICC declares that “The ICC is intended to complement, not to replace, national criminal systems; it prosecutes cases only when a State is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution (Article 17(1)(a)). This is such a case which is why we are addressing the ICC directly.

A. Background

The Corona virus ‘vaccines’ are an innovative medical treatment, which have only received temporary Authorisation under Regulation 174 of the Human Medicine Regulations Act (2012). The long-term effects and safety of the treatment in recipients are unknown. It is important to note that the CoronaVirus ‘vaccines’ are the world’s first introduction to the synthetic m-RNA technology and all previous immunisations worked in a totally different manner, by way of introducing a deactivated or weakened virus to the body to trigger a natural arousal of the immune system against it. As detailed by Dr Mike Yeadon, the risks anticipated by this innovative medicaltreatment are hereby enclosed as Appendix 1 to this request.

All Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trials are ongoing and not due to conclude until late2022/early 2023. The vaccines are, therefore, currently experimental with only limited short-term and no long-term adult safety data available. In addition, they are using a completely new mRNA vaccine technology, which has never previously been approved for use in humans. The mRNA is effectively a pro-drug and it is not known how much spike proteinany individual will produce. Potential late-onset effects can take months or years to become apparent. The limited children’s trials undertaken to date are totally underpowered to rule out uncommon but severe side effects.

The Covid-19 ‘vaccines’ do not meet the requirements to be categorised as vaccines and are in fact gene therapy (Appendix 8). The Merriam-Webster dictionary quietly changed the definition of the term ‘vaccine’ to include components of the COVID-19 m-RNA injection. The definition of vaccine was specifically changed due to the Covid-19 injection on February 5th 2021. Dr Mike Yeadon, joint applicant on this request, asserts that claims calling the Covid-19 injections a ‘vaccine is public manipulation and misrepresentation of clinical treatment. It’s not a vaccination. It’s not prohibiting infection. It’s not a prohibiting transmission device. It’s a means by which your body is conscripted to make the toxin that then allegedly your body somehow gets used to dealing with it, but unlike a vaccine, which is to trigger the immune response, this is to trigger the creation of the toxin.’ MRNA uses the cell’s machinery to synthesize proteins that are supposed to resemble the SPIKE protein of the virus, which is what it uses to enter cells via the ACE2 receptor. These proteins are then identified by the immune system, which builds antibodies against them. The real concern isthat these proteins could accumulate in the body especially in regions of high concentration of ACE2 receptors, such as the gonads. If the immune system then attacks the location where they accumulate, then you could be dealing with an auto-immune condition.

PCR Tests

A review from the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (Appendix 2) found that the standard PRC test is so sensitive, that it can detect old infections by picking up fragments of dead viral cells. Originally developed to detect the presence of DNA and RNA in biological samples, even its Nobel Prize-winning inventor Kary Mullis declared that PCR was never intended to diagnose a disease. It simply detects the presence of specific genetic material, which may or may not indicate infection. As Dr. Kary Mullis put it, the PCR technique can find almost anything in anybody. The PCR test uses amplification cycles to find viral RNA. The sample is repeatedly chemically amplified to increase the RNA copies until they can be detected. Each “cycle” of amplification doubles the number of molecules in a sample. If you run enough cycles, you can effectively find a single molecule of any substance. Public Health England (PHE) policy confirms that the cycle threshold should beset around 25.6 and if the machine must run more than 25 to 35 cycles (Appendix 2a) to get the sample to the test’s Limit of Detection, there isn’t enough virus in the sample to matter clinically.

We have information from freedom of information requests that as many as 40-45 cycles are being carried out (Appendix 3, 3a, 3b, 3c) which is too many because it increases the chance of a positive result even without coronavirus RNA being present in the original sample –hence the ‘asymptomatic’ individuals. In addition to being completely unreliable the PCR tests also contain carcinogenic ethylene oxide. (Appendix 48)

Click here to read the full document.

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“Patriotism cannot be based on a falsehood, particularly when it constitutes a pretext for waging war and killing innocent civilians”.

Author’s Note

The article below entitled “Osamagate” was first published more than 22 years on October 9, 2001, two days after the onslaught of the bombing campaign directed against Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. 

Within hours of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden was identified as the architect of the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, without a shred of evidence.

On the following day, the “war on terrorism” was launched. The media disinformation campaign went into full gear.

From the outset, the objective was to use 9/11 as a pretext for launching the first phase of the Middle East Central Asian War, which consisted in the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan. This was achieved by sustaining the myth that Muslim terrorists supported by the Afghan government had attacked America on September 11, 2001.

To this date there is no evidence that Al Qaeda was behind these attacks. 

Afghanistan was identified as a “state sponsor of terror”. The 9/11 attacks were categorized as an act of war, an attack on America by a foreign power.

The right to self-defense was put forth. The US-NATO aggressor was portrayed as the victim.

On September 12, 2001, less than 24 hours after the attacks, NATO invoked for the first time in its history “Article 5 of the Washington Treaty – its collective defence clause” declaring the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon “to be an attack against all NATO members.” (I should mention, in relation to the Ukraine War, that there are indications that the invocation of Article 5 are currently being discussed by US/NATO behind closed doors). 

Public opinion was led to believe that war preparations got underway on September 12th on the spare of the moment, that it was the result of indignation and outrage.

You do no plan a large scale theater war in four weeks. Military analysts will confirm that the war on Afghanistan launched on October 7, 2001, was planned well in advance of  9/11.

9/11 remains the pretext and justification for waging a war without borders.

911 marked the onslaught of war propaganda, of a massive media disinformation campaign. A World of fiction has replaced real people and real processes.

Eventually the term “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) emerged. 

The underlying objective was to sustain the legitimacy of  a US-NATO war without borders. … President Bush pledged to “lead the world to victory”.

The Bush Administration confirmed its intention to embark on “a sustained military campaign rather than a single dramatic action” directed against Osama bin Laden.  In addition to Afghanistan, a number of countries in the Middle East were mentioned as possible future targets including Iraq, Iran, Libya and the Sudan.

And several prominent US political figures and media pundits have demanded that the air strikes be extended to other countries “which harbour international terrorism.”

According to intelligence sources, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda has operations in some 50 to 60 countries providing ample pretext to intervene in several “rogue states” in the Middle East, Central Asia, South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa” (Cited from “Osamagate, October 9, 2001) 

The Big Lie must be sustained through terror events; the terror organizations must be real. The threats must be real. 

The dramatic loss of life on September 11, 2001 served as a pretext to go after the “outside enemy”, the bogeyman (Osama bin Laden)  as well as install the contours of the Homeland Security State.

As of September 12, 2001 there was mounting public support for a war of retribution directed against Afghanistan described as “A Just War  a legitimacy, which was shared by progressive sectors of society including the antiwar movement. The US led war was presented as a counterterrorism operation:

-The “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT)  waged internationally

-The Homeland Security State with the mandate to wage the “Domestic War on Terrorism” 

A holy crusade was launched against the Muslim World of approximately 50 countries and one quarter of the World’s population. 

In turn, “Counterterrorism” has been used in the course of the last twenty years as a justification for the establishment of U.S. military bases in Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia.

The unspoken objective of “counter-terrorism” is to confiscate and appropriate the extensive oil and gas reserves of Muslim countries. 

On October 7, 2023, Israel with the support of the U.S. initiated a genocidal war against the people of Palestine which was in the course of the last three months has evolved into a regional war in the Middle East. This process of escalation hinges upon the 9/11 counter-terrorism doctrine.

Below is my October 9, 2001 article focussing on the role of Al Qaeda as a US sponsored intelligence asset.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research,  September 11, 2011, December 31, 2023

 

 

“Osamagate”

by Michel Chossudovsky

Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), Montréal

October 9, 2001

 

“Now the Taliban will pay a price” vowed President George W. Bush, as American and British fighter planes unleashed missile attacks against major cities in Afghanistan.

The US Administration claims that Osama bin Laden is behind the tragic events of the 11th of September. A major war supposedly “against international terrorism” has been launched, yet the evidence amply confirms that agencies of the US government have since the Cold War harbored the “Islamic Militant Network” as part of Washington’s foreign policy agenda. In a bitter irony, the US Air Force is targeting the training camps established in the 1980s by the CIA.

The main justification for waging this war has been totally fabricated. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future. 

Confronted with mounting evidence, the US Administration can no longer deny its links to Osama. While the CIA admits that Osama bin Laden was an “intelligence asset” during the Cold War, the relationship is said to “go way back”. Most news reports consider that these Osama-CIA links belong to the “bygone era” of the Soviet-Afghan war. They are invariably viewed as “irrelevant” to an understanding of present events. Lost in the barrage of recent history, the role of the CIA in supporting and developing international terrorist organisations during the Cold war and its aftermath is casually ignored or downplayed by the Western media.

Yes, We did support Him, but “He Went Against Us”

A blatant example of media distortion is the so-called “blowback” thesis: “intelligence assets” are said to “have gone against their sponsors”; “what we’ve created blows back in our face.”1 In a twisted logic, the US government and the CIA are portrayed as the ill-fated victims:

The sophisticated methods taught to the Mujahideen, and the thousands of tons of arms supplied to them by the US – and Britain – are now tormenting the West in the phenomenon known as `blowback’, whereby a policy strategy rebounds on its own devisers. 2

The US media, nonetheless, concedes that “the Taliban’s coming to power [in 1995] is partly the outcome of the U.S. support of the Mujahideen, the radical Islamic group, in the 1980s in the war against the Soviet Union”.3 But it also readily dismisses its own factual statements and concludes in chorus, that the CIA had been tricked by a deceitful Osama. It’s like “a son going against his father”.

The “blowback” thesis is a fabrication. The evidence amply confirms that the CIA never severed its ties to the “Islamic Militant Network”. Since the end of the Cold War, these covert intelligence links have not only been maintained, they have become increasingly sophisticated.

New undercover initiatives financed by the Golden Crescent drug trade were set in motion in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. Pakistan’s military and intelligence apparatus (controlled by the CIA) essentially “served as a catalyst for the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of six new Muslim republics in Central Asia.” 4

Replicating the Iran Contragate Pattern

Remember Ollie North and the Nicaraguan Contras under the Reagan Administration when weapons financed by the drug trade were channeled to “freedom fighters” in Washington’s covert war against the Sandinista government. The same pattern was used in the Balkans to arm and equip the Mujahideen fighting in the ranks of the Bosnian Muslim army against the Armed Forces of the Yugoslav Federation.

Throughout the 1990s, the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) was used by the CIA as a go-between — to channel weapons and Mujahideen mercenaries to the Bosnian Muslim Army in the civil war in Yugoslavia. According to a report of the London based International Media Corporation:

“Reliable sources report that the United States is now [1994] actively participating in the arming and training of the Muslim forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina in direct contravention of the United Nations accords. US agencies have been providing weapons made in … China (PRC), North Korea (DPRK) and Iran. The sources indicated that … Iran, with the knowledge and agreement of the US Government, supplied the Bosnian forces with a large number of multiple rocket launchers and a large quantity of ammunition. These included 107mm and 122mm rockets from the PRC, and VBR-230 multiple rocket launchers … made in Iran. … It was [also] reported that 400 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran) arrived in Bosnia with a large supply of arms and ammunition. It was alleged that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had full knowledge of the operation and that the CIA believed that some of the 400 had been detached for future terrorist operations in Western Europe.

During September and October [1994], there has been a stream of “Afghan” Mujahedin … covertly landed in Ploce, Croatia (South-West of Mostar) from where they have traveled with false papers … before deploying with the Bosnian Muslim forces in the Kupres, Zenica and Banja Luka areas. These forces have recently [late 1994] experienced a significant degree of military success. They have, according to sources in Sarajevo, been aided by the UNPROFOR Bangladesh battalion, which took over from a French battalion early in September [1994].

The Mujahedin landing at Ploce are reported to have been accompanied by US Special Forces equipped with high-tech communications equipment, … The sources said that the mission of the US troops was to establish a command, control, communications and intelligence network to coordinate and support Bosnian Muslim offensives — in concert with Mujahideen and Bosnian Croat forces — in Kupres, Zenica and Banja Luka. Some offensives have recently been conducted from within the UN-established safe-havens in the Zenica and Banja Luka regions.

(…)

The US Administration has not restricted its involvement to the clandestine contravention of the UN arms embargo on the region … It [also] committed three high-ranking delegations over the past two years [prior to 1994] in failed attempts to bring the Yugoslav Government into line with US policy. Yugoslavia is the only state in the region to have failed to acquiesce to US pressure.5

“From the Horse’s Mouth”

Ironically, the US Administration’s undercover military-intelligence operations in Bosnia have been fully documented by the Republican Party. A lengthy Congressional report by the Republican Party Committee (RPC) published in 1997, largely confirms the International Media Corporation report quoted above. The RPC Congressional report accuses the Clinton administration of having “helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base” leading to the recruitment through the so-called “Militant Islamic Network,” of thousands of Mujahideen from the Muslim world:

Perhaps most threatening to the SFOR mission – and more importantly, to the safety of the American personnel serving in Bosnia – is the unwillingness of the Clinton Administration to come clean with the Congress and with the American people about its complicity in the delivery of weapons from Iran to the Muslim government in Sarajevo. That policy, personally approved by Bill Clinton in April 1994 at the urging of CIA Director-designate (and then-NSC chief) Anthony Lake and the U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, has, according to the Los Angeles Times (citing classified intelligence community sources), “played a central role in the dramatic increase in Iranian influence in Bosnia”.

(…)

Along with the weapons, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and VEVAK intelligence operatives entered Bosnia in large numbers, along with thousands of mujahedin (“holy warriors”) from across the Muslim world. Also engaged in the effort were several other Muslim countries (including Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Turkey) and a number of radical Muslim organizations. For example, the role of one Sudan-based “humanitarian organization,” called the Third World Relief Agency, has been well documented. The Clinton Administration’s “hands-on” involvement with the Islamic network’s arms pipeline included inspections of missiles from Iran by U.S. government officials… the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), a Sudan-based, phoney humanitarian organization … has been a major link in the arms pipeline to Bosnia. … TWRA is believed to be connected with such fixtures of the Islamic terror network as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and Osama Bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi émigré believed to bankroll numerous militant groups. [Washington Post, 9/22/96] 6

Complicity of the Clinton Administration

In other words, the Republican Party Committee report confirms unequivocally the complicity of the Clinton Administration with several Islamic fundamentalist organisations including Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda.

The Republicans wanted at the time to undermine the Clinton Administration. However, at a time when the entire country had its eyes riveted on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Republicans no doubt chose not to trigger an untimely “Iran-Bosniagate” affair, which might have unduly diverted public attention away from the Lewinsky scandal. The Republicans wanted to impeach Bill Clinton “for having lied to the American People” regarding his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the more substantive “foreign policy lies” regarding drug running and covert operations in the Balkans, Democrats and Republicans agreed in unison, no doubt pressured by the Pentagon and the CIA not to “spill the beans”.

From Bosnia to Kosovo

The “Bosnian pattern” described in the 1997 Congressional RPC report was replicated in Kosovo. With the complicity of NATO and the US State Department. Mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were recruited to fight in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO’s war effort.

Confirmed by British military sources, the task of arming and training of the KLA had been entrusted in 1998 to the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Services MI6, together with “former and serving members of 22 SAS [Britain’s 22nd Special Air Services Regiment], as well as three British and American private security companies”.7

The US DIA approached MI6 to arrange a training programme for the KLA, said a senior British military source. `MI6 then sub-contracted the operation to two British security companies, who in turn approached a number of former members of the (22 SAS) regiment. Lists were then drawn up of weapons and equipment needed by the KLA.’ While these covert operations were continuing, serving members of 22 SAS Regiment, mostly from the unit’s D Squadron, were first deployed in Kosovo before the beginning of the bombing campaign in March. 8

While British SAS Special Forces in bases in Northern Albania were training the KLA, military instructors from Turkey and Afghanistan financed by the “Islamic jihad” were collaborating in training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.9:

“Bin Laden had visited Albania himself. He was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo, … Bin Laden is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994 … Albanian sources say Sali Berisha, who was then president, had links with some groups that later proved to be extreme fundamentalists.” 10

Congressional Testimonies on KLA-Osama links

According to Frank Ciluffo of the Globalized Organised Crime Program, in a testimony presented to the House of Representatives Judicial Committee:

“What was largely hidden from public view was the fact that the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the “Balkan Route” that links the “Golden Crescent” of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated $400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined for Europe.” 11

According to Ralf Mutschke of Interpol’s Criminal Intelligence division also in a testimony to the House Judicial Committee:

“The U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden” . Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Jihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict.” 12

Madeleine Albright Covets the KLA

These KLA links to international terrorism and organised crime documented by the US Congress were totally ignored by the Clinton Administration. In fact, in the months preceding the bombing of Yugoslavia, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was busy building a “political legitimacy” for the KLA. The paramilitary army had –from one day to the next– been elevated to the status of a bona fide “democratic” force in Kosovo. In turn, Madeleine Albright has forced the pace of international diplomacy: the KLA had been spearheaded into playing a central role in the failed “peace negotiations” at Rambouiillet in early 1999.

The Senate and the House tacitly endorse State Terrorism

While the various Congressional reports confirmed that the US government had been working hand in glove with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, this did not prevent the Clinton and later the Bush Administration from arming and equipping the KLA. The Congressional documents also confirm that members of the Senate and the House knew the relationship of the Administration to international terrorism. To quote the statement of Rep. John Kasich of the House Armed Services Committee: “We connected ourselves [in 1998-99] with the KLA, which was the staging point for bin Laden…” 13

In the wake of the tragic events of September 11, Republicans and Democrats in unison have given their full support to the President to “wage war on Osama”.

In 1999, Senator Jo Lieberman had stated authoritatively that “Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.” In the hours following the October 7 missile attacks on Afghanistan, the same Jo Lieberman called for punitive air strikes against Iraq: “We’re in a war against terrorism… We can’t stop with bin Laden and the Taliban.” Yet Senator Jo Lieberman, as member of the Armed Services Committee of the Senate had access to all the Congressional documents pertaining to “KLA-Osama” links. In making this statement, he was fully aware that that agencies of the US government as well as NATO were supporting international terrorism.

The War in Macedonia

In the wake of the 1999 war in Yugoslavia, the terrorist activities of the KLA were extended into Southern Serbia and Macedonia. Meanwhile, the KLA –renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC)– was elevated to United Nations status, implying the granting of “legitimate” sources of funding through United Nations as well as through bilateral channels, including direct US military aid.

And barely two months after the official inauguration of the KPC under UN auspices (September 1999), KPC-KLA commanders – using UN resources and equipment – were already preparing the assaults into Macedonia, as a logical follow-up to their terrorist activities in Kosovo. According to the Skopje daily Dnevnik, the KPC had established a “sixth operation zone” in Southern Serbia and Macedonia:

Sources, who insist on anonymity, claim that the headquarters of the Kosovo protection brigades [i.e. linked to the UN sponsored KPC] have [March 2000] already been formed in Tetovo, Gostivar and Skopje. They are being prepared in Debar and Struga [on the border with Albania] as well, and their members have defined codes. 14

According to the BBC, “Western special forces were still training the guerrillas” meaning that they were assisting the KLA in opening up “a sixth operation zone” in Southern Serbia and Macedonia. 15

“The Islamic Militant Network” and NATO join hands in Macedonia

Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting in Macedonia (October 2001) in the ranks of self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), are Mujahideen from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also within the KLA’s proxy force in Macedonia are senior US military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon as well as “soldiers of fortune” from Britain, Holland and Germany. Some of these Western mercenaries had previously fought with the KLA and the Bosnian Muslim Army. 16

Extensively documented by the Macedonian press and statements of the Macedonian authorities, the US government and the “Islamic Militant Network” are working hand in glove in supporting and financing the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia. The NLA is a proxy of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In turn the KLA and the UN sponsored Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) are identical institutions with the same commanders and military personnel. KPC Commanders on UN salaries are fighting in the NLA together with the Mujahideen.

In a bitter twist, while supported and financed by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, the KLA-NLA is also supported by NATO and the United Nations mission to Kosovo (UNMIK). In fact, the “Islamic Militant Network” –also using Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) as the CIA’s go-between– still constitutes an integral part of Washington’s covert military-intelligence operations in Macedonia and Southern Serbia.

The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded from US military aid, the United Nations peace-keeping budget as well as by several Islamic organisations including Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. Drug money is also being used to finance the terrorists with the complicity of the US government. The recruitment of Mujahideen to fight in the ranks of the NLA in Macedonia is implemented through various Islamic groups.

US military advisers mingle with Mujahideen within the same paramilitary force, Western mercenaries from NATO countries fight alongside Mujahideen recruited in the Middle East and Central Asia. And the US media calls this a “blowback” where so-called “intelligence assets” have gone against their sponsors!

But this did not happen during the Cold war! It is happening right now in Macedonia. And it is confirmed by numerous press reports, eyewitness accounts, photographic evidence as well as official statements by the Macedonian Prime Minister, who has accused the Western military alliance of supporting the terrorists. Moreover, the official Macedonian New Agency (MIA) has pointed to the complicity between Washington’s envoy Ambassador James Pardew and the NLA terrorists. 17 In other words, the so-called “intelligence assets” are still serving the interests of their US sponsors.

Pardew’s background is revealing in this regard. He started his Balkans career in 1993 as a senior intelligence officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for channeling US aid to the Bosnian Muslim Army. Coronel Pardew had been put in charge of arranging the “air-drops” of supplies to Bosnian forces. At the time, these “air drops” were tagged as “civilian aid”. It later transpired –confirmed by the RPC Congressional report– that the US had violated the arms embargo. And James Pardew played an important role as part of the team of intelligence officials working closely with the Chairman of the National Security Council Anthony Lake.

Pardew was later involved in the Dayton negotiations (1995) on behalf of the US Defence Department. In 1999, prior to the bombing of Yugoslavia, he was appointed “Special Representative for Military Stabilisation and Kosovo Implementation” by President Clinton. One of his tasks was to channel support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which at the time was also being supported by Osama bin Laden. Pardew was in this regard instrumental in replicating the “Bosnian pattern” in Kosovo and subsequently in Macedonia…

Justification for Waging War

The Bush Administration has stated that it has proof that Osama bin Laden is behind the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. In the words of British Prime Minister Tony Blair: “I have seen absolutely powerful and incontrovertible evidence of his [Osama] link to the events of the 11th of September.” 18 What Tony Blair fails to mention is that agencies of the US government including the CIA continue to “harbor” Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.

A major war supposedly “against international terrorism” has been launched by a government which is harboring international terrorism as part of its foreign policy agenda. In other words, the main justification for waging war has been totally fabricated. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future.

This decision to mislead the American people was taken barely a few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Without supporting evidence, Osama had already been tagged as the “prime suspect.” Two days later on Thursday the 13th of September –while the FBI investigations had barely commenced– President Bush pledged to “lead the world to victory”. The Administration confirmed its intention to embark on “a sustained military campaign rather than a single dramatic action” directed against Osama bin Laden. 19

In addition to Afghanistan, a number of countries in the Middle East were mentioned as possible targets including Iraq, Iran, Libya and the Sudan. And several prominent US political figures and media pundits have demanded that the air strikes be extended to other countries “which harbour international terrorism.” According to intelligence sources, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda has operations in some 50 to 60 countries providing ample pretext to intervene in several “rogue states” in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Moreover, the entire US Legislature –with only one honest and courageous dissenting voice in the House of Representatives– has tacitly endorsed the Administration’s decision to go war. Members of the House and the Senate have access through the various committees to official confidential reports and intelligence documents which prove beyond doubt that agencies of the US government have ties to international terrorism. They cannot say “we did not know”. In fact, most of this evidence is in the public domain.

Under the historical resolution of the US Congress adopted by both the House and the Senate on the 14th of September [2001]:

“The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

Whereas there is no evidence that agencies of the US government “aided the terrorist attacks” on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, there is ample and detailed evidence that agencies of the US government as well as NATO, have since the end of the Cold War continued to “harbor such organizations”.

Patriotism cannot be based on a falsehood, particularly when it constitutes a pretext for waging war and killing innocent civilians.

Ironically, the text of the Congressional resolution also constitutes a “blowback” against the US sponsors of international terrorism. The resolution does not exclude the conduct of an “Osamagate” inquiry, as well as appropriate actions against agencies and/or individuals of the US government, who may have collaborated with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. And the evidence indelibly points directly to the Bush Administration.

Notes

1United Press International (UPI), 15 September 2001.

2The Guardian, London, 15 September 2001.

3UPI, op cit,

4For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, Centre for Research on Globalisation, 12 September 2001, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html.

5 International Media Corporation Defense and Strategy Policy, US Commits Forces, Weapons to Bosnia, London, 31 October 1994.

6 Congressional Press Release, Republican Party Committee (RPC), US Congress, Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base, 16 January 1997, available on the website of the 7 Centre of Research on Globalisation (CRG) at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html. The original document is on the website of the US Senate Republican Party Committee (Senator Larry Craig), at http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/iran.htm)

7 The Scotsman, Glasgow, 29 August 1999.

8 Ibid.

9 Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, Arizona, 2 April 1999

10 Sunday Times, London, 29 November 1998.

11 US Congress, Testimony of Frank J. Cilluffo , Deputy Director, Global Organized Crime, Program director to the House Judiciary Committee, 13 December 2000.

12 US Congress, Testimony of Ralf Mutschke of Interpol’s Criminal Intelligence Division, to the House Judicial Committee, 13 December 2000.

13 US Congress, Transcripts of the House Armed Services Committee, 5 October 1999,

14 Macedonian Information Centre Newsletter, Skopje, 21 March 2000, published by BBC Summary of World Broadcast, 24 March 2000.

15 BBC, 29 January 2001, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1142000/1142478.stm)

16 Scotland on Sunday, Glasgow, 15 June 2001 at http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/text_only.cfm?id=SS01025960, see also UPI, 9 July 2001. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Washington behind Terrorist Assaults in Macedonia, Centre for Research on Globalisation, August 2001, at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO108B.html.)

17 Macedonian Information Agency (MIA), 26 September 2001, available at the Centre for Research on Globalisation at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MNA110A.html

18 Quoted in The Daily Telegraph, London, 1 October 2001.

19 Statement by official following the speech by President George Bush on 14 September 2001 quoted in the International Herald Tribune, Paris, 14 September 2001.

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Orders at many of the world’s biggest arms companies are “near record highs” due to rising geopolitical tensions in recent years, an analysis published Wednesday by Financial Times revealed.

The London-based newspaper analyzed the order books of the world’s 15 top arms makers and found their combined backlogs were $777.6 billion at the end of 2022—a 10% increase from 2020.

According to FT:

The trend’s momentum continued into 2023. In the first six months of this year—the latest comprehensive quarterly data available—combined backlogs at these companies stood at $764 billion, swelling their future pipeline of work as governments kept placing orders.

The sustained spending has spurred investors’ interest in the sector. [Member of Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment’s] global benchmark for the industry’s stocks is up 25% over the past 12 months. Europe’s Stoxx aerospace and defense stocks index has risen by more than 50% over the same period.

Private equity firms including BlackRock, Vanguard, Capital Group, and State Street are dominant or major shareholders in most of the weapons companies analyzed by FT. These Wall Street speculators are “the ones driving the perpetual wars to maintain their bankrupt financial system,” according to the International Schiller Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

“In the U.S., the defense budget was $858 billion in 2023, and it is rapidly heading towards $1 trillion per year,” the institute said last week. “Meanwhile our highways and railroads, our bridges and tunnels, our hospitals and schools are crumbling. And the rest of the world also desperately needs American technology and capital goods to help their development, working with China and Russia, rather than driving the planet towards World War III against them.”

Who owns the Military Industrial Complex?

Factsheet from the @SchillerInst on financial firms that own the military industries in the U.S., and how much civilian economic projects can be otherwise built for the same resources spent on war!https://t.co/Jnj3B3pG1K pic.twitter.com/XjQF4Hajij

— Hussein Askary (@HusseinAskary) December 27, 2023

The West’s scramble to arm Ukraine’s homeland defense against ongoing Russian invasion and occupation played a significant role in surging arms orders.

For example, Hanwha Aerospace, South Korea’s largest weapons manufacturer, recorded the biggest increase in new orders—FT says its backlog soared from $2.4 billion in 2020 to $15.2 billion at the end of last year—largely due to sales of K-9 self-propelled howitzers to countries supplying arms to Ukraine.

Rheinmetall, a German firm that makes Panther main battle tanks, nearly doubled its backlog from $14.8 billion to $27.9 billion, also in large part because of Ukraine-related sales.

However, many of the company’s swollen backlogs predate the Ukraine war, which began in February 2022.

“The reality is lead times for policymaking, budgets, and placing orders are so long that the invasion of almost two years ago is only just appearing in orders and barely in revenues, except for a few shorter-cycle specialists such as Rheinmetall,” Nick Cunningham, an analyst at the insurance firm Agency Partners, told FT.

Israel’s assault on Gaza—which began in October and is already one of the most devastating in modern history, with an average of 1,000 bombs dropped daily on the densely populated strip—is not included in FT‘s analysis, but is a boon to arms-makers and a large part of the reason why last year’s record backlogs are expected to reach new heights in 2023 and beyond.

As Common Dreams reported earlier this year, global military spending rose to an all-time high of over $2.2 trillion last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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First posted on Global Research on December 21, 2022

Over time, it’s become clear that the globalist cabal seeking to implement a one world government repeatedly tell us what they’re about to do. Table top pandemic simulations, for example, are a form of dress rehearsal.

In 2017, Johns Hopkins Center of Health Security held a coronavirus pandemic simulation called the SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028 scenario. In October 2019, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with Johns Hopkins and the World Economic Forum hosted Event 201.

As in the SPARS Pandemic scenario, Event 201 involved an outbreak of a highly infectious coronavirus, but the primary (if not sole) focus of the exercise was how to control information and keep “misinformation” in check, not how to effectively discover and share remedies.

October 23, 2022, Gates, Johns Hopkins and the World Health Organization cohosted “a global challenge exercise” dubbed “Catastrophic Contagion,” involving a novel pathogen called “severe epidemic enterovirus respiratory syndrome 2025” (SEERS-25), which primarily affects children and teens

Enterovirus D68 is typically associated with cold and flu-like illness in infants, children and teens. In rare cases, it’s also been known to cause viral meningitis and acute flaccid myelitis, a neurological condition resulting in muscle weakness and loss of reflexes. The virus they modeled in the Catastrophic Contagion simulation appears to be something similar to enterovirus D68, but worse

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Over time, it’s become clear that the globalist cabal seeking to implement a one world government repeatedly tell us what they’re about to do. They hold dress rehearsals in the form of tabletop exercises, and they’ve revealed their plans in various reports and white papers through the years.

I have been subscribed to the channel that posted the video above for some time now. She only has 10K subscribers but really gets some amazing content. I have no idea how she was able to secure this video as it is not widely circulated. Even more surprising is that her channel is not being taken down.

COVID Dress Rehearsals

For example, in 2017, Johns Hopkins Center of Health Security held a coronavirus pandemic simulation called the SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028 scenario.¹ Importantly, the exercise highlighted and stressed “communication dilemmas concerning medical countermeasures that could plausibly emerge” in a pandemic scenario.

In October 2019, less than three months before the COVID-19 outbreak, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with Johns Hopkins and the World Economic Forum hosted Event 201.

As in the SPARS Pandemic scenario, this exercise involved an outbreak of a highly infectious coronavirus, but the primary (if not sole) focus of the exercise was how to control information and keep “misinformation” in check, not how to effectively discover and share remedies.

Social media censorship played prominently in the Event 201 plan, and in the real-world events of 2020 through the present, accurate information about vaccine development, production and injury has indeed been effectively suppressed around the world, thanks to social media companies and Google’s censoring of opposing viewpoints.

We now know this censorship was illegally directed by U.S. government officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was recently deposed² about his role in the online censoring of COVID information.

Both of these simulations, SPARS and Event 201, foreshadowed what eventually occurred in real life during COVID, so, when Gates hosts yet another pandemic exercise, it’s worth paying attention to the details.

‘Catastrophic Contagion’ Exercise

October 23, 2022, Gates, Johns Hopkins and the World Health Organization cohosted “a global challenge exercise” dubbed “Catastrophic Contagion,”^3,4 involving a novel (and as of now fictional) pathogen called “severe epidemic enterovirus respiratory syndrome 2025” or SEERS-25 for short.

Enterovirus D68⁵ is typically associated with cold and flu-like illness in infants, children and teens. In rare cases, it’s also been known to cause viral meningitis and acute flaccid myelitis, a neurological condition resulting in muscle weakness and loss of reflexes in one or more extremities.

Enteroviruses A71 and A6 are known to cause hand, foot and mouth disease,⁶ while poliovirus, the prototypical enterovirus, causes polio (poliomyelitis), a potentially life-threatening type of paralysis that primarily affects children under age 5. So, the virus they modeled in this simulation appears to be something similar to enterovirus D68, but worse.

Training African Leaders to Go Along With the Narrative

Tellingly, the Catastrophic Contagion exercise focused on getting leadership in African countries involved and trained in following the script. Participants included 10 current and former Health Ministers and senior public health officials from Senegal, Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, Singapore, India and Germany, as well as Gates himself.

African nations just so happened to go “off script” more often than others during the COVID pandemic, and didn’t follow in the footsteps of developed nations when it came to pushing the jabs. As a result, vaccine makers now face the problem of having a huge control group, as the COVID jab uptake on the African continent was only 6%.⁷

Not surprisingly (for those in the know), Africa has fared far better than developed nations with high COVID jab rates in terms of COVID-19 infections and related deaths.⁸

Now, the Catastrophic Contagion exercise predicts SEERS-25 will kill 20 million people worldwide, including 15 million children, and many who survive the infection will be left with paralysis and/or brain damage. In other words, the “cue” given is that the next pandemic will likely target children rather than the elderly, as was the case with COVID-19.

This is an interesting coincidence, seeing how rates of toddlers and young children hospitalized with influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is already spiking.

COVID Jabs Are Destroying People’s Immune Systems

Coincidentally, over the past year, researchers have been warning that the COVID jabs may be dysregulating and destroying people’s immune systems, leaving them vulnerable to all sorts of infections. According to a study⁹ posted on the preprint server medRxiv in May 2021, the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID jab “reprograms both adaptive and innate immune responses, causing immune depletion.”

In August 2021, a French group of pediatric infectious disease experts also warned that “immunity debt” caused by a lack of exposure to common viruses and bacteria during COVID lockdowns and school closures might predispose children to suffer more infections in the future.¹⁰

They predicted the decrease in viral and bacterial exposure that train your child’s immune system may result in a rebound of a variety of infectious diseases, including influenza and RSV) which is precisely what we’re now seeing. If a modified enterovirus gets added into the mix, it’s not difficult to see how parents might get spooked enough to start lining their kids up for more shots — including parents in African nations.

Why Manufactured Pandemics Will Continue

At this point, it’s quite clear that “biosecurity” is the chosen means by which the globalist cabal intends to seize power over the world. The WHO is working on securing sole power over pandemic response globally through its international pandemic treaty which, if implemented, will eradicate the sovereignty of all member nations.

Ultimately, the WHO intends to dictate all health care. December 13, 2022, the WHO announced Sir Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust — who colluded with Dr. Anthony Fauci to suppress the COVID lab-leak narrative — has been chosen as its new chief scientist.¹¹

The WHO’s pandemic treaty is the gateway to a global, top-down totalitarian regime, a one world government. But to secure that power, they will need more pandemics. COVID-19 alone was not enough to get everyone onboard with a centralized pandemic response unit, and they probably knew that from the start.

So, the reason we can be sure there will be additional pandemics, whether manufactured using either fear and hype alone or an actual bioweapon created for this very purpose, is because the takeover plan, aka The Great Reset, is based on the premise that we need global biosecurity surveillance and centralized response.

Biosecurity, in turn, is the justification for an international vaccine passport, which the G20 just signed on to, and that passport will also be your digital identification. That digital ID, then, will be tied to your social credit score, personal carbon footprint tracker, medical records, educational records, work records, social media presence, purchase records, your bank accounts and a programmable central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Once all these pieces are fully connected, you’ll be in a digital prison, and the ruling cabal — whether officially a one world government by then or not — will have total control over your life from cradle to grave.

COVID Is a Global Propaganda Operation

In the video above,^12,13 initially published in August 2021, professor Piers Robinson, Ph.D., an expert on communication, media, world politics and the role of propaganda, spoke to Asia Pacific Today about propaganda in the age of COVID.

As noted by Robinson, COVID-19 is unquestionably the largest, most sophisticated propaganda operation in history. Psychological techniques were extensively used during 2020 to incite fear in the population, while other persuasion strategies were used to get people to support and defend COVID measures such as masking, isolation, social distancing, lockdowns and jab mandates.

Indeed, propaganda is what allowed for draconian and unscientific COVID measures to be implemented. Without propaganda and simultaneous censorship of opposing views, little of what we’ve been through would have been possible.

As noted by Robinson, while the use of state propaganda could initially be justified as a necessary means to achieve a public health objective — protecting people from COVID-related illness and death — it quickly became apparent that this was not the case, and likely never was.

COVID-19 has instead been used to suspend and strip us of Constitutional rights and civil liberties, and is still being exploited to further social, political and financial restructuring objectives, entirely outside democratic processes and public scrutiny. We also know it’s not about public health since:

• COVID is now nothing more than another endemic respiratory infection, much like the common cold, and
• The COVID jabs don’t prevent infection or spread of the virus, which negates the entire premise for vaccine passports, yet they’re being pushed anyway

How Did Gates Become the High Priest of the COVID Narrative?

In related news, Politico recently published a special report¹⁴ detailing how Gates, who has no medical expertise whatsoever, ended up controlling the global COVID response with no oversight to speak of.

In the earliest days of the pandemic, four nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) banded together to identify vaccine makers and make “targeted investments in the development of tests, treatments and shots,” Politico explains.

These NGOs were the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gavi (a Gates organization that provides vaccines to developing nations), the Wellcome Trust (a British research foundation led by Farrar, now selected to be the WHO’s head scientist) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), an international vaccine research and development group cofounded by Gates and Wellcome in 2017.

In collaboration with the WHO, these four NGOs — three of which were founded by Gates — then set out to create a global distribution plan for the tests, drugs and injections they’d invested in.

Incidentally, Gates at that time was also the largest donor to the WHO, as then-President Trump had pulled the U.S. out of the WHO and stopped funding. It’s hard to imagine a situation with greater conflicts of interest. The four groups also greased the wheels of governments.

Collectively, they spent more than $8.3 million to lobby lawmakers and officials in the U.S. and Europe. A number of U.S. and EU officials, as well as WHO representatives, have also been employed by one or more of these NGOs, which helped solidify their political connections.

A number of civil society organizations that are active in developing countries, including Doctors Without Borders, have objected to Western-dominated groups making life-and-death decisions for poorer nations.

“‘What makes Bill Gates qualified to be giving advice and advising the U.S. government on where they should be putting the tremendous resources?’ asked Kate Elder, senior vaccines policy adviser for the Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign,” Politico writes.¹⁵

Self-Serving Consortium Is Running Our Pandemic Response

Politico’s special report continues:¹⁶

“Now, critics are raising significant questions about the equity and effectiveness of the group’s response to the pandemic — and the serious limitations of outsourcing the pandemic response to unelected, privately-funded groups. ‘I think we should be deeply concerned,’ said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University professor who specializes in public-health law.

‘Putting it in a very crass way, money buys influence. And this is the worst kind of influence. Not just because it’s money — although that’s important, because money shouldn’t dictate policy — but also, because it’s preferential access, behind closed doors.’

Gostin said that such power, even if propelled by good intentions and expertise, is ‘anti-democratic, because it’s extraordinarily non-transparent, and opaque’ and ‘leaves behind ordinary people, communities and civil society’ …

[M]any global health specialists question whether the groups are capable of performing the rigorous post-mortems necessary to build a stronger global response system for the future.

‘No one’s actually holding these actors to account,’ said Sophie Harman, professor of international politics at Queen Mary University of London. ‘And they’re the ones that are really shaping our ability to respond to pandemics’ …

Without governments stepping in to take the lead on pandemic preparedness, the four organizations, along with their partners in the global health community, are the only entities that are in a position to lead in the world’s response to a devastating outbreak — again.

‘They’re funded by their own capabilities and or endowments and trusts. But when they step into multilateral affairs, then who keeps watch over them?’ a former senior U.S. official said. ‘I don’t know the answer to that. That’s quite provocative.'”

Final Thoughts

So, in the final analysis, we already have a pseudo-one world government, in the form of Gates’ NGOs. They are making health care decisions that should be left to individual nations and/or states, and they’re making decisions that will line their own pockets, regardless of what happens to the public health-wise.

They coordinate and synchronize pandemic communication during these simulated practice runs, and then, when the real-world situation emerges that fits the bill, the preplanned script is simply played out verbatim.

African nations failed to follow the script during COVID, which is why they’re focusing on African leaders in the latest simulation. They need to get rid of the African control group by getting them onboard with mass injection and all the rest. It’s basically a recruitment effort.

Lastly, between the G20 declaration to implement an international vaccine passport under the auspice of the WHO, and the WHO’s pandemic treaty, everything is lined up to take control of the next pandemic, and in so doing, further securing the foundation for a one world government.

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Notes

¹ SPARS Pandemic Scenario

² Anthony Fauci Deposition Transcript November 23, 2022

³ Catastrophic Contagion

⁴ Catastrophic Contagion Videos

⁵ CDC Enterovirus D68

⁶ CDC Enteroviruses

⁷ First Post November 19, 2021

⁸ Yahoo News November 19, 2021

⁹ medRxiv May 6, 2021

¹⁰ Infectious Diseases Now August 2021; 51(5): 418-423

¹¹ Twitter Helen Branswell December 13, 2022

¹² Asia Pacific Today August 4, 2022

¹³ Twitter Robert Malone August 7, 2022

^14, 15, 16 Politico September 14, 2022

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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As the world watches in horror Israel’s military assault on the people of Gaza, people are left to wonder why world leaders are not doing more to censure Israel and are allowing Israel to get away with mass killing.

Jeff Halper, an American-Israeli anthropologist who has written numerous books on Israeli history, has a clear answer.

He says that leaders of countries around the world are feeling more insecure as wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a tiny capitalist elite and popular disaffection and the threat of rebellion grows.

Israel is revered precisely for its mastery of population-control techniques against the Palestinians, which many leaders want to emulate against dissident or minority groups within their own borders.

Part of Israel’s ace in the hole, according to Halper, is its development of a formidable weapons industry that allows it to supply high-tech weapons to countries around the world for the purpose of population control.

Israel is at the cutting edge in the development of surveillance satellites, weaponized and surveillance drones, Artificial Intelligence (AI) target identification systems, spyware gadgets and crowd control and cyberwarfare technologies, which it sells around the world.

Israel additionally provides training to police and military forces and supplies mercenaries who can be found in presidential guards and among the enforcers of drug cartels.

Because of their heavy reliance on Israeli military aid, many countries may make a show of criticizing certain Israeli excesses but do nothing to impede them, refusing to impose economic sanctions or embargoes or trying to cut Israel off from world trade.

Halper spoke during a webinar on December 6 sponsored by the War Industries Resistance Network and Massachusetts Peace Action. His presentation included a map which showed the huge number of countries to which Israel sells weapon systems.

Among them are countries run by dictators to which even the U.S. refuses to sell weapons, like Equatorial Guinea and Myanmar.

Israel is also China’s number two arms supplier and the top supplier to India, which purchases more than $1 billion per year.

Additionally, Israel is a supplier of arms to South Korea, Brazil, Russia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Turkey and Azerbaijan which used the arms to brutalize Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh.

Halper sees Israel as a key global enforcer of the world capitalist system whose arm sales extend to 191 countries (up from 130 eight years ago).

The Occupied Territories have functioned as a laboratory for testing new weapons and counterinsurgency techniques by Israel which collaborates closely with the U.S. military and allows for testing of its new weapon systems.

U.S. leaders are in love with Israel because they seek to emulate Israel’s success against the Palestinians in asymmetrical warfare, which they have failed at miserably in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and before that Vietnam.

U.S. leaders also see as a model for the U.S.-Mexico border the censor-laden wall that Israel built surrounding Gaza.

Halper warned that we are in danger of “all being Palestinized.”

All of this is by a global capitalist elite and its political representatives who are adopting ever more repressive measures in an attempt to sustain their wealth and power.

Funding Your Own Assassins

Israel’s claim to be fighting in Gaza in self-defense is undercut by the emergence of new details about its role in funding and propping up Hamas.

On December 10, The New York Times published an article entitled “‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas” by Mark Mazetti and Ronen Bergman.

The article noted that, “for years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip—money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.” So too did three American presidents—Barack Obama, Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden.

According to the Times, much of the money was dispensed to Hamas from suitcases by Qatari officials who were escorted into Gaza by the Mossad. The money allowed Hamas to divert some of its own budget toward military operations targeting Israel, including the October 7 attacks.

CovertAction Magazine has previously detailed how the Israeli billionaire class, whom Benjamin Netanyahu represents, has sought a state of permanent war as part of their governing strategy.

The billionaires grow rich from war and the Israeli war industry, and the creation of a terrorist threat legitimizes expanded military operations designed to wipe out the Palestinians and enhance the goal of establishing a “Greater Israel.”

Israel had been gripped with massive protests on the eve of the Israel-Gaza War against rising inequality and the attempt to subordinate Israel’s judiciary to the executive branch, with Netanyahu personally facing corruption charges.

Once the war broke out, the protests dissipated and Netanyahu could play his familiar role of uniting Israelis of all class backgrounds against a foreign enemy—which conveniently he and his ruling circle had helped to empower.

The October 31 issue of The New York Times had an article tellingly titled “They Refused to Serve. Now They’re Supporting Israel’s War Effort.” It profiled former coordinators of the anti-Netanyahu street protests who had once vowed not to serve in the IDF, but who were now supporting Israel’s war effort in reaction to the Tribe of Nova massacre and helping to organize clothing and military equipment drives for soldiers on the front lines of the war in Gaza.

No wonder then that Netanyahu’s government ignored warnings of the impending Hamas attack!

A Times article on December 20 was titled “After the Oct. 7 Attacks, Israelis Are Becoming More Politically Conservative.”

It emphasized that a) Israel’s peace camp had been driven virtually underground after the October 7 attacks; b) that being a leftist had now become a dirty word; and that c) Israelis had moved decidedly to the right on a number of issues, including support for settlers in the West Bank, endorsement of far-right politicians, and even the reestablishment of a military occupation of Gaza.

Tai Schneider, a columnist for the Times of Israel was quoted as saying “the trauma of what happened on Oct. 7 shifted Israeli society. It made them question the most basic tenets of whether they were safe in their homes. They are calling now for more—more military, more protection–more hard-line policies.”^[1] This is similar in many ways to what happened in the United States vis-à-vis 9/11.

The Times in its December 10 article emphasized as a motive for Netanyahu’s funding of Hamas his goal of wanting to establish a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

In 2012, Netanyahu told Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that having two strong rivals, including Hamas which does not recognize Israel’s legitimacy, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.

Shlomo Brom, a retired general and former deputy to Israel’s national security adviser, said that “one effective way to prevent a two-state solution is to [create a] divide between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.” The division gives Mr. Netanyahu an excuse to disengage from peace talks, noting that he can say, “I have no partner.”^[2]

This motive is totally perverse and undermines Netanyahu’s claim to have launched military operations to protect Israeli security— from an enemy that he financed, no less.

Chaos Agents

Netanyahu’s critics include Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, who stated that Israel was “controlled by “chaos agents” whose goal is to create a “human disaster” in Gaza, because “from the chaos we shall start again.”

“This is exactly the theory of the most radical, fundamental Muslim organizations,” of ISIS and al-Qaeda, Ayalon said.

He added that it is foolish to go to war without defining a political goal: “The military goal is never the end goal, military is a tool, war is not the objective…. Victory is never measured in military terms. So when we say ‘the day after,’ we are trying to define the concept of victory, and we are not doing it. It’s a huge failure.”

Dethrone King Bibi

On December 25, Haaretz’ lead editorial was titled “Dethrone King Bibi.” It argued that the conditions exist to resume the huge protests against Netanyahu and his government that shook Israel for months before October 7.

At that time, the protests were focused against Bibi’s dictatorial “judicial reform;” now, their focus will be “King Bibi’s” responsibility for creating the conditions that led to October 7 and the current war.

Haaretz wrote that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the one who bears the greatest blame for the security, diplomatic and social failures that led to the October 7 massacre and the outbreak of war. The thousands who protested on Saturday night in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Caesarea, calling for him to be deposed, prove that conditions have matured for the protests to be resumed and to expand the ranks of those taking to the streets.”

Haaretz went on to note that Netanyahu accepts no responsibility for that disaster of October 7, but blames the IDF, the intelligence services, the Oslo peace accords and “Yitzhak Rabin and those who continued his path,” the Israeli daily writes, and adds: “All of the above is enough without saying a word about the judicial coup he advanced in the service of the extreme Kahanist right, with its appetite for annexation and Jewish supremacy.”

Haaretz concluded by stating that “the time has come to demand from the one who wrought disaster on the State of Israel to vacate his throne and allow others the chance to repair what he has destroyed.”

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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

1. Sherra Frenkel, “After the Oct. 7 Attacks, Israelis Are Becoming More Politically Conservative,” The New York Times, December 20, 2023, A8. 

2. Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Netanyahu’s finance minister, put the Israeli strategy bluntly in 2015 when he said: “The Palestinian Authority is a burden,” while “Hamas is an asset.” 

Featured image is from globalchallenges.ch

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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. But the milky confidence curdled, as with much else with tech assets, leading to the company stock falling by as much as 87% of value. But this is the sort of language that delights the economy boffins no end, a bloodless exercise that ignores what Palantir really does.

The surveillance company initially cut its teeth on agendas related to national security and law enforcement through Gotham. A rather dry summation of its services is offered by Adrew Iliadis and Amelia Acker:

“The company supplies information technology solutions for data integration and tracking to police and government agencies, humanitarian organizations, and corporations.”

Founded in 2003 and unimaginatively named after the magical stones in The Lord of the Rings known as “Seeing Stones” or palantíri, its ambition was to remake the national security scape, a true fetishist project envisaging technology as deliverer and saviour. While most of its work remains painfully clandestine, it does let the occasional salivating observer, such as Portugal’s former Secretary of State or European Affairs Bruno Maçães, into its citadel to receive the appropriate indoctrination.

It’s impossible to take any commentary arising from these proselytised sorts seriously, but what follows can be intriguing. “The target coordination cycle: find, track, target, and prosecute,” Maçães writes for Time, reflecting on the technology on show at the company’s London headquarters. “As we enter the algorithmic age, time is compressed. From the moment the algorithms set to work detecting their targets until these targets are prosecuted – a term of art in the field – no more than two or three minutes elapse.” Such commentary takes the edge of the cruelty, the lethality, the sheer destruction of life that such prosecution entails.

While its stable of government clients remain important, the company also sought to further expand its base with Foundry, the commercial version of the software.“Foundry helps businesses make better decisions and solve problems, and Forrester estimated Foundry delivers a 315% return on investment (ROI) for its users,” writes Will Healy, whose commentary is, given his association with Palantir, bound to be cherubically crawling while oddly flat.

This tech beast is also claiming to march to a more moral tune, with Palantir Technologies UK Ltd announcing in April that it had formed a partnership with the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (OPG) to “enable investigators on the ground and across Europe to share, integrate, and process all key data relating to more than 78,000 registered war crimes.”

The company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Alexander C. Karp, nails his colours to the mast with a schoolboy’s binary simplicity. “The invasion of Ukraine represents one of the most significant challenges to the global balance of power.  To that end, the crimes that are being committed in Ukraine must be prosecuted.”

Having picked the Ukrainian cause as a beneficial one, Palantir revealed that it was “already helping Ukraine militarily, and supporting the resettlement of refugees in the UK, Poland and in Lithuania.” For Karp, “Software is a product of the legal and moral order in which it is created, and plays a role in defending it.”

Such gnomic statements are best kept in the spittoon of history, mere meaningless splutter, but if they are taken seriously, Karp is in trouble. He is one who has admitted with sissy’s glee that the “core mission of our company always was to make the West, especially America, the strongest in the world, the strongest it’s ever been, for the sake of global peace and prosperity”. Typically, such money-minded megalomaniacs tend to confuse personal wealth and a robber baron’s acquisitiveness with the more collective goals of peace and security. Murdering thieves can be most moral, even as they carry out their sordid tasks with silver tongs.

When Google dropped Project Maven, the US Department of Defense program that riled employees within the company, Palantir was happy to offer its services. It did not matter one jot that the project, known in Palantir circles as “Tron”, was designed to train AI to analyse aerial drone footage to enable the identification of objects and human beings (again bloodless, chilling, instrumental). “It’s commonly known that our software is used in an operational context at war,” Karp is reported as saying. “Do you really think a war fighter is going to trust a software company that pulls the plug because something becomes controversial with their life? Currently, when you’re a war fighter your life depends on your software.”

War is merely one context where Palantir dirties the terrain of policy. In 2020, Amnesty International published a report outlining the various human rights risks arising from Palantir’s contracts with the US Department of Homeland Security. Of particular concern were associated products and services stemming from its Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Human rights groups such as Mijente, along with a number of investors, have also noted that such contracts enable ICE to prosecute such activities as surveillance, detentions, raids, de facto family separations and deportations.

In 2023, protests by hundreds of UK health workers managed to shut down the central London headquarters of the tech behemoth. The workers in question were protesting the award of a £330 million contract to Palantir by the National Health Service (NHS) England. Many felt particularly riled at the company, given its role in furnishing the Israeli government with such military and surveillance technology, including predictive policing services. The latter are used to analyse social media posts by Palestinians that might reveal threats to public order or praise for “hostile” entities.

As Gaza is being flattened and gradually exterminated by Israeli arms, Palantir remains loyal, even stubbornly so. “We are one of the few companies in the world to stand and announce our support for Israel, which remains steadfast,” the company stated in a letter to shareholders. With a record now well washed in blood, the company deserves a global protest movement that blocks its appeal and encourages a shareholder exodus.

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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 is from Shutterstock

Quella condotta da Israele a Gaza viene definita dal Washington Post “una delle guerre più distruttive di questo secolo”. Questa guerra – attuata da Israele col pieno sostegno di USA NATO e UE – ha provocato finora nella popolazione palestinese oltre 20.000 morti e 55.000 feriti gravi, che per la maggior parte non sopravviveranno dato che le forze israeliane distruggono sistematicamente gli ospedali di Gaza. Donne e bambini rappresentano il 70% dei morti. Circa 2 milioni di persone, corrispondenti all’85% della popolazione, sono sfollati. Aumentano allo stesso tempo i raid israeliani in Cisgiordania.

Su questo sfondo il premier Netanyahu enuncia, in un articolo sul Wall Street Journal, quale primo “prerequisito per la pace” la necessità che 2 “Hamas deve essere distrutto”. Egli sottolinea che “nel distruggere Hamas, Israele continuerà ad agire nel pieno rispetto del diritto internazionale.”

Dimentica Netanyahu quanto dichiarava ufficialmente nel 2019: “Chiunque voglia ostacolare la creazione di uno Stato palestinese deve sostenere Hamas e trasferire denaro ad Hamas. Questo fa parte della nostra strategia: isolare i palestinesi di Gaza dai palestinesi della Cisgiordania.” Per anni, d’accordo con Israele, il Qatar ha inviato ogni mese centinaia di milioni di dollari in contanti a Gaza per sostenere il governo di Hamas. Un documento di 40 pagine, denominato in codice dall’intelligence israeliana “Mura  di Gerico”, dimostra che Israele conosceva da oltre un anno, nei dettagli, il piano dell’attacco effettuato da Hamas il 7 Ottobre 2023. Esso è servito ai capi di Israele per giustificare “una delle guerre più distruttive di questo secolo”, il cui scopo è stato chiaro fin dall’inizio: cancellare i territori dello Stato palestinese, massacrando e deportando l’intera popolazione. Lo conferma oggi Paula Betancur dell’Alto Commissariato Onu per i Diritti Umani: “L’operazione militare israeliana a Gaza mira a deportare in massa la popolazione civile”.

La guerra israeliana per cancellare definitivamente lo Stato Palestinese si inserisce nella strategia USA-NATO-UE di mantenere con la guerra il controllo di una regione strategica, il Medioriente, in cui l’Occidente sta perdendo terreno di fronte all’avanzare dei progetti politicoeconomici, come quello dei BRICS, che stanno cambiando gli assetti mondiali.

Manlio Dinucci

VIDEO : https://www.byoblu.com/2023/12/29/medioriente%20gli%20incendiari%20gridano%20al%20fuoco%20/

First published by Global Research on June 1, 2022

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THE PLAN shows the official agenda of the World Health Organization to have ten years of ongoing pandemics, from 2020 to 2030.

This is revealed by a WHO virologist, Marion Koopmans. You will also see shocking evidence that the first pandemic was planned and abundantly announced right before it happened.

Make sure to watch, and share this everywhere.

More information, and to see all the documents in THE PLAN, go to: https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/proof

Video: The Plan 

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This article was originally published in April 2021.

In a shocking new report on the COVID-19 vaccines, it has been discovered that the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine may have long term health effects not previously disclosed, including “ALS, Alzheimer’s, and other neurological degenerative diseases.”

“The current RNA based SARSCoV-2 vaccines were approved in the US using an emergency order without extensive long term safety testing,” the report declares.

“In this paper the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was evaluated for the potential to induce prion-based disease in vaccine recipients.” Prion-based diseases are, according to the CDC, a form of neurodegenerative diseases, meaning that the Pfizer vaccine is potentially likely to cause long term damage and negative health effects with regards to the brain.

Click Below to Access Research Article by J. Bart Classen MD

This is especially concerning since the Pfizer vaccine is an mRNA vaccine, an untested type of vaccine which creates new proteins and can actually integrate into the human genome, according to a report from the National Library of Medicine. In other words, degenerative brain conditions may appear at any time in your life after receiving the vaccine.

Important article and interview.

Points to the over-counting of alleged Covid 19 deaths.  

First published on April 15, 2020.

Among 2020 Most Popular Articles

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Senator Scott Jensen represents Minnesota. He’s also a doctor. He appeared on Fox News with Laura Ingraham where he revealed a very disturbing piece of information.

Dr. Scott Jensen says the American Medical Association is now “encouraging” doctors to overcount coronavirus deaths across the country.

Jensen received a  7-page document that showed him how to fill out a death certificate as a “COVID-19 diagnosis” even when there isn’t a lab test confirming the diagnosis.

“Right now Medicare is determining that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you get $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.” (Dr. Sen. Scott Jensen, from Fox Interview)

This is absolutely bone-chilling.

Watch the interview below.

 

Original Sources: TheSpectator.info Fox News. Thanks to Wayne Dupree for bringing this article to our attention

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First published on February 13, 2022

***

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

I have to say then I mention names like Mrs Merkel, even Vladimir Putin and so on they all have been Young Global Leaders of The World Economic Forum. But what we are really proud of now with the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, President of Argentina and so on, is that we penetrate the cabinets… It is true in Argentina and it is true in France now… (Klaus Schwab)

Click here or image to access Video 

In 1992, Klaus Schwab and World Economic Forum launched a program initially called Global Leaders of Tomorrow.

In 2004, this program was turned into the Forum for Young Global Leaders (which I cover in my book The Global Coup D’Etat) –  a 5-year program of indoctrination into WEFs principles and goals.

The aim was – and is – to find suitable future leaders for the emerging global society. The program has since its inception has included politicians, business leaders, royalty, journalists, performers and other cultural influencers who have excelled in their fields but have not yet turned 40 years of age (originally 43 in order to include Angela Merkel). It has since grown into an extensive global network of dedicated leaders with enormous resources and influence, all working to implement the technocratic plans of the World Economic Forum in their respective nations and fields.

The network creates a force for worldwide influence through the combination of the individual skills and resources of its members.

As Klaus Schwab says in the introductory quote, it has become very successful.

Already in the first year, 1992, a number of highly influential candidates were elected. Among 200 selected were global profiles such as Angela Merkel, Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy, Bill Gates, Bono, Richard Branson (Virgin), Jorma Ollila (Shell Oil), and José Manuel Barroso (President of the European Commission 2004–2014).[1]

More examples of influential Young Global Leaders [2]:

Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden
Crown Prince Haakon of Norway
Crown Prince Fredrik of Denmark
Prince Jaime de Bourbon de Parme, Netherlands
Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al-Saud, Ambassador for Saudi-Arabia in USA
Jacinda Arden, Prime Minister, New Zeeland
Alexander De Croo, Prime Minister, Belgium
Emmanuel Macron, President, France
Sanna Marin, Prime Minister, Finland
Carlos Alvarado Quesada, President, Costa Rica
Faisal Alibrahim, Minister of Economy and Planning, Saudi Arabia
Shauna Aminath, Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Technology, Maldives
Ida Auken, MP, former Minister of Environment, Denmark (author to the infamous article “Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better”)
Annalena Baerbock, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Leader of Alliance 90/Die Grünen, Germany
Kamissa Camara, Minister of the Digital Economy and Planning, Mali
Ugyen Dorji, Minister of Domestic Affairs, Bhutan
Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Canada
Martín Guzmán, Minister of Finance, Argentina
Muhammad Hammad Azhar, Minister of Energy, Pakistan
Paula Ingabire, Minister of Information and communications technology and Innovation, Rwanda
Ronald Lamola, Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, South Africa
Birgitta Ohlson, Minister for European Union Affairs 2010–2014, Sweden
Mona Sahlin, Party Leader of the Social Democrats 2007–2011, Sweden
Stav Shaffir, Leader of the Green Party, Israel
Vera Daves de Sousa, Minister of Finance, Angola
Leonardo Di Caprio, actor and Climate Activist
Mattias Klum, photographer and Environmentalist
Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba
Larry Page, Founder of Google
Ricken Patel, Founder of Avaaz
David de Rothschild, adventurer and Environmentalist
Jimmy Wale, Founder of Wikipedia
Jacob Wallenberg, Chairman of Investor
Niklas Zennström, Founder of Skype
Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook

The purpose from the beginning has been to “identify and advance a future-oriented global agenda, focusing on issues at the intersection of the public and private sectors.”

Public–Private Partnerships is one of the cornerstones of the World Economic Forum philosophy. That is, a merger between state and large companies (also known as corporativism) with the aim of solving global problems of in a more “effective” way. The choice of leaders clearly reflects this aspiration.

The Young Global Leaders group was initially instructed to identify the major challenges of the 21st century. These included peace, the environment, education, technology and health – areas which these upcoming leaders could exploit politically, economically, and culturally in the new millennium.

Partners for Global Leaders of Tomorrow in 2000 were large global companies such as The Coca Cola Company, Ernst & Young, Volkswagen, and BP Amoco. These could contribute to the agenda by “playing an active role in developing and implementing the concept of the GLT project. The partners can therefore actively participate in the development of GLT programs; representatives of the partner companies as well as their guests are invited to GLT meetings .. ”Since the Global Leaders of Tomorrow was turned into Young Global Leaders 2004, partners such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and JPMorganChase (with alumni from the program) have also participated as sponsors.

The ultimate consequence of both public–private partnerships and these target areas is the creation of a largely tyrannical  social contract in which the individual has become subordinated to these powerful interests. Noble goals of creating a better world have also been kidnapped. This is especially evident in the context of the partnership between the WEF and the UN and the implementation of the global goals (Agenda 2030) through the application of the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

This means that the democratic principles and division of power of the 20th century have largely been completely undermined and instead replaced by a new global class that shapes our common future based on their own interests.

This has led to a de facto privatisation of both  national governments and international organisations, where lobbyists are no longer kept in the lobby but have moved into the seat of power, shaping policies directly affecting our lives. What this means has become particularly evident since the pandemic was declared in March 2020. In addition, leading multinational investment management corporations such as BlackRock, led by the World Economic Forum’s own Larry Fink, have constantly moved their positions forward.

German economist and journalist Ernst Wolff believes that many of the national leaders included in the Young Global Leader program have been selected for their willingness to carry out the tough agenda of lockdowns in recent years without asking any questions, and that their impending failure (as evidenced by in a growing dissatisfaction of the masses) will be used as an excuse to create a new form of Global Government where the old nation states become largely obsolete.

A new global digital currency with Universal Basic Income (UBI) can then be gradually introduced to replace our doomed monetary system.[3] This conclusion partly coincides with my own.

It is also supported by Paul Raskin‘s scenarios from The Great Transition Initiative on how  a totalitarian “New Earth Order” is established, to be replaced in the long run by a global democratic government (Earth Federation) with a World Constitution.[4]

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the catastrophic failure of an every-country-for-itself approach to public health, and national economic interests, rather than global needs, continue to dominate discussions of climate policy, paving the path toward climate chaos.

Under the tricameral World Parliament come the four main agencies of the Earth Federation government: the World Supreme Court system, the World Executive, the World Enforcement System, and the World Ombudsman.[5]

Glen T. Martin, The Great Transition Requires the Earth Constitution

The vision is that a peaceful and harmonious world in balance is created through the establishment of a World Federation with a World Parliament, World Government and a World Court. These are ideas that have long circulated in Club of Rome and closely connected New Age circles.

The question is how such a new global system of power would escape the fate of being kidnapped by the same interests that created our current corrupt and failing system?

This is in view of those who support projects such as The Great Transition (initiated with start-up capital from Steven Rockefeller). What is happening is rather a method of taking us to their ultimate solution in the form of a global technocratic control system.

However, it is highly unlikely that this plan will succeed. Awareness is spreading like wildfire and the panic of the elite increases as their narrative crumbles and people become more and more immune to the propaganda. Hence all the inquisitors and “fact checkers” who diligently gatekeep the narrative and help steer public opinion in the “right” direction. They are surely to be trusted since, for example, David Roy Thomson, Chairman of the Thomson Reuters Corporation, is an alumni of Global Leaders of Tomorrow, class of 1993.

It is now time to take control of our own destinies and to avoid falling into new traps.

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Thanks to investigative journalist Cory Morningstar for the clip that inspired this blog article. Follow her blog Wrong Kind of Green.

Notes

[1] World Economic Forum, GLT Class of 1993.pdf

[2] World Economic Forum, Young Global Leaders Community (searchable list over YGL alumni)

[3] Michael Lord, “Exposed: Klaus Schwab’s School For Covid Dictators, Plan for ‘Great Reset’“, RAIR Foundation, November 10, 2021

[4] Paul Raskin, Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary Civilization.pdf, Tellus Institute, Boston, 2016

[5] Glen T. Martin, The Great Transition Requires the Earth Constitution“, Great Transition Initiative, November 2021

All images in this article are from Pharos

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First published on February 4, 2022

Peter Koenig with foresight predicted what is happening worldwide

***

Introduction

Remember Bill Gates’ initiative, Agenda ID2020?

What we are confronted with now is much worse. It’s Agenda ID2020 on steroids. It’s the worldwide invasion of the QR code – QR coding of everything, including Agenda ID2020 – and all of your most intimate data, health, personal behaviors, habits – track records of where we have been and even where we may be planning to go. Nothing will escape the QR code. Nobody talks about it.

It’s been quietly sneaking into our lives, quietly, persistently – but by now almost unavoidably.

“What is the infamous ID2020?  It’s an electronic ID program that uses generalized (Covid) “vaccination” as a platform for digital identity. … The program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity.”

Agenda ID2020 aims at connecting everything with everything, eventually covering and connecting data from the planet’s 7.9 billion people, gradually building up individual, as well as societal data banks, including your highly personal data, bank account information, work information, behavioral trends, criminal records, relations with friends and family – an endless stream of everything that may be linked to an individual, or groups of individuals, and that may be watched and controlled.

See this and this.

An intense and as we know by now, coercive, even forced “vaccination” program against a virus that does not exist, accompanied by a well-studied psychological fear drive, day-in day-out, 24/7, attempting to bring people to their knees.

It’s been going on for two years. The media in charge of this campaign has been exceedingly subsidized and corrupted by the respective governments  and would one or the other of these bought media fall off the bandwagon, their existence would be wiped out in a flicker.

Forced mask wearing – dangerous, as the masks prevent the absorption of vital oxygen – and social distancing are lowering people’s self-esteem, making them even more submissive and obedient.

The government lies to the people in order to get them as soon as possible and as often as possible “vaxxed” with a so-called mRNA gene-modifying and electro-magnetic killer substance that contains graphene oxide.

This poisonous substance will literally kill people (see this –  Spanish “Fifth Column’s” findings). It is in itself a premeditated crime of unheard-of proportions, a crime against humanity. It reminds of the post-WWII Nuremberg trials of 1945-1946.

The tyranny and atrocity that has taken place over the past two years is unique in human history. It spans across the globe and, thus, in several regards surpasses the horrendous crimes of war.

The QR Code

While Agenda ID2020 has been silently adopted by most countries as a first phase of this monster surveillance program of the vaxx survivors, the time has come to universalize Agenda ID2020 into an all-encompassing uniform worldwide digitized platform called “Quick Response”, or QR code. Google calls it a barcode on steroids.

While the barcode holds information horizontally, the QR code does so both horizontally and vertically. This enables the QR code to hold exponentially more information than a barcode.

And here lays the danger: the QR code can accommodate literally all the information your life has ever produced or accumulated in a single square code, unreadable to the bare eye. It can be read only electronically by a digitized QR code reader which is set to read only specific data, as required by the authority concerned. Only the QR code central management system can read all the data.

Data Management

Mind you, in an ever more neoliberal world, outsourcing or what is euphemistically called public-private-partnership (PPP) has become the order of the day. It is very well possible that a PPP arrangement is made by a government with a large private sector agency or agencies, such as private banking and/or the insurance industry. Imagine, your personal, including very intimate private data, in the hands of a bank or insurance company. Unbelievable. But no longer very far-fetched.

The private sector may even trade it for money. Never mind the type of contract they sign with their government, in a lawless world as we have reached in just about two years, everything is possible.

No legal system works, as we are seeing everyday. No lawsuit against the current tyranny is accepted by any judge, as they are afraid of “punishment”. They have all been warned. So have all the medical and science professionals who want to stay within the system – and keep earning their and their families’ sustenance. They are being blackmailed or coerced to betray us, we the People.

The law and ethics are gone. No illusions. We are alone out there. And in many ways, that’s good, as long as we are aware and awake, and start depending on our own ingenuity, not on a corrupt system, hoping senselessly their masters will help us. Instead, we must take our lives in our own hands, search for alternatives. Breaking out of The Matrix. Take the red pill.

The system we have today will never help Us, the People. Never. To the contrary, the tarnished tenants forming the backbone of the “system”, for their sheer survival, they keep betraying Us, their colleagues and co-citizens. That’s what makes it so hard to believe. The very people we pay with our taxes are so miserably betraying us. They are trying to sell us out to the compulsory and deadly vaxx machine.

Even though, most if not all the medical doctors and scientists who opted for the blue pill (the conformists of The Matrix, movie) and whom we consult for our health, know what these so-called vaxxes do – they know, these poison concoctions result in mortality and morbidity. Are they are part of a “depopulation” initiative? Are they complicit with the system, against us?

Over the past 10 to 15 years, the QR code has gradually and silently been stealing its way into every corner of our lives. The vaxx pass, whether “vaccinated” or healed from Covid, or by having to take – or being scared into taking – multiple PCR tests, at every occasion, has been an argument to give each one of us world citizens a personalized QR code.

No matter how invalid the PCR tests are, they are pushed on us – you can’t enter any restaurants, any supermarket, any cinema, any closed area, and the list goes on, without a PCR test. So, the multiple PCR test results will be put on our individual QR code.

Nobody is really interested in the PCR test, but they are perfect pretexts to expand the data base on our QR code – where and why did we take the test?

The inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, Dr. Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winning biochemist, said way before Covid appeared on the horizon, that the PCR method was not meant to test for diseases and especially for viruses. On 7 August 2019, he was mysteriously found dead in his apartment.

This was only a few months before Event 201 (18 October 2019, in NYC) which effectively launched SARS-CoV-2, alias Covid-19.

Did the players of Event 201 already plan to use this useless test to drive up the SARS-Cov-2 “infections”, enhance the Covid statistics and spread fear – fear to facilitate the deadly vaxx drive?

The German virologist Dr. Christian Drosten, also known as the Coronavirus Czar, as part of the bought scientific clan, had indeed soon after the launching of SARS-CoV-2 decided that the PCR method was to be used massively, but massively, for the testing of the Covid virus in people, including in children as young as five years, no matter whether they had any symptoms or not.

According to real science, even including WHO and CDC, the test produces a 97% false positives. But the steamroller of the ruthless, inhuman and lawless governments pays no attention to the truth. The masters of deception continue pushing ahead with their PCR and vaxx drive, relentlessly – to increase the Covid statistics and eventually the “Covid death toll”.

The QR code is instrumental in perpetuating the lies about Covid.

By now, the QR code is everywhere

Virtually all citizens of at least the western world have a personalized QR code. It holds more, much more than health data. Payments can increasingly be made only through a QR coded message via a cell phone. Restaurants don’t give you anymore written menus. You have to scan a QR code on your smart phone. It’s all for your safety. You don’t touch potentially virus infected paper. In museums, parks, anywhere you go and want to read an information related to what you are watching, you have to scan a QR code.

The same with cash – in some places cash is no longer accepted. Official reason: Paper money and coins could be virus-infected. Digital money to be paid via QR code is the solution. People go for it. It’s so cool; just swipe your QR code in front of a payment device. The money is instantly deducted from your electronic bank account.

What (most) people do not realize is that every time you scan a QR code, it’s registered on your personalized QR code. In other words, you’re traceable wherever you go. They, the masters that be, know at every moment, real time, where you are, what you are doing, what you are buying, whether you buy an air ticket.

If you don’t behave according to the “system’s” values, they can turn off your money stream. They can indefinitely block your money or simply take it out of your account. You are totally at their mercy — enslaved. If not already, then soon, with the graphene oxide in your body, you are manipulable with the infamous and dangerous 5G ultra-short waves. Sooner or later, the QR code will be in our body, remotely accessible by artificial intelligence (AI) or robots.

You may then convert from a human to a transhuman, what Klaus Schwab – the WEF Czar — had already predicted in 2016 in an interview with Swiss French TV (first section of video below)

Video: Towards Digital Tyranny with Peter Koenig

Click here to link to bitchute version

What if you have taken the red pill and resist the mind manipulations? They may turn you off. Literally. Remotely. Your family would never know what happened.

We are not there yet. As it looks like today, it is almost impossible to get rid of the QR code. Yet we have to find ways to escape it. It may mean working towards an alternative society, detached from OWO slavehood that may descend on us, before we know it, if we keep going along with “mandates” and the all-encompassing QR code.

What can we do? We have to wake up, and those of us who are awake, help others to make that step forward and out of the comfort zone.

In parallel we have to bring the perpetrators to justice. This movement is already under way by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, the head of the German Corona Investigative Committee. Reiner Fuellmich just announced that he and a team of lawyers, scientists and witnesses are about to launch a Grand Jury, either at the International Criminal Court (ICC), The Hague, or in a newly created Court of Justice with judges who are not beholden to the dark masters of crime.

And also simultaneously, we may have to start building a new civilization, with new societies, a new beginning, outside and totally detached of the current system. This may be the biggest challenge because it will require sacrifices. It may cause misery and famine, and even death for some. Such losses may be the price as part of winning the war, if we are to escape the current flow of things – the impending One World Order – and the consequential tyranny – and enslavement, the dehumanization.

Nothing is impossible. “Venceremos!” The tide is turning – and we are entering a period of light, a bright light of a transparent new civilization, with human rights, with respect for each other and in solidarity. We may succeed, if we all put into our heads the positive and relentless thinking of VENCEREMOS – we shall overcome. Willpower, an element of quantum science, is invincible.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

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

Featured image: The CommonPass generated QR code is shown. Original image sourced from the Common Project

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Image: Netanyahu talks to Wounded Al Qaeda mercenary at Golan Heights IDF Military Field Hospital 

***

For those who have doubts concerning the criminality and insidious role of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government:  

1. Netanyahu is on Record for Supporting and Financing Hamas:  

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IMPORTANT UPDATE: GAZA HOSPITAL: THE DENIAL OF CRIMINALITY

6. Video: Israeli Air Burst Bomb Striking al-Ahli Hospital Grounds. New Evidence

Stunning new video evidence reveals that Israel is likely the culprit behind the al-Ahli hospital bombing which killed more than 500 Palestinians as they slept on the hospital courtyard grounds (right next to the parking lot that was bombed).

Most conservative media publishers in America are missing key, critical evidence that overwhelmingly points to an Israeli-launched air burst bomb being used, specifically to blame Hamas and justify further atrocities in Gaza.

VIDEO

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Just in from Al Jazeera – 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.

When, in reality, they are depriving Palestinians of their means of survival – buying food and merchandise that has not yet been banned from entering West Bank Palestine territories. Click image below to view video .

There is no end in sight for Zionist atrocities. Hence, it might be unfair to call killer-war forces Israel Defense Forces (IDF). More appropriate seems to be the term Zionist Defense Forces.

Yes, they are soldiers and must obey orders. But really? 

Foremost they are humans and have a conscience. Their mind tells them no matter how deep down, that what they are doing is wrong, is not only against any human law and reasoning, but is against the Principles of the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, laid out in the Tribunal’s Judgment of 1950.

In other words, these Israeli soldiers, many of whom do not agree with Netanyahu’s genocide policy, could leave the battlefield – legally. In fact, according to the rulings of the Nuremberg Charter, they MUST leave the battlefield, if they sense that orders they receive are against human rights and against the laws of ethics: 

It is not through “negotiations” with Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Biden, both of whom are responsible for “crimes punishable under International Law” (See Principle VI) that we will be able to put an end to the genocidal attack against the People of Palestine. 

What is required is a campaign which enables Israeli, U.S. and NATO combatants To Disobey Unlawful Orders” and “Abandon the Battlefield”.

Principle IV of the Nuremberg Charter  defines the responsibility of combatants to refuse the orders of Government or a superior … “provided a moral choice [is] possible“. 

What is required is to initiate a campaign in Israel and Worldwide to make that “moral choice” possible, to enable enlisted Israeli, American, and NATO service men and women to “Abandon the Battlefield”. (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 27, 2023)

Question, when and where does inhumanity stop and humanity begin?

What is the trigger – that starts Peace?

Is it a butterfly somewhere in Asia waving through the air that will bring a seed of Peace in the Middle East or Ukraine – or just about anywhere in the world – to start taking hold on Mother Earth’s soil and slowly grow?

It is called the butterfly effect. It obeys no rules, no digital commands, it is sheer incalculable dynamics at play.

Eventually, this growing seed may be helped by someone, who comes its way, and who will regularly nourish it with water, until the seed develops its own roots and finds its own water – and grows and grows autonomously, bigger than the tallest palm tree in the world – seeking water from deep down in the earth, so deep that no one can bar the tree’s access to its survival nutrition, WATER. 

Water is Peace – but humans MUST stand by and see to it that the seeds of Peace receive their daily portion of water to grow. It is a question of consciousness.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image is a screenshot from Al Jazeera

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On December 20 the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) held national multi-party elections in a country with a population of approximately 100 million people.

Popularly known in the past as the “Heart of Congo”, the DRC is one of the richest areas in the world regarding its strategic minerals and metals along with vast swaths of rainforests and arable land.

However, despite the wealth in natural resources, a large section of the population remains mired in poverty and insecurity. Multinational mining firms and financial institutions which facilitate their operations dominate the economy of the country like so many others across the continent.

Official results from the elections indicate that incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi is heading towards being declared the winner. There are opposition parties which have already declared the elections as fraudulent, prompting demonstrations against the administration.

The government has prohibited any protest actions related to the results of the vote calculations and criticism of the process. Some news reports claim that dozens have already been killed and injured in election-related violence.

There are several historical factors which have contributed to the current political situation in the DRC. Since its national independence from Belgium in June 1960, the former colonial power, the United States and other imperialist powers sought to undermine and subvert the trajectory being established by the first democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and his party known as the Congolese National Movement (MNC).

Lumumba was heavily influenced by the national liberation and Pan-Africanist political currents which took control of their governments from imperialism during the late 1950s. When the Ghana government under the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and its then Prime Minister Dr. Kwame Nkrumah convened the First All-African People’s Conference in Accra in December 1958, Patrice Lumumba (image right) was in attendance along with more than 60 other political parties and mass independence movements. Figures such as Guinean President Ahmed Sekou Toure, Frantz Fanon of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), Tom Mboya of the trade union movement in Kenya, among others played important roles during this period of transition from colonialism to emergent independent states.

After winning the largest bloc of votes in the June 1960 elections, a series of events occurred leading to mutinies within the Belgian-dominated security forces; the house arrest of Lumumba by the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces which had been invited into the Congo by the MNC government; Lumumba’s flight to the eastern region of the country; and the eventual capture, torture and execution of the prime minister and two of his cabinet members by the Belgians, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and their agents under the supervision of Mobuto Sese Seko and Moise Tshombe.

Mobutu’s control of the country beginning in October 1960, later named Zaire, continued the process of economic exploitation of the land and labor of the Congolese people. When Mobutu was overthrown in May 1997, Laurent Kabila, a former fighter with the Lumumba forces, became the head-of-state. However, the fallout between Kabila and the governments of Rwanda and Uganda led to a protracted military conflict which lasted from 1998-2003. The intervention of Rwanda and Uganda prompted the deployment of tens of thousands of troops from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) led by Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola.

A negotiated resolution to the war after 2003 brought about the involvement of UN peacekeepers and the eventual joining of the SADC by the DRC. Over the last two decades the instability in the eastern DRC has continued.

At present the two most formidable rebel groupings, the M23 and Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), continue to terrorize the population. The M23 has been accused of enjoying support from neighboring Rwanda while the ADF, which has its origins in Uganda, is patterned on the ISIS-affiliated organizations which arose in West Asia more than a decade ago.

Consequently, the further fracturing of the political parties contesting the recently held elections does not bode well for the future stability of the DRC. In a report published by Al Jazeera it says:

“The vote has been marred by accusations of corruption and chaotic organization since it kicked off on Wednesday, with authorities extending the poll into Thursday after some polling stations failed to open and some voters could not find their names on registers. While electoral authorities officially extended the vote only until Thursday, ballots were still being cast on Saturday in remote areas. The unscheduled extension prompted fierce pushback from opposition candidates, some of whom labelled the move unconstitutional and called for a new election.” 

Until the crises of governance in the DRC can be effectively resolved in the interests of the majority of working people, farmers and youth, the heart of Africa will continue under severe duress. An emphasis on Pan-African unification and socialism provides the only pathway towards genuine freedom and social emancipation.

SADC and Political Unity

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) was founded in 1992 in the newly independent Republic of Namibia. Previously known as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), founded in 1980 in Zambia, this sub-continental organization grew directly out of the necessities of the struggle against white-minority rule in the region during the 1980s and early 1990s.

After the overthrow of the apartheid system in South Africa in April 1994, the SADC region was poised to make progressive strides towards economic integration and political unification. Most of the member-states have periodic elections and avoid the military seizure of power. However, there have been exceptions in the case of the Kingdom of Lesotho in previous years. In addition, a rebel Al-Shabaab grouping has waged a terror campaign in the northern Cabo Delgado province of the Republic of Mozambique.

In the case of Mozambique, the government of Rwanda along with SADC military forces have been deployed to Cabo Delgado to fight the insurgents. In previous years, the rebels were able to disrupt the development of a liquified natural gas project jointly operated between the Mozambique government and the French energy corporation Total since 2017.

Nonetheless, reports emanating from the SADC during 2023 revealed that due to the intervention of the regional organization with Rwanda, the stability of northern Mozambique has been re-established. Modern Diplomacy wrote in a July article that:

“Mozambique now enjoys relative peace due to the SADC regional force. President Filipe Nyusi has been sharing this valuable experience about the use of well-constituted regional military force for enforcing peace and security in his country. Creating regional military forces to fight threats of terrorism will absolutely not require bartering the entire gold or diamond mines for the purchase of military equipment from external countries, he emphasized several times at different conferences. Now, Mozambique has relative peace and stability after the 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) had finally approved the deployment of joint military force with the primary responsibility of ensuring peace and stability, and for restoring normalcy in the Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique.” 

If this stability in Cabo Delgado proves to be sustainable it could very well serve as a model for similar crises such as the DRC. The capacity of the African Union (AU) and regional associates to resolve their own problems would mark a tremendous leap towards full unification and sovereignty.

U.S. Imperialism and the 21st Century Cold War

Washington and Wall Street are vying incessantly to reclaim influence within AU member-states in light of the public sentiment which is far more favorable towards the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. The myths of the “Chinese debt traps” have been refuted even by western media outlets.

The positions taken by the majority of African states towards the Russian special military operation in Ukraine has been geared towards a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement of the conflict. These views on Ukraine conflict with the administration of President Joe Biden.

Palestine has become the towering issue on a global scale. The U.S. posture at the United Nations has exposed for the world to see its support for genocide in Gaza and the commitment to expand the already regionalized war in West Asia. Key states such as the Algerian and South African governments have ensured that the Israelis are kept out of the deliberations of the AU.

AU member-states must be resolute in solving internal conflicts including establishing a development framework which is continental in scope. These are the lessons of the present century which must be internalized and implemented.

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

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Former Assistant U.S Attorney for the District of Delaware Lesley Wolf did not tell lawmakers why she protected Joe Biden from a planned search warrant ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Wolf testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 14 and declined to discuss an email she sent in August 2020 instructing FBI Agent Joshua Wilson to take Joe Biden’s name off a draft search warrant during the Hunter Biden investigation, according to a transcript reviewed by the Daily Caller.

“This is an email chain between you and FBI Special Agent Joshua Wilson. In the last sentence of the email that you sent, it states, ‘There should be nothing about political figure 1 in here.’ Can you tell us who political figure 1 is?” Wolf was asked.

“Looking at page 2 of the document, it would be, well, who’s described as former Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., now President Biden,” Wolf responded.

“And can you tell us why you wrote ‘There should be nothing about political figure 1 in here’?”

“So I am not able to answer questions about this particular search warrant or this particular draft,” Wolf replied. She proceeded to give a lengthy explanation of how drafting search warrants works and the requirements to obtain one.

“So in this instance, you stand by your statement that there should be nothing about political figure 1 in here?”

“I’m not able to speak to this particular warrant” Wolf said.

She insisted political bias did not play a role in her decision to have Joe Biden removed from the search warrant and referred to her opening statement where she defended herself. Throughout her testimony, she claimed her actions on the Hunter Biden case were in line with Department of Justice (DOJ) policy.

“Okay. But in your opening statement, I think you indicated that none of these decisions were made for political reasons. Is that fair to say?”

“That is reflected in my opening statement, and I agree with that,” Wolf stated.

“Okay. So to extent you didn’t you asked the agents to take out political figure 1, there was no political motivation in requesting that?”

“I refer back to my opening statement where I said at no time there was politics playing a role in those decisions,” Wolf answered.

IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler have accused Wolf of giving Hunter Biden special treatment by slow-walking and shutting down investigative steps, such as searching Joe Biden’s Delaware guest house and Hunter Biden’s northern Virginia storage locker.

She recently left the DOJ in the wake of the IRS whistleblower accusations. Wolf similarly refused to address a memo written by Shapley detailing how she ignored potential campaign finance issues surrounding Hunter Biden’s financier Kevin Morris.

The House Ways and Means Committee released a trove of documents in September provided by the IRS whistleblowers to support their initial testimony.

Among those documents was the email Wolf sent Wilson in August 2020 referring to “political figure 1” and telling him to remove the figure from the Blue Star search warrant. A draft copy of the search warrant shows “political figure one” was then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Read the email here.

“As a priority, someone needs to redraft attachment B. I am not sure what this is cut and pasted from but other than the attribution, location and identity stuff at the end, none if it is appropriate and within the scope of this warrant. Please focus on FARA evidence only.  There should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here,” Wolf emailed Wilson.

When he first testified in May, Shapley explained how Wolf and the DOJ’s stonewalling of the Blue Star search hindered the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) aspect of the Hunter Biden probe.

“On September 3rd, 2020, the slow-walking of process continued when AUSA Wolf stated that a search warrant for the emails for Blue Star Strategies was being sat on by OEO,” Shapley told the House Ways and Means Committee.

“She indicated it would likely not get approved. This was a significant blow to the Foreign Agents Registration Act piece of the investigation.”

Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings hired Blue Star to lobby the Obama administration in late 2015 ahead of then-Vice President Biden’s December 2015 trip to Ukraine. Blue Star sent Burisma Joe Biden’s talking points for the trip a few days before it took place, a memo released by the Ways and Means Committee shows.

The year before, Joe Biden used an alias to exchange dozens of emails with Hunter Biden’s business associate Eric Schwerin, with most of their communications happening around Joe Biden’s June 2014 Ukraine trip, email metadata released Dec. 5 by the Ways and Means Committee revealed.

In late 2016, Blue Star and Schwerin celebrated a “victory lap” when it appeared Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky was going to be cleared by Ukrainian authorities, emails show. Blue Star also did lobbying work for the Ukrainian prosecutor who decided to go easy on Zlochevsky, according to internal State Department emails.

The Ukrainian prosecutor who let off Zlochevsky replaced Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor who was fired after Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion of funding for Ukraine. Burisma considered Shokin a “threat” to the firm’s business, former Burisma board member and Hunter Biden business associate Devon Archer told Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson in August.

Ep. 13 Part 2. Devon Archer pic.twitter.com/R1sxSuPrKq

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 4, 2023

Archer testified before the House Oversight Committee in July and recalled how the Biden family “brand” protected Burisma from scrutiny. He also told lawmakers about a spring 2015 dinner Joe Biden attended alongside Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi.

Burisma paid Hunter Biden over $80,000 per month when his father was leading the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy, bank records indicate. His salary from Burisma dropped significantly when former President Trump took office, a federal indictment leveled against Hunter Biden in California shows.

Hunter Biden is facing nine federal tax charges in California in addition to three federal gun charges in Delaware as part of special counsel David Weiss’ ongoing criminal investigation. Weiss, the Delaware U.S. Attorney and Wolf’s old boss, defended her when he testified in November before the House Judiciary Committee, according to a transcript reviewed by the Caller.

In September, Attorney General Merrick Garland declined to answer questions about Wolf when he testified publicly before the Judiciary Committee because of alleged physical threats to her safety.

Garland appointed Weiss special counsel in August after the IRS whistleblowers first came forward and Hunter Biden’s guilty plea deal in Delaware for two tax misdemeanor charges collapsed in federal court.

Delaware U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika derailed Hunter Biden’s guilty plea arrangement by scrutinizing a prosecutorial immunity provision inside of a pretrial diversion agreement for a felony gun charge tied to the guilty plea arrangement.

Wolf declined to answer specific questions surrounding the diversion agreement and instead made general claims about her understanding of pretrial diversion agreements.

Christopher J. Clark, Hunter Biden’s defense attorney at the time, subsequently withdrew from the case because of his role in the failed negotiations.

Wolf played a central role in orchestrating the guilty plea and diversion agreement after spending years on the Hunter Biden case, Politico first reported. Clark submitted a court filing Dec. 11 confirming Wolf’s central role in the negotiations to support Hunter Biden’s attempt to get the Delaware gun charges dismissed. His legal team has argued the diversion agreement is still legally binding.

House Republicans released a lengthy report Dec. 5 detailing how testimony from Weiss and other DOJ, FBI and IRS officials confirmed significant allegations brought forward by the IRS whistleblowers prior to Weiss’ special counsel appointment. Shapley and Ziegler said in a statement after the Dec. 7 California indictment they had been vindicated.

The White House pushed back against the IRS whistleblower allegations and the House GOP in a Dec. 5 memo circulated by spokesperson Ian Sams.

Hunter Biden is suing the IRS for alleged illegal disclosures by the whistleblowers. Ziegler has accused Hunter Biden of trying to silence them with the lawsuit.

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Henry Rodgers contributed to this report.

James Lynch can be reached on Twitter @jameslynch32.

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Once upon a time, a man entered a store.

Behind the counter stood an angel, whom he asked: “What do you have to offer me?”

The angel replied: “Anything you want, and for free.”

Then the man called out:

“If so, I would like to have for myself and all beings in the whole world,

Good health, and enough to eat, and clean water, and freedom, and love,

and no one who is lonely and must endure pain or suffering,

and bright children’s eyes, and a smile every day,

and a healthy nature, and happiness, and good air, and no more poverty,

and no more war, and, and, and….”

Then the angel interrupted him:

“Dear person, we don’t offer finished products here.

We only carry seeds.”

Translated from German by Peter Koenig

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The Ukrainian conflict would have meant a return to the Cold War between Russia and the US and a return to the Doctrine of Containment, the foundations of which were laid out by George F. Kennan ( image below) in his essay “The Sources of Soviet Behavior” published in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1947 and whose main ideas are summarized in the quote “Soviet power is impervious to the logic of reason but very sensitive to the logic of force.”

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.

Thus, such actors would be desperately trying to involve NATO in the Ukrainian conflict, with which the jester Zelensky would already be for the US a burden from which it is appropriate to detach immediately, not being ruled out that he should be accused of corruption and forced into exile in the US.

The loss of control of Congress by the Democrats after the mid-term elections in November has meant that the Republicans are overseeing future arms aid to Ukraine, estimated to date at $90 billion and in effect until December, as well as a growing wave of political disaffection with Zelensky that would span the entire American political spectrum. Thus, Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in an interview in ” New Statesman” stated that “the US is sending 113 billion dollars to Ukraine when a quarter of American citizens go to bed hungry.”

On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump said in his networks that “we have never been so close to World War III” and that there must be a “total commitment to dismantle the globalist neoconservative power group responsible for dragging the world into endless wars.”

Likewise, the Republican candidate Ron DeSantis, affirmed that “Washington has many vital national interests, but getting even more entangled in the territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”

The coup de grace to Ukraine would be Congress’s recent rejection of Biden’s proposed aid of $80 billion more in military or humanitarian aid to Kiev, due to the frontal opposition of the radical Republican wing of Congress led by Donald Trump, with the avowed aim of stifling Zelensky from economic starvation to force him to sign a peace agreement with Putin. Moreover, military aid to Israel following the invasion of the Gaza Strip will absorb a significant part of the US military budget, so it could accelerate the personal encounter between Biden and Putin, which would lead in mid-2024 to a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia that ends the Ukrainian dispute, already considered by the US as a drag due to spending due to the unaffordable expense involved.

Netanyahu, the Last Jewish King

Netanyahu, a nefarious politician who tried to strike an autocratic coup to later establish a presidential regime and implement the atavism of Greater Israel, could face a criminal trial in which he will be accused of negligence and crimes against human rights, which could mean a criminal conviction and his definitive departure from the Israeli political scene.

Thus, taking advantage of the alleged security holes in the Israeli Defense caused by the schism between the reservists and Netanyahu, the armed wing of the Islamist group Hamas, launched the largest military offensive since 2007 with the infiltration of tens of its members in Israeli localities and the launching of thousands of projectiles against large areas, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with the result about 1400 Israeli victims and more than 200 hostages.

Netanyahu, using the invisible dictatorship of fear of the Third Holocaust, came from Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran, took advantage of the bloody incursion of Hamas to declare the State of War (defense of Israel’s security) and unleash a crushing offensive in the Gaza Strip that would increase his lost popularity with his failed legal reform and allow him to bypass the judicial process in which he is accused of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Thus, all basic infrastructure, schools, mosques, hospitals and 80 per cent of Gaza’s buildings would have been razed by the systematic bombing of Israeli aircraft, with the result of more than 20,000 Palestinian civilian casualties and several thousand more buried in the rubble, Massacre that will have as collateral a new nakba in which 1.5 million Palestinians will be forced to leave a Gaza turned into a mass of rubble and human remains that will make it impossible for the displaced Gazan population to return.

However, after the invasion of Gaza by Israel, the disaffection of a civil society that cannot forgive the security failures in the Israeli Defence that would have led to the killing of 1400 Israelis and the kidnapping of more than 200 months of people by Hamas would be exacerbated.Thus,the newspaper Haaretz would have become the champion of the defense of democratic values and in an editorial of October 8 directly accused Netanyahu of being “responsible for this war between Israel and Gaza”, so the Netanyahu government would have imposed a financial punishment.

Moreover, Israeli public opinion would already be holding Netanyahu responsible for the shocking Israeli security failure by belittling the Egyptian reports that 10 days earlier allegedly warned Netanyahu that Hamas was preparing a major offensive against Israel, which was denied by Netanyahu in a tweet in which he accused the intelligence services of negligence, getting to antagonize the powerful services of the Israeli Mossad. Thus, according to a survey by The Jerusalem Post, 80% of those polled say that “the Government is mainly responsible for the infiltration of Palestinian militias” and 56% think that “Netanyahu should resign at the end of the current war.”

Netanyahu would already be cornered by the international community’s repulsion of the flagrant violation of human rights in Gaza with nearly 20,000 civilian victims and the US as the only supporter before the UN, so the Biden Administration is desperately trying to get a declaration of “indefinite truce” which would allow the exchange of Jewish hostages still held by Hamas as well as restore the circulation of humanitarian aid trucks for about 1 million Palestinians confined in a space of 7 Km 2 next to the Rafah border crossing, with which Biden would aim an important diplomat and wash his image before the world.

In this context, we are witnessing the unfortunate death by the Tzahal of three of the Jewish hostages by confusing them with members of Hamas. As a result, the mobilizations of the relatives of the people kidnapped by Hamas at the residence of Netanyahu who are made “personally responsible for their return home alive” have increased. Consequently, the disaffection of Israeli society towards Netanyahu due to his nefarious management of the crisis with Hamas and the zero interest in rescuing the Jewish hostages alive, could provoke the resignation of his Government and the subsequent convocation of new elections that facilitate the formation of a new Government of Salvation, whose primary task would be to reedit the Oslo Accords that allow the coexistence of Two peoples in Two states.

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Germán Gorraiz Lopez is a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Indian diplomacy is ending 2023 with a momentous turnaround. What began as a course correction necessitated by the torrential flow of events in West Asia is assuming strategic overtones. 

Truly, the aberration in India’s policies can be traced to the UPA rule (2004-2014) but it is under the period since then 2014 that they accentuated phenomenally and began creating contradictions undermining national interests. This aberration also led to a serious erosion of India’s strategic autonomy in a transformative international environment. 

India’s voting pattern in the United Nations with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict is lately marked by a calibrated distancing from Israel. Only a few weeks ago, Israel’s ambassador in Delhi bullishly described the Indian stance as one of “100% support” to his country. But that is no more the case today. 

Delhi has rejected the repeated Israeli entreaties to declare Hamas as a terrorist organisation, marking its independent opinion regarding the ecosystem of resistance movements. Indeed, this is a highly significant distinction that Delhi is making vis-a-vis the Israeli and Western narrative about Hamas. Although India has not hesitated to condemn the violence directed against Israel on October 7, it refused to name Hamas. 

Considering that Hamas had a chequered past of receiving patronage from Israel, Tel Aviv has no right to expect Delhi to dance to its tunes. Equally, Hamas’ future is far from an open and shut case. The fact that Sinn Fein and Irish opinion has shown empathy towards Hamas, or that South Africa, which has itself been a victim of apartheid, has recalled its ambassador and diplomatic mission to Israel, calling the horrific Gaza killings as “genocide,” go to show that the embers of national liberation struggle are still burning.  

Although India expressed “solidarity” with the Israeli people over the brutal violence on October 7, it cannot condone the vastly disproportionate Israeli retaliation since then, blithely calling it a matter of Israel’s ‘right to self-defence’. On December 13, India voted in favour of a resolution in the UN General Assembly that demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict. 

This was the first time India supported such a resolution since the war broke out more than two months ago. Such a stance puts India on the right side of history, as the 193-member UNGA overwhelmingly adopted the resolution at an emergency special session, with 153 nations voting in its favour.

A third aspect is that from a geopolitical perspective, Delhi has marked its distance from the US-Israeli campaign branding Iran as the instigator of extremist groups acting against Israel. Interestingly, on December 19, India was one of only thirty states — along with Russia and China — who voted against a UN resolution on “the human rights situation in Iran.”

The running thread here is that India has reverted to its traditional stance on the Palestine problem and jettisoned the tilt supportive of Israeli interests. The unprecedented unity among the Arab countries, the close coordination between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the huge groundswell of opinion in the Arab world against Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian populations in Gaza and West Bank — all this has created a new momentum in Middle East politics that has pitchforked the Palestine problem to the centre stage, which is something India cannot afford to ignore. 

Nor can Delhi be oblivious of the new reality that something has fundamentally changed in the dynamics of the Palestine problem after the events since October 7. The Israeli ploys of dissimulation and evasiveness and deliberate wrecking of dialogue process and negotiations may no longer work. Indeed, Israel’s overwhelming military superiority vis-a-vis its Arab neighbours has lost its relevance. Coupled with the US’ loss of influence and America’s waning global hegemony alongside the sharp polarisation of opinion within Israel itself internally add up to create grave uncertainties regarding the future of the state of Israel as it exists today. 

Suffice to say, India feels the need to adapt to the new conditions in West Asia where regional countries prefer to settle their issues by themselves, which in turn undermines the rationale behind the creation of Israel as a cockpit of western strategic interests. The way out of this impasse lies in Israel reinventing itself. But the near civil war conditions in the country won’t permit that to happen. 

An immediate fallout of all this is going to be that India is unlikely to join the US-led alliance in the Red Sea gearing up to wage a war on terror against the Houthis of Yemen. This is despite the US efforts to involve the Quad countries in the Red Sea operations. By the way, both Japan and Australia have dissociated themselves from joining the US-led coalition of the willing. Once again, Delhi will be guided by the consideration that the US’s ill-fated move to use military power against the Houthis has no takers among the regional states. 

The US naval enterprise in the Red Sea is struggling to be born. The well-known ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson has written that

“On paper it would appear that Yemen is outnumbered and seriously outgunned. A sure loser? Not so fast. The U.S. Navy, which constitutes the majority of the fleet sailing against Yemen, has some real vulnerabilities that will limit its actions.”

Johnson cites the expert opinion of Cdr. Anthony Cowden, a US Naval Reserve Officer, that given the current configuration of the US Navy as a ‘forward-based navy’ — as distinct from an ‘expeditionary navy’ — “US Navy no longer has sufficient capability for sustaining expeditionary operations.” 

After all, the Chief of Staff of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Mohammad Reza Naqdi was not far off the mark when he warned last week that the US and its allies are “trapped” in the Red Sea and should prepare for the closure of waterways stretching all the way to the western gates of the Mediterranean Sea. 

The Indian defence and security establishments have been unabashed votaries of India’s strategic ties with Israel. Such excessive adulation of the Israeli model as worthy of emulation by India was built on sheer naïveté, completely overlooking that the two countries operate under vastly different conditions and national ethos. It is patently absurd that India can emulate Israeli methods of brutal repression or assassination as part of statecraft, apartheid policies and so on and get away with it. 

The incidents of October 7 have been an eye opener for Indians, which has exposed not only Israel’s frailties as a modern state but also its military’s bluster and intelligence’s failure. The acolytes of Israel in the Indian strategic community feel utterly disillusioned. Simply put, an influential constituency in India and the interest groups that it spawned are no longer calling the shots in Delhi. This is going to be consequential. 

At the same time, the entire ideological underpinning of the present government’s tilt towards the Israeli leadership under Benjamin Netanyahu is unravelling. In a brilliant essay recently, the well-known French scholar and author on right-wing politics in India, Christophe Jaffrelot wrote that the emerging India-Israel alliance during the recent years was anchored not only on the two ruling elites’ hostility to Islam but also on affinities between Hindutva and Zionism, characterised by “ethno-nationalist ideologies that prioritise factors like race, territory and nativism.” 

Going forward, such affinities are going to be hard for the Indian elite to sustain, leave alone openly flaunt, as Israel turns into an apartheid state and gets battered by the forces of history.  

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The financial crisis of 2007–08, the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, badly damaged the international capitalist system and led to further erosion of confidence in the United States among its allies. US credibility was already undermined by its completely unjustified invasion of Iraq in 2003, and over the past 20 years America’s position has been declining as the single global power.

Following the 9/11 (11 September 2001) terrorist attacks against America, democratic institutions within the country have been regressing further. American scholar Francis Fukuyama admitted in 2014 that the decline of democracy in the US was more advanced than in other affluent Western countries.

Fukuyama highlighted the worsening corruption and incompetence within Washington, which was resulting in growing levels of inequality and the accumulation of money in fewer hands. By 2014 chief executives of the biggest American companies were paid 331 times more than the typical worker. The concentration of wealth among elites was also enabling them to manipulate the political structures to their advantage.

In 2022 there were more than 12,500 registered lobbyists in the US, groups who try to influence government policy, whereas in 1971 a modest 171 lobbyists were in existence. Economics expert Nouriel Roubini, who is based in New York, said in January 2015 that it would be very difficult for the US to remedy its huge problems with inequality because the country’s political system was centred on “legalized corruption”.

The US is recognised to have the world’s largest economy, but living standards in Russia have improved much more so by comparison to America over the past two decades. In 1998 the number of Russians living below the poverty line was at more than 35%, mainly because of the USSR’s collapse and implementation in the 1990s of neoliberal policies endorsed by the West. This century under president Vladimir Putin’s government by 2013 the poverty rate in Russia was reduced to 11.2%, and in 2022 only 9.8% of Russians were impoverished. In addition, the average yearly wage of a Russian citizen by 2017 was almost twice larger than what it had been during 2005.

In America in 2002 the poverty rate stood at 12.1%, and by 2022 it was slightly higher at 12.4%, revealing that there are more poor people in America than in Russia. The poverty rate in Russia is also lower than in EU states like France, where 14.6% of the population was living in poverty in 2020. Relating to China it is predicted that its economy could become the world’s biggest before long; but consistently in recent years the average yearly income of a Russian adult has been quite close to double that of a Chinese adult, as outlined by annual UN human development reports.

Russia belongs to the very high human development category while China is placed a bit lower down, in high human development. In recent decades China has undoubtedly achieved significant social advances and wealth, but the country still has some way to go. Extensive media coverage has been given to China’s neighbour, India, often pertaining to the continued expansion of India’s economy over the past generation. Yet a Russian citizen earns on average per year almost four times more than an Indian citizen.

From the early 1980s under the neoconservative Reagan administration, inequality levels grew dramatically in America, and also to a slightly lesser extent in European nations. President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies went a long way to wiping out middle-income families in the US, while the most telling legacy of his British counterpart during the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher, was in the record levels of inequality that occurred in England when she was prime minister.

The lobbying groups in Washington have helped to craft legislation with the cash they give to politicians. Those with the financial means have a prominent role in dictating policy, as opposed to those who lack resources, which means the US is “not a true democracy, it’s a plutocracy”, Roubini noted.

Across much of America, factories were shut down and jobs shifted to cheaper sources overseas, resulting in deindustrialisation and urban decay. The two political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, have increasingly relied on the same sources of funding such as from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, Israeli-linked groups, along with cash from energy and mining companies and agribusiness.

The system for funding elections in the US makes political candidates favourable to those with the biggest purses. Between 2007 and 2008, Barack Obama’s election campaign received millions of dollars from major banks and corporations like Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, JP Morgan Chase, and Citigroup.

The campaign of Obama’s rival, John McCain, received less funding from the same companies because they distrusted backing another Republican politician due to the unpopularity of the outgoing president George W. Bush, himself a Republican.

On 1 May 2008 an opinion poll by CNN/Opinion Research Corp stated that 71% of Americans disapproved of Bush’s performance, and that he ranked as the least popular president in modern American history. By mid-January 2009 Bush’s approval rating was at 22%.

Political and ideological differences between parties in the West have mostly disappeared since the 1980s, with many social democrat and communist parties having either fragmented or vanished altogether. The ideology that has persisted most of all in Western countries, liberalism, and which has become more entrenched with each passing year, is borne out by “movements” like lgbt, same-sex marriage, wokism, etc.

These activities have gained substantial public support in nations such as America and Britain, encouraged by the mass media and liberal philanthropists like George Soros. He has provided particularly big funding down the years for the above actions.

The general public is pressured into supporting lgbt and same-sex rights, which takes their attention away from important issues like unemployment, declines in biodiversity, and so on. A person’s sexual orientation should of course not be advertised like a company slogan but should be strictly a private affair.

Western leaders are fond of boasting about the supposed freedom and openness of their societies, but there are in fact severe and growing restrictions for example on freedom of speech. Any public figure who has the temerity to criticise lgbt organisations is likely to be condemned and isolated.

The spread of liberalism in the West has coincided with a sharp decline in church membership and support for Christianity. Thousands of churches permanently close every year in the most powerful Western nation, the US, and less than half of Americans say they now belong to a house of worship.

From 2010 to 2020, between 3,850 to 7,700 places of worship were estimated to have closed each year in the US, amounting to between 75 to 150 congregations disappearing per week. In 1937 US church membership stood at 73%. The figure was still as high as 70% in 1999 before falling to 46% by 2022. This downward trend is expected to continue.

There is a steep fall too in the number of Americans who regard themselves as Christians; in the early 1990s around 90% of Americans identified as Christians, in 2007 it was down to 78%, and by 2020 the figure had dropped to 64%. The declining influence of WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon protestants) in America, those who had traditionally run the country, seemed to be summarised by the 2008 presidential election victory of Obama, an African-American.

A considerable number of Americans belonging to the WASP category, and who may have had racist prejudices, struggled to cope in their minds with an African-American as the country’s leader. This was a key factor in the formation in 2009 of the hardline Tea Party phenomenon within the Republican Party.

Obama’s predecessor, Bush, enjoyed critical support from white evangelical Christians which helped him to win the presidency in 2000 and to be re-elected in 2004. Bush received 68% of the white evangelical vote in 2000, rising to 78% four years later. Karl Rove, the senior adviser to Bush, believed that the backing of white Christians was decisive in Bush’s election successes.

Racism has long influenced the opinions of some white Americans and a study conducted in 2011, with input from Stanford University and the University of Michigan, outlined that 51% of Americans had prejudices towards black people. This was an increase from 48% in 2008 when Obama was set to win the presidency.

The black community accounts for about 13% of the total American population, whereas three-quarters of the population is classed as white. Despite the disparity, black people in America are sent to prison at five times the rate of white Americans and by 2019 nearly a third of all inmates in US prisons were African-Americans; while the number of black people living in poverty in America is much higher than the poverty level of whites.

Regarding US imprisonment practices abroad, in 2006 president Bush signed the Military Commissions Act while the US Congress approved the National Defense Authorization Act, which effectively legitimised human rights violations including the imprisonment of “suspected terrorists” captured after the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Already between 2002 and 2004, dozens of prisoners under the age of 18 were held in the US-run Guantanamo Bay military prison in south-eastern Cuba. By 2008 an estimated 21 children were still kept as prisoners in Guantanamo which has a notorious record concerning human rights.

Cuba itself had come under US control in 1898, when the Americans invaded Cuba on the pretext of freeing the island from Spanish colonialism. Washington’s aim consisted of assuming full authority over Cuba as part of its imperialist foreign policy. There were no historical or cultural links between the US and Cuba, as prior to 1898 Cuba had been under Spanish rule for around four centuries.

After the victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959 the US has to present times retained control over Guantanamo Bay, where the Americans have had a naval base since 1903. Continued US military occupation of Guantanamo is intended to undermine the Cuban economy, and to prevent Cuba’s government from developing that part of the island.

An American presence in Guantanamo is part of Washington’s encirclement strategy of Cuba and punishment of the country for its “successful defiance” of US hegemony over the Western hemisphere.

The US Supreme Court has stated that it can’t rule on the rights of prisoners held at Guantanamo, because the area does not fall under American jurisdiction as it is not part of the territory of America. The Bush administration and the US Congress had in effect said that Guantanamo is not under international law, so it has been a convenient place to send prisoners to.

Along with Guantanamo, the Americans established prisons in European nations such as Romania, Lithuania and Poland, and in parts of Asia and North Africa. The CIA extradited alleged terrorists to states like Pakistan, Thailand and Morocco, allowing the local security forces to interrogate the prisoners and in some cases inflict physical abuses on them.

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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.

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

Sources

“Do you happen to be a member of a church or a synagogue? Church membership among Americans 1992-2022”, Statista, 2 June 2023

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer; 1st edition, 23 June 2017)

“George Floyd: How are African-Americans treated under the law?”, BBC, 21 April 2021

Keith Bolender, Cuba under Siege (Palgrave Macmillan, 5 December 2012)

John Pilger, The New Rulers Of The World (Verso Books, 20 February 2003)

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st edition, 4 February 2019)

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Dec. 28, 2023 – Archbald, PA – Amy Costanzo was diagnosed with Stage 3C Ovarian cancer. She has had to have extensive “debulking surgery” which included removal of all female reproductive organs and her omentum layer.

Dec. 24, 2023 – UK – 23 year old Caitlin Tomlinson Button is fighting a rare advanced ovarian cancer. “Up until June 2023 I was living a very normal life, looking after the elderly enabling them to stay in their own homes.”

Dec. 15, 2023 – Bradenton, FL – 31 year old Alyson Bermudez, a softball coach at New College of Florida and pitching instructor, was diagnosed with a 20cm ovarian tumor on right ovary and 13cm tumor attached to her left ovary. She also has cancer on “several surfaces of her abdomen”.

Dec. 14, 2023 – Hamilton City, CA – Gaby Chavez was diagnosed with Stage 4 Ovarian cancer 3 weeks prior to her death on Dec. 14, 2023.

Dec. 11, 2023 – Johnson City, TN – 32 year old Porschea Elswick was diagnosed with a 30cm Ovarian Cancer (Mucinous Adenocarcinoma) in August 2023.

Dec. 9, 2023 – Tennis Star Chris Evert diagnosed with ovarian cancer for a second time. “Her cancer has returned.”

Dec. 9, 2023 – Great Falls, MT – Amber McAvoy was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer in July 2023. The cancer has already spread.

Dec. 8, 2023 – Avondale, AZ – 31 year old Ashlie Edwards was diagnosed with Stage 3C Ovarian Cancer on Aug. 17, 2023. One mass was the size of a basketball on her left ovary, another mass was on her kidney.

Nov. 11, 2023 – Bolivar, MO – 60 year old nurse Bobbi Nash was diagnosed with Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer end of Sep. 2023 and died one month later on Nov. 11, 2023.

Nov. 8, 2023 – 21 year old Destinee was diagnosed with a 32 by 15cm ovarian cancerous tumor in Jan. 2022.

Oct. 30, 2023 – Dayton, OH – 52 year old LAPD Police Officer Tara Kessop was diagnosed with Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer in May 2023.

Oct. 21, 2023 – TURBO CANCER – 34 year old Colombian actress & model Alejandra Villafane Osorio died from a very rare cancer Oct. 21, 2023. She fought months against ovarian germ cell tumor (& also breast tumors).

Oct. 20, 2023 – Pompano Beach, FL – Jessica Christie died from Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer.

Oct. 12, 2023 – Calista had a family member develop a large Ovarian Turbo Cancer in 3 months after receiving a COVID-19 Vaccine.

Oct. 12, 2023 – Plainland, QLD, Australia – Tanya Arthur was diagnosed with Advanced Stage Ovarian Cancer.

Click here to read the full article.

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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

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Not many people have the opportunity to provide an oral and written statement to the United Nations Security Council. I had my chance on December 11, 2023, when I was asked as a retired U.S. Army colonel and a former U.S. diplomat to speak on weapons transfers in the Russia-Ukraine war.

I introduced myself as a U.S. taxpayer who was fed up with my tax money being used by the powerful and wealthy U.S. arms industry authorized by the U.S. government for sale to countries that are killing innocent civilians.

My statement to the Security Council was simple. Wars will never end as long as weapons transfers into the conflict area continue. I noted, as the Security Council well knows, that civilians will be the primary victims of the transfer of weapons.

I cited the two wars to which the U.S. is providing weapons: Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza.

I took the opportunity to look across the horseshoe U.N. Security Council table and say to the Alternate Representative of the U.S. for Special Political Affairs in the U.N. and Alternate Representative of the U.S. for Special Political Affairs in the Sessions of the General Assembly of the U.N. Robert Wood that I was horrified by “shameful” U.S. veto of the cease-fire resolution for Gaza the previous Friday, December 8, 2023. At that point over 18,000 Palestinians had been killed by massive Israeli bombing using U.S.-provided 2,000-pound bombs, U.S. hellfire missiles, and other U.S.-provided weapons.

Two weeks later, on December 22, 2023, after five days of wrangling with the U.S. on the wording of another resolution, the U.N. Security Council adopted a watered-down resolution that calls for immediately speeding up aid deliveries to starving civilians in Gaza. The United States refused to agree to a tougher demand for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas. It abstained in the vote, as did Russia, which wanted the stronger language. The resolution was the first on the war to make it through the council after the U.S. vetoed two earlier ones calling for humanitarian pauses and a full cease-fire.

The U.S. has provided Israel $317 billion in military aid, making it the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. The U.S. gives Israel $3.3 billion annually. The Biden administration wants to send another $10 billion to Israel.

As of late October, two months ago, the U.S. had delivered 36,000 rounds of 30-millimeter cannon ammunition, 1,800 M141 bunker-buster munitions, at least 3,500 night-vision devices, ammunition for AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships including about 2,000 Hellfire Laser Guided missiles, 57,000 155-millimeter High Explosive artillery shells, 20,000 M4A1 rifles, 5,000 PVS-14 night vision devices, 3,000 M141 hand-held bunker-buster munitions, 400 120- millimeter mortars, 75 of the Army and Marine Corps’ new Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, and 312 Tamir missile interceptors for the Iron Dome.

On the issue of the profitability of weapons transfers particularly in the Ukraine-Russia war, the topic I had been invited to speak on, I reminded the Security Council that in a December 7, 2023, press conference with the new U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that over the last two years, the United States has provided $70 billion to support Ukraine and European allies have provided more than $110 billion.

Blinken also said,

“If you look at the investments that we’ve made in Ukraine’s defense to deal with this aggression, 90% of the security assistance we’ve provided has actually been spent here in the United States with our manufacturers, with our production, and that’s produced more American jobs, more growth in our own economy. So, this has also been a win-win that we need to continue.”

I reminded the Security Council that the win-win is not for civilians in conflict areas. The win-win is for the military industrial complex and the politicians and retired government officials who are offered senior positions in companies immediately after their retirements!

And it’s certainly not a win-win for the innocent civilians who are killed in these conflicts.

At the end of my statement, I appealed to countries to not torpedo peace talks as the U.S. and the U.K. have done to efforts by Germany, Turkey, and Israel to bring the Ukraine-Russia war to an end.

In closing, I read part of a poem that describes how some parents in Gaza have resorted to writing their children’s names on their legs to help identify them should either they, the parents, or the children be killed in Israeli bombing.

It was written for the children of Gaza but is applicable to children in all conflict areas—in Ukraine, in Russia, in Israel, in Yemen:

Write My Name on My Leg, Mama.
By Zeina Azzam
Write my name on my leg, Mama
Use the black permanent marker
with the ink that doesn’t bleed
if it gets wet…
Write my name on my leg, Mama
and on the legs of my sisters and brothers.
This way we will belong together
This way we will be known
as your children.
Write my name on my leg, Mama
When the bomb hits our house
When the walls crush our skulls and bones
our legs will tell our story, how
there was nowhere for us to run.

On behalf of the people of the world who want to live in peace and safety, I said to the U. N. Security Council: “Stop the Killings! Cease-fires now!”

After the statement I gave in the U.N. Security Council, I doubt that I will be invited back to give another, as I feel quite certain the U.S. would Veto the invitation.

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”

Featured image: A screengrab shows Retired Army Colonel Ann Wright speaking at the U.N. Security Council on December 11, 2023. (Photo: U.N./Screengrab via CodePink)

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Senior Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, are again publicly advocating the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Their proposals are being presented as voluntary emigration schemes, in which Israel is merely playing the role of Good Samaritan, selflessly mediating with foreign governments to find new homes for destitute and desperate Palestinians. But it is ethnic cleansing all the same.

Alarm bells should have started ringing in early November when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western politicians began insisting there could be “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.” Rather than rejecting any mass removal of Palestinians, Blinken and colleagues objected only to optically challenging expulsions at gunpoint. The option of “voluntary” displacement by leaving residents of the Gaza Strip with no choice but departure was pointedly left open. 

Ethnic cleansing, or “transfer” as it is known in Israeli parlance, has a long pedigree that goes back to the late-nineteenth-century beginnings of the Zionist movement. While the early Zionists adopted the slogan, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land,” the evidence demonstrates that, from the very outset, their leaders knew better. More to the point, they clearly understood that the Palestinians formed the main obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. This is for the simple reason that, to them, a “Jewish state” denotes one in which its Jewish population acquires and maintains unchallenged demographic, territorial, and political supremacy. 

Enter “transfer.” As early as 1895, Theodor Herzl, the founder of the contemporary Zionist movement, identified the necessity of removing the inhabitants of Palestine in the following terms: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country … expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” David Ben-Gurion (née Grün), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and later Israel’s first prime minister, was more blunt. In a 1937 letter to his son, he wrote: “We must expel the Arabs and take their place.” 

Writing in his diary in 1940, Yosef Weitz, a senior Jewish National Fund official who chaired the influential Transfer Committee before and during the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), and became known as the Architect of Transfer, put it thus: “The only solution is a Land of Israel devoid of Arabs. There is no room here for compromise. They must all be moved. Not one village, not one tribe, can remain. Only through this transfer of the Arabs living in the Land of Israel will redemption come.” His diaries are littered with similar sentiments. 

The point of the above is not to demonstrate that individual Zionist leaders held such views, but that the senior leadership of the Zionist movement consistently considered the ethnic cleansing of Palestine an objective and priority. Initiatives such as the Transfer Committee, and Plan Dalet, initially formulated in 1944 and described by the pre-eminent Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi as the “Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine,” additionally demonstrate that the Zionist movement actively planned for it. The 1948 Nakba, during which more than four-fifths of Palestinians residing in territory that came under Israeli rule were ethnically cleansed, should, therefore, be seen as the fulfillment of a longstanding ambition and implementation of a key policy. A product of design, not of war (historical Christmas footnote: the Palestinian town of Nazareth was spared a similar fate only because the commander of Israeli forces that seized the city, a Canadian Jew named Ben Dunkelman, disobeyed orders to expel the population, and was relieved of his command the following day).

That the Nakba was a product of design is further substantiated by the Transfer Committee’s terms of reference. These comprised not only proposals for the expulsion of the Palestinians but, just as importantly, active measures to prevent their return, destroy their homes and villages, expropriate their property, and resettle those territories with Jewish immigrants. Weitz, together with fellow Committee members Eliahu Sassoon and Ezra Danin, on June 5, 1948, presented a three-page blueprint, entitled “Scheme for the Solution of the Arab Problem in the State of Israel,” to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion to achieve these goals. According to leading Israeli historian Benny Morris, “there is no doubt Ben-Gurion agreed to Weitz’s scheme,” which included “what amounted to an enormous project of destruction” that saw more than 450 Palestinian villages razed to the ground.

The understandable focus on the expulsions of 1948 often overlooks the fact that ethnic cleansing remains incomplete unless its victims are barred from returning to their homes by a combination of armed force and legislation, and thereafter replaced by others. It is Israel’s determination to make Palestinian dispossession permanent that distinguishes Palestinian refugees from many other war refugees. 

After 1948, Israel put out a whole series of fabrications to shift responsibility for the transformation of the Palestinians into dispossessed and stateless refugees onto the Arab states and the refugees themselves. These included claims that the refugees voluntarily left (they were either expelled or fled in justified terror); that Arab radio broadcasts ordered the Palestinians to flee (in fact, they were encouraged to stay put); that Israel conducted a population exchange with Arab states (there was nothing of the sort); and the bizarre argument that because they’re Arabs, Palestinians had numerous other states while Jews have only Israel (by the same logic, Sikhs would be entitled to seize British Columbia and deport its population to either the rest of Canada or the United States). More importantly, even if uniformly substantiated, none of these pretexts entitles Israel to prohibit the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes at the conclusion of hostilities. It is, furthermore, a right that was consecrated in United Nations General Assembly resolution 194 of December 11, 1948, which has been reaffirmed repeatedly since.

Ethnic Cleansing After 1967

In 1967, Israel seized the remaining 22 percent of Mandatory Palestine — the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. Depopulation in these territories operated differently than in 1948. Most importantly, Israel, in addition to prohibiting the return of Palestinians who fled hostilities during the 1967 June War, and encouraging others to leave (by, for example, providing a daily bus service from Gaza City to the Allenby Bridge connecting the West Bank to Jordan), conducted a census during the summer of 1967 . Any resident who was not present during the census was ineligible for an Israeli identity document and automatically lost their right of residency. 

As a result, the population of these territories declined by more than twenty percent overnight. Many of those thus displaced were already refugees from 1948. Aqbat Jabr Refugee Camp near Jericho, for example — until 1967, the West Bank’s largest — became a virtual ghost town after almost all its inhabitants became refugees once again in Jordan. So many Palestinians from the Gaza Strip ended up in Jordan that a new refugee camp, Gaza Camp, was established on the outskirts of Jerash. The occupied Palestinian territories would not recover their 1967 population levels until the early 1980s.

Within the West Bank, there were also cases of mass expulsion. These included the town of Qalqilya, which was additionally slated for demolition but to which its residents were later permitted to return. Those of ‘Imwas (the Biblical Emmaus), Bayt Nuba, and Yalu in Jerusalem’s Latrun salient were less fortunate. They were summarily expelled (many today live in Ramallah’s Qaddura Refugee Camp), their villages demolished and annexed to Israel, and replaced by Canada Park, so named because the project was completed with donations from the Canadian Jewish community. Within Jerusalem’s Old City, the historic Mughrabi Quarter, abutting the Haram al-Sharif, was summarily razed to make way for a plaza astride the Wailing Wall. With many residents given only minutes to evacuate their homes, several were killed when the bulldozers went to work. According to Eitan Ben-Moshe, an engineer who oversaw the atrocity, “We threw out the wreckage of houses together with the Arab corpses.”

Depopulation Through Administrative Rule

In subsequent years, Israel employed all kinds of administrative shenanigans to further reduce the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Until the 1993 Oslo Accords, for example, an exit permit from Israel’s military government was required to leave the occupied territory. It was valid for only three years and thereafter renewable annually for a maximum of three additional years (for a fee) at an Israeli consulate. If a Palestinian lost an exit permit or failed to renew an exit permit prior to its expiration for any reason (including bureaucratic foot-dragging), or couldn’t pay the renewal fee, or failed to return to Palestine prior to its expiration, that Palestinian automatically lost residency rights. Separately, Israel, over the years, deported numerous activists and community leaders, primarily to Jordan and Lebanon. During the late 1960s and 1970s, it also exiled Gaza Palestinians accused of resisting the occupation, along with their families, to prison camps in the occupied Sinai Peninsula. Among those who spent time there was the iconic Palestinian leader Haidar Abdel-Shafi.

A particularly notable case of administrative deportations occurred in 1992 after Israeli special forces botched an operation to rescue an Israeli soldier who had been seized by Hamas to exchange him for their imprisoned leader, Shaikh Ahmad Yasin. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the summary deportation of approximately 400 Palestinians, many of them prisoners affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad (PIJ), none accused of involvement in the incident that led to Rabin’s frenzied rage. 

In contrast to previous deportations, which were considered permanent, these were for one- and two-year terms. In its rush to carry out the deportations under cover of night, Israel expelled a number of Palestinians who were not on its list and left behind others who were. Needless to say, the mass expulsion was, as always in such matters, approved by Israel’s High Court of Justice after minor modifications. It ruled, among other things, that this was not a collective deportation but rather a collection of individual deportations. Perhaps more significantly, the deportees were stuck in an inhospitable no-man’s land, Marj al-Zuhur, because Lebanon refused to facilitate the deportations by receiving them. During their involuntary residence in Marj al-Zuhur, assistance came primarily from Hezbollah, and it was during this period that relations between Hamas, PIJ, and Hezbollah were solidified.

Israel’s Strategies to ‘Thin’ Gaza’s Population

With the focus in recent years on the intensified campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, it is often forgotten that, for decades, the primary target for depopulation was the Gaza Strip, particularly its refugee population, which accounts for approximately three-quarters of the territory’s residents. Even before it occupied Gaza in 1967, Israel regularly promoted initiatives to achieve the “thinning” of its refugee population, with destinations as far afield as Libya and Iraq. Not without reason, Israel’s leaders felt uncomfortable with the presence of so many ethnically cleansed Palestinians within walking distance of their former homes. After 1967, it encouraged Palestinian emigration from the Gaza Strip to not only foreign countries but also the West Bank. 

In 1969, Israel even devised a scheme to send 60,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Paraguay with offers of lucrative employment. The plan was negotiated between Paraguay’s military dictator Alfredo Stroessner and Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency. It was, of course, purely coincidental that, shortly thereafter, Mossad discovered it no longer had the resources to hunt Nazi fugitives in Paraguay, which had been one of their destinations of choice. The scheme was discontinued when several of its victims, upon realizing the promise of a new life of comfort was all a sham, shot up the Israeli embassy in Asuncion, killing one of its staff. 

‘Transfer’ and Gaza Today

In the decades since, “transfer,” often presented as the encouragement of voluntary emigration either by providing material incentives or making the conditions of life impossible, has become increasingly mainstreamed in Israeli political life. In 2019, for example, a “senior government official,” quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, expressed a willingness to help Palestinians emigrate from the Gaza Strip. 

Mass expulsion has been gaining its share of adherents as well, and it is a position that is today represented within Israel’s coalition government. As has the idea that “transfer” should include Palestinian citizens of Israel — Avigdor Lieberman, for example, who was Israel’s Minister of Defense several years ago, is an advocate of not only emptying the West Bank and Gaza Strip of Palestinians but of getting rid of Palestinian citizens of Israel as well. As one might expect from a minister who was in charge of the Israeli military, he is also an advocate of “beheading” disloyal Palestinian citizens of Israel with “an axe.”

Against this background, Israel saw the attacks of October 7 as not only a threat but also as an opportunity. Fortified with unconditional U.S. and European support, Israeli political and military leaders immediately began promoting the transfer of Gaza’s Palestinian population to the Sinai desert. The proposal was enthusiastically embraced by the United States and by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in particular. Hopelessly out of his depth when it comes to the Middle East, as ever, he appears to have genuinely believed he could recruit or pressure Washington’s Arab client regimes to make Israel’s wish a reality. Given Egyptian strongman Abdelfattah al-Sisi’s economic troubles, the fallout of the Menendez scandal, and the looming Egyptian presidential elections, it was suggested to him by the Washington echo chamber that it would take only an IMF loan, debt relief, and a promise to file away Menendez to bring Cairo on board. As so often when it comes to the Middle East, Blinken, armed only with Israel’s latest wish list, didn’t have a clue his indecent proposal would be categorically rejected, first and foremost by Egypt.  

‘Transfer’ as ‘Voluntary Emigration’

The fallback position is opposition to “forcible displacement” at the point of a gun, while anything else is fair game. This includes reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble in what may well be the most intensive bombing campaign in history; a genocidal assault on an entire society that has killed civilians at an unprecedentedly rapid pace; the deliberate destruction of an entire civilian infrastructure, including the targeted obliteration of its health and education sectors; the highest proportion of households in hunger crisis ever recorded globally and the real prospect of pre-meditated famine; severance of the water and electricity supply leading to acute thirst, widespread consumption of non-potable water, and termination of sewage treatment; and promotion of a sharp rise in infectious disease. One Israeli soldier has already died of a fungal infection resulting from the collapse in sanitation he helped bring about in the Gaza Strip. How many Palestinians have been consumed by similar illnesses, we do not know, but it is reasonable to assume that children and the elderly are hit particularly hard.

In other words, if desperate Palestinians seek to flee this seventh circle of hell to save their skins, that’s considered voluntary emigration — their choice. If they cannot remain in the Gaza Strip because Israel has made it unfit for human habitation with U.S. weapons, that is a voluntary choice that will be respected. And the U.S. and Israel are only here to help, like Mother Theresa, determined to assist every last one of them whether they like it or not.

Danny Danon, a member of parliament who was previously Israel’s envoy to the United Nations (the guy who sounds like Elmer Fudd), recently held up the mass displacement of Syrians to multiple shores during the past decade as an example to be emulated. “Even if each country receives ten thousand, twenty thousand Gazans, this is significant.”

Asked about Danon’s proposal at a Likud meeting on Christmas Day, Netanyahu responded, “We are working on it. Our problem is [finding] the countries that are willing to absorb [them].”

As an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz put it on December 27: “Israeli lawmakers keep pushing for transfer under the guise of humanitarian aid.”

Not to be outdone by the politicians, the Jerusalem Post ran an opinion piece entitled “Why Moving to the Sinai Peninsula is The Solution for Gaza’s Palestinians.”

“Sinai,” its author Joel Roskin enthused, “comprises one of the most suitable places on Earth to provide the people of Gaza with hope and a peaceful future.”

Not individual Gazans, but “the people of Gaza.” Notably, such proposals consistently take it as a given that those departing will never return. One waits with bated breath, for the European Union is expected to respond to these calls for mass expulsion with further investigations of Palestinian textbooks.

While ethnic cleansing has been intrinsic to Zionist/Israeli ideology and practice from the very outset, it also has a flip side: the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinians expanded what had been a conflict between the Zionist movement and the Palestinians into a regional, Arab-Israeli one. The second Nakba Israel is currently inflicting on the Gaza Strip similarly appears well on its way to instigating the renewal of hostilities across the Middle East. 

As importantly, the 1948 Nakba did not defeat the Palestinians, who initiated their struggle from the camps of exile, those in the Gaza Strip most prominently among them. It would take a Blinken level of foolishness to assume the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip would produce a different outcome.

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Featured image: Yosef Weitz (center right), “the architect of transfer,” with Yitzhak Rabin and Haim Laskov in the Yakir forest in the Naqab area. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

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The number of journalists killed in Gaza by Israel since the outbreak of war has reached 105, according to the government media office in the strip.

Among them are Mohammad Khair al-Din and Ahmed Khair al-Din who were killed by “Israeli treachery” in Gaza, the office was cited as saying by Turkish news agency Anadolu.

It means more than one journalist has been killed a day on average since the launch of Israel’s war on the strip.

Israel’s relentless military campaign has killed more than 21,300 people in Gaza, with over 55,600 others injured.

Places of worship, residential buildings, ambulances, and hospitals have come under attack.

Israeli forces also detained Diaa al-Kahlout, the Gaza bureau chief for ­The New Arab’s Arabic-language edition, earlier in December.

The senior al-Araby al-Jadeed journalist was rounded up alongside hundreds of other Palestinian men, including his brothers and other relatives, in the town of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.

The newspaper called for his freedom in a statement posted to social media on Tuesday.

“We in the al-Araby al-Jadeed family demand the immediate release of our colleague Diaa al-Kahlout, correspondent and bureau chief for the al-Araby al-Jadeed website and newspaper in Gaza, who has been detained by the [Israeli] occupation army since 7 December 2023,” the pan-Arab daily said.

“We also condemn and deplore the assassination, arrest, abuse, and torture journalists are being subjected to as they carry out their duty to convey the truth about the war crimes and genocide the occupation is committing in the Gaza Strip.”

On Sunday, The New Arab reported that a young Palestinian recently released from Beersehba Prison had said he saw al-Kahlout in the Israeli detention facility.

The reporter may be transferred to Jerusalem like other Palestinians held in Beersheba.

Al-Kahlout was arrested at gunpoint, then stripped and beaten by Israeli forces.

He was forced to abandon his seven-year-old daughter, who has special needs.

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Featured image: Funeral for Palestine TV journalist Mohammad Abu Hattab. Credit: X/@MuhammadSmiry

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On December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court banned former president Donald Trump from running for presidency under the pretext that he led the so-called “January 6 insurrection”. Despite the fact that Trump was never formally charged (let alone convicted) for that highly controversial event, the Court made its decision based precisely on that premise. However, what the DNC-aligned judges probably didn’t expect is that this obviously partisan decision would open up a political “Pandora’s box” that is now spreading like wildfire, threatening to consume the entire country. Namely, in response to the ruling, Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick suggested taking President Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas due to his disastrous immigration policies.

Obviously, the Democrats are completely incapable of using basic common sense, so they probably never expected the “red states” to respond in kind. The “woke” extremist ultra-liberal ideology that the DNC subscribes to prevents them from seeing their political rivals as equal. The Democrats simply feel that they are the “indispensable party”, just like they think the United States is an “indispensable nation”. The boomerang effect of their dangerous delusions is already there, as three more states are now seriously contemplating the possibility of banning Biden’s presidential bid. Namely, congressmen Aaron Bernstine of Pennsylvania, Cory McGarr of Arizona and congresswoman Charlice Byrd of Georgia released a joint statement about this initiative.

“I am joining with PA Rep. Aaron Bernstine and AZ Rep. Cory McGarr to introduce legislation to remove Joe Biden from the ballot in response to the absurd ruling by radical Democrat judges in Colorado, removing Donald Trump from their ballot,” congresswoman Byrd posted on Twitter (now known as X).

I am joining with PA Rep. Aaron Bernstine and AZ Rep. Cory McGarr to introduce legislation to REMOVE Joe Biden from the ballot in response to the absurd ruling by radical Democrat judges in Colorado, removing Donald Trump from their ballot. Read my full statement here: pic.twitter.com/9Ltw2nzUpv

— Rep. Charlice Byrd (@charlice_byrd) December 22, 2023

Judging from their other statements, Republican lawmakers are trying to get ahead of the Democrats who are aiming to push other “blue states” to follow Colorado’s example.

“Today, we are joining forces to introduce legislation to remove Joe Biden from the ballot in Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania,” they said in a joint statement, adding: “The absurdity of radical Democrat judges removing Donald Trump from the ballot in Colorado will be a stain on the American political system for decades. By their very own interpretation of the law, Joe Biden is 100 percent not eligible to run for political office.”

“Democrats’ insane justification to remove Trump can just as easily be applied to Joe Biden for his insurrection at the southern border and his corrupt family business dealings with China. Colorado radicals just changed the game, and we are not going to sit quietly while they destroy our Republic,” the statement reads, further adding: “To be clear, our objective is to showcase the absurdity of Colorado’s decision and allow ALL candidates to be on the ballot in all states. To do that, we must fight back as Republicans against the communists currently running our great country.”

Trump himself is claiming that the Democrats are “destroying America”. While the statement may seem highly politicized, particularly in the context of the most intensive part of the 2024 presidential election campaign, the consequences of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision can surely lead to such an outcome. With “blue” and “red states” diverging along all lines, the functioning of the country is certainly at stake. The DNC controls most federal institutions, including the State Department and the Senate, while the mainstream propaganda machine and the so-called “Big Tech” are firmly on their side. Still, the GOP dominates in the House of Representatives and has already made decisions that have spoiled the plans of the troubled Biden administration.

Since the so-called “Russiagate” conspiracy theory that has been the main go-to scapegoat for the countless internal and foreign policy failures of the DNC, be it the 2016 presidential or 2018 midterm elections, American politics has become more disastrous than ever before. The Democrats have pushed the country into an escalating confrontation with Russia, based on an entirely fabricated premise of Trump’s long-debunked “collusion with Moscow”. For well over half a decade, the mainstream propaganda machine has been parroting the supposed “Russian election meddling” narrative. And yet, things took a turn for the worse in recent months. Apart from the highly politicized prosecution of Trump, both the 2016 and 2020 elections have been marred with controversy, as evidenced by the latest findings.

However, the poll proving that 20% of mail-in voters effectively committed fraud during the 2020 presidential election isn’t the end of America’s political troubles. Namely, President Biden is now faced with an impeachment inquiry in connection to his son’s criminal activities. The White House has been trying to torpedo Congressional subpoenas and demands for transcribed interviews with Biden family members since they were launched back in September. This was based on the grounds that the existing impeachment probe was invalid because the House didn’t vote to authorize it. However, with a 221-212 vote in favor of the inquiry, the Biden administration can’t use this pretext anymore. House Speaker Mike Johnson even directly accused the White House of impeding the investigation.

Coupled with the shameless weaponization of the Justice Department, FBI and other federal institutions that are supposed to be entirely impartial, what is actually going on is the effective dismantling of the said institutions, now even on the level of individual states. If these aggressive policies aren’t kept in check, they will inevitably result in further polarization along ideological and political grounds. The DNC-dominated federal center will try to impose its ultra-liberal extremism on everyone simply because it’s politically beneficial.

Logically, the GOP will respond, resulting in a sort of blockade of both federal and state institutions. This leads to the same path the former USSR took in the late 1980s. And indeed, the US is increasingly reminiscent of it in that regard. In the meantime, American leaders keep looking for ways to launch new wars and coups, particularly in an attempt to slow down or even prevent the expansion of BRICS+. Terrified by the advent of multipolarity, they’re either sweeping mounting problems under the rug or outright ignoring them.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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I don’t have anyone whom I would consider a friend who supports the genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza. But my occasional interaction with the psychopaths who infest the US government and media and who are intimately connected by virtue of their political instincts as well as their personal interests in campaign donations and/or elevated salaries derived from Israel and its powerful lobby have plenty of sound bites to throw out to demonstrate their love of the Jewish state in all its manifestations.

They mouth the Pelosi-Schumer-Biden assertion that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and that Israel is “America’s closest ally” and “best friend,” all of which can readily be exposed as a series of self-serving lies and deliberate misinterpretations of international law. Beyond that, they inevitably cite their view that critics of Israel are fully responsible for what they choose to refer to as the ultimate evil of “surging anti-semitism.” In so doing they conveniently ignore the obvious fact that anger towards Jews collectively speaking is nearly always derived from the crimes against humanity committed by the Zionist political entity that now legally defines itself as Jewish.

I sometimes ask the friends of Israel what interest the United States has that would warrant our country becoming complicit in committing war crimes that, collectively speaking, amount to precursors for the complete expulsion or killing of millions of Palestinians from what remains of their homes. They try to weasel word their way avoiding the implications of that question by observing that the United States is not directly engaged in the conflict, an evasion that I belittle by pointing out that Washington is providing funding, arming and political cover for the more powerful and lethal party engaged in the conflict while also blocking attempts to bring about a ceasefire to comply with orders from that same party, which sure looks like direct involvement to me. I also point out that Israel is working hard to get the US military engaged against Hezbollah in Lebanon and also against Iran and is likely to be able to maneuver the stoneheads in and around the White House to do its bidding vis-à-vis both objectives.

So the big question has to be “Why does the United States engage in a conflict that inter alia has utterly ruined our country’s reputation worldwide and for which there is no real compelling national interest?” The answer is, of course unpalatable to many, but has to be that the US government is in many respects and vis-à-vis some of its designated national policies completely under the control of Israel and its powerful domestic as well as international lobby. This habitual bowing to force majeure has warped the thinking of the ambitious scallywags who seem to be present wherever one turns in places like Washington. How else does one explain the infamous and quite frankly ridiculous comment delivered at the 2018 Israeli American Council meeting by leading politician Nancy Pelosi, who said that

“I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”

The delusional Pelosi, who appears to have no “fundamental” attachment to the interests of the American people whom she represents, is unfortunately not unique in the halls of Congress, even less so in the Joe Biden White House, which might be regarded as the illustration of what happens when you appoint Zionists to nearly all key positions running your foreign, economic and national security policies. The degree of direct Zionist/Israeli control over the hapless Biden can best be illustrated by reviewing the course of the recent redrafting of a UN Security Council resolution authored by the United Arab Emirates that sought to bring about a suspension of the fighting and the urgent resumption of humanitarian supplies for Gaza. The US forced the revisions after coordination with Israel to permit the Israelis to continue to attack civilian targets and avoid entering into anything like a ceasefire, changing the word “suspension” in the original draft to the less demanding creation of “conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Language authorizing the lead UN role in monitoring and delivering the assistance to the Gazans was also expunged leaving to belligerent Israel the task of completely controlling the distribution of any supplies allowed entry into the areas inside Gaza, which it is also simultaneously continuing to bomb, thereby slowing the stream of urgently needed supplies to a trickle while also killing hundreds more civilians.

To be sure, it was the United States blindly supporting Israel that rendered what was a promising proposal to put an end to the multiplying civilian deaths toothless. Israel demonstrated just how high it regarded Joe Biden when it contradicted what the president said about the US being able to moderate some Israeli offensive action in Gaza. Netanyahu denied that, saying that he and his war cabinet were continuing to make all relevant decisions based on Israel’s own interests. Israel Defense Force (IDF) Chief of the General Staff General Herzi Halevi followed on with his own assessment that finishing the job in Gaza, i.e. totally destroying Hamas by whatever means it requires, will take “many more months.” The Israeli military has indeed visibly increased its efforts by opening up new “battle zones” inside Gaza, to include directly targeting the crowded and starving refugee camps outside the cities. The civilians are paying the price while a grinning Joe Biden is spending his New Year’s holiday in the American Virgin Islands.

Allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a known liar and habitual war criminal to tell the US government what to do is about as low as it gets, Mr. Biden! You should not only be ashamed, but more than that, humiliated, compelled to do ghastly things in support of your own fear of possible Jewish/Israeli reaction if you do not bow down before King Netanyahu. He and the band of inhuman monsters he has assembled in his cabinet have made no secret of their intention to remove the Palestinians from Palestine, either by forced emigration or by killing them if necessary. On Christmas Day, Prime Minister Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud bloc “that he was still working on the ‘voluntary’ immigration of Gaza’s inhabitants to other countries.” His associates Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have made it clear that the ethnic cleansing process will proceed even if it is not in any way voluntary. As Israel is the occupying power in the former Palestine, what is taking place is, as defined by the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention and the UN Charter, a crime against humanity and the United States is completely complicit in it not to mention actually enabling the slaughter through its supplying of arms and money to the Israelis. It has recently been reported in the Israeli media that the United States has delivered an astonishing “10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment on 244 cargo planes and 20 ships” to sustain the Israeli homicidal assault against the people of Gaza. And to demonstrate its gratitude for the flood of weapons, America’s “best friend” and “closest ally” Israel has nevertheless complained “about a delay in the delivery of munitions.”

The total support of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians by Washington and the media is not only shameful, it is lacking any context for a crime against humanity that has been going on with US connivance for the past 76 years. Under international law, an occupied people has a right to use force to resist occupation, but even given that, the majority of Israeli deaths on October 7^th should probably be attributed to so-called “friendly fire” from the Israeli army not from Hamas. The occupied and woefully abused Palestinians rising-up and seeking both freedom and sovereignty in the land that was once completely theirs is fully justified and should be respected. Israel’s killing women and children through deliberate starvation or even by execution style is indisputably a war crime. Bombing hospitals or leaving newborn incubator babies abandoned to die is a crime against humanity. Arresting innocent Palestinians before parading them naked and even desecrating their dead bodies by harvesting organs that you then sell is unspeakable and almost unimaginable evil as is deliberately targeting and bombing schools and churches where people are trying to find shelter.

The genocide and destruction in Gaza is the worst crime committed in modern history and the man who could have stopped it, Joe Biden, sits on his hands and grins. No one should remain silent when confronted by this horror but the silence and the deliberate distortion of what is taking place is a tribute to Jewish power in America and elsewhere. I am including some recent commentary from the illustrious Australian Journalist Caitlin Johnstone which demonstrates perfectly the hypocrisy and inhumanity of both Biden and the leaders of Britain, France, Canada, and Germany: “Sometimes Israel’s crimes are so horrific that at first you don’t even understand what you’re looking at. You just stare at it trying to make sense of what you’re seeing for a bit, like you would if you suddenly saw a space alien or a leprechaun or something… It’s so incredibly obvious what we’re looking at here. The only thing putting a wobble on people’s perception is the immense amount of propaganda distortion the media is churning out on this issue, plus the fact that the demographics look a bit different from what history has conditioned people to watch out for. If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians in a giant concentration camp and placed under total siege, being told that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were witnessing.”

And a leading American journalist Daniel Larison must have the last word of advice from his site on Eunomia: “We are witnessing one of the gravest crimes of our time. Our government is aiding and abetting the perpetrators. It is up to people in this country to make our government cut off all support for this war and to press for an end to the war itself.” Amen, Daniel!

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Canadian Government Admits 48,780 Excess Deaths in 2022 (17% Increase in Mortality). There Is No Evidence COVID-19 Vaccines Saved a Single Life in Canada During 2021-2022

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The Biden administration is blaming Iran for drone attacks on a commercial tanker in the Indian Ocean. The claims are being used as leverage on Iran to pressure the Houthis to abandon their blockade in the Red Sea and allow maritime traffic to return to normal. But the Houthis have no intention of caving in to pressure from Iran or anyone else. They are determined to continue their attacks on Israel-bound traffic however long it takes and whatever the cost.

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The Biden administration, Israel’s chief enabler, defanged the resolution that was ultimately passed by the UN Security Council on December 22, rendering it merely symbolic. The final resolution calls for humanitarian assistance but not for a ceasefire which would allow aid to reach the people of Gaza. The U.S. saved diplomatic face by not employing its customary veto, but it did not vote for the resolution, electing instead to abstain.

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.

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U.S. “ironclad” support for militarism undercuts attempts to curb right-wing terrorism. From white supremacist violence in the West Bank to gendered violence in Olongapo, we can’t defeat at home what we export abroad.

In his first month as secretary of defense with the J6 Capitol riots fresh in memory, Lloyd Austin rolled out training requirements to combat right-wing extremism in the ranks of the U.S. military. 

Extremism has indeed been a problem for quite some time, dating back to early American history when George Washington’s army committed violence against the Iroquois and recaptured enslaved Africans who had fled from plantations. In 1919, W.E.B. Du Bois found evidence of widespread racism in the ranks of the U.S. army. All-too-common slurs against Asian Americans originate from U.S. troops fighting the Korean War.

In occupied Guam, activist Naek Flores shared a harrowing incident with CODEPINK during our recent webinar, Beyond the Cold War: A Feminist Foreign Policy for the Asia-Pacific. An air force member reportedly vandalized two buildings, with the message: “Stop racism against white Americans. Our tax dollars pay for your entire government, your paychecks. Without us, you are nothing.” Flores linked the racist vandalism to similar incidents at the hand of Israeli troops in Gaza.

But Austin’s initiatives, while focused on a very real problem, have not addressed that link – the one between extremism and U.S. imperialism. Austin’s policies have in fact solidified this link, by invoking military alliances with settler colonialist states and former colonies of the U.S. as a pretext for “defending” national security. From supporting Israel’s aggression to provoking China, Austin’s “ironclad” commitment to militarism threatens human security, and leaves no room for peace and protecting communities most vulnerable to extremism.

Despite more attention needed on rooting out right-wing extremism from Chicago to Salt Lake City, Austin’s priorities have been focused on targeting the countries of origin of those victimized at home. Since October, he’s repeatedly expressed support for Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Palestine, despite 153 countries – the majority of the world – supporting a ceasefire at the United Nations. 

On December 18, he tweeted on his way to Tel Aviv that he was traveling to reiterate the U.S.’ “ironclad commitment to Israel” and discuss ways to topple Gaza’s government. It comes as the U.S. is sending warships to Yemen (where a U.S.-backed siege has killed at least hundreds of thousands) to reopen the Red Sea for Israeli commerce.

Even as Austin has raised concerns about Israel’s conduct, he’s stubbornly backing it, despite the Palestinian people and the entire world demanding peace, all while bringing more, not less conflict, to war-torn Yemen. The rules-based order is definitely not a diplomacy-based order or a humanity-based order. And it reveals why the South China Sea and Korean peninsula are also on the brink of war.

Austin has used his favorite word – “ironclad” – to embrace Japan’s remilitarization. While the U.S. fought Japan just 80 years ago, most of Japan’s wartime atrocities mostly targeted the Asia-Pacific region from Beijing to Bataan. In fact, Japanese expansionism during the 20th century was enabled by Western politicians who supported Japan’s colonization of Korea in the Taft-Katsura Agreement, as well as the Chinese coastal city of Qingdao after Germany’s defeat in World War I. In October, days before Israel escalated its 75-year-long occupation, Austin said Article V of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty affirms an “ironclad” commitment to defend Japan’s claim to the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands – territory disputed by China.

Aside from the danger of affirming a military alliance instead of seeking ways to de-escalate between a former colonizer and the country it once colonized, Austin’s ironclad commitment also potentially makes the Japanese people casualties of a would-be war with China.

Signed in 1960, eight years after the U.S. ended its occupation of Japan, the treaty was protested by 6.4 million workers. In Okinawa, occupied by the U.S. until 1972, residents have continued to oppose the treaty’s authorization of American military bases. As New Diplomacy Initiative director Sayo Saurta highlighted in an interview with CODEPINK back in August, Okinawans are still standing up to environmental and human rights abuses perpetrated by U.S. forces.

Austin’s ironclad commitment to our military alliance with South Korea also exposes how little he’s worried about resuming the Korean War. As President Biden met with President Xi in San Francisco, Austin’s visit to Seoul was an alarming reminder that U.S. nuclear threats in Asia did not end with President Trump. Austin said the U.S. commitment includes “the full range of nuclear, conventional, and missile defense capabilities.” Instead of breaking with our ugly history of nuclear blackmail, Austin’s policies are effectively doubling down and blocking chances for peaceful mediation.

North Korea, of course, has a military alliance with China. As Joseph Gerson wrote in a letter to the Boston Globe in September, “Common security negotiations today between the United States and China, focused on Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and South China Sea, can resolve the security dilemma and prevent ‘avoidable’ and catastrophic war.”

If Austin really cares about security, as well as stopping extremism, it’s time he expresses ironclad commitment to negotiations, which would decrease abuses of power by military personnel and promote mutual understanding between our supposed adversaries. We can also finally begin our path to decolonization.

From decades of deforestation to the 2014 transphobic murder of Jennifer Laude, our military footprint has increased violence and exploitation. Just like with Japan and South Korea, the Philippines is also in danger of becoming a battleground in a world war. In April, Austin announced four new U.S. military bases in the northern region of Luzon. Some analysts fear President Bongbong Marcos is poised to join a U.S. contingency in nearby Taiwan if war breaks out.

Austin said the U.S.’ support for the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines also remains ironclad, echoing numerous statements of the kind made since the summer as maritime tensions between Beijing and Manila have flared up. Based on a then-secret agreement, hosting U.S. military bases was a condition for the Philippines’ independence, granted in 1946. This was despite the widespread racist abuse by U.S. forces. In 1951, the Mutual Defense Treaty was signed. It has allowed for the continuation of American abuses perpetrated against Filipinos going back to the Spanish-American War. 

From West to East Asia, Austin’s commitment to military alliances is getting in the way of his stated goal of stamping out right-wing extremism. We can’t defeat at home what we are exporting abroad, from white supremacist settler aggression in the West Bank to gendered violence in Olongapo. His ironclad commitments keep no one safe and only secure the legacies of colonization and nuclear terrorism. To truly build peace and root out extremism in the ranks, Austin must embrace common-sense diplomacy and human-centered security. 

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Cale Holmes is CODEPINK’s China Is Not Our Enemy Campaign Coordinator. Cale is an international relations analyst, writer, and environmentalist who has lived in Beijing. He serves as CODEPINK’s China Is Not Our Enemy Campaign Coordinator.

Featured image: US Flag Around the Earth — Image by © Images.com/Corbis

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***

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created in 1947 by Harry S. Truman, replacing the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to investigate administrative and fiscal files without judicial authorization and with the initial philosophy of providing the President with a second point of view drawn up by civilians compared to that provided by the military of the National Security Agency (NSA).

Until Eisenhower, the CIA was only the central intelligence organization for the United States government and was behind multiple insurgent training tasks and destabilizing governments contrary to Pentagon policies, but the military and financial lobbies (both fagged by the Zionist lobby) could not resist the temptation to create a de facto government that manipulated the intricacies of power, leading to the emergence of a new entity: the military-industrial complex, in Eisenhower’s words and the control of the United States Congress and Senate.

Eisenhower himself, a year before the end of his term, delivered a premonitory speech of the subsequent mutation of the initial “Campus” until the shadow government that guards American democracy today and from which all democratically elected presidents are held hostage:

“In government councils, we must be attentive to the acquisition of an illegitimate influence, whether or not projected by the military-industrial complex. The risk of the development of a usurped power exists and will persist. We will never allow the weight of this conjunction to threaten our freedoms or democratic processes”.

For his part, Kennedy, in a speech at Columbia University on November 14, 1963, admits that

“there is strong pressure from US power groups to turn the office of President into something merely figurative”

and so, on November 21, 1963, he was forced to sign executive order 11490, “which allows in an emergency to provide the government with exceptional measures, even for any dictatorship” and shortly before leaving for Dallas commented to his intimate advisors: “We have to face the CIA…” while secretly preparing a meeting with Fidel Castro.

All this implied a clear plea to the CIA, a true shadow power-bearer and deeply entrenched in all the US power apparatus.

Thus, its leaders proceeded to the gestation of an endogenous plot that dealt with the Coup de Mano against the democratic legality of the American political system and culminated in the Assassination of Kennedy (Dallas, 1.963). Such a plot would be a work of labyrinthine engineering that would have as brains the aforementioned unofficial CIA and as necessary collaborators to the anti-Castro exile in Miami and its connections with the Mafia and the FBI of Hoover, Lee Harvey Oswald as a scapegoat and distraction exercise to deceive the hounds and as collateral damage the birth of a political system protected by the Fourth Power, remaining since then as hostages all successive US Presidents-elect.

At present, the military-industrial complex would have been transformed into the so-called Department of Homeland Security (Homeland Security) and the primitive hydra-CIA would have born 17 new heads in the form of intelligence agencies that would integrate the US Intelligence Community (the Fourth Branch of Government according to Tom Engelhardt), pathogens of a totalitarian nature and turned into a parallel state and real power in the shadow. This would make the prophetic words of the so-called “Father of the Constitution” James Madison, who in number 47 of the Federalist essay, says

“the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, in the same hands and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, can be equated with the same definition of tyranny.”

Given the current division of American society into two symmetrical and irreconcilable halves, presumably the Fourth Branch of Government uses its resources to get the next President of the US to implant an Orwellian government that will drink from the sources of paternalism of soft dictatorships and be characterized by the cult of the leader, the use of disinformation and Orwellian surveillance of the non-white population and political dissent, which would de facto be an autocratic government or kind of invisible dictatorship supported by solid strategies of cohesion (mass manipulation and leader worship).

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Germán Gorraiz López is a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The Middle East was the home of the earliest civilizations in the world’s history. The first urbanizations and literacy started there.

The region of the Middle East usually covers the territories from the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea up to India in the East. In a broader sense, geographically, the region encompasses territories of the East Mediterranean and Central Asia but many Americans followed by other Western academicians, politicians, and journalists regard as a single region the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). 

The majority of the inhabitants of MENA have many things in common like the Arab language and culture, confession of Islam, etc., but on the other, different ethnic minorities exist in each of those regional countries while the Islamic religion is divided into two factions: the Sunni (majority) and the Shia (minority). 

All states of the region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) can be selected into four ethnic-geographic sub-regions (groups): 

1) The North African states; 

2) The Persian Gulf States; 

3) The Central Arab states; and 

4) Iran and Israel. 

The combined number of inhabitants of all of those states is more than 250 million (for the matter of comparison, in the EU 28, i.e. with the UK, there were some 500 million people).

The region itself is experiencing culture and civilization back some 6000 years but the majority of the present-day nations are relatively new.

In other words, except for Iran and Egypt, all other regional states appeared in their present form only in the last century, largely after WWI, but some of them even after WWII (Israel).

The number of states in MENA can be fixed by taking into account at least three criteria:

1) The historical period;

2) Political conditions; and

3) Geopolitical perspective.

Today usually is applied that there are 24 states (with Palestine) in the region of MENA (but with Turkey and Sudan 26).

However, the state of Palestine is still not generally and formally recognized as independent, as it was expected to appear as such taking into consideration the results of the Israeli-PLO negotiations (Roadmap for Peace). 

It is worth noticing that the first modern Arab country became Egypt of Muhammad Ali in the first half of the 19^th century when due to the French (Napoleonic) occupation Egypt became familiar with some features of the “European progress”.

Muhammad Ali started certain modernization reforms of the society like the creation of a modern and more effective governance organization, rational economic system, and a modern army restructured and reorganized according to West European principles of warfare at that time. It was established in Cairo as the first Western-type institute, the Egyptian Institute, in the Arab world with the crucial function of spreading out Western European (mainly the French) philosophers’ writings (like Russo and Volter).  

The majority of the regional populations are Arabs and Muslims. Pan-Arabism is one of the focal political issues in MENA in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

In recent times, leadership within the Pan-Arab movement, however, initially passed to the hands of the Christian Arabs in Lebanon and Syria. Nevertheless, all political attempts to form some kind of United Arab Republic failed but there are successful stories of macro-regional economic integration, for instance, the economic integration of six states of the Persian Gulf as they created a Gulf Cooperation Council.

Nonetheless, instead of the United Arab Republic existing an Arab League (est. 1945 with 22 member states today) which promotes better communication systems for the region using the Arabic language and the ARABSAT (the Arab Regional Satellite System). 

Oil discovery and production are probably the focal special features of MENA (but particularly of the Middle East) in contemporary history.

The economic and social development of all oil-rich Gulf countries depends almost totally on the policy of oil export and, therefore, for better mutual economic cooperation, Middle Eastern oil-producing nations established their Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (the OAPEC) that is the regional variant of global OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). In fact, some 65−70% of global petroleum reserves are located in the territory of the Middle East. Oil extraction and refining play a significant role in both regional and world economies, and, therefore, have a significant impact on the welfare and politics of the majority of Western (post-industrial) countries (especially of G7).

A lack of a full type of Western “liberal democracy” is another crucial feature of MENA as today, regional forms of governance are ranging from pure authoritarianism (Saudi Arabia) to some forms of democratic experiments based on the Western pattern (Lebanon or Israel) which are followed by Muslim regimes governed by religious leaders (Iran after 1979). Out of 22 Arab League’s states today, 8 of them are republics (including the Islamic Republic of Mauritania and the Baath Socialist Republic of Syria), 7 are monarchies, 4 have a one-party rule, the UAE is a political federation of sheikdoms, Somalia that is, in fact, lacking functioning governance, and finally, Palestine with not clear governmental type and even statehood. In general, regarding politics, the region is still in evolutionary transition as a result of modernization, Westernization, and globalization including references to economic and educational development with current tendencies of the radicalization of Islam as anti-colonial ideology against the post-industrial Western imperialism and the Zionist Israeli (backed by the USA) policy of apartheid (segregation and discrimination) and ethnic cleansing.   

An ancient conflict between two Islamic factions – the Sunni and the Shia Muslims – is another feature of the division of the region of the Middle East and North Africa. The first division within Islam was born soon after the death of his Prophet Muhammad in 632 A.D. when the Islamic world of Arabs became divided between those who had the pretensions to inherit the religious power after the death of the Prophet. They created two principal factions with different claims. The Sunni faction claimed that the religious power of the Caliph after 632 A.D. passed to Abu Bakr – Muhammad’s father-in-law, while the Shia faction (“Followers of Ali”) claimed the religious power to the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet – Ali ibn Abi Talib. The assassination of the third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan in 656, and the election of Ali ibn Abi Talib fueled the first armed conflict (civil war) among the Muslims which ended with the Battle of the Camel on November 7^th, 656 in present-day Iraq in Basra between Aisha’s supporters (widow of the Prophet) and Ali ibn Abi Talib’s supporters (the fourth Caliph and son-in-law of the Prophet) who won the battle against Aisha. However, it was only after the murder of Ali, and a few years later, of his son Hussein ibn Ali in the Battle of Karbala on October 10^th, 680 in present-day Iraq, that Islam went to a dogmatic and political split. The Shia Muslims reject the legitimacy of the first three Caliphs whom, however, the Sunni Muslims follow, having at the same time some doctrinal and political differences with the Sunnis. The biggest percentage of Shia Muslims today in the Middle East is in Iran (90−95%), Bahrain (65−75%), Iraq (60−70%), Lebanon (45−55%), and Yemen (30−40%).

The last important feature of the Middle East is the sectarian violence and its impact in some regional states. Several cases are going to be mentioned below:

1. The Saudi government is composed of Sunnis and the monarchy itself in power belongs exclusively to the Sunni faction which is in constant competition with the Shia Iran. The government of Saudi Arabia fears that the Shia theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran could create serious unrest within both the Saudi and the Gulf’s Shia communities. However, both Iran and Saudi Arabia, in fact, are pretending to become the leading power in the region.
2. The majority of Bahrain’s population is the Shia believers but there is a ruling Sunni monarchy. Inspired by the Arab Spring in 2011, the Shia believers started to demonstrate their political rights but without support from the US administration. The Bahraini Sunni governmental authorities and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, have violently cracked down on protests, killing hundreds of civilians.
3. In Iraq, for a long time, the country’s Shia majority had been oppressed by the Sunni regime in Baghdad. We have to keep in mind that in Iraq exist the most sacred religious sites for the Shia Muslims. After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, they came to power and the Shia population began to target the Sunni community. The Sunni believers have been persecuted and tortured by the Shia death squads and in response to the increasing violence against them, Iraqi Sunnis have committed several suicide attacks and bombings. As a consequence, the Shia-Sunni religious sectarianism in Iraq exacerbated the nationalistic and fundamentalistic attitudes of the Shia Muslims in power and has contributed to the strengthening of the Sunni support to ISIS (ISIL, DAESH).   
4. For Iran, the most important thing is to protect its regional interests among them the rights of the Shia population abroad. For instance, after the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979 that brought the Shia government to power in Tehran, Iran began to fund and encourage the Shia revolts in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia which is rich in oil reserves. The Iranian government is also supporting the government of Alawite (a branch of Shia Islam) Assad in Syria, which bridges with Lebanon.
5. In Yemen, the Houthi rebels, located predominantly in the northern part of the country, are Shia Muslims and represent about 1/3 of the total population. The Houthis were able to force the resignation of President Hadi, recognized by the international community. Regardless of the fact that during the revolt in 2014−2015, Shia rebels took political control, the majority of Sunni tribes in South Yemen do not recognize the Shia authority. In 2015 it was formed a coalition of Arab states under the leadership of Saudi Arabia to support former President Hadi against the Houthi rebels, who are pro-Iranian. Large parts of the territory of Yemen are also under the control of the Sunni militant group al-Qaeda which is opposed to both Shia Houthi and the ex-government of Hadi. The Sunni al-Qaeda in Yemen has been several years targeted by the controversial US drone campaign inside of the country.
6. Finally, behind the Syrian civil war which started in 2011 is, in essence, sectarian violence. Syrian President al-Assad belongs to the minority of Alawite Muslims who are a branch of the Shia sect. The Alawites take their name from Ali ibn Abi Talib who was a cousin, son-in-law, and the first male follower of the Prophet Muhammad (Alawite = “Follower of Ali”). The protests against Assad’s rule started in March 2011 and have been violently repressed. Nevertheless, the Syrian civil war has in part contributed to exacerbating the feelings of hatred and resentment between the Shia and the Sunni communities in the country. During the conflict, Shia Iran and the Shia Hezbollah from South Lebanon, in the moment of greatest difficulty for Assad’s regime, have flocked to the side of President Assad to prevent the deposition. However, similarly, the Sunni fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra Front and the Sunni ISIS are fighting in Syria against Assad. We have to keep in mind that Jabhat al-Nusra is the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda and that the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf and Sunni Turkey are financially and militarily supporting the Sunni opposition fighters in Syria.

The region of the Middle East and North Africa is an area where geography and history are important factors in the contemporary lives of the people.

There are many native peoples of the region for whom MENA is considered as the Arab homeland. It refers to those lands in which the Arabic language (with all dialects) is spoken. It is, basically, a unique region in the world regarding geography, geopolitics, and geostrategy as here three continents are meeting each other (Europe, Africa, and Asia) and as the region which was a focal point of the development of the first civilizations.

Geologically, its topography was transformed after the Ice Age from a climate that supported the grasslands and waterways into vast steppes and deserts. Around 2000 B.C., the pastoral people of Aryans, or called as well as Indo-Iranians migrated into India and West as well as Central Asia, including today’s Iran (Persia) and surrounding countries. Strategically, MENA was considered all the time to be an extremely valuable geostrategic territory as being a crossroad for trade, faith, conflicts, or cultural development.

In principle, the crucial mark of the region is the predominant Arab culture with some contrasts in the cultural habits between, for instance, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Besides, the cultural features of several other ethnic and confessional groups of MENA give a more comprehensive picture of the region’s peoples and challenges.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Background

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the Gaza war has exacted a “very heavy price” on the regime.

Netanyahu said Israel has no choice but to keep fighting to achieve its goals, including the elimination of Hamas and returning of its hostages. He made the comments after the Israeli army confirmed that 14 troops were killed in Gaza since Friday. It said 153 Israeli troops have been killed and nearly 500 others wounded since the beginning of Israel’s ground invasion in Gaza. Hamas says the number of Israeli army casualties is much higher.

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PressTV: Israel has committed enormous crimes against humanity, causing more than 21,000 Palestinian casualties, since Netanyahu ordered a ground invasion in Gaza.

Please give us your views on these crimes and their consequences.

Peter Koenig (PK): Where to begin is the question. There is an abundance of crimes being committed as we speak

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are wantonly targeting civilian populations.

Of the estimated more than 21,000 killed since October 7, at least two-thirds are women and children.

Coincidence? Of course not, there are no coincidences. Children are the future generation of Palestine, and women are the bearers of future generations. Eliminating them is an Israeli strategy.

More than 80% of all housing is destroyed, not to speak of infrastructure.

Israel is withholding emergency shipments of food and water – literally attempting to starve Palestinians to death.

Israel is selectively cutting off electricity and means of communication – internet, telephone, television….

But these are just “statistics”, right?

Nevertheless, think about it, when you are celebrating New Year with friends and have good times — you may, of course. It is your right. 

But please, DO NOT forget Gaza and Palestine.

Remember, that most likely your government – especially when you are in the US or European Union – your government supports or rather encourages the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians.

And I have not even mentioned yet: the execution-style killings; a few days ago IDF soldiers separated a group of men from women then they shot point blank the men – about a dozen – in front of their wives and children.

Organ stealing – totally illegal, Israel has always been one of the leaders in human organ trading, if not THE leader – now they are stealing killed Palestinians, remove their organs for their illicit organ trade.

Stripping civilians, mostly men, by the hundreds, having them sitting in rows in full sight of everybody – a shameful humiliation. 

And more, much more – the list goes on and on, Israeli crimes have no end.

Nobody should ever talk about the Holocaust inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Jews. Nobody.

What Zionists are doing to Palestinians is at least in the same category or worse. 

And it has lasted for 75 years, for the entire existence of Israel, the apartheid system has prevailed – and killed countless Palestinians indiscriminately, year after year; silenced by the mainstream media, most of which are under Zionist control.

In addition to all the atrocities mentioned before, there is the human suffering that cannot be accounted for, not in money, not in numbers.

But the price Israel is most likely paying for their indiscriminate and well-thought-out genocide of an entire population is high – it may be Israel herself. 

Netanyahu, Zionist-in-chief, is wiping Israel off the map.

Once this is over – and one day it will be over, namely as soon as the money and weapons flow stops, pretty much like the Ukraine – then, the war will stop.

Israel cannot survive without Western money – with war or without war. 

Israel’s regular budget, in normal times, depends to about one-third on “subsidies” from the US – compliments of US tax-payers.

The price for these atrocities and suffering Israel is inflicting on Palestine will be steep.

PEACE is what We, the Western People – forget our corrupted governments – wish upon Palestine.

Our thoughts, our positive vibes, shall help bring PEACE to Palestine.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image: Bad Moon Rising – by Mr. Fish

Сви чланци Глобалног истраживања могу се читати на 51 језику активирањем дугмета Преведи веб локацију испод имена аутора (доступно само у верзији за десктоп).

Да бисте добили дневни билтен Глобал Ресеарцх-а (изабрани чланци), кликните овде.

Кликните на дугме за дељење изнад да бисте е-поштом/проследили овај чланак својим пријатељима и колегама. Пратите нас на Инстаграму и Твиттеру и претплатите се на наш Телеграм канал. Слободно поново постављајте и делите чланке Глобалног истраживања.

***

 

Почели су масовни протести у Београду. Опозиционари и њихове присталице, који се не слажу са резултатима недавних парламентарних избора, изашли су на улице, блокирајући путеве и нападајући зграде владе. Органи за спровођење закона реагују покушавајући да обуздају немире. Ситуација се захуктава.

По мишљењу стручњака, у Србији се могуће организује државни удар по узору на украјински Мајдан 2014. Већина стручњака сматра да акције српске опозиције координирају Брисел и Вашингтон.

Да ли је могућа политичка револуција у Србији?

Директорка Центра за геостратешка истраживања Драгана Трифковић изнела је руском Јавном сервису своје мишљење о овом питању:

Ко прави протесте у Београду и какви су њихови захтеви?

У Србији су одржани 17. децембра ванредни парламентарни, београдски и локални избори. По мом мишљењу, циљ организовања ванредних избора је био легитимизација политике владајућег режима, посебно у вези са Косовом и Метохијом.

Подсетићу да је владајући режим потписао Бриселски споразум 2013. године и Вашингтонски споразум 2020. године, којим се Србија практично одриче суверенитета и пристаје на одлуке албанских сепаратиста подржаних Вашингтоном. Такође у фебруару ове године је усмено усвојен Француско-немачки план у Охриду, којим се признаје суверенитет, територијални интегритет и национални симболи независног Косова. САД сматрају да је усмени пристанак председника Србије Александра Вучића довољан за легитимизацију независног Косова. Истовремено председник Србије понавља како никада неће признати косовску независност, али не поништава већ потписане договоре и усмени пристанак.

За САД је важно да након избора заврше пројекат косовске независности и у том циљу они координишу деловање и власти и опозиције. То је потребно имати у виду приликом оцене тренутне ситуације у Србији, где су протести и политичка нестабилност само део једног ширег плана.

Постоје индиције да се Вучић сагласио са захтевом амбасадора САД Кристофера Хила да власт у Београду пређе у руке про-западне опозиције, али је очигледно да он жели да задржи власт у Београду. Апсолутно не подржавам мешање страног фактора у Србији, као ни насилне протесте. Међутим чињеница је да и власт и опозиција имају исти политички програм, а то је безалтернативне интеграције Србије у ЕУ. Недавно је ЕУ укључила у процес европинтеграција обавезу Србије да призна косовску независност.

Да закључим, протесте у Србији организује опозција због изборних нерегуларности, али они нису претња по режим осим ако не добију пуну подршку Запада, што сада није случај. Дакле прозападна опозиција користи америчком амбасадору као контролни фактор ка власти, како би власт испунила све потписане уговоре у вези са Косовом.

Да ли је могуће у Србији очекивати државни преврат?

Након ванредних избора режим Александра Вучића је добио већину у Парламенту и фактички се учврстио на власти. То говори о томе да он има и даље велику подршку са Запада. Са једне стране српски режим покшава да одугловачи са потписаним и сагласованим обавезама око Косова, а са друге стране САД желе да пре избора у Америци реализују у потпуности пројекат косовске независности. Дакле ако поредимо ситуацију у Србији са ситуацијом у Украјини до Мајадана, јер има доста таквих поређења, морамо да будемо свесни кључне разлике. То је да је Јанукович одложио потписивање договора са ЕУ, а Вучић за сада ништа није одложио и даље заступа идеју безалтернативних интеграција Србије у ЕУ. Из тог разлога сматрам да не постоји никаква опасност да дође до државног преврата у Србији. Летос смо имали далеко озбиљније демонстрације у Србији где је на улицама било преко 100 хиљаде људи, али након што се про-западна опозција инсталирала на чело тих протеста, они су угушени. Треба и истаћи то да незадовољство грађана у Србији евидентно постоји, и да су они подједнако незадовољни и влашћу и опозицијим, односно комплетном политичком сценом Србије. Фактички у Србији не постоји алтернатива безалтернативном путу у ЕУ нити озбиљне политичке структуре које би могле да задобију поверење грађана. Из тог разлога је нејасно чиме може да резултира нарастајуће незадовољство грађана.

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***

Over the past several decades, until very recently, you would have been hard-pressed to locate a single word of criticism in the corporate state media leveled at literally anything the Israeli state does. The uniparty’s pawns in elected government — and, more to the point, the national security state that actually runs foreign policy — have unanimously, full-throatedly embraced Zionism without reservation.

The few over the years who have strayed from the company line, like Pat Buchanan, have been met with the full force of the Israel lobby and its media attack dogs at the Anti-Defamation League, which intentionally, disgustingly conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, a common tactic to silence the Israeli state’s political opponents.

Via ADL:

“Buchanan makes no attempt to hide his anti-Semitic and anti-Israel views, which have become more virulent in recent years…

Buchanan also turned his attention to Israel in his columns in 2010. In a June 2010 article, ‘Lift the Siege of Gaza,’ about the Israeli offensive in Gaza, Buchanan wrote that it “’was the inevitable result of Israel doing what it always seems to do: going beyond what is essential to her security, to impose collective punishment upon any and all it regards as hostile to Israel.’ In a May 2010 column, ‘Poodle Biden Gets Kicked,’ about Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, Buchanan cited Biden’s comment that ‘there is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security.’ Buchanan then claimed that Biden ‘was played for a fool’ when Israel decided it would build new homes in disputed areas. Buchanan called Americans “grovelers” when it comes to dealing with Israel and claimed that the U.S. responded like a ‘battered spouse to Israel’s ’public slap across the face.’…

Buchanan went on to criticize those who believe his views are anti-Semitic… ‘They charge us with anti-Semitism… The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a ‘passionate attachment’ to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America.’“

Where’s the lie, ADL? They present Buchanan’s claims with no rebuttal as if they are self-evidently a.) incorrect and b.) somehow antisemitic even though in all cited examples Buchanan is explicitly discussing U.S. foreign policy vis-a-vis Israel — nothing about Jews or Judaism.

Anyway, in recent weeks, a new phenomenon has unfolded: the knives have come out against the government of Bibi Netanyahu (not the Israeli state per se) in the corporate state media — even in its epicenter, which is Morning Joe and his sidepiece, Mika “Deep State Nepo-Baby” Brzeziński. Whatever line Joe and Mika are parroting is, invariably, the current approved narrative; it doesn’t get more establishment.

What gives?

There might be an amalgam of explanations, as most geopolitical issues are multifactorial. But here’s what I think is going on:

Netanyahu, as head of the Likud party and of a governing coalition including even more dogmatic parties, represents the highly religious, nationalistic faction of Israeli politics that is most likely to resist a full takeover by the multinational corporate state. Their vision of an explicitly Jewish state conflicts with the monocultural global technocracy’s ambition to turn the world into a consolidated techno-fiefdom.

What sold me on this theory was a trend that began earlier this year, when I saw a symphony of top technocrats, led by the WEF lieutenant himself, Yuval Noah Harari, who is no critic of Israel per se as a geopolitical beachhead in the Middle East as such, publicly turn on Netanyahu.

Via Times of Israel, March 2023:

“The Israeli historian, philosopher, and best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari said Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may go down in history as the man who destroyed Israel.

Harari, who has been vocal about his opposition to a proposed judicial overhaul by Netanyahu’s right-wing government, said the long-serving prime minister has divided the country to preserve his political longevity.

This has caused rifts that will be difficult to heal, Harari said.

‘If Netanyahu had retired after two terms in office or after, say, eight years. I think even though I didn’t like many of the things he did, I think he would have retired as one of the great leaders of Israel,’ Harari said during an interview with The Associated Press in Tel Aviv.

‘Now, his legacy is he is certainly the divider of Israel, the person who divided the Israeli nation against itself. And I hope … we don’t get there,’ he said. ‘But he could go down in history as the person who destroyed the state of Israel.’…

Harari said Netanyahu, who is in a coalition with ultra-Orthodox and ultranationalist parties affiliated with the West Bank settlement movement, could move toward a dictatorship if the [judicial reform] plan is passed, and sounded the alarm for Israel’s Western backers.

‘If this kind of power falls into the hands of an autocratic regime, which is also a fundamentalist religious regime with expansionist aims and with this belief in Jewish supremacy, it will set the whole Middle East on fire,’ Harari said.”

The likes of Harari view Israel as a necessary asset of the Western corporate state in a region otherwise dominated by Muslim caliphates, even the most closely-held of which, like Saudi Arabia, are only on board for the oil money and the weapons/military assistance. Even given that the leaderships of these countries are nominally in on the globalist project, they sit atop a barely-contained ticking time bomb of Islamic fundamentalism, waiting for any opening to make a mess of things. Imagine ISIS but backed by the vast oil wealth currently controlled by the Saudi royal family and their analogs in the other Gulf States. This makes them unreliable allies at best, to the extent they could be considered allies at all and not mercenaries. Israel is an indispensable asset in the region.

Religious Israeli hardliners, therefore, represent the chief ideological adversaries of creatures such as Harari, as do nationalists of all stripes — be they secular or sectarian in nature, or ethnocentric or multicultural. It is no coincidence that, since the latter half of the 20^th century, “nationalism” has become a dirty word in polite neoliberal society, analogized to Nazism.

Israel, but for the Zionist ultra-nationalists in the way, is very nearly a fully captured state. The most glaring evidence for this is its government’s full-throated embrace of the COVID shots as “the first country on Earth to fully vaccinate a majority of its citizens against COVID-19” and its offering of the Israeli population as the de facto global guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical companies.

There are self-interested geopolitical reasons, of course, for Israel to give itself over to the multinational corporate state; it is surrounded on all sides, except the one occupied by a sea, by its enemies. It depends wholly on the financial, diplomatic, and military support of the United States, which at the top is itself nearly fully captured.

I have previously argued, which I stand by, that October 7 was not an “intelligence failure.” However, I am open to the possibility that Netanyahu himself did not see the attack coming and that the Israeli national security/intelligence apparatus hid pertinent information from him so as to achieve a pretext to finally get rid of him. If that is the case, putting the puzzle pieces together as to why American corporate state media has turned on Bibi becomes easier. 

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The unfortunate dismantling of the Soviet Union over 30 years ago has left a power vacuum in the enormous territory it covered, either directly or through its ideological “brethren”. One of those was Yugoslavia, a relatively prosperous state that had a hybrid market socialist economy. It can be argued that Yugoslavia served as the testing ground for the US-led political West’s crawling aggression against Russia.

Eliminating the USSR simply wasn’t enough for Washington DC and Brussels, as the then newly established Russian Federation was still way too big and powerful for their liking. At the time, Moscow was kept down by the disastrous Yeltsin-era policies that essentially destroyed not only its status as a superpower, but also much of its internal sovereignty and economic power.

In the meantime, NATO focused on the destruction of whatever was left of Yugoslavia. The country’s largest ethnic group, the Serbs, was particularly targeted, with the political West aiming to reduce Serbian ethnic space as much as possible, starting with “Operation Storm” in 1995, when upwards of 400,000 Serbs were ethnically cleansed from the former Republic of Serbian Krajina and western parts of Republika Srpska. The latter was forcibly incorporated into Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995.

And that certainly wasn’t the end of it, as just four years later, the world’s most aggressive military alliance directly attacked Serbia itself to take away its resource-rich province of Kosovo and Metohia, resulting in another ethnic cleansing of over 250,000 indigenous Serbs.

However, the US-led NATO wasn’t done with Serbia. On the contrary, already the following year (October 5, 2000), it launched a color revolution, in many ways the first one in the post-Cold War era. Belgrade never really recovered from this, as the newly established Western-backed government effectively destroyed the country’s sovereignty by handing it over to Washington DC and Brussels.

By the mid to late 2000s, Serbia was almost completely dismantled, with Montenegro detaching in 2006 after a shady EU-backed referendum. Even before the vote, NATO threatened Serbia in case it intervened to prevent the secession, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about its legitimacy. Just two years later, the political West officially launched the “Kosovo project” by recognizing its so-called “independence”.

In 2012, Serbia’s pro-Western government lost its standing and was replaced by what many thought was a much more independent and sovereigntist option led by the current President Aleksandar Vucic.

However, the pressure on Serbia never subsided and the new government continued much of the same policies. And yet, this wasn’t enough, so the political West continued supporting various pro-EU/NATO political parties and NGOs, seeking to put even more compliant people in power. The recent parliamentary election is a perfect example of that, where pro-Western opposition parties and organizations launched somewhat Maidan-like violent protests, attacking police and several key institutions, including the Belgrade Assembly, as the capital’s city hall is officially called.

Claiming that the election was rigged, the opposition is demanding a new one. Dozens of violent protesters have been arrested, while at least eight police officers were injured. President Vucic is claiming there’s evidence of foreign interference that led to violent protests, while Prime Minister Ana Brnabic even thanked Russian intelligence services for providing timely information that prevented a more violent escalation. [It should be noted that Brnabic is a Young Leader of the WEF, a disciple of Klaus Schwab] The involvement of Moscow might seem a bit strange, but it’s hardly surprising given the history of NATO-backed protests in countries Russia sees as partners and allies.

There have been at least half a dozen such events in the former Soviet Union in the last two decades, with one resulting in the Donbass War in 2014, forcing the Kremlin to intervene in 2022.

After the aforementioned 2000 coup in Serbia, the people involved were swiftly transferred to Ukraine and Georgia. From there, with the help of US intelligence services, they expanded their operations all across the former Soviet Union, with plans to cause instability in Moscow’s entire geopolitical periphery. The number of people involved in these operations is truly staggering and includes individuals from all walks of life. And yet, there’s one particular name that stands out – Srdja Popovic. This man, clearly one of the CIA’s top assets in all of the former Eastern Bloc and beyond, is one of the key people behind the practical implementation of virtually every major protest in the former USSR.

Worse yet, the mainstream propaganda machine has been showering him with praise for decades now, claiming that he’s “helping democracy”. The Guardian styles him as “the secret architect of global revolution“, while the Economist admitted that “Popovic is advising rebels in 40 countries” (or even more). Back in 1998, packed with CIA funds and resources, Popovic established an organization called “Otpor” (“Resistance” in Serbian). After the 2000 coup, he tried his hand at politics, but failed after his close links to US intelligence services were revealed. Highly unpopular in Serbia, Popovic has been keeping a low profile in the country ever since. However, the CIA and the likes put his “expertise” to “good use”, as he switched to organizing similar movements in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East.

Popovic contributed to the so-called “Arab Spring” coups that helped US aggression in several Middle Eastern countries, including Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. And yet, his most important projects involved Georgia and Ukraine in the early 2000s, where he helped organize the so-called “Rose” and “Orange” revolutions in 2003 and 2004, respectively. In 2005, there was also the so-called “Tulip” revolution in Kyrgyzstan, followed by two more in 2010 and 2020. Interestingly, the last one started on October 5, the exact date of the coup that happened in Serbia precisely 20 years earlier. After the political failure of “Otpor”, in 2004 Popovic founded another organization called the Center for Applied NonViolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS) and took part in the creation of the “Pora” movement.

This organization was effectively a carbon copy of “Otpor”, only focused on Russia and Ukraine. It took active and sometimes even the leading part in every US/NATO-orchestrated rebellion and protest in both countries, including the infamous Maidan that eventually led to the rise of the Neo-Nazi junta in Ukraine. The activities of such movements have also been recorded in Armenia in 2018 and Kazakhstan in late 2021/early 2022. Although organizations Popovic founded and trained claim to use nonviolent methods, the results of their actions always lead to countless deaths, both directly and indirectly. For instance, the Maidan coup is the reason behind the Donbass war that took upwards of 15,000 lives, with hundreds of thousands more after Russia was forced to put a stop to it.

Taking all this into account, it can easily be argued that Popovic is a dangerous and well-trained US/NATO-backed terrorist who should’ve been arrested . Unfortunately, as this was never done, neither by the Milosevic government nor any other, particularly after his overthrow, people like Popovic were given a free hand to sow discord and instability, playing the role of a vanguard that would then be followed by a more direct US aggression. What’s more, the monsters that Popovic created have now grown into even more dangerous organizations that are continuing his “democratic” work. As previously mentioned, the ongoing protests in Serbia are eerily reminiscent of the infamous Maidan, as they have all the trademarks of Popovic’s playbook.

Although there’s no direct evidence that the Kiev regime’s services, such as the SBU, contributed to the protests, it’s not impossible that precisely this happened. The reaction of Russian intelligence further reinforces this notion. While the current Serbian government has largely given in to Western pressure and blackmail, mostly due to decades of US/NATO aggression and partial occupation, even joining some openly anti-Russian initiatives, it’s certainly not in Moscow’s interest to see the much more pro-Western opposition come to power in Serbia. For this reason, the Kremlin definitely sees the current Belgrade establishment as “the lesser of two evils”, as it can still work with it on a number of issues, despite ongoing attempts to drive a wedge between the two historically allied countries.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Nov. 27, 2023 – Statistics Canada released a fascinating report called “Deaths 2022”. Here is my analysis of the report.

 

 

The Statistics Canada Report can be accessed HERE. 

Excess deaths:

• Let’s start by analyzing some simple numbers.
• 48,780 excess deaths in 2022 compared to 2019. 17% increase in mortality.
• That’s 0.128% of the population, or 1 in every 784 Canadians died in 2022.
• In USA, that would be equivalent to 423,270 American deaths

What would you do?

• Let’s assume you’re the Trudeau government and you’ve poisoned your population.
• You recommended 7 experimental COVID-19 Vaccines that are now causing heart attacks, blood clots, collapses, cancers & sudden deaths.
• These are the COVID-19 Vaccines the Canadian Government (NACI) recommended:
  • 2 doses in early 2021
  • 1st booster in late 2021
  • 2nd booster in April 2022
  • 3rd (Omicron bivalent booster) in Oct.2022
  • 4th (Omicron bivalent booster) in Mar.2023
  • 5th (XBB.1.5 monovalent booster) in Sep.2023
• If you followed the Canadian government recommendations precisely, you would have taken 7 COVID-19 Vaccines as of right now.
• It was also possible to skip the 2nd booster and wait for the Omicron bivalent, which means you would have taken 6 COVID-19 Vaccines.
• We know that there is a tsunami of sudden deaths in the COVID-19 Vaccinated, but how do you present that data as the Federal Government?

What caused 48,780 deaths in 2022?

• 19,700 deaths from “COVID-19” in 2022, up from 15,900 in 2020.
• And this after 7 COVID-19 Vaccines recommended by NACI.
• This is proof that COVID-19 Vaccines did not save a single life.
• It’s important to remember that 80% of COVID-19 deaths in 2020 in Canada were found to be in long term care home settings (source), where vulnerable seniors were often left to die without adequate treatment (like antibiotics), or were given euthanasia drug cocktails (midazolam, morphine).
• So most COVID-19 deaths in 2020 were not true COVID-19 deaths.
• In terms of vaccines protecting from “severe disease”, where is this protection on the graph below? I don’t see any protection in 2021. Hospitalizations were similar in 2021 compared to 2020.
• Now look at what happened after COVID-19 mRNA 1st booster shots were rolled out in Nov-Dec.2021. This was followed by massive Omicron spikes in 2022 in Jan (BA.1), March (BA.2), July (BA.5), October (BA.5+).
• Again, where is this “protection from severe illness” promised by the vaccines?
• There is once again no evidence of vaccines protecting people in 2022.

• Even if we accept 19,700 deaths from COVID-19 in 2022, who was dying?
• BC government data (just before they deleted it in July 2022) told us 90% of those dying were Vaccinated.
• So 17,730 of the 19,700 deaths (90%) were COVID-19 Vaccinated anyways.
• Therefore, either:
  • they died from a COVID-19 Vaccine Injury and it was falsely reported as a COVID-19 death, or
  • they died from failure of their COVID-19 Vaccine (and likely Immune system injury) and they died from COVID-19.
• Any way you dissect it, these 19,700 “COVID-19 deaths” are really COVID-19 Vaccine deaths.
• Where is the 99% or 95% COVID-19 Vaccine efficacy we were promised?

Unspecified causes of deaths:

• 16,043, a stunning 375% increase from 2019 when it was 3,378!
• This is the most stunning admission from the entire report.
• This is also the number that has been circulated extensively on social media
• We don’t actually get any plausible explanation for this number in the entire report.

Cardiac

• Cardiac deaths increased by 4,000.
• This is a significant number, although I suspect many cardiac deaths are hidden in the “unspecified” or “COVID-19” death categories.

Accidents (Unintentional injuries)

• 18,365, up almost 3,000 from 2019 (15,527)
• I’m guessing they’re hiding blood clots here (strokes, falls, medical emergency while driving, etc)

Cancer

• Turbo Cancer due to COVID-19 Vaccines is a signal they have to hide at all costs.
• I’m not surprised to see only a small rise from 80,400 to 82,400, or +2000
• This is a number that is undoubtedly tampered with.
• It would be very easy to hide cancer deaths as COVID-19 deaths.

Statistics Canada:

“Life expectancy decreases for a third year in a row”.

• the important detail: “In 2022, the decline was more prominent among females than among males”.
• more women are vaccine injured than men.
• women are losing life expectancy in Canada at faster rate than men.

“COVID-19 deaths…This increase may in part be due to the exposure to new highly transmissible COVID-19 variants and the gradual return to normalcy, eg. reduced restrictions and masking requirements”

• Translation: 19,700 7x-vaccinated Canadians died from COVID-19 because of the milder new variants, no lockdowns and they stopped masking.
• this explanation makes NO SENSE – if their vaccine protected them, they wouldn’t need lockdowns, wouldn’t need masks that don’t work, and they certainly wouldn’t be dying from milder variants.
• so Statistics Canada has NO EXPLANATION for these 19,700 deaths.

“Deaths due to influenza and pneumonia on the rise”

• “deaths due to influenza and pneumonia increased by 45.4% from 2021 to 2022”
• I’ve often talked about this, this is due to COVID-19 Vaccine Immune damage.

“information on the causes of death, particularly among younger Canadians, whose deaths are more likely to result in an investigation, typically requires more time before it is reported to Statistics Canada…the data released today are preliminary”

• they’re telling us that we’re not getting all the young Canadian sudden deaths in this report.
• So the 48,700 Excess deaths doesn’t include an unknown number of “younger Canadians” who died suddenly.

My Take…

Statistics Canada “Deaths 2022” is data that you can reasonably expect has been thoroughly manipulated and tampered with.

It’s “preliminary” and doesn’t include many “younger Canadians” who died suddenly.

Even so, it is a devastating report.

48,780 Excess deaths in 2022 (17% increase in mortality).

I propose that the vast majority of these are COVID-19 Vaccine deaths.

These COVID-19 vaccine deaths are being concealed as:

• 19,716 COVID-19 deaths (not possible)
• 16,043 Unspecified causes (no explanation given or even attempted)
• the remaining 12,000 or so they’re not hiding:
  • 4,000 Cardiac
  • 3,000 Accidents
  • 2,000 Cancers
  • 800 liver disease
  • 500 kidney disease
  • 500 diabetes

A reminder that 1 in every 784 Canadians died in 2022, as admitted by the Canadian government in this Nov.27, 2023 Statistics Canada report. 

This is very much in line with Denis Rancourt’s work on excess deaths due to COVID-19 Vaccination.

This is what I wrote in my very first substack article on Feb.6, 2023:

“A good quick rule of thumb is: highly COVID vaccinated countries lost0.1% of their total population to “excess deaths” in 2022. That’s 1 in every 1000 people, dead.”

Statistics Canada corrected me. Not 1 in 1000.

Worse. 1 in 784.

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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 Michael Nevradakis, PhD via COVID Intel

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Mass protests have begun in Belgrade. Opposition members and their supporters, who disagree with the results of the recent parliamentary elections, have taken to the streets, blocking roads and attacking government buildings. Law enforcement agencies are responding by trying to contain the unrest. The situation is heating up.

According to experts, an attempt is being made to stage a coup in Serbia on the model of Ukraine’s Maidan in 2014. Most experts believe that the actions of the Serbian opposition are coordinated by Brussels and Washington.

Is a political revolution possible in Serbia?

The director of the Center for Geostrategic Research, Dragana Trifkovic, gave the Public News Service her own take on the issue.

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On December 17 of this year, parliamentary and local elections were held in Serbia. In my opinion, the purpose of organizing early elections was to legitimize the policies of the ruling regime, especially in relation to Kosovo and Metohija.

Let me remind you that the ruling regime signed the Brussels Agreement in 2013 and the Washington Agreement in 2020, according to which Serbia practically renounces its sovereignty and agrees with the decisions of the Albanian separatists supported by Washington.

Also, in February this year, the Franco-German plan to recognize the sovereignty, territorial integrity and national symbols of an independent Kosovo was verbally adopted in the city of Ohrid. The United States believes that the verbal agreement of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is sufficient to legitimize an independent Kosovo. At the same time, the Serbian president repeats that he will never recognize Kosovo’s independence but does not cancel already signed agreements and verbal consent.

It is important for the United States to finalize the Kosovo independence project after the elections, and to that end it is coordinating the actions of both the government and the opposition. This should be kept in mind when assessing the current situation in Serbia, where the protests and political instability are only part of a larger plan.

There are signs that Vucic has agreed to U.S. Ambassador to Serbia Christopher Hill’s request to cede power in Belgrade to the pro-Western opposition, but it is clear that he wants to keep power in Belgrade. I in no way support the intervention of a foreign factor in Serbia or violent protests. But the fact is that both the government and the opposition have the same political program – Serbia’s uncontested integration into the EU. The EU recently included Serbia’s commitment to recognize Kosovo’s independence in the European integration process.

In conclusion, we can see that the protests in Serbia are organized by the opposition because of the electoral irregularities, but they do not pose a threat to the regime unless they receive full support from the West, which they do not have at the moment. Therefore, the pro-Western opposition is used by the USA as a factor of control over the government, blackmailing the government to fulfill all the contracts signed regarding Kosovo.

After the early elections, Aleksander Vucic’s regime won a majority in parliament and effectively consolidated its power. This shows that it still enjoys strong support from the West. On the one hand, the Serbian regime is trying to delay the implementation of the already signed and agreed obligations regarding Kosovo, and on the other hand, the United States wants to fully implement the Kosovo independence project before the American elections.

So, if we compare the situation in Serbia with the situation in Ukraine before Maidan, because there are many similarities of this kind, we must recognize one fundamental difference. This is due to the fact that Yanukovych postponed signing an agreement with the EU, while Vucic still defends the idea of Serbia’s unquestionable integration into the EU and continues cooperation with the Union. Therefore, I believe that there is no risk of a coup in Serbia.

This spring we had much more serious demonstrations in Serbia, where more than 100,000 people took to the streets, but after the pro-Western opposition took the lead in the protests, they were repressed. It should also be noted that the dissatisfaction of the citizens in Serbia clearly exists, and they are equally dissatisfied with the government and the opposition, i.e. with the entire political scene in Serbia.

In fact, in Serbia there is no alternative to the single path to the EU, just as there are no serious political structures that can win the trust of citizens. For this reason, it is unclear how far the growing discontent of citizens will take us. Political stability is based solely on the agreement between the government and the opposition with the American ambassador, and the interests of Serbian citizens have nothing to do with it.

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Why go for war, when Yemen’s request is very simple: Allow humanitarian aid flow into Gaza and a Ceasefire. They didn’t even request it for themselves, even though they have a need for aid. God bless Yemen @EsirEid

Why go for war, when Yemenite request is very simple: Allow humanitarian aid flow into Gaza and a Ceasefire. They didn't even request it for themselves, even though they have a need for aid. God bless Yemen

— 🇪 🇸 🇮 🇷 🇹🇿🇲 🇹 🇿 (@EsirEid) December 19, 2023

The Biden administration is blaming Iran for drone attacks on a commercial tanker in the Indian Ocean. The claims are being used as leverage on Iran to pressure the Houthis to abandon their blockade in the Red Sea and allow maritime traffic to return to normal. But the Houthis have no intention of caving in to pressure from Iran or anyone else. They are determined to continue their attacks on Israel-bound traffic however long it takes and whatever the cost.

On Sunday, numerous articles in the western media reported that Iran had launched a drone attack on a Japanese-owned chemical tanker named the MV Chem Pluto in the Indian Ocean. Many of these articles based their reports on claims made by unidentified Pentagon sources or declassified intelligence. As of Tuesday, none of those allegations have been independently verified or proven to be true.

What we know from previous experience is that elements of the national security state frequently plant fictitious stories in the media in order to garner public support for unpopular military campaigns or to demonize foreign nations for things for which they are in no way responsible.

And that appears to be the case here. There is no doubt that both Israel and the US want to implicate Iran in the recent attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea. But, so far, there is no evidence to verify those claims. Iran’s leaders strongly oppose Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza, but they’ve also indicated that they do not want to participate in the hostilities. Iran does not want to get dragged into a broader regional war which could trigger a confrontation with the United States which would result in the deaths of millions of Iranians. All of this suggests that the recent flurry of anti-Iran reporting is agenda-driven disinformation designed to turn public opinion against Iran. This is from an article at BBC:

A chemical tanker in the Indian Ocean was hit by a drone launched from Iran on Saturday, the US military says….

Iran has not commented. Houthi rebels in Yemen – who are backed by Iran and support Hamas in its war with Israel – have recently used drones and rockets to target vessels in the Red Sea….

The same company also said the vessel was heading from Saudi Arabia to India, and was linked to Israel. The Houthis have claimed to be targeting Israel-linked vessels over the conflict in Gaza.

The US said the Chem Pluto was hit by “a one-way attack drone fired from Iran”. It is believed to be the first time the US has publicly accused Iran of targeting a ship directly.

It has previously accused Iran of being “deeply involved” in planning operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea – a charge Tehran has denied…Tanker hit off India coast by drone from Iran, says US, BBC

Yemen is so very badass–they take this brave stance as the poorest country in the Middle East, and in their 8th year of war and forced starvation by US/Israel and their allies. Yemen: "FU. GO AROUND AFRCA!!" lol Be like Yemen. #ILoveYemen #SaveGaza pic.twitter.com/49zSFMVThy

— Tamlyn Joy 🇵🇸🇷🇺 (@TamlynJJoy) December 25, 2023

Not surprisingly, the BBC article is factually wrong on several counts. First, Iran HAS commented on the incident, in fact, they have categorically denied any involvement whatsoever. This is from Al Jazeera:

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has dismissed accusations of the United States that Tehran struck a chemical tanker in the Indian Ocean, as tension rises globally over threats to maritime shipping.

A spokesperson for the ministry dismissed the accusation out of hand at a news conference on Monday. He asserted that the US claim that an Iran-launched drone had hit a Japanese-owned tanker as it sailed near India was false.

“We declare these claims as completely rejected and worthless,” said Nasser Kanaani when asked about the US accusation.

“Such claims are aimed at projecting, distracting public attention, and covering up for the full support of the American government for the crimes of the Zionist regime [Israel] in Gaza,” he added. Iran dismisses US accusations of tanker attack off India, Al Jazeera

We cannot understand why BBC editors did not include this explicit denial of involvement unless they were driven by an ulterior motive, that is, to further demonize Iran.

Second, we have zero evidence that the “drone (was) launched from Iran“. None of the many cookie cutter articles we have read provide anything remotely resembling verifiable evidence.

Third, Iran is not “deeply involved” in planning operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea”. The idea of attacking Israel-bound merchant ships in the Red Sea was concocted by Houthi leaders alone. Both the Houthis and the Iranians have admitted as much. Here’s more from the BBC:

The Pentagon statement said the Chem Pluto, “a Liberia-flagged, Japanese-owned, and Netherlands-operated chemical tanker”, was struck on Saturday at 10:00 local time …. The BBC was not able to independently verify the incident.” BBC

If the BBC “was not able to independently verify the incident,” then why in heaven’s name did they file a report that implied Iranian culpability? Is that not professional malfeasance?

Here’s more from the same article:

Many global shipping groups have suspended operations in the Red Sea due to the increased risk of attacks. The UK government has vowed to ensure the route’s safety.

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told the Sunday Times newspaper that the UK was committed to repelling attacks on vessels – and would not allow the Red Sea to become a “no-go area”...

Chris Farrell from Neptune P2P Group, a UK maritime security company, described nervousness in the region and observed that container ships were proving more likely to reroute than larger vessels.“Nobody really knows the situation out there,” he told the BBC World Service’s Weekend programme.

“Because of the lack of stability, that’s creating the uncertainty with the clients and the shipping companies which are putting their assets within that region.” BBC

This is so epic. Yemen. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/GwQqEeN1CL

— Shirin Khan (@Shirinkhan0) December 19, 2023

This excerpt requires some additional analysis: The UK Defence Secretary says he will not allow the Red Sea to become a “no-go area” while tacitly admitting that it has already become a “no-go area”. In other words, by his own admission, “Many global shipping groups have suspended operations in the Red Sea”, the transit corridors are no longer safe, and “container ship” are already being rerouted. By any conceivable metric, the Houthi strategy is working better than anyone could have imagined.

That is what he is saying. Don’t the authors realize that? Don’t they see that they have just admitted that the Houthi’s asymmetrical attack may be the most successful hybrid attack of all time; that they have effectively detonated a nuclear bomb at the economic epicenter of the “rules-based order”? It would be impossible to overstate the impact this ingenious offensive is having on political leaders and elites scattered across the western world. The sense of hysteria is palpable. A smallish, unsophisticated militia has delivered a withering blow to the Empire’s Achilles heel—the vital transit corridor for global trade that is now under the de facto control of Washington’s mortal enemy, the Houthis. Is that not a victory for the majority of ordinary people around the world who oppose the US and Israel’s sadistic butchery of the Palestinian people?

It is a victory. It is a triumph of good vs evil. But it will not go unanswered. Here’s more from an article at CNN:

The US on Friday released newly declassified intelligence that suggests Iran has been “deeply involved in planning the operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told CNN.

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched more than 100 attacks against about a dozen commercial and merchant ships transiting the Red Sea over the past four weeks, CNN previously reported. The newly declassified intelligence suggests that “Iranian support throughout the Gaza crisis has enabled the Houthis to launch attacks against Israel and maritime targets, though Iran has often deferred operational decision-making authority to the Houthis,” Watson said.

On Tuesday, a senior US military official said the Iranians are operating in the Red Sea when asked whether Iran is helping the Houthis select targets. But that official said the Houthi attacks have been broadly indiscriminate.

“Iran has the choice to provide or withhold this support, without which the Houthis would struggle to effectively track and strike commercial vessels navigating shipping lanes through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” Watson said….US intelligence suggests Iran involved in planning attacks in Red Sea, CNN

What declassified intelligence? What senior US military official? Who provided this intelligence and what documents can CNN produce to prove their claims? We need to know the answers to these questions.

Once again, there’s no evidence, no witnesses, no documents, no electronic communications, and no proof. We are left with nothing but a “tapestry of lies” supporting an insidious anti-Iran narrative that may or may not be true. We just don’t know, because there are no verifiable facts, just speculation amid huge doses of hearsay. All we know for sure is that the authors want us to believe that Iran is source of all the problems in the Middle East. But that idea defies any understanding of the region’s history or recent events. It’s not Iran that has been toppling governments, killing millions and obliterating countries across the ME for the last 30 years. That is Washington’s doing. And it’s not Iran that has waged a brutish war of extermination on the civilian population in Gaza, reducing most of the area to smoldering rubble while herding 2 million starving people towards the Egyptian border. That is Israel’s doing. Iran wages war on no one; rather, they have been the target of relentless US hostility for over 5 decades for having the audacity to assert control over their own resources. That is Iran’s real crime; it’s unwillingness to bend a knee to Uncle Sam and timidly accept its role as Washington’s servile meat-puppet. Is that true or not true?

It’s true. This is from ABC News:

U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the United States military to carry out retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-backed militia groups after three U.S. service members were injured in a drone attack in northern Iraq….

Iraqi officials said that U.S. strikes targeting militia sites early Tuesday killed one militant and wounded 18. They came at a time of heightened fears of a regional spillover of the Israel-Hamas war….

The U.S. has also blamed Iran, which has funded and trained the Hamas group, for attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militants against commercial and military vessels through a critical shipping choke point in the Red Sea. “Biden orders strikes on an Iranian-aligned group after 3 US troops wounded in drone attack in Iraq, ABC News

Are these really “retaliatory strikes” on Iranian positions or is Biden trying to coerce Iran into putting pressure on the Houthis?

IMO, the attacks are clearly aimed at the Houthis who can only be approached via their ally, Iran. The administration has made no effort to talk directly with the Houthis nor will they. US leaders will not negotiate with people they see as their inferiors which means they must persuade Iran to make their case for them. But, what does Iran get for its efforts?

They avoid the wider regional war that Netanyahu is angling for but that no one else (including the US) really wants. So, the Biden team is pressuring Iran because the next escalatory step is firing directly on Houthis positions, command-and-control, arms depots, communications and the rest. Once that happens, events will move very quickly. The Houthis will close the Red Sea to maritime traffic, they will attack regional US bases and installations, and they will take out critical oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. The genie will be out of the bottle and all Hell will break loose across the region. Oil prices will skyrocket, markets will plunge, and the global economy will go off a cliff. Which is why Biden is pursuing the Iranian track. It’s a last-ditch effort to avoid a Middle East catastrophe.

Sadly, it won’t work because Israel is determined to continue its ethnic cleansing in Gaza and then move on to the West Bank. So, the attacks on commercial ships are going to continue which will leave Washington with no option but war.

Yemen poses a unique but serious threat to US hegemony. Its military is small by US standards but they are adept at fighting in rugged terrain and they know every nook and cranny of the battlefield. They are fully prepared to fight a guerrilla war that could drag on for years. Naturally, Biden and his advisors would rather avoid such a conflict, but that may not be possible, after all, the “rules-based order” rests on a foundation of economic-political-military power.

So, when a smaller country ‘disrespects’ the US by disrupting merchant ships in the world’s most important shipping lanes, Uncle Sam must prove that he has the power to put down that rebellion or be prepared to face similar insurgencies in the future. This is the logic that guides imperial policy. Never show weakness or the jackals will rip you apart and leave you to die. That is the maxim Washington lives by.

What the Houthis are showing the world is that the Washington is no longer capable of imposing its Pax Americana on the hinterland. The US cannot form a broad-based maritime coalition because America’s allies no longer trust Washington’s judgement or believe in its moral authority. Nor does the Navy have a flotilla large enough or nimble enough to protect the waterways and transit corridors that sustain western economies. This is no small problem. This is crisis of legitimacy. It is a question of whether the US can act as the guarantor of global security or not. We don’t think it can, but we do think that the administration and the western elites that support them, are going to give-it-the-old-college-try by charging into Yemen ‘guns blazing’ in an effort to put down the Red Sea rebellion and to restore America’s image as the world’s premier military power.

Bottom line: Uncle Sam is not going to allow itself to get slapped-around in public by a country it sees as a ‘third-rate power.’ It’s going to roll-out the heavy artillery and then send in the ground troops. God help us.

The current situation pic.twitter.com/MW5QhMgXZl

— Rev Laskaris (@REVMAXXING) December 24, 2023

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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). 

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Some 1,000 children have had limbs amputated without anaesthesia in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its brutal bombing campaign on 7 October, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said.

It added that allowing the continued shelling of Gaza means greenlighting the killing of more children.

The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip has previously stated that nearly 70 per cent of the casualties of the aggression were children and women.

The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip has surged to 20,674, the Health Ministry in the territory said yesterday.

Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra also said that 54,536 people had been injured in the months-long offensive.

The Israeli onslaught 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.

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As Israel continues its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza — with the death toll now exceeding 20,000 (about 70 percent women and children) — the world seems powerless to stop the slaughter.

The Biden administration, Israel’s chief enabler, defanged the resolution that was ultimately passed by the UN Security Council on December 22, rendering it merely symbolic. The final resolution calls for humanitarian assistance but not for a ceasefire which would allow aid to reach the people of Gaza. The U.S. saved diplomatic face by not employing its customary veto, but it did not vote for the resolution, electing instead to abstain.

On the same day, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons Paula Gaviria Betancur warned that Israel seeks to permanently change the composition of Gaza’s population with additional evacuation orders, and systematic and widespread attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in areas of southern Gaza.

Calls for prosecution of Israeli and U.S. officials in the International Criminal Court (ICC) have been ignored as the chief prosecutor of the ICC demonstrates blatant bias in favor of Israel.

On November 13, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations, Palestinians and Palestinian Americans against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, charging them with failure to prevent genocide and complicity in genocide. It seeks an emergency court order to halt U.S. military and diplomatic support to the Israeli government. The suit documents how Israel is committing genocide as defined in the Genocide Convention. A hearing will take place in January.

Nevertheless, the carnage continues unabated.

The “World Court” Decides Disputes Between Countries

The ICC’s Rome Statute provides for the prosecution of individuals who commit, or aid and abet the commission of genocide. By contrast, the International Court of Justice (ICJ or “World Court”) — the judicial arm of the UN system — resolves disputes between countries.

Any of the 153 state parties to the Genocide Convention can and should submit Israel’s genocide to the ICJ. Article IX of the Genocide Convention provides:

Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide . . . shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.

A formal investigation of the “Situation in the State of Palestine” has been pending in the ICC for nearly three years. If the ICJ were to make a finding of genocide, the ICC would not have to determine that genocide has occurred. The ICC would just have to decide which individuals are responsible for the genocide.

In the last two months, states parties to the Genocide Convention — including South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, Colombia, Algeria and Turkey — have urged the ICC to investigate Israeli officials for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza. Other countries critical of Israel’s actions include Pakistan, Brazil, Chile, Belize, Jordan, Ireland, Honduras, Bahrain, Venezuela, Iran and Cuba.

These countries should be urged to submit the matter of Israel’s genocide to the ICJ. If one of them does make a submission, the ICJ would have jurisdiction to hear the matter. Its decision must then go to the Security Council for enforcement, although that could be limited by political considerations.

When the Genocide Convention was invoked against Serbia by Bosnia and Herzegovina regarding the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, the ICJ ruled against Serbia. This fed directly through to prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

In 2004, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion against Israel in the case involving the barrier wall it built on Palestinian land. There’s another advisory opinion case pending in the ICJ about the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, in which the ICJ is expected to rule against Israel.

But if a state party to the Genocide Convention were to submit the matter of Israel’s genocide to the ICJ, the court’s decision could have binding authority.

On December 12, Craig Murray, the U.K.’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, attended a UN session in Geneva called by Palestine. More than 120 countries were represented. Murray spoke to several delegates about why no country has submitted the matter of Israel’s genocide to the ICJ.

“The answer is now clear to me,” Murray wrote. “It is not that people are worried that a claim of genocide will not be successful at the International Court of Justice. It is that everybody is quite sure it will succeed.”

A World Court Finding of Genocide Would Bind the ICC

“The problem is that once the ICJ has determined that this is a genocide, it follows that not only are [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and hundreds of senior Israeli officials and military personally liable,” according to Murray. “[B]ut it is absolutely plain that ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden, [U.K. Prime Minister Rishi] Sunak and members of their administrations are also criminally liable for complicity, having provided military support for the genocide.”

Murray added,

“The International Criminal Court cannot ignore a judgment of genocide from the International Court of Justice and will have no choice but to issue arrest warrants.”

There is no doubt that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Craig Mokhiber, former director of the New York Office of the UN’s High Commissioner of Human Rights (who resigned in October to protest the UN’s failure to prevent Israel’s genocide) called it “unprecedented — a text book case of genocide.”

Speaking at a December 13 webinar sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, Friends Committee on National Legislation, and MPower Action, Mokhiber said that Israel has murdered entire bloodlines, multigenerational families and whole neighborhoods in Gaza.

Israel has destroyed the civilian infrastructure and intentionally imposed disease, hunger, thirst and a lack of medical care on the people in Gaza. This amounts to the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, Mokhiber stated, which constitutes a genocidal act.

The ICJ can infer genocidal intent from Israel’s conduct, Mokhiber noted. But, he added, the court doesn’t need to infer intent from conduct because Israel is openly declaring its genocidal intent through public statements uttered by Israeli government officials: the intent to reduce Gaza to rubble, to bury Gazans, etc. “I have never seen a case like this,” Mokhiber said.

The General Assembly Should Convene Under “Uniting for Peace”

There is also a procedure the General Assembly can follow to circumvent a U.S. veto in the Security Council. Under Uniting for Peace, a resolution passed by the General Assembly to evade the Soviet Union’s veto power during the Korean War, the General Assembly can call on its 193 UN member states to impose a trade embargo on Israel and urge them to organize a military force to intervene in Gaza. The General Assembly can also suspend Israel from its ranks.

I have joined dozens of global intellectuals in signing a Declaration of Conscience and Concern, urging “national governments to embargo and halt all shipments of weapons to Israel, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, which should also withdraw their provocative naval presences from the Eastern Mediterranean.” We called on “the UN Security Council and General Assembly to so decree without delay.”

Moreover, we “unequivocally” urged “an immediate ceasefire and the initiation of diplomatic negotiations under respected and impartial auspices, aimed at terminating Israel’s long and criminally abusive occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. This process,” we wrote, “must be fully respectful of the inalienable right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and take proper account of relevant UN resolutions.”

Millions of people around the world have taken to the streets to protest Israel’s genocide. We must redouble our efforts to mobilize public opinion to pressure countries critical of Israel to submit the matter of its genocide to the ICJ and convene the General Assembly under Uniting for Peace. And we must support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement to compel Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian land.

The people of Gaza deserve our immediate and urgent action.

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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She is founding dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She is co-host of “Law and Disorder” Radio.

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Trade between India and Russia exceeded $50 billion this year, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said, setting a new record by an astronomical amount. It comes as the South Asian and Eurasian Giants deepen their ties despite major attempts by Washington to prevent this.

“There is an X factor when it comes to the relationship between India and Russia, which has remained good and has enhanced to a Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership. I signed an agreement along with DPM Manturov for future units of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project in Tamil Nadu. The bilateral trade between India and Russia can increase from the present $50 billion to $100 billion in the next few years,” said Jaishankar, while interacting with the Indian diaspora in Moscow on December 26 as part of his five-day visit and after explaining that trade exchange with Russia was previously between $12 billion and $14 billion.

“Our relationship with Russia has been stable over the past many decades as the leadership has taken care to nurture it, and there are strong people-to-people connections between our two nations. We support Russia for their BRICS Presidency and will continue to be their partner,” India’s top diplomat added.

He also indicated that India and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) – made up of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan – will begin negotiations on a free trade agreement at the beginning of 2024. Both countries already prepared a draft trade agreement in March 2020, but its consideration was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The fact that Jaishankar visited Moscow in the last week of the year to meet with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and with the Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov among others, demonstrates the importance that India places with its relationship with Russia, something to the immense frustration of the US.

The Biden administration has told foreign governments, including India, that now is not the time for “business as usual” with Russia, as the US President makes no secret of his efforts to try to isolate Moscow. Since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, the Biden administration has been trying to disrupt Russia’s economy through sanctions and export control measures, which created hurdles in India’s trade ties with the country. Both countries have acknowledged that billions of dollars of payments are stuck in banks due to difficulties in transferring payments created by the sanctions.

New Delhi has also expressed serious concern about the West’s import restrictions on Russian diamonds. Russia and India complement each other in the diamond industry, with the former being the largest producer globally while the latter is the world’s top exporter of polished diamonds.

It is recalled that the Indian Air Force (IAF) admitted to a committee of the Indian Parliament earlier this year that Russian defence exports to India have been delayed due to Western sanctions on the Russian military-industrial complex.

Russia and India signed in December 2021 the “Agreement on Military Technical Cooperation Program” for 2021-2031, which provides for the licensed production of T-90 tanks and Su-30 MKI fighter jets, along with the sale of S-400 systems. According to New Delhi’s aims of achieving self-reliance in defence production, Russia assists India in establishing manufacturing facilities for AK-203 rifles and BrahMos missiles, contributing to the fact that Russia is India’s largest supplier of arms.

Nonetheless, despite the difficulties created by the sanctions, New Delhi has shown Western powers that it will not shy away from Russia and instead will rapidly deepen trade relations. Due to this, Washington is forced now to show a greater understanding of India-Russia ties, which was spurred on mostly by the West’s favouritism towards Pakistan and financing of regional jihadi groups during the Cold War.

The success of Jaishankar’s visit to Moscow will ultimately be judged on the outcome of the meetings, such as whether a significant deal will be signed between Russia and India, which can be seen as a breakthrough. Although energy trade appears to be replacing defence as the key pillar of New Delhi-Moscow relations, evidenced by the fact that Russia is now the largest supplier of crude oil to India, it does not diminish security as a major concern, including financial security, especially in the face of US pressure. Yet, even a breakthrough deal is unlikely to garner major public backlash in the West as they now understand that they cannot deter the growing relations between India and Russia, meaning it will only be a matter of time until $50 billion worth of trade becomes $100 billion.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from thewire.in

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[Our thanks to Al Jazeera for this article.]

***

It has been four days since Gaza’s smallest refugee camp was pounded in yet another series of Israeli air strikes, but Palestinians there are still digging up the bodies of their loved ones from under the rubble.

The onslaught in central Gaza’s Maghazi late on Sunday killed at least 90 people, including children and many who were internally displaced.

In one of the deadliest attacks on the Gaza Strip since Israel launched a war on the enclave on October 7, residents including Ashraf al-Haj Ahmed said the assault happened “suddenly” and without prior warning.

“At around 11:30pm that night, we witnessed a series of large explosions that shook the entire camp,” al-Haj Ahmed told Al Jazeera.

At least three homes were completely destroyed [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

His relative’s home was among those that were flattened to the ground. Al-Haj Ahmed recalled running towards it as soon as the bombardment woke him up, just a few blocks down.

At the scene of the attack, he found a four-storey building destroyed “on top of those who were living in it”.

“There must have been around 40 people, among them are the owners of the house, as well as displaced families who were taken in,” he said.

At least three houses in the overcrowded camp were hit by Israeli air strikes. Officials in Gaza said seven families were among the casualties.

While the official number of those who were killed stands at 90, residents of the camp near Deir el-Balah say in reality, the figure is much higher as entire residential blocks were wiped out.

“In each home, there’s a minimum of 50 people,” another Maghazi resident told Al Jazeera. “A lot of them are displaced Palestinians from other parts of Gaza who were forced to flee their homes.”

Israel’s attacks have not spared homes and shelters that displaced people have fled to [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

The camp normally houses 30,000 people, according to the UN refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA). But with the displacement of Palestinians fleeing Israel’s relentless bombardment in other parts of the enclave, the number of people there has risen to an estimated 100,000.

“We pulled out so many body parts that we can’t even estimate the total number of deaths yet,” the second resident said.

“They’re all in pieces, and we’re pulling them out with our bare hands,” he added. “We’ve now gathered at least two piles of body parts.”

‘Dark and Painful Night’

Israel’s attacks have not spared homes and shelters that people have fled to.

Despite being on the southern side of the Strip, an area that Israeli forces deemed “safe” and ordered civilians from the north to flee ahead of their ground offensive, Maghazi has been subjected to intense artillery and air raids.

It was also attacked last month when at least 50 Palestinians were killed. The vicinity of the camp was also subjected to intense Israeli shelling over the last week.

Abu Rami Abu al-Ais is among those who have been sheltering in Maghazi ever since he left his home in the al-Zahra neighbourhood. He said Sunday’s attack was not the first time he and his family members had been hit.

“We had a home in al-Zahra, which came under attack. After coming here, the house we were staying in was bombed again,” al-Ais, whose daughter is badly injured, told Al Jazeera.

More than 21,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

He echoed al-Haj Ahmed’s experience and said there had been “no warnings whatsoever” prior to the strikes.

Al-Ais said in previous assaults on the enclave, Israeli forces would sometimes warn residents of a building to evacuate a few minutes before an attack, either by throwing leaflets or via speakerphones. But during this offensive, there had been no such warnings.

“The rockets fall on the heads of innocent people sleeping in their homes,” he said. “They [Israel] want to commit a complete genocide.”

Al-Ais said people are still collecting the remains of their friends, neighbours and relatives with their bare hands.

“We found the remains of women and children who were blown up. Their body parts have been scattered over a span of about three blocks,” due to the intensity of the strikes, al-Ais said.

“It was a very dark and painful night for Maghazi,” he recalled. “The widespread and sheer destruction is indescribable.”

Residents of Maghazi refugee camp have called for an urgent ceasefire [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Infrastructure, such as roads leading to the camp, were also destroyed.

Al-Ais said there are no excavators that can help speed up the process of recovering people from under the blocks of concrete.

The lack of much-needed fuel to operate bulldozers and vehicles means that – just like civil defence teams in Gaza – residents are digging with only their bare hands to try and pull out as many victims from under the rubble as they can.

Israel has blocked the entry of fuel since it imposed a total siege on the already blockaded Strip at the start of the war, and has only allowed a very small amount of aid in through the Rafah border crossing.

“We don’t need food, we don’t need water, we don’t need coffins,” al-Ais said. “What we need is a ceasefire and for this war to end.”

Al-Haj Ahmed, agreed. “Shame on the Arab world. We don’t just need aid, we need you here personally. Come and stand with your brothers,” he said.

Attacks on refugee camps and civilian infrastructure have become common since October 7. The Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza has been targeted several times, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians.

Civilian infrastructure – including schools, hospitals, ambulance vehicles, and places of worship – has also been subjected to bombardment.

More than 21,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, while nearly 1.9 million – more than 80 percent of the 2.3 million people who live in Gaza – have been displaced.

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Featured image: At least 90 Palestinians were killed in Sunday’s attack on the Maghazi refugee camp [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

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Is Kiev Regime Now Killing Foreign Journalists to Hide Its Corruption?

By Drago Bosnic, December 27, 2023

Back in August this year, reputable Egyptian investigative journalist Mohammed al-Alawi revealed exclusive materials regarding the purchase of a villa worth nearly $5 million by a woman named Olga Kiyashko. This would hardly be newsworthy if the person in question wasn’t the mother-in-law of the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky.

Stunning Atrocities in Gaza Funded by US Taxpayers

By Ralph Nader, December 28, 2023

The stunning atrocities going on day after day is being recorded by U.S. drones over Gaza and by brave Palestinian journalists directly targeted by the Israeli army. Over 66 journalists and larger numbers of their families have been slain. Israel has excluded foreign and Israeli journalists for years from Gaza.

Free Zones or Zones of Unfreedom? Debunking National Mythologies of “Happy” Jamaican Call Centre Workers

By Tina Renier, December 27, 2023

Jamaica serves as a peculiar case study on special economic zones’ integration in global supply chains (GSCs) because it is a small island developing state in the Caribbean region with 213 special economic zones across 10 out of 14 of its parishes which employs 53,000 people.

Israel’s War Spending: The Ballooning Costs of Israel’s Genocidal War Against Palestine

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, December 27, 2023

The Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron is worried. He is keeping an eye on the ballooning costs of his country’s war against Gaza and the Palestinians. Initially, the Netanyahu government promised to increase its defence budget by NIS 20 billion (US$5.48 billion) per annum in the aftermath of the war.

Fort Bragg: Meeting at the End of the World. The US Military in Crisis. “Recent COVID Period Worsened All These Problems”

By Christine E. Black, December 27, 2023

In the past few years, the U.S. military has failed to meet its recruitment goals, according to U.S. news outlets. International outlets, like Al Jazeera, also report on the shortages. Young people’s poor mental and physical health, learning losses, and lack of confidence in the U.S. government and the military have all been blamed for lagging recruitment. The recent Covid period worsened all these problems.

Europe Betrayed. Minsk Peace Negotiations “Did Not Fail”? They Prepared Ukraine for War with Russia? Angela Merkel

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, December 27, 2023

According to former German prime minister, Angela Merkel, the Agreements did not fail, but fulfilled their real objective: to prepare Ukraine for a war against Russia in the near future. Commenting on the beginning of Moscow’s special military operation and the escalation of the conflict in Donbass, the German former official stated that this confrontation was expected from the very beginning, with the ceasefire established in Minsk only working as a way to temporarily alleviate tensions, enabling Kiev to gain time.

Christ in the Rubble. The Billionaires in Davos: “The Hypocrisy and Racism of the Western World Is Transparent…” Rev. Munther Isaac

By Rick Thomas, December 27, 2023

Will the genocidal war machine come to its senses and stop the barbaric slaughter of innocent civilians? Or will the conflict stir up so much regional anger, that the conflict escalates into a much wider confrontation between Israel, America, Hezbollah and Iran?

Sudden Deaths: What Is Killing COVID-19 Vaccinated Men at 30-39?

By Dr. William Makis, December 27, 2023

31 year old Amsterdam High School teacher Liam Pickett died suddenly of a burst aortic artery on Nov. 28, 2023 which happened after teaching his last period class.

Palestine: The Cost of Bearing Witness. Chris Hedges

By Chris Hedges, December 27, 2023

Writing and photographing in wartime are acts of resistance, acts of faith. They affirm the belief that one day – a day the writers, journalists and photographers may never see – the words and images will evoke empathy, understanding, outrage and provide wisdom. They chronicle not only the facts, although facts are important, but the texture, sacredness and grief of lives and communities lost.

Palestinian Resistance Cannot be Killed

By Steven Sahiounie, December 27, 2023

For the last thirty years, various resistance groups in the Middle East have emerged. Over time, they have made alliances among themselves. Their collective goal is to free Palestine from the brutal and enduring Israeli occupation.

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***

The unstoppable Israeli U.S. armed military juggernaut continues its genocidal destruction of Gaza’s Palestinians. The onslaught includes blocking the provision of “food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” openly genocidal orders decreed by Netanyahu and his extreme, blood-thirsty ministers.

The stunning atrocities going on day after day is being recorded by U.S. drones over Gaza and by brave Palestinian journalists directly targeted by the Israeli army. Over 66 journalists and larger numbers of their families have been slain. Israel has excluded foreign and Israeli journalists for years from Gaza.

This no-holds-barred ferocity came out of the Israeli government’s slumber on October 7^th which allowed a few thousand Hamas and other fighters to take their smuggled hand-held weapons and attack soldiers and civilians before being destroyed or driven back to Gaza.

Seventy-five years of Israel military violence against defenseless Palestinians and fifty-six years of violently and illegally occupying their remaining slice of the original Palestine provides some background for Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion’s candid statement: “We have taken their country.” (See, his full statement here).

The overwhelming military superiority of Israel – a nuclear armed nation – in the Middle East has produced a more aggressive Israeli government. Being more secure than ever before doesn’t seem to temper the expansionist missions of right-wing Israeli colonies in the West Bank.

Presently, the narrow Netanyahu majority in the Parliament believes that “nothing can stop us.” Presently, they are right.

Joe Biden and Congress are vigorously enabling the annihilations. The UN is frozen by the Joe Biden administration’s vetoes in the Security Council against ending the carnage in Gaza. The Arab nations either lay in ruins – Syria, Iraq – or are too weak to cause Israeli generals any worry. The rich Arab nations in the Gulf want to do business with prosperous Israel and, other than Qatar, care little about their Palestinian brethren.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are no obstacle. Israel, along with Russia and the U.S. do not belong to the International Criminal Court. The Palestinian Authority is a party, but the practical difficulties of investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza and apprehending the accused are insurmountable. The ICJ’s jurisdiction requires a country to bring Israel before the Court for war crimes or genocide. In any event, the Court’s lead-footed procedures trespass on eternity. So much for international law and the Geneva Conventions. Netanyahu rejects the moral authority of seventeen Israeli human rights groups, including Rabbis and reservist soldiers. Their open letter to President Biden in the December 13, 2023 issue of the New York Times on “The Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Gaza Strip” was ignored by the media despite the truth and courage it embodied.

In the U.S., protests and demonstrations are everywhere. Many are organized by Jewish human rights groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, Standing Together, Veterans for Peace and various student organizations. Everywhere Biden travels there are people from all backgrounds protesting.

A few days ago, the first protests by labor union members occurred in Oakland, California. Union activists could turn their attention to why, for years, union leaders put billions of dollars into riskier lower-interest Israeli bonds rather than U.S. Treasuries or bond funds investing in America. Like U.S. weapon deliveries, purchases of Israeli bonds by states, cities and unions have surged since October 7^th.

Pope Francis, informed of the Israeli attack on the only Catholic Church and Convent in Gaza, which housed people with disabilities, killing and injuring Christians sheltering there, sorrowfully said: “Some would say, ‘It is war. It is terrorism.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.”

In 2015, over 400 Rabbis from Israel, the USA and Canada called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the practice of demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes as being contrary to international law and Jewish tradition. Their successors Rabbis for Human Rights are being ignored by the regime.

The Head of the U.S. Bishops Conference and the National Council of Churches, representing millions of parishioners, condemned the bombings but received little coverage.

There is only one institution that could stop Netanyahu’s mass military massacres of the Palestinian people. That is the U.S. Congress. As long as over 90% of the politicians there automatically support AIPAC, the Israeli Government Can Do No Wrong Lobby, even a peace-loving Joe Biden cannot deter Netanyahu. Bibi (his nickname) could simply say to a hypothetically transformed Biden “Joe, take it up with OUR Congress.”

How has AIPAC achieved such domination on Capitol Hill? By years of relentless lobbying and the smear of “anti-semitism” to anyone defying them. AIPAC and its chapters don’t bother with marches or demonstrations. They personally focus on the legislator – one by one. Carrots or sticks. Praise, PAC money and junkets are the Carrots. The Sticks are smears and money for selected primary challengers in their Districts or States. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) called AIPAC “a Hate Group.”

There are about 300,000 citizens spending significant time back in the states working Congress in AIPAC’s favor. They know the doctors, lawyers, accountants, clergy, local politicians, donors, golf champions and other friends of the Senators and Representatives, and forcefully promote Israeli expansionism backed to the hilt by the U.S. government.

AIPAC is proficient in part for lack of any organized opposition. It is also practicing state-of-the-art non-stop grassroots lobbying.

Congress is poised to send $14.3 billion to Israeli militarism—a “genocide tax” on U.S. taxpayers—without public hearings. While growing public opinion in the U.S. is against unconditional backing of the Israeli regime, it has not changed a single vote in Congress. Someday, more organized support for America’s national interest will.

(For calls to your legislators, the Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.)

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of “The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future” (2012). His new book is, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All” (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).

Featured image source

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***

As recentes notícias sobre a libertação de Maryinka mostraram que os russos continuam a avançar no campo de batalha, apesar da lentidão dos combates. Mais do que isso, a cidade é extremamente estratégica e possibilita o processo de libertação total da República Popular de Donetsk, consolidando o controle territorial russo nas regiões reintegradas.

O anúncio da vitória em Maryinka foi feito no dia 25 de dezembro pelas autoridades russas. O fato foi reconhecido pelo próprio governo ucraniano, que confirmou que as suas tropas recuaram da cidade e estão agora entrincheiradas nas redondezas.

Maryinka, por fazer parte de Donetsk, já é território legalmente russo desde os referendos de 2022, porém, a região ainda era disputada militarmente, com presença de forças ucranianas na cidade até então. Maryinka está localizada no extremo oeste de Donetsk e o seu controle é essencial para permitir a expulsão definitiva dos soldados ucranianos do recém-integrado oblast.

Maryinka tem sido bombardeada diariamente desde o início do conflito. A sua localização estratégica levou a fortes atritos desde 2014, quando começaram os confrontos entre separatistas russos e militantes ucranianos. Na época, os ucranianos conseguiram construir fortificações na região e manter-se numa posição sólida, que só agora foi destruída pelos russos.

Uma extensa rede de túneis subterrâneos e bunkers foi construída pelas forças de Kiev, segundo o Ministério da Defesa russo. Isto explica por que os combates foram tão intensos e longos, considerando a dificuldade de conduzir operações militares em regiões ocupadas por canais subterrâneos que permitem ao inimigo se esconder e armazenar equipamentos. Nesse sentido, ao destruir a fortificação militar ucraniana no sudoeste de Donetsk, os russos conseguem infligir pesados ​​danos às forças de Kiev, agravando ainda mais a fraqueza da Ucrânia.

Em verdade, controlar as cidades nos arredores de Donetsk parece ser hoje uma prioridade russa. Ao libertar as zonas fronteiriças dos novos oblasts, os russos conseguem expulsar o inimigo e consolidar as suas posições nos territórios que já fazem parte da Federação. Nesse sentido, o sucesso em Maryinka soa como uma grande vitória para Moscou e mostra como os objetivos militares e políticos russos continuam a ser alcançados, apesar do conflito parecer “lento” e sem grandes mudanças territoriais.

Desde o início da operação militar especial, a Rússia optou por uma estratégia de movimentos “lentos mas seguros”. O objetivo das forças de Moscou nunca foi avançar rapidamente no campo de batalha e tomar o máximo possível de territórios – pelo contrário, a Rússia tem se esforçado por manter linhas de defesa sólidas, protegendo as zonas já libertadas e mantendo uma distância segura entre estas e as áreas controladas pelos ucranianos.

No mesmo sentido, os russos apostam fortemente no uso de artilharia para neutralizar o inimigo, mobilizando tropas no terreno apenas depois de infligir danos substanciais ao inimigo. Assim, as vidas dos soldados russos também são protegidas. É possível dizer que salvar vidas militares e civis tem sido a principal prioridade da Rússia durante toda a operação.

Na prática, isso faz com que o combate seja mais demorado e gera na opinião pública uma sensação de “paralisia” no campo de batalha. No entanto, é uma forma comprovadamente eficiente de salvar vidas humanas sem causar perdas militares e territoriais. O tempo não é inimigo da Rússia neste conflito – pelo contrário, o tempo corre contra Kiev, que perde cada vez mais soldados, equipamentos e territórios e não tem capacidade de reverter este cenário.

Em outra declaração recente do ministério da defesa russo, foi dito que o principal objetivo da operação militar especial em 2023 era neutralizar a “contraofensiva” ucraniana. Obviamente, o objetivo foi alcançado com sucesso, com o conflito a entrar agora numa nova fase, em que as forças ucranianas já não parecem ter qualquer possibilidade de sequer tentar uma reação ou contra-ataque. Nesta nova etapa de hostilidades, as forças russas têm controle absoluto sobre como conduzir seus avanços, pois as tropas ucranianas estão extremamente enfraquecidas e não conseguirão manter posições por muito tempo.

Do ponto de vista militar, a libertação de Maryinka pode ser vista como o início de uma onda de libertações nas regiões fronteiriças de Donetsk. Acredita-se que a Rússia iniciará movimentos focados na obtenção do controle total dos novos territórios, eliminando definitivamente a presença militar ucraniana nestas áreas. Considerando a estratégia adotada até agora, é possível que os conflitos se prolonguem e os objetivos demorem a ser alcançados, mas isso certamente acontecerá devido ao próprio interesse da Rússia em evitar perdas humanas – e não devido à capacidade de defesa da Ucrânia.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês :

https://infobrics.org/post/40157/

Imagem : InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

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***

Back in August this year, reputable Egyptian investigative journalist Mohammed al-Alawi revealed exclusive materials regarding the purchase of a villa worth nearly $5 million by a woman named Olga Kiyashko. This would hardly be newsworthy if the person in question wasn’t the mother-in-law of the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky.

According to the documentation al-Alawi presented, the lavish compound is located in the so-called VIP area of the city of El Gouna on the Red Sea coast. Zelensky’s mother-in-law acquired the villa in May for 150 million Egyptian pounds (approximately $4,860,000). This is rather peculiar, given that Zelensky’s income before he took power in 2019 was ₴28 million (hryvnia), which is around $750,000.

Ever since, his wealth increased exponentially. Although sources vary significantly, Zelensky’s current net worth that not even the mainstream propaganda machine denies is roughly $20 million. The actual number could be orders of magnitude higher, but for the sake of the argument, let’s say it’s true. Still, the question arises, how did he manage to accomplish a 25-fold increase in wealth? Worse yet, this “remarkable” accomplishment happened in the middle of an “evil Russian invasion”. However, it should be noted that the reason why his net worth is extremely likely to be much higher lies in the fact that he surely wouldn’t invest a quarter of his wealth into a luxurious villa that probably costs tens of thousands in maintenance per month.

Still, the more important question is where did the money come from? Obviously, the question is rhetorical, but the Neo-Nazi junta and its NATO overlords wouldn’t want anyone to start asking it, let alone giving the most obvious answer.

Egyptian sources indicate that much of the so-called “Ukrainian elite” acquired property in Egypt, particularly in the aftermath of the special military operation (SMO). However, Al-Alawi “dared” to do his job and investigate the matter and it seems that he really hit the hornet’s nest by revealing this information.

Namely, several news outlets reported that he was found dead near the El Hadaba road in Hurghada. Local police said that his body had numerous abrasions, fractures, bruises and a traumatic brain injury.

The investigation has so far concluded that al-Alawi was beaten to death. His family and relatives said that they feared for their lives ever since he revealed the details of his investigation. Namely, both al-Alawi and his family have been receiving death threats for months. Interestingly, the mainstream propaganda machine and its “independent fact-checkers” fought tooth and nail to “debunk” al-Alawi’s findings and even launched a smear campaign against him. However, Egyptian authorities are now suspecting that special services (most likely the SBU) were involved in al-Alawi’s murder. This is hardly surprising, given that murdering foreign journalists and anyone who doesn’t bow to the Neo-Nazi junta has become its common practice.

In this particular case, the goal was to punish al-Alawi for exposing Zelensky and undermining the image of a “war hero” that the Kiev regime and the political West have been trying to create since the SMO started. What’s more, it’s not impossible that al-Alawi had additional information about the rampant corruption of the Neo-Nazi junta and its leadership, the extent of which is difficult to overstate. The sheer magnitude of embezzlement on all levels of government has prompted the Kiev regime’s American backers to actively disrupt any audits. Such investigations would certainly reveal the enormous extent of the Neo-Nazi junta’s corruption. This would only exacerbate its funding issues, as the GOP-dominated Congress can’t wait for an excuse to cut it completely.

And yet, corruption scandals keep springing up everywhere in Ukraine. In recent days, a senior Defense Ministry official was arrested for embezzling $40 million allocated for the purchase of artillery munitions. The unnamed official is said to have committed fraud by using state funds to purchase shells at inflated prices. His home was searched by the police who found documentation that confirms he ran the scheme. It should be noted that the Kiev regime forces are experiencing chronic shortages in artillery munitions. This means that the unnamed official effectively contributed to the problem that is so severe now that Ukrainian artillerymen are forced to limit their fire support only to larger formations and completely ignore smaller Russian units.

Corruption scandals are so common that the Neo-Nazi junta is simply unable to prevent people from leaking information about it. The Defense Ministry is particularly involved in such embezzlement schemes, as evidenced by ongoing investigations into the acquisition of sub-standard bulletproof vests, as well as the purchase of food supplies and uniforms at inflated prices. One of the more recent scandals was when Zelensky fired all officials in charge of conscription commissions. Namely, they were essentially selling exemption notices and making it possible for the more well-off people to avoid being sent to the frontline. This is creating tensions with the political West, as both the US and EU are deeply irritated by the lack of battlefield results.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

Read Part I: 

From Colonialism to “Neoliberal Capitalism”: Low Wage “Special Economic Zones”. Integrating Developing Countries into Global Supply Chains: The Case of Jamaica

By Tina Renier, December 16, 2023

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“I have to create affirmation cards to boost my self-esteem whenever I go to work daily.

I keep up the facade of happiness to meet daily targets and customers’ satisfaction. I have to keep up a facade of happiness even though I am paid less than my regular monthly salary.

Call centre workers are not treated as human beings. We are treated as robots or business transactions.”

(Online testimony from a 21-year-old woman working at a BPO company for 2 years and 2 months, Daily Observer, February 21, 2022).

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For decades, special economic zones (SEZs) have been pivotal development strategies to promote economic growth, international trade, foreign direct investment, and job creation for several developing countries. Special economic zones (SEZs) are also known as “free zones”, “free trade zones” or “export processing zones” and they are geographically delimited areas within which governments facilitate industrial activity through fiscal and regulatory measures as well as infrastructural support (UNCTAD, 2019). Globally, SEZs have proliferated throughout the world and there are over 7,000 special economic zones employing more than 100 million people. More than 1,000 special economic zones have been established in the last five (5) years (UNCTAD, 2022).

Jamaica serves as a peculiar case study on special economic zones’ integration in global supply chains (GSCs) because it is a small island developing state in the Caribbean region with 213 special economic zones across 10 out of 14 of its parishes which employs 53,000 people. The nation was also a host of the 8^th Annual Conference for the World Free Zones Organisation in 2022. Jamaica has positioned itself as a hub for private investment in the business product outsourcing (BPO) sector in the Latin America and Caribbean region. One of the main policy objectives for the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) is to promote job creation through economic growth while creating an enabling environment for local and foreign investors (National Investment Policy of Jamaica, White Paper, July 2022).

In this interpretive essay, I argue that the Government of Jamaica’s use of special economic zones as key policy instruments obscures the attention from the quality of jobs created and therefore, this undermines the sustainable development imperative, which is also a core aspect of its policy objective outlined in its National Investment Policy White Paper.

Sustainable development is defined as ensuring that the needs of the present generation are met without jeopardizing future generations and it is a form of development that pays keen attention to economic, social, and ecological considerations. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s (2010) conceptual frameworks of “promise of happiness” and “cognitive capitalism” this essay explains that Jamaica’s neoliberal capitalist government regime, business product outsourcing (BPO) corporations, employers, BPO industry experts and private sector investors serve a powerful discursive function in which they construct and produce “happy” narratives and images of call centre workers while profits and foreign direct investment revenue have been maximised.

On the other hand, the majority of call centre workers describe their deplorable working conditions as akin to slavery and hence, free zones or special economic zones can be considered as ‘zones of unfreedom’.

Cognitive capitalism refers to the exploitation of creative and emotional labour and purports that the dominant subjective interpretation that work is a major contributor to the economy while thoughts, desires and feelings are quantified as expressed solely in terms of monetary value (Marini, 2007). Finally, this essay highlights how significant changes such as the post-COVID-19 pandemic context, global supply chain disruption, global geo-political crises, pessimistic projections for an incoming new year (2024) and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (artificial intelligence-driven work) pose serious implications for not only decent work creation in special economic zones but also for the Jamaican decision-making landscape concerning special economic zones.

Special economic zones undermine the Government of Jamaica’s sustainable development imperative because immense emphasis has consistently been placed on profit maximisation and the number of jobs created rather than the quality of jobs created.

This is evident in the fact that it was reported that the business product outsourcing sector (BPO) within special economic zones contributes USD$136 billion to the Jamaican economy which is equivalent to 6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Williams, 2023). Local and foreign investors are entitled to a wide array of benefits under Sections 3 and 4 of the 2016 Special Economic Zones Act of Jamaica. Local and foreign investors are exempted from customs duties, exempted from income taxes on profits derived from rentals of property within zones and a 12.5% tax rate on income of the developer or occupant (Special Economic Zones Act of Jamaica, 2016).

One of the primary legal rights of a zone occupant is to transfer funds freely in and out of Jamaica under Section 39 1 h of the 2016 Special Economic Zones Act and as mentioned previously in the first part (Part 1) of this essay, this reinforces the hegemonic power of business product outsourcing (BPO) or call centre transnational corporations whereby they are effectively able to wield leverage over the Government of Jamaica’s local regulatory and investment policy frameworks to suit their agendas.

Transnational corporations expert, John Madeley (2008:18) argued that governments of developing countries often overlook the deeply problematic social costs of integrating into global supply chains and social costs associated with hosting transnational corporations in their countries because developing country governments are more concerned about pressing economic needs such as addressing high unemployment rates, chronic debt and the need for generating foreign exchange revenue from investments. As a result, developing country governments end up defending corporations that are exploiting the country (Madeley, 2008, p.18).

Madeley’s postulation is seen in the example of Government of Jamaica and its correspondent agencies and ministries utilising the media (online news headlines) as an avenue to establish constructs of “happy news” about the creation of more BPO/call centre jobs by marketing and promoting Jamaica as an ideal investment location because it has a proven track record in foreign direct investment, nearshore advantage to North America, a highly educated and English-speaking workforce, competitive labour costs and quality infrastructure (JAMPRO, 2017). Competitive labour costs are the code words for low-waged, low-valued added, indecent work as the cost for wages in Jamaica are 40-60% lower than the corresponding salaries in North America. 

Sara Ahmed (2010) in her book, “The Promise of Happiness” offers a critical decolonial and feminist perspective and an incisive interpretation of happiness where she defines happiness as a technique of power relations and a crucial industry that maintains hierarchical relations in societies through texts, popular images, messaging, and several forms of media. Ahmed (2010:3) postulates that happiness narratives or national stories are often cited in old or new media when the social realities of oppressed groups do not reflect the national mythologies of happiness.

The national mythology of happiness associated with business product outsourcing (BPO) work is widely shared in newspaper headlines by industry experts, government, BPO employers, private investors, and even high-ranking government officials such as the Prime Minister of Jamaica, The Most Honourable Andrew Holness who boasts,

“ Jamaica has the largest BPO market in the Latin America and Caribbean region and the industry has created “job opportunities that has transformed people’s lives” (Angus, Jamaica Information Service, June 7, 2022).

Without a doubt, massive transformation has been associated with creating thousands of BPO jobs but what is not mentioned in the national mythology or national frenzy of happiness is the fact that the transformation is highly uneven, as the nation still suffers from high inequalities in income, life expectancy and access to social and economic opportunities for majority of its population (UNDP’s Human Development Report, 2021) and the fact that the transformations lay bare the enduring history of labour exploitation that stems from its colonial past.

The transformation to which Prime Minister Holness speaks is not transformative per se either in potential or reality but is rather highly extractive. The harsh social ramifications of special economic zones’ integration in global supply chains are revealed in the quotes from testimonies of call centre workers at the beginning of this interpretive essay who have openly shared that despite slavery-like, waged jobs, they are forced to mask their real emotions on the job by pretending to be happy. This is referred to as emotional labour. Emotional labour involves more than being polite to customers. It involves suppressing genuine emotions with happiness because most call centre workers’ job security and wages are on the line and their working conditions are primarily characterized by emotive performance (Granday, Rupp and Brice, 2015).

Thus, happiness about working in Jamaican call centres is treated like a script to be followed as deviations from the script of happiness deployed by employers, private investors, BPO industry experts and governments would be perceived as not only a deviation from happiness but unsettling the broader macroeconomic, social, spatial-ecological, epistemological, and political conditions of oppression? Similar to Ahmed (2010:50), I ask the question, “How can one justify the unequal distribution and exploitation of labour and say such a form of labour makes people happy?” How can Jamaica’s call centre workers be happy about low wages, gruelling working hours, customer, peer and employer mistreatment, abuse and harassment, excessive surveillance of job performance, limited or no social protection benefits, limited or no job security, myriad occupational health illnesses associated with call centre work and no union representation to advocate on their behalf?

The zones of unfreedom established by the previous and the current neo-liberal capitalist government regime continue to court foreign direct investment and hold economic growth as the sole metric of development without any serious emphasis on the quality of jobs created.

The severity of the BPO/call centre dilemma has gained the attention of the Governor of the Bank of Jamaica, Richard Byles who has explained that BPO jobs are not only low waged but low value-added as most of them primarily rely on customer call service operations and they are like the low waged jobs that have created two decades ago. For the Government of Jamaica to achieve its sustainable development imperative, the Government of Jamaica must place urgent focus on ensuring the special economic zones as central strategies of development or policy instruments court both foreign direct investment while creating decent work with adequate attention to designing and implementing progressive or inclusive labour demand and labour supply policies. Adequate attention must be given to designing and implementing progressive or inclusive, labour demand and supply policies because the vast majority of the populations in the Latin American and Caribbean region are working jobs (including call centre work) that do not pay enough that lift them out of poverty and people living and working in poverty experience the highest deficits in decent work (Abramo, Cechini and Morales, 2019, p.14).

Secondly, special economic zones undermine the Government of Jamaica’s sustainable development imperative because there are several labour and human rights violations even though national laws and policies have outlined that employers should adhere to legislation governing interactions with employees.

Fundamental rights and freedoms of Jamaican workers including the right to freedom of association and freedom from discrimination under Chapter III- Fundamental Rights and Freedoms in Jamaica’s Constitution (Amended 2011) have been seriously breached in special economic zones.

In fact, as a country, we have been categorized for repeated labour rights violations of workers, according to the 2022 International Trade Union Confederation Global Rights Index. These unlawful actions should exemplify greater social advocacy and movement towards reforming Jamaica’s Constitution to better reflect not only today’s socio-economic realities but to ensure rights of every Jamaican are both effectively upheld and enforced presently and for future generations. Additionally, from a right-based perspective, the United Nations Common Multi-Country Analysis (UN CMCA) Report in 2021 referred to the limitations of most Caribbean Constitutions. The report illustrated that most Caribbean countries do not provide guarantees for economic, social and cultural rights in their domestic legislations or constitutions.

Therefore, one potential area for improvement or a recommendation for the Government of Jamaica’s effort at constitutional reform is to ensure that our constitution fully reflects the values and principles enshrined in the 1966 UN Covenant for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights along with stronger enforcement mechanisms to ensure accountability and more punitive measures for individuals and or entities that are in breach of legally binding principles.  Two powerful, online testimonies were posited in the Jamaica Daily Observer article entitled, “Sweatshop: Call Centre workers employed in a Slavery-like Working Environment and Unfair Treatment” dated February 21, 2022. 

A 30-year-old call centre worker working at a BPO company explained in the Jamaica Daily Observer article:

“This sector is like modern-day slavery as you are easily drained, overwhelmed and replaceable. Base pay is not enough and the slightest mistake results in the loss of monthly incentives”.

A 22-year-old woman call centre worker, who works a year and 11 months at another BPO company noted in the Jamaica Daily Observer article:

“I have 10-hour shifts with no breaks or lunch. You have to do everything on time and if you are late for work, it comes out of your monthly pay. You earn a sick day every 22 days and when you get sick, they do not pay for it. The industry offers good salaries only at the managerial and occupational levels.”  

In the same article, Khadea Folkes who is an Attorney-at-Law observed that according to Jamaica’s labour laws, workers are entitled to ten (10) sick days annually and these workers’ experiences and concerns underscore the need for the enforcement of the 2017 Occupational Health and Safety Act which would allow employees to experience decent work conditions without jeopardizing their health and well-being. The online testimonies of these call centre workers mirror a completely different reality from the ambitious statements examined in policy documents or “happy” national announcements of the creation and establishment of more zones of unfreedom with BPO sector jobs.

Sara Ahmed (2010) expresses that happiness means to follow someone else’s directives and when one or a group becomes unhappy or speaks about the source of their happiness is seen as a source of defiance especially if one or a group of oppressed people are expected to recede in the background.”

Ahmed’s explanation is quite relevant to these Jamaican call centres as their testimonies have not only assisted in debunking national mythologies of happiness, as zones by their very restrictive spatial design add to call centre workers’ unfreedom alongside surveillance but their testimonies also embody resistance against the national tropes of happiness and inequitable, extractive transformation that BPO brings to their lives. These testimonies also show how cognitive capitalism is embedded in the psyche of workers and is popularized by the time is money and money is time, adage. In a country where wages are 40-60% less than comparable wages of North American workers and where globally, the cost of living, inflation, and devaluation of developing countries’ currencies like Jamaica have impacted negatively on wages and purchasing power, we simply cannot expect Jamaican call centre workers to be happy or to “recede into the background by silencing stories that need to be told- stories that unsettle national fabrications of happiness.

To add insult to injury, there is more “unhappy” news from the 2022 International Labour Organization (ILO) publication has expounded on the fact that erosion of wages affects all wage earners in developing, emerging market and industrialized countries but a more disproportionate impact is faced by wage earners from low-income households, especially in the post-pandemic context. The report also calls for renewed attention on rebuilding people’s sense of social justice. We can only rebuild a sense of social justice when the local sustainable development agenda is pursued both on paper and, as well as when our development strategies are people-centred coupled with a serious focus on environmental sustainability.

Finally, the Government of Jamaica should observe the trends in global development that will affect the local, policy decision-making landscape concerning special economic zones, as we are a small, island developing states that are becoming ever more vulnerable to exogenous shocks.  On a global scale, it is predicted that this year and the incoming years (2024 and beyond) will be characterized by rapidly shifting macroeconomic conditions, global supply chain disruptions both due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s long-lasting implications and geo-political crises, banking sector turmoil in the US and Europe, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and increased vulnerabilities for developing countries (United Nations, 2023). Already business product outsourcing (BPO) mainly consisting of call centre jobs is experiencing the headwinds of accelerated artificial intelligence which is expected to slash seventy (70%) of BPO with more than 38,000 of an estimated 55,000 people employed being without work (Editorial, Jamaica Gleaner, April 13, 2023). Excuse my pessimism which might be seen as an act of political troublemaking! but we must collectively rethink, reimagine, and develop policies to ensure a more equitable transformation beyond the current exploitative, extractive model of neoliberal and cognitive capitalism associated with these zones of unfreedom.

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Sources

Abramo, L, Cechini, S. and Morales, B. (2019). Social programmes, poverty eradication and labour inclusion. Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean. Santiago de Chile, Chile: United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC) publication.

Ahmed, S. (2010). The Promise of Happiness. London and Durham: Duke University Press.        

Allen, I. (11 October 2019). Byles: Jamaica needs to create high-value jobs. Jamaica Gleaner. Retrieved from https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20191011/byles-jamaica-needs-create-high-value-jobs

Angus, G. (7 June 2022). 6,000 More BPO Jobs Since COVID-19. Jamaica Information Service. Retrieved from https://jis.gov.jm/6-000-more-bpo-jobs-since-covid-19/

Granday, A. Rupp, D, and Brice, W. (2015). Emotional Labour Threatens Decent Work: A Proposal to Eradicate Display Rules. Journal of Organisational Behaviour, 36, pp. 770-785.

International Labour Organization. (2022). The Impact of Inflation and COVID-19 on Wages and Purchasing Power. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO Publications

Jamaica Gleaner. (13 April 2023). Low tech-Low Wage Dilemma. Editorial. Retrieved from jamaica-gleaner.com/article/commentary/20230413/editorial-low-tech-low-wage-dilemma

Jamaica Observer. (21 February 2022). Sweatshop: Call Centre workers complain of a slavery-like working environment and unfair Treatment. Retrieved from https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/sweatshop/

Madeley, J. (2008). Big Business, Poor Peoples: How Transnational Corporations Damage the World’s Poor. London and NY: Zed Books. p.18

Marini, C. (2007). The Feminization of Labour and Cognitive Capitalism. Feminist Review, 87, pp. 40-59

United Nations. (2023). World Economic Situation and Prospects- Mid Year Update. New York, USA: UN Publications.

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (2019). World Investment Report. Special Economic Zones- Chapter IV. Geneva, Switzerland: UNCTAD Publications.

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. (17 May 2022). Special Economic Zones. Geneva, Switzerland: UNCTAD Publications

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The Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron is worried. He is keeping an eye on the ballooning costs of his country’s war against Gaza and the Palestinians. Initially, the Netanyahu government promised to increase its defence budget by NIS 20 billion (US$5.48 billion) per annum in the aftermath of the war. But a document from the Finance Ministry presented to the Knesset Finance Committee on December 25 suggests that the number is NIS 10 billion greater.

The Finance Ministry is also projecting that the war against Hamas will cost the country’s budget somewhere in the order of NIS 50 billion (US$13.8 billion). NIS 9.6 billion will go towards such expenses as evacuating residents close to the borders of the country’s north and south, buttressing emergency forces and rehabilitation purposes.

The increased military budget is predictable and in keeping with the proclivities of the Israeli state. What is striking is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has regarded Israeli defence expenditure as generally inadequate when looked at as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP).

Between 2012 and 2022, military expenditure as a percentage of GDP fell from 5.64% to 4.51%. Doing so enables him to have two bites at the same rotten cherry: to claim he was blameless for that very decline in military expenditure, and to show that he intends to rectify a problem he was hardly blameless for.

Even in war time, Netanyahu is proving oleaginous in his policy making. The mid-December supplementary budget for 2023, coming in at NIS 28.9 billion, was intended to cover the ongoing conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. But its approval was hardly universal. Opponents of the budget noted the allocation of hundreds of millions of shekels towards “coalition funds” intended for non-war related projects relevant to parliamentarians and ministers. Benny Gantz’s National Unity party, a coalition partner, would have nothing to do with it. Intelligence minister Gila Gamliel was absent from the vote, while Yuli Edelstein of Netanyahu’s own Likud Party abstained. Opposition leader Yair Lapid pointed the finger at the rising budget deficit.

On December 18, Yaron gave vent to some of his concerns.

“During this period, more than at any other time, and as investors, rating agencies, financial markets and the public as a whole are carefully examining policymaking in Israel, it is necessary to manage economic policy – fiscal and monetary – with great responsibility.”

Body counts interest Yaron less than budget figures and reputational damage in the markets, though killing Palestinians is proving an expensive business.

“The government will have to find the right balance between financing war expenses and the expected increase in the defence budget and the need to continue investing in other civilian budgets, which are already low, in particular in growth engines such as infrastructure and education.”

Yaron has every reason to assume that costs will continue to balloon. For one thing, Netanyahu’s idea of peace in the current conflict reads like a blueprint for ongoing, lengthy massacre, accompanied by permanent mass incarceration: the destruction of Hamas itself, the demilitarisation of Gaza and a Palestinian society free of radical elements. This is a nightmare to both humanitarians and the belt-tighteners in the Finance Ministry.

Notably, the plan says nothing about Palestinian statehood, which, in the scheme of Israel’s aims, has been euthanised. Gaza, the designated monstrosity Israel nourished as a supposedly useful tool to keep Palestinian ambitions in check, is to be turned into a prison entity that seems awfully much like it was prior to the October 7 attacks by Hamas. (The cruel, in such cases, lack imagination.)

A “temporary security zone on the perimeter of Gaza and an inspection mechanism on the border between Gaza and Egypt” will be established in accordance with “Israel’s security needs”. The zone will also serve to prevent “smuggling of weapons into the territory”, which sounds much like the original blockade, lasting 14 years, that was meant to achieve the same purpose.

The Israeli PM is, however, promising that the destruction of Hamas will take place “in full compliance with international law”, begging the question what sort of international law he is consulting. Given various official statements from Netanyahu’s cabinet and the Israeli Defence Forces, it must be either a law of jungle provenance or one applicable to animal kind. That same standard of legal analysis has permitted the generously expansive massacre of over 20,000 Palestinians, a staggering number of them children, the ongoing flattening of Gaza, and the utter destruction of critical infrastructure.

Given that Israeli law, alongside military and administrative policy, does nothing other than encourage the radicalisation of Palestinians and the fertilising of the Jihadist soil, this is charmingly delusionary. The current war will simply prove to be the same as previous ones, protean, adjustable, and shape changing. Conflict will simply continue by other means, a continued growth of flowering hatreds, leaving Israel a butcher’s bill of shekels and casualties it is only now chewing over.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: Slaughterhouse – by Mr. Fish

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Dying throes of U.S. militarism, with post-covid trauma and malaise, display themselves in Fayetteville, North Carolina this December as I travel there on a Friday for a Saturday meeting.

Fort Bragg is there, which is one of the largest military bases in the world.  My meeting is with a group I volunteer with that counsels military members and veterans, takes calls from those who need help, and directs them to services. 

In the past few years, the U.S. military has failed to meet its recruitment goals, according to U.S. news outlets. International outlets, like Al Jazeera, also report on the shortages. Young people’s poor mental and physical health, learning losses, and lack of confidence in the U.S. government and the military have all been blamed for lagging recruitment. The recent Covid period worsened all these problems.

Current service members suffer heart problems after receiving mandated Covid shots, and over 8000 service members were discharged for declining the shots, with members losing benefits and promotion opportunities. War rages in Israel and Palestine, and U.S. warships recently fired on drones that attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea. The military has sent thousands of U.S. troops to the Middle East while attacks on soldiers in Iraq and Syria increase. 

Because my father was career military, my family lived at Ft. Bragg when I was a child, and my father left from there for his first deployment to the Vietnam War. The base was recently renamed Fort Liberty. Gleaming chains stores line the main road into town – I Hop, Panera, Ross, every imaginable fast-food place, and some I have never heard of like Cinnaholic, all brightly lit and crowded. Consumerism and consumption look like signs of prosperity, but here, now, they seem to have reached an unsustainable critical mass.

Signs of despair and struggle are everywhere along with a sweet vulnerability also circulating among common people as though we tremble at the edge of the world, the edge of doom when being kind to each other, making some kind of connection seems more important than ever.

“Is it nice enough?” I ask the lady at the counter when I check into the Comfort Inn on Friday night. “I’m tired after a long drive.”

“It is,” she answers tenderly. When I ask her where a good place to eat is, she asks me what I like and when I tell her a few choices, she walks out the door of the hotel beside me, with extraordinary politeness, to point out Mission BBQ a few store fronts down, close enough for me to walk.

Cars, muscular trucks, and gleaming motorcyles roar through the main drag that is eight-lanes wide. Occasionally, a driver accelerates an engine with a ferocious sound and burst of speed. You can almost smell the testosterone. I often wonder: does the U.S. public really understand what we ask military people, mostly men, to do when we train them for wars and send them to wars? What do people think actually happens there? Military patches, photos, tools, and mementos fill the walls of the Mission BBQ restaurant where I eat.

A large print of the U.S. Army’s Soldier’s Creed hangs prominently in the main dining room. Prints of soldiers returning from war, kissing girls, are displayed in the women’s bathroom. 

The girl bussing tables asks me what I am reading. She tells me she likes to read, that she read a lot when she lived in England, growing up in a military family. 

“Joan Didion,” I tell her and show her the cover of the book of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I read it in my twenties and am re-reading it now. My copy is yellowed and brittle. She thanks me, says she’ll check it out. The restaurant is full of young men, amazingly fit, plus a few young families. At the table next to me is a huge, beautiful man with tattoos all over his arms and neck. It looks like he is with his wife, mother, and toddler son.

On my walk back to the hotel, I see a smoke shop and am curious as I have never been in one before. Students in public schools where I have taught sneak vape pipes in bathrooms and get in trouble when detectors identify them. When I was in high school, we smoked cigarettes outside and some sneaked marijuana, but I didn’t like it. I wanted to see what the shop was like. They are everywhere now – neon and bright, full of colorful, varied products, rows of boxes and bottles, lines of vials and packages, candles, incense and fragrance oils. I puzzled how populations in the U.S. were so easily subdued by government Covid lockdowns in 2020 and beyond. Maybe shops like this one – and video games — were part of the answer. People stayed home, smoked, drank (liquor stores were never closed), played MMOGs, waited for Amazon boxes to appear on their porches.

I tell him I am a teacher, plus a writer and put on my reporter’s role, ask questions of the 23-year-old young man working there. He kindly answers. The store sells CBD or nicotine for vape pipes and a special kind of strong tobacco for the hookah pipes, also sold there.

In many states, marijuana is fully legal now. A steady stream of customers arrives, buying rolling papers for marijuana, another buying a vape pipe, which are rechargeable in all kinds of styles. The shop also sells disposal pipes to ingest psychedelic mushrooms. The young shop worker grew up in military family, he says, and recounted the many places he had lived. He joined the military at 17, was in for four years, stationed a few places, including Fort Bragg, and then got out. He’s now divorced at 23.

“I am leaving here as soon as I can,” he says.

I walk back to the hotel. Discarded shopping carts with trash and old clothes litter spaces between bushes. A homeless person rests beside her shopping cart, filled with clothes and bedding. Parking lots are strewn with trash. I look in the hotel lobby for hot tea. 

“We don’t have fresh right now,” says the young black guy seated, half sleeping, in the lobby. I ask him if there’s a place I could walk to for a hot chocolate or tea.

“There’s a Dunkin Donuts,” he says. He steps out of the hotel with me and points. He’s wearing a security uniform. He says he’ll walk with me, that he’s trying to wake up for his night shift at the hotel. I ask him if he is working security after military service. He says he was in the Marines and was shot in the leg and got out on a medical discharge and now works security at the hotel. I ask him if he likes it.

“It’s quiet and not that hard,” he says. He is young, yet his face has a tremor. Old railroad tracks run beside the road. I tell the young man I lived at Fort Bragg when I was a child, that my father left for Vietnam from there. 

“It’s a lot different since then, I’m sure,” he says. “Now they call it Fort Liberty. I don’t know why they did that. It doesn’t seem to matter. They’re just trying to be showy or something.”

Dozens of obscenely bright stores shine in the night as we walk to Dunkin Donuts. Christmas lights blink and flash. I see more trash tangled in bushes and strewn on sidewalks; cigarette butts, plastic cups, and Styrofoam containers litter parking lots. 

When I get back to the hotel room, the colors from the high-definition TV in my room are even brighter than the world outside; shapes and figures are hyper-real, extremely defined, almost grotesque in their clarity. There is a ridiculous game show on. I don’t see high-definition TV at home, so hotel TVs easily entrance and shock me. When I watch too long, a sick feeling of the decline of Western civilization overtakes me. The show, Raid the Cage, is on a major network this Friday night, the network with the stylized eye ball I remember from childhood. How different TV is now.

Ghoulishly grinning, jumping, and cheering couples take turns running and grabbing purses, electronics, designer perfumes, jewelry, even kayaks from an enclosure and then carry the items out before a buzzer ends the round. The man or woman goes into the enclosure while the other one cheers and jumps. The person may even push a four-wheeler or a car out. I have the sound off, watching this scene unfold, this American decadence and consumerism with garish lights, neon flashing, and bells ringing on the set. I think couples may have had to compete in other games to qualify to “raid the cage.” 

“Rebuild the world,” says a Lego toy advertisement with insanely detailed computer animation. Holiday Coke ads glitter with snows and Santas and computer stardust. Has TV become more hyper real after Covid nightmares, after wars in Ukraine and Palestine? Do advertisers want us in there – inside the screens – rather than in the world?

Pharmaceutical companies occupy airwaves. Fat people dance in a town square in an ad for pills to lower blood sugar. Another ad proclaims that a cartoon guy will deliver a colon test to your doorstep in a box. Drug ads for eczema, chrone’s disease, and all kinds of ailments fill the screen. Rich people in glittering rooms with tinsel and gold and greenery slowly eat Lindor chocolates. Pfizer advertises vaccines for pregnant women. On another network, a show called The Great Christmas Light Fight appears. 

There is too much here. My eyes and heart hurt from the excess. My meeting is tomorrow.

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This article was originally published on Brownstone Institute.

Christine E. Black’s work has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, Nimrod International, The Virginia Journal of Education, Friends Journal, Sojourners Magazine, The Veteran, English Journal, Amethyst Review, Dappled Things, Adbusters Magazine, Brownstone Institute, The Harrisonburg Citizen, The Stockman Grass Farmer, Off-Guardian, Cold Type, The News Virginian, and other publications.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

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).

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Given the unholy dissonance, Bethlehem’s usual celebration of the birth of a Palestinian Prince of Peace was cancelled this year as Gaza endured – and an indifferent West watched – genocide unfold beneath pitiless Israeli airstrikes. Along with a “Liturgy of Lament,” the Rev. Munther Isaac created a nativity scene for the times: Baby Jesus lying amidst the rubble. Meanwhile, rescue workers still struggle to dig, pull, save children from it. Peace on earth, indeed.

Now more than ever, “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history” has leveled Gaza to a hellscape where, per Doctors Without Borders, “no one and nowhere is safe.”

Over the holiday weekend, 90 people were killed in strikes on Gaza City, including 76 members of one extended family and a longtime UN official alongside his wife and five children, and a “Christmas Eve massacre” saw over 100 killed in Khan Younis, Bureij refugee camp and Al-Maghazi refugee camp, about half women and children. In a genocidal crusade where “everything is intentional,” such collateral damage is no concern to Netanyahu; after griping critics are “unjustly blaming Israelis for these casualties,” he proclaimed, “We have no choice (but) to continue to fight… We are not stopping.”

Appalled by the ongoing carnage, Bethlehem officials cancelled traditional Christmas celebrations in the presumed place of Jesus’ birth. At the Church of the Nativity, a searing sculpture depicts a bombed-out version of the nativity scene with debris, barbed wire, and angels representing the souls of too many murdered Palestinian children. At the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Rev. Munther Isaac set up a creche with baby Jesus in a Palestinian keffiyeh – “A Jewish infant. A homeless infant. A refugee infant” – lying in the concrete remains of a building.

“We are angry. We are broken. This is an annihilation,” he said in his sermon, Christ in the Rubble: A Liturgy of Lament. “If Christ were born today, he would be born under the rubble. This is where we find God right now.”

Honoring a Jesus “born among the occupied and marginalized…in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness,” Isaac also blasted the hypocrisy of a Western world that “sent us bombs whilst celebrating Christmas.”

“They sing about the Prince of Peace in their land, while playing the drum of war in our land,” he said. “Your charity, your words of shock after the genocide won’t make any difference. Words of regret will not suffice…I want you to look at the mirror (and) ask: Where was I?”

The Intercept echoes him, wishing us “Merry Christmas!” while noting that, “in any just universe,” we should all be imprisoned at the Hague for our failure to act on ills from the “junkyard of the U.S. war on terror” to “the Palestinian nightmare.” Hillel the Elder: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.”

In Gaza, for now, 14,000 rescue workers making up civil defense teams across the enclave daily toil to save lives in an apocalyptic landscape where, “Everyone is a target.” “I cannot sleep,” says Ibrahim Musa, 27. “I am constantly haunted by the voices and screams of people under the rubble as they beg us to pull them out. These are our children, our siblings, our families whom we are saving.” After each airstrike, they arrive at the scene and quickly try to determine what lies under the tangle of wire and concrete: “We scream until someone hears us.” Often, as they begin to dig, they must calm children trapped beneath, asking about their families: “We sometimes lie and tell them everyone is okay so they don’t go into shock…This is our work.”

At a bombing in southern Al-Qarara, Ahmed Abu Khudair recalls hearing moaning, starting to dig, finding “two stuck legs.” He frees a 12-year-old girl named Aisha, who says eight members of her family are buried there with several other families, including nine children. But without equipment, they cannot reach them. This is their ultimate horror: “Leaving a place knowing there are people alive under the rubble, but you cannot do anything for them.” From poet Nasser Rabah:

“When I return from the war, if I do/don’t look into my eyes/do not see what I saw…If war knew/that it made good poets/it would shoot itself.”

Yet life goes on. In this world, we wish you a holiday season of peace, joy, family, compassion and no savage military incursions. We are unfairly blessed.

Explaining our Chirstmas manger on the rubble. "If Jesus were born today, he would be born in Gaza under the rubble." Christmas in Bethlehem pic.twitter.com/qGeqj29HiC

— Munther Isaac منذر اسحق (@MuntherIsaac) December 7, 2023

The children of Gaza who are seeking refuge in the Catholic Church praying this morning. The sound of bombing can be heard in the beginning, but they continue their prayer. Resilience. We pray for and with all the children or Gaza pic.twitter.com/0GrxVPrO5z

— Munther Isaac منذر اسحق (@MuntherIsaac) October 29, 2023

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Abby Zimet has written CD’s Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women’s, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues. Email: [email protected]

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When your body temperature rises, sweat glands release water at your skin’s surface, which quickly evaporates and cools your skin and the blood underneath

In traditional Persian medicine, sweating is used for both preventive care and disease treatment

Sweat glands secrete antimicrobial peptides that help restrict the growth of various microbes on the skin, potentially helping to reduce infection or atopic dermatitis

Concentrations of the heavy metals nickel, lead and chromium may be 10 to 30 times higher in sweat than in blood and urine, and some toxins may be preferentially excreted in sweat

Sweating may offer support for chronic diseases, including cardiovascular, respiratory and joint diseases

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Sweating is often viewed as a nuisance — something unpleasant that humans try to avoid and cover up. Yet, this natural and important body process occurs for good reasons. In addition to regulating body temperature, sweating helps maintain homeostasis in your body, including removing waste products and toxins.¹

Sweating can also be used therapeutically to support well-being and reduce chronic disease.² If you’re unable to sweat normally, sweating either too much or too little may signify significant health concerns, another clue of its wide-reaching importance.

Why Humans Sweat

Sweating, also known as perspiration, describes the release of liquid from your sweat glands, which number anywhere from 2 million to 4 million. During puberty, your sweat glands become fully active, with glands in men tending to produce more sweat than sweat glands in women.³

As a method of thermoregulation to help keep your body cool, sweating ramps up if the weather is hot or you’re exercising. However, you may also sweat if you’re feeling angry, stressed, anxious or afraid. Medical conditions, such as cancer and low blood sugar, can also trigger sweating, as can menopause and fever.

Consuming certain medications, including thyroid hormone and morphine, may also make you sweat, as can drinking alcohol or caffeinated beverages or eating spicy foods, a condition known as gustatory sweating.⁴

When your body temperature rises, sweat glands release water at your skin’s surface, which quickly evaporates and cools your skin and the blood underneath. “This is the most effective means of thermoregulation in humans,” according to researchers with the University of Mississippi Medical Center.⁵ Beyond cooling you off, sweating also has “important homeostatic functions,” such as:⁶

• Clearing excessive micronutrients from your body
• Removing waste products produced by metabolic processes
• Eliminating toxins
• Support for chronic diseases, including cardiovascular, respiratory and joint diseases

Health Risks of Excessive or Inadequate Sweating 

Your body depends on its ability to sweat normally, such that when this balance is thrown off disease states can result. Hyperhidrosis is the medical term for excessive sweating, believed to affect about 4.8% of U.S. adults, or 15.8 million people.⁷

Hyperhidrosis is known to interfere with self-esteem, social interactions, relationships and career choices, with many affected reporting problems with work, school, social functioning and emotional health. Close to half — 48% — say their quality of life is poor or very poor as a result of hyperhidrosis.

The condition can also cause dehydration and skin infections.⁸ A link to systemic conditions is also possible, as sweating disorders may signal dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, particularly the sympathetic nervous system.⁹

Hypohidrosis, which is inadequate sweating, and pathologic anhidrosis, an inability to sweat, are also potentially damaging to your health and may lead to dry skin, heat exhaustion, heatstroke and death.¹⁰

Sweating to Help Prevent and Relieve Chronic Disease

In traditional Persian medicine, sweating is used for both preventive care and disease treatment.¹¹According to a review published in Galen Medical Journal:¹²

“Reviewing historical medical manuscripts indicates that traditional Persian medicine (PM) scientists have described several methods for the treatment of diseases. Sweating is one of them which has an important role in both prevention and treatment of diseases.

PM physicians were well aware of the health benefits of sweating and believed that sweating removes waste products, maintains the body health, and balances body temperature.

Based on the principles of PM, any disturbances in the excretion of metabolic and dietary waste products can cause disease; therefore, the use of several sweating methods and even diaphoretic herbs have been considered in maintaining human health and as one of the therapeutic method since many centuries ago.”

Indeed, from Roman baths and Scandinavian saunas to Aboriginal sweat lodges, sweating for health has been embraced by cultures worldwide. Researchers writing in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health explained:¹³

“Sweating with heat and/or exercise has been viewed throughout the ages, by groups worldwide, as ‘cleansing’ … Sweating offers potential and deserves consideration, to assist with removal of toxic elements from the body.

… Sweating is not only observed to enhance excretion of the toxic elements of interest in this paper, but also may increase excretion of diverse toxicants, as observed in New York rescue workers, or in particular persistent flame retardants and bisphenol-A … Optimizing the potential of sweating as a therapeutic excretory mechanism merits further research.”

The researchers noted the following promising roles of sweat in detoxification:

• Sweat may be an important route for excretion of cadmium when an individual is exposed to high levels
• Sweat-inducing sauna use might provide a therapeutic method to increase elimination of toxic trace metals
• Sweating should be the initial and preferred treatment of patients with elevated mercury urine levels

Sweat glands also secrete antimicrobial peptides that help restrict the growth of various microbes on the skin, potentially helping to reduce infection or atopic dermatitis. The sweat gland-derived antimicrobial peptide dermcidin is also thought to play a role in regulating the innate immune system’s response to infection and injury.¹⁴

Many Toxins May be ‘Preferentially Excreted Through Sweat’

Because sweat is 99% water, it’s sometimes said that sweating doesn’t provide a meaningful avenue for detoxification. In the journal Temperature, it’s noted, “The role of sweating to eliminate waste products and toxicants seems to be minor compared with other avenues of excretion via the kidneys and gastrointestinal tract.”¹⁵

However, research shows that toxins are, in fact, excreted via sweat. According to research in Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology:¹⁶

“Many toxic elements appeared to be preferentially excreted through sweat. Presumably stored in tissues, some toxic elements readily identified in the perspiration of some participants were not found in their serum. Induced sweating appears to be a potential method for elimination of many toxic elements from the human body.”

For instance, concentrations of the heavy metals nickel, lead and chromium may be 10 to 30 times higher in sweat than in blood and urine.¹⁷ It’s also noted in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, “Physiologists have long regarded sweating as an effective and safe means of detoxification, and heavy metals are excreted through sweat to reduce the levels of such metals in the body.”¹⁸

That study found levels of nickel, lead, copper and arsenic in sweat were higher when the sweating was induced via dynamic exercise as opposed to sauna usage, although mercury levels in sweat were the same regardless of sweating method.¹⁹

Another systematic review found that in people with higher exposure or body burden of arsenic, cadmium lead and mercury, “sweat generally exceeded plasma or urine concentrations, and dermal could match or surpass urinary daily excretion … Sweating deserves consideration for toxic element detoxification.”²⁰

Bisphenol A is another chemical contaminant often detected in sweat, in some cases even when no BPA was found in serum or urine samples.²¹

Health Benefits of Sauna Usage

Inducing sweating via sauna usage has been linked to many health benefits, including for the heart, respiratory system, joints, chronic pain and brain.²² One mechanism for this effect is thought to be related to the fact that heat stresses your heart and body similar to that of exercise, thus prompting similar effects.²³ However, sweating is also part of sauna bathing’s therapeutic effects.

Researchers in Finland — where sauna use is common — found that men who used a sauna four to seven times a week for an average of 15 minutes had a 66% lower risk of developing dementia, and 65% lower risk of Alzheimer’s, compared to men who used the sauna just once a week.²⁴

Waon therapy, a form of dry sauna treatment that warms the entire body, is also linked to improved heart health, including in people with chronic heart failure.²⁵ Separate research published in JAMA Internal Medicine revealed that men who used a Finnish-style, dry heat sauna seven times per week also cut their risk of death in half from fatal heart problems compared to those who used it only once a week.²⁶

This held true even after confounding factors such as smoking, blood pressure and triglyceride levels were factored in. In regard to time, the greatest benefits were found among those who sweated it out for 19 minutes or more each session.

As noted by the study, “Sauna bathing leads to skin sweating — induced fluid loss and increase in heart rate, which are physiologic responses to warm temperature … Our results suggest that sauna bathing is a recommendable health habit.”²⁷

How to Induce Sweating

Regular sauna usage is one way to induce sweating, but it’s not the only one. Virtually any type of intense exercise will lead to sweating, as will exercising in warm temperatures or in a heated room, such as in Bikram yoga. If you choose to use a sauna for sweating, there are several options, including a Finnish sauna, far-infrared saunas and near-infrared saunas.

The difference between the infrared saunas and the traditional Finnish sauna is the Finnish-style heats you from the outside in, whereas the infrared heats from the inside out. Near-infrared saunas have additional benefits as they penetrate your tissues more effectively and at wavelengths not absorbed by water.

The near-infrared range affects your health primarily through interaction with chromophores, light-absorbing molecules found in your mitochondria and water molecules. Near-infrared light also has healing and repairing properties, helping optimize other biological functions.

Remember, if you sweat heavily, you’ll also lose valuable fluids and electrolytes. So, be sure to drink plenty of pure water and replace your electrolytes. Coconut water is one option to replace electrolytes naturally. You can also mix one-quarter teaspoon of Himalayan salt with a gallon of pure filtered water for electrolyte replacement.

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Notes

^{1, 2, 6, 10, 11, 12} Galen Med J. 2020; 9: e2003

^3, 4 Medline Plus, Sweating

⁵ National Library of Medicine, StatPearls, Anatomy, Skin Sweat Glands October 10, 2022

^7, 8 Am J Clin Dermatol. 2023; 24(2): 187–198

⁹ Br J Dermatol. 2018 Jun;178(6):1246-1256. doi: 10.1111/bjd.15808. Epub 2018 Apr 25

¹³ Journal of Environmental and Public Health Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 184745, 10 pages

¹⁴ Shock. 2016 Jan; 45(1): 28–32

¹⁵ Temperature (Austin). 2019; 6(3): 211–259

¹⁶ Arch Environ Contam Toxicol. 2011 Aug;61(2):344-57. doi: 10.1007/s00244-010-9611-5. Epub 2010 Nov 6

^17, 18, 19 Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Apr; 19(7): 4323

²⁰ J Environ Public Health. 2012; 2012: 184745

²¹ J Environ Public Health. 2012;2012:185731

²² Galen Med J. 2020; 9: e2003., Introduction

²³ Complement Ther Med. 2019 Jun:44:218-222. doi: 10.1016/j.ctim.2019.05.002. Epub 2019 May 2

²⁴ Age and Ageing, Volume 46, Issue 2, March 2017, Pages 245–249, doi: 10.1093/ageing/afw212

²⁵ Am J Cardiol. 2012 Jan 1;109(1):100-4. doi: 10.1016/j.amjcard.2011.08.014. Epub 2011 Sep 23

²⁶ JAMA Internal Medicine 2015;175(4):542-548

²⁷ JAMA Internal Medicine 2015;175(4):542-548, Introduction, Conclusions