Global Research

Iran’s electricity grid will be connected with Russia and Azerbaijan in a few months, once grid compatibility studies are completed, Iran’s Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian said on Friday.

Iran’s power grid could be linked and synchronized to connect with other grids either via Azerbaijan or via Armenia and Georgia, Ardakanian said, as reported by Iranian Fars news agency.

“Iran welcomes either of the two routes which gets ready first,” Fars quoted minister Ardakanian as saying.

Iran, Azerbaijan, and Russia have agreed to set up a company which has already started working on the project to link Iran’s grid to Russia via Azerbaijan, he added.

The idea of connecting Iran’s power grid with Russia via Azerbaijan was first aired in March 2019, when Ardakanian met with the then Azerbaijani minister of economy and industry, Shahin Mustafayev, in Tehran.

“We are considering plans for connecting the country’s power grid to Russia through the Republic of Azerbaijan, which will help synchronize Iran’s power system with that of Russia,” the Iranian minister said back then.

Iran and Russia are looking to boost their energy cooperation, including via joint projects, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported earlier this week after Iranian Ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, held a meeting to discuss the future energy cooperation with Russian Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Tikhonov.

A day later, Tikhonov was detained at a pre-trial detention center in Russia pending a trial over his alleged involvement in embezzlement of US$8 million (603 million Russian rubles), news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.

Tikhonov, who is one of eight deputy ministers of Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak, has held the deputy minister post since the summer of 2019. Tikhonov and other people were detained for two months until November 8 and are charged with fraud.

Lawyers for Tikhonov say that the charge was an attempt to “discredit the ministry’s top officials,” TASS reported.

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Tsvetana Paraskova is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

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A new report showing that US state-level voter databases were publicly available calls into question the narrative that Russian intelligence “targeted” US state election-related websites in 2016.

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A September 1 report in the Moscow daily Kommersant on a “dark web” site offering a database of personal information on millions of registered American voters undermines one of the central themes of the Russia hysteria pervading US politics.

Democratic politicians and corporate media pundits have long accepted it as fact that Russian intelligence “targeted” US state election-related websites in 2016. But the Kommersant report shows that those state registered voter databases were already available to anyone in the public domain, eliminating any official Russian motive for hacking state websites.

Kommersant reported that a user on a dark web Forum known as Gorka9 offered free access to databases containing the information of 7.6 million Michigan voters, along with the state voter databases of Connecticut, Arkansas, Florida and North Carolina.

There are differences between the Michigan database described by Gorka9 and the one that the State of Michigan releases to the public upon request. Tracy Wimmer, the spokesperson for the Michigan Secretary of State, said in an e-mail to Grayzone that when the Michigan voter registration database is released to the public upon request, the state withholds “date of birth (year of birth is included), driver’s license number, the last four digitals of someone’s social security number, email address and phone number….”  However, Gorka9’s description of the Michigan data includes driver’s license numbers, full dates of birth, social security numbers and emails.

In fact both un-redacted and redacted state voter files are obviously widely available on the dark web as well as elsewhere on the internet. Meduza, a Russian-language news site based in Riga, Latvia, published the Kommersantstory along with an “anonFiles” download portal for access to the Michigan voter database and a page from it showing that it is the officially redacted version. The DHS and the FBI both acknowledged in response to the Kommersant story that “a lot of voter registration data is publicly available or easily purchased.”

Joint Statement from #CISAgov and the @FBI on U.S. Elections #Protect2020 pic.twitter.com/TcMBznikhz

— Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (@CISAgov) September 1, 2020

Criminal hackers have been seeking to extract such personal information from online state personal databases for many years — not only from voter registration databases but from drivers license, health care and other databases. Oregon’s chief information security officer, Lisa Vasa, told the Washington Post in September 2017 that her team blocks “upwards of 14 million attempts to access our network every day.”

Ken Menzell, the legal counsel to the Illinois state Board of Elections, told this writer in a 2017 interview that the only thing new about the hack of the state’s voter database in 2016, in which personal data on 200,000 Illinois registered voters was exfiltrated, was that the hackers succeeded. Menzell recalled that hackers had been “trying constantly” to get into every Illinois personal database ever since 2006.

The motive for the hackers was simple: as observed by Andrey Arsentiev, the head of analytics and special projects at the private security partnership, Infowatch, databases can be mined for profits on the dark web, primarily by selling them to scam artists working on a mass scale. Gorka9 was offering state voter files for free because the owner had already squeezed all the potential profit out of selling them.

For the Russian government, on the other hand, such databases would be of little or no value. When FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap was asked by a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2017 how Moscow might use personal voter registration data, the only explanation he could come up with was that the Russian government and its intelligence agencies were completely ignorant of the character of U.S. state voter databases. “They took the data to understand what it consisted of,” Priestap declared.

Priestap was obviously unaware of the absurdity of the suggestion that the Russian government had no idea what was in such databases in 2016. After all, the state voter registration databases had already been released by the states themselves into the public domain, and had been bought and sold on the dark web for many years. The FBI has steered clear of the embarrassing suggestion by Priestap ever since.

Priestap’s inability to conjure up a plausible reason for Russia to hack U.S. election sites points to the illogical and baseless nature of the claims of a Russian threat to the U.S. presidential election.

DHS creates the Russian cyber campaign against state election sites

Back in 2016, the Department of Homeland Security did its best to market the narrative of Russian infiltration of American voting systems. At the time, the DHS was seeking to increase its bureaucratic power by adding election infrastructure to its portfolio of cybersecurity responsibilities, and exploiting the Russian factor was just the ticket to supercharge their campaign.

In their prepared statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2017, two senior DHS officials, Samuel Liles and Jeanette Manfra, referred to an October 2016 intelligence report published by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis. They stated it had “established that Internet-connected election-related networks, including websites, in 21 states were potentially targeted by Russian government cyber actors.” That “potentially targeted” language gave away the fact that DHS didn’t have anything more than suspicion to back up the charge.

In fact DHS was unable to attribute any attempted election site hack to the Russian government. On October 7, 2016, in fact, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated explicitly that they could not do so. Liles and Manfra appeared to imply such an attribution, however, by associating DHS with a joint assessment by CIA, FBI and NSA released January 7, 2017, that contained the statement, the “Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards.”

But the meaning of that language was deliberately vague, and the only additional sentence related to it stated, “Since early 2014, Russian intelligence has researched US electoral processes and related technology and equipment.”  That was far from any finding that Russia had scanned or hacked election-related websites.

In September 2017, under pressure from governors, DHS finally notified state governments about the cyber incidents that it had included in its October 2016 intelligence report as examples of “potential” Russan targeting. Now, it abandoned its ambiguous language and explicitly claimed Russian responsibility.

One state election official who asked not to be identified told this writer in a 2018 interview that “a couple of guys from DHS reading from a script” had informed him that his state was “targeted by Russian government cyber actors.”

DHS spokesman Scott McConnell issued a statement on September 28, 2017 that DHS “stood by” its assessment that 21 states “were the target of Russian government cyber actors seeking vulnerabilities and access to U.S. election infrastructure.” But McConnell also revealed that DHS had defined “targeting” so broadly that any public website that a hacker scanned in a state could be included within that definition.

The dishonest tactics the DHS employed to demonstrate plausible evidence of “targeting” was revealed by Arizona Secretary of State Michelle Reagan’s spokesperson Matt Roberts, who told this writer in an interview, “When we pressed DHS on what exactly was targeted, they said it was the Phoenix public library’s computer system.” Another 2016 hacking episode in Arizona, which the FBI originally believed was a Russian government job, was later found to be a common criminal hack. In that episode, a hacker had targeted a local official with a phishing scheme and managed to steal their username and password.

Ironically, DHS had speculated in its initial intelligence report that “that cyber operations targeting election infrastructure could be intended or used to undermine public confidence in electoral processes and potentially the outcome.”

That speculation, reiterated by corporate media, became a central feature of the Russiagate hysteria that electrified the Democratic Party’s base. None of the journalists and politicians who repeated the narrative stopped to consider how unsubstantiated claims by the DHS about Russian penetration of the US election infrastructure was doing just that – lowering public confidence in the democratic process.

The hysteria surrounding the supposed Russian threat to elections is far from over. The Senate Intelligence Committee report released in July 2019 sought to legitimize the contention by former Obama cyber security adviser Michael Daniel that Russia “may have” targeted all fifty states for cyber attacks on election-related sites.  In explaining his reasoning to the Senate committee’s staff, Daniel said: “My professional judgment was we have to work on the assumption [Russians] tried to go everywhere, because they’re thorough, they’re competent, they’re good.”

The New York Times eagerly played up that subjective and highly ideological judgment in the lede of a story headlined, “Russia Targeted Election Systems in All 50 States, Report Finds.’

As for DHS, it appeared to acknowledge by implication in an October 11, 2018 assessment excerpted in the Senate Committee report that it could not distinguish between a state-sponsored hack and a criminal hack. This August, the senior cybersecurity adviser for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Matthew Masterson, said,

“We are not and have not seen specific targeting of those election systems that has been attributable to nation-state actors at this time….  We do see regular scanning, regular probing of election infrastructure as a whole, what you’d expect to see as you run IT systems.”

Despite these stunning admissions, DHS has faced no official accountability for deliberately slanting its intelligence assessment to implicate Russia for common criminal hacking activity. No matter how shoddy its origins and development have proven to be, the narrative remains too politically useful to be allowed to die.

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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012.  His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.

This article was originally published in 2018.

In mid-December 1960, a conference was held at Strategic Air Command headquarters near Omaha, Nebraska, to outline America’s nuclear war strategy. During the meeting, plans were revealed whereby Moscow alone would be hit by 40 megatons of nuclear weapons. That is: about 4,000 times the force of the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima, on 6 August 1945.

Forty megatons also exceeded, by up to 30 times over, the full outlay of Allied conventional bombing during the Second World War. US General Thomas Power, commander-in-chief of Strategic Air Command, outlined at this meeting that radioactive fallout from the bombings would kill about 100 million Soviet citizens – roughly four times the total wiped out by the Nazis. The 100 million death toll was from radioactive fallout alone, not taking into account the further millions that would be killed by the bombs’ direct impact and blast radius.

Neighboring China was also to be decimated by American nuclear attacks; in 1949, the US had “lost China to Communism” following a revolution led by Mao Zedong. General Power noted at the conference that “there are about 600 million Chinese in China”. His chart quickly revealed that following planned nuclear attacks on the country, 300 million Chinese would be killed. Almost all the fatalities would constitute civilians.

One of those in attendance then asked whether they could change the strategy for “just a war with the Soviets?” General Power replied, “Well yeah, we can, but I hope nobody thinks of it, because it would really screw up the plan”.

John H. Rubel, later president John F. Kennedy’s Assistant Secretary of Defense, who was present, wrote that he “shrank within, horrified”, and his mind wandered to “the Wannsee conference in January 1942”. Rubel notes that at this Nazi meeting in southwest Berlin “an assemblage of German bureaucrats swiftly agreed on a program to exterminate every last Jew they could find anywhere in Europe”. The American meeting almost two decades later, at the Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, was planning for killings on a vastly greater scale to the Wannsee Conference, organized by sinister SS commander Reinhard Heydrich.

In attendance at the American conference were the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a list of general officers from various US commands across the world, and a small number of civilians. The Harvard chemistry professor George Kistiakowsky – an advisor to Dwight D. Eisenhower – informed the outgoing US president of the unprecedented death tolls predicted from such attacks. Though appalled by the news, Eisenhower approved the mass genocide proposal. Eisenhower even demanded that, mostly for budgetary purposes, no other plan for fighting the Russians should be formulated.

Eisenhower’s successor, president Kennedy, was later briefed of the impact of nuclear attacks that would result in the deaths of hundreds of millions. Like Eisenhower, Kennedy changed nothing and accepted the risks. As too did future presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon – with much evidence to suggest the “major attack options” continued through the administrations of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr (and most likely onto Donald Trump).

Furthermore, US pre-planned nuclear assaults were to target every city in both the USSR and China. With regard the USSR, there was one US nuclear warhead allocated for each place in the vast socialist state containing 25,000 people or more. Such attacks would also have knowingly wiped out America’s NATO allies in Europe. Soviet nuclear medium-range missiles and tactical bombers were pointed at their NATO adversaries, who would face annihilation in retaliatory strikes, as would the Warsaw Pact states. If there was any doubt, the radioactive fallout from America’s nuclear assaults on the USSR would then sweep across Europe, east to west, in a double whammy blow.

When president Kennedy assumed office in 1961, there were about 1,700 Strategic Air Command bombers in operation, comprising almost entirely of jet-powered B-52 and B-47 aircraft. Each plane was equipped with nuclear-armed weapons, ranging from five to 25 megatons in strength. The most powerful, 25 megaton bombs, contained 25 million tons of TNT – or over 12 times the entire bomb outlay the US Air Force dropped during World War II. A small number of B-52s were in the sky at all times, while much of the rest remained on alert.

Upon initiation of the US general nuclear war plan – an Execute order – it called for the departure of as many of these heavy bombers as possible. The fleet of hundreds would make their way onto each city in the Soviet Union and China, before releasing their arsenals.

Today, thousands of US nuclear weapons remain on “hair-trigger alert”, mostly aimed at Russian military installations, many of which are located in or close to cities. Such policies have been defended on the pretext of deterring a Soviet, or later Russian, nuclear first strike. In reality, the aggressive US nuclear strategy is designed to limit the retaliatory damage to America, following a nuclear first strike against Russia from the Western superpower.

Such contingencies are rendered meaningless anyway. To the current day, not foreseen by US planners is the nuclear winter effect following the initiation of a single such attack – by the US, or one of the other now eight nuclear powers. The extinction phenomenon of nuclear winter was not apparent to scientists until the early 1980s, when president Reagan was in office.

Even limited first-strike nuclear attacks, much smaller than those planned during the Cold War, would kill virtually every human on the planet, including all those in the US. As a consequence of nuclear explosions, firestorms would lift great levels of smoke and soot into the global stratosphere. It would remain there for 10 years or longer, blocking out the majority of sunlight, destroying harvests everywhere, while sinking the earth’s temperatures to Ice Age levels. Within two years, the human race would be virtually wiped out as a result of starvation.

In the US, throughout the Cold War years, the decision to begin a nuclear war did not rest with the president himself. Eisenhower delegated nuclear authority to his theater commanders who, in turn, passed on the initiative to their own subordinates.There was nothing to prevent a rogue commander, or officer, deciding that a nuclear attack was required and acting upon it. Any decision to initiate nuclear war against the USSR and China, could be taken by an armed force member the public had not remotely heard of. Nor were they informed of such policies, of course, which are one of America’s “highest national secrets”.

Americans were told such an earth-defining decision would be left to the president alone. However, a president, particularly with a low military rank or largely civilian background, was bound to be looked upon with suspicion by important military men. This was hardly the case during Eisenhower’s two terms, ending in January 1961, as he was a five-star general and former World War II Supreme Commander. It was a much different story under Kennedy, however, whose military rank only reached as high as lieutenant – and he had previously retired from the armed forces in March 1945, on “physical disability”.

General Curtis LeMay, the US Air Force Chief of Staff, bitterly denounced Kennedy in 1961 as being merely “a politician”. On the possibility of unleashing nuclear war, LeMay said:

“After all, who is more qualified to make that decision? Some politician who may only have been in office for a couple of months… or a man who has been preparing all his adult life to make it?”

LeMay further said of “Lieutenant Kennedy” that,

“They talk about the president exercising command and control. What is the president? A politician. What does a politician know about war? Who needs the president if there’s a war? Nobody! All we need him for is to tell us there’s a war”.

One can imagine LeMay’s views regarding the current president Trump, a real estate mogul and “former reality television star” (it would also be interesting to note the feelings of today’s military chiefs under Trump).

As commander of 21st Bomber Command in World War II, LeMay was responsible for giving orders that killed about 100,000 Japanese civilians during the firestorming of Tokyo (9-10 March 1945). LeMay also relayed the request to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945. This was long after the war had practically been won. With such hawkish figures having the authority (and willingness) to utilize nuclear weapons, along with a broader delegation of power reaching downwards, it seems a miracle there has been no nuclear war to date. Not to mention the other risks and proliferation that have occurred.

As the threats continue to present – increased elsewhere by worsening climate change – it may be worth noting the opinions of Ernst Mayr, one of the most respected biologists of the past century. Mayr wrote that among the hundreds of millions of species “that have existed on earth since the beginning of life, only a single one, Homo Sapiens, acquired high intelligence”.

Mayr believed the arrival of a species like modern humans which have “high intelligence” would inevitably be “short-lived”. He outlined that “the average life span” of such a species “is about 100,000 years”. Worryingly, modern humans have already outlived that average, with many estimates suggesting they have been in existence for about 200,000 years.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Demonstrations in Kathmandu protesting India’s territorial claim on Kalapani, a spur of land at Nepal’s furthest northwestern border subsided after a talk between their respective prime ministers. Then military skirmishes between India and China on their shared border raised anxiety in Kathmandu.

As for how the pandemic is affecting Nepal, scant news might lead to a conclusion that the country’s thin air or its pantheon of well-attended deities has immunizes residents from Covid’s ravages. Nepal’s low death toll—322 (with 52,000 cases reported to date, although rising rapidly)—for a population of 30 million is remarkable, also inexplicable given the government’s weak public health policy and shoddy management. Some citizens timidly suggest they might share a genetic immunity; others claim that popular herbal bromides protect them. Cynics accuse the government of hiding the real death toll, or worse, that it simply doesn’t know the count.

Lack of information and public distrust heighten tensions around the growing medical threat. Throughout early summer, while Covid-19 wreaked havoc across Europe, U.S.A. and in nearby India, Nepal’s death toll remained below 100. This did not however mean the population was unaffected: migrant workers were stranded; essential imports were threatened and building projects and business in general came to an abrupt halt; tourism ceased. When India and the U.S. (countries Nepali politicians closely follow) imposed lockdowns, Nepal’s administration followed suit. Except it did so as a knee-jerk reaction; it had no short-term relief plan and no long-term management strategy. When India eases rules, Nepal does too, and when its southern neighbor announces restrictions, officials in Kathmandu adopt a similar policy.

The government made no arrangements to mobilize social and economic services to help citizens cope.

All schools and colleges closed (and remain shuttered); inter-city bus transport was halted and international air travel and internal domestic flights that link remote hill regions to lowland cites and the capital ended. Kathmandu’s streets turned eerily empty. Even travel by motorcycle was prohibited. Next, all these closures were strictly, often pitilessly, enforced by a heightened nationwide police presence.

Exacerbating Nepal’s crisis was an influx of returning migrant workers:– tens of thousands of more than four million, mainly men, employed in Malaysia, the Gulf States and India. Reports of jobless laborers walking long distances to their homes across India included Nepalis who, when they reached the border of their homeland, found entry barred, and were then quarantined in camps inside India. The Nepal government’s unkind response was matched by more obstacles for those who managed to cross the 1,088-mile border.

Once inside their homeland these beleaguered souls found themselves unwelcome in border cities and in Kathmandu on their first stopover en route to the interior. City residents feared new arrivals might be carrying the virus with them. Then, many returnees who reached their home village (usually by foot) were banned from entering until they passed yet another quarantine period.

Added to medical threats are lost incomes; so families who’d grown dependent on workers’ remittances—anecdotal reports claim that every house in Nepal has at least one member employed abroad– are also negatively impacted. Doubtless, Nepalis are among millions of other laborers caught in limbo in Qatar,Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

Nepal is not without resources of its own to alleviate Covid-related hardships but the government has been stingy, relying largely on lockdown enforcement and on a vigorous public information campaign to instruct citizens about what safety measures they should follow.

Several million dollars donated by the WHO was to provide for testing and for PPE and treatment facilities for stricken Nepalis. This finances limited testing at regional centers nationwide as well as the construction of quarantine shelters. (Testing is reportedly contracted out to private agencies who charge the Nepali equivalent of $11.00 per test, but few people can manage this fee. But free tests are also available.) Beyond Kathmandu Valley and major cities, hospital treatment for serious Covid cases is scarce. (The ‘socialist’ government, led for several years by leftist parties, is hardly socialist in practice, promoting private hospitals over establishing a national health system for example.)

Many citizens feel their government must do more and they suspect Covid-targeted aid is another source for officials to line their pockets. Growing discontent at Kathmandu’s handling of the pandemic seems to have no effect. The main policy to deal with the crisis remains simply an on-off imposition of the lockdown. Probably, like the public, ministers anxiously watch international news for the announcement of a successful Covid vaccine.

Businesses in the capital are suffering badly, and with no government relief to tide them over, many will fail. Lines for food handouts from government and private or religious agencies are longer.

As in many Asian societies, Nepal’s elderly are well cared for by their children at home. So this country will not see the nursing home death toll that Americans and British experienced.

During the crisis Nepalis have made good use of IT facilities and their readily chargeable cell phones to weather the Covid storm. Nepal’s media have remained vigorous; and teachers and officials (urban and rural) have adapted to the use of zoom meetings, and online teaching, once limited to elite schools for children of the wealthy, is now widely used.

What citizens most lament is their incompetent, corrupt administration. Many had thought that with the unification in 2018 of squabbling, dysfunctional leftist parties, they could build a stronger nation; they are sadly disappointed.  As the eminent Canada-based Nepali writer Manjushree Thapa notes:  “I think about how high people’s expectations were of Nepal’s governing party (an alliance between Marxist-Leninist and Maoist communist parties) when they voted it into a majority. It’s all just deteriorated into a cabal of ‘high’ caste men”.

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B. Nimri Aziz is an anthropologist and journalist who’s worked in Nepal since 1970, and published widely on peoples of the Himalayas. A new book on Nepali rebel women is forthcoming. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

All images in this article are from the author

The collective evidence we can draw from the current scientific status regarding adverse health and biological effects of artificial electromagnetic field exposures, such as from cell phones, antennas/base stations, TV and radio towers, babyalarms, smart meters, powerlines, and WiFi routers, points to that we may be jeopardizing more than our own health and behaviour. Bacteria, plants, birds, frogs, and pollinating insects, may all be targeted, and it is obvious we must proceed with the highest caution before immersing the citizens and our wildlife in more and more artificial electromagnetic fields. We may, as a matter of fact, already be gravely endangering our current as well as coming generations. To not act today, may prove a disaster tomorrow, and such lack of action may again result in the classical “late lessons from early warnings”, or – even worse – “too late lessons from early warnings”.

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As a scientist and as a citizen, I do not know if the new version of wireless telecommunication, the so-called 5G, is safe or not. Neither does the The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which is an independent agency of the United States government created by statute to regulate interstate communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable, nor The American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which is a federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments.

When they – at the recent Feb. 7^th, 2019, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on the future of 5G wireless technology and their impact on the American people and economy – were asked by the U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal why there is a lack of any scientific research and data on the 5G technology’s potential health risks, and where he also criticized the FCC & FDA for inadequate answers on outstanding public health questions, he had to point firmly to that the wireless carriers concede they are not aware of any independent scientific studies on safety of 5G! 

On April 15, 2019, Rep. Peter A. DeFazio, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman, wrote a letter to the FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and acting FDA Commissioner Norman Sharpless inquiring about the status of the government’s research into the potential health effects of radiofrequency (RF) radiation and its relation to the FCC’s guidelines for safe human RF exposure levels, in light of the Commission push to roll out 5G technology and over 800,000 new antenna installations in the United States, aiming at providing a fast Internet service to 99% of the Americans within six years. (Ref: FCC chairman backs T-Mobile-Sprint deal in key endorsement)

Rep. DeFazio pointed out that although the Commission sought comment on whether its RF safety guidelines should be reassessed in 2013, no further action has been taken and the guidelines have not been updated since their implementation in 1996. DeFazio’s letter asks for details on the health-related studies conducted and what efforts have been taken by the agencies to educate and inform the public about its RF/5G technology research.

Again, it is obvious from the consumer’s point of view that nothing is to be found in the filing cabinets of the FDA or the FCC. 

But, all over the world, the consumers/citizens as well as our parliament politicians are still told, e.g. by the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish governmental radiation and health authorities that there is no reason for any concern. Excuse me! If no one – including the American FCC & FDA – is aware of any independent scientific studies on safety of 5G, then I must be very concerned taking into account the fact that from the current vast scientific literature, counting more than 26,000 relevant entries into various literature databases, on the other G:s, like 2G, 3G and 4G, as well as similar exposures from TV and radio towers, babyalarms, smart meters, and powerlines, it is obvious we must proceed with the highest caution before immersing the citizens and our wildlife in more and more artificial electromagnetic fields.

We may, as a matter of fact, already be gravely endangering our current as well as coming generations. To not act today, may prove a disaster tomorrow, and such lack of action may again result in the classical “late lessons from early warnings”, or – even worse – “too late lessons…”.

And for all the civil servants – employed by various governmental authorities – to actively lure their own government and parliament must be regarded as very serious. I believe it is called “high treason” to engage in such an act, or…? I, as a scientist, am not here to promote convenience or economic growth, but only “to serve and protect” human health, as well as to directly protect other animals, plants, and bacteria. These aims must be my only target, not to ensure consumers nor parliaments “there is no cause for alarm” which would be a blatant lie.

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Based on earlier conclusions, the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva already in 2001/2002 classified powerfrequency magnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic for childhood leukemia (Class 2B), and, by May 31, 2011, radiofrequency electromagnetic fields were also classified as possibly carcinogenic for certain brain tumours (Class 2B).

In the same year, the Council of Europe said “Ban mobile phones and wireless networks in schools”, since these technologies have ”potentially harmful” effects on humans.

The Council of Europe concluded that immediate (!) action was required to protect children. In Sweden nothing happened along these lines, the children were – and are – obviously not worth protecting from the effects summarized below, as compared to protecting profit, money, and unlimited greed. All of this in spite of that the 2B classification means that we do put our children in an exposure equally bad as many very dangerous substances and exposures, such as lead, petrol exhausts, marine diesel fuel, HIV type 2, Human Papilloma Virus, dry cleaning chemicals, methylmercury, hexachlorobenzene, chloroform, carbazole (as in tobacco smoke), etc., all found in the same category 2B. …. … Quite a paradox, is it not, and definitely no exposures parents would happily subject their loved children to, or what do you think…?

The paradox is even more obvious since all these gadgets – from an evolutionary point-of-view – are toys. Children who do not get tablets and smart phones still will mature to responsible and loving citizens – that you do not need to worry about! But without the real life necessities such as clean water, clean air, food that can be eaten without risk, care, concern, love and respect, they will perish, as if wildlife, such as pollinating insects, is/are damaged beyond repair.

Sometimes the toy aspect of 5G seems quite a bit over the top! A few days ago I read about how the commercial company, Ordnance Survey Limited in England, promise that

“Together, we’ve developed a demonstrator tool that lets network providers and local authorities visualise the best locations for placing radio antennae – to help deliver faster network speeds and better coverage that will cater for the increase of mobile and connected devices”. –  5G. We’ll keep you connected, Ordnancesurvey.co.uk

Among their images is one of St. Peter’s Church in Bournemouth with oblique imagery from Leica Geosystems.

But how stupid of me, I believed a church was for prayer, respect, sadness, happiness, contemplation and preaching, not to be colour-coded by Leica Geosystems…and definitely not providing a chuch spire platform assisting in relaying hard-core pornography, violent movies, amoral and unethical messages, etc. Is that really what our churches should be used for? But I suppose the driving force, as so often, is greed, not need.

So no wonder that the citizens of Bournemouth now are upset!

With the very recent American National Toxicology Program’s study [2016-2018], which found a clear link between near-field radiofrequency radiation from mobile phones and malignant gliomas of the brain and schwannomas in the heart of rats, and the Italian Ramazzini rodent far-field exposure/cancer results [2018/2019] supporting the first, the above is of even stronger importance.

And in 2012, the Italian Supreme Court ruled for the first time that mobiles can cause a brain tumour! And do not forget that the very same WHO (cf. above) cancer-classified powerfrequency magnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic (Class 2B) already in 2001/2002!

Besides the brain and heart cancer risks, cell phone and WiFi signals may also affect the blood-brain barrier to open and let toxic molecules into the brain, hurt and kill neurons in the hippocampus (one of the brain centres for memory), down- or up-regulate essential proteins in the brain engaged in the it’s metabolism, stress response and neuroprotection. Exposed sperms have been seen with more head defects, decreased sperm count, lowered motility, decreased viability, and other malfunctions as well as DNA damage, and severe effects on fertility have been found. Wireless signals can increase oxidative stress in cells and lead to increase of proinflammatory cytokines and lower capacity to repair genotoxic DNA single- and double-strand breaks. Cognitive impairments in learning and memory have also been shown.

Results from the OECD’s PISA performance surveys in reading and mathematics show decreasing results in countries that have invested most in introducing computers, tablets and cell phones in school. Multitasking, too many hours in front of a screen, less time for social contacts and physical activities with risk for neck and back aches, overweight, sleep problems, and information technology (IT) addiction are some of the known risks and side-effects of IT. They stand in marked contrast to the often claimed, but largely unproven possible benefits (the OECD actually says frequent use of computers in schools is more likely to be associated with lower results!).

And the implications of the most recent findings – by Taheri et al from 2017 – of bacteria exposed to mobile phone and WiFi radiation turning resistant to antibiotics are chilling, to say the least, and may easily explain the on-going huge and highly frightening development into more and more antibiotics-resistant microorganisms around the world. The latter has very recently summoned the G20 countries – in 2017 – to discuss the fact that each year more than 25,000 Europeans die prematurely due to antibiotic resistance. By the year 2050 it has been calculated to be about 10,000,000 humans world-wide, and neither of these two estimations have taken into account the Taheri et al findings, thus, the 10,000,000 can easily instead become 7,600,000,000…not then counting all livestock dying for the same reason.

Finally to be noted while you still can see this text, the blue light beaming from smartphones and tablets is changing cells in our eyes that could accelerate blindness, according to a recent study by Ratnayake et al, in Nature Scientific Reports, 2018. Researchers from The University of Toledo studied the impact of blue light – which comes from the sun as well as digital devices – on our eyes. The study found blue light triggers ”toxic” reactions in retinal molecules that sense light and signal the brain. The retinal used by photoreceptors in our eyes is what allows people to see.

Results showed blue light helps generate poisonous chemical reactions killing photoreceptors, which cannot be restored once they die off. This leads to macular degeneration, an incurable eye disease that causes blindness starting in your 50s or 60s, researchers said.

Blue light can also affect your sleep, suppressing your body’s ability to create the hormone melatonin, according to the American National Sleep Foundation. They suggest staying away from devices at least 30 minutes before going to bed.

Ref: USA Today: Blue light from phones, tablets could accelerate blindness and hurt vision, study finds

Maybe the latter can explain the dramatically increased insomnia problems encountered in our modern society?

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To Read Olle Johansson’s Complete Writings on the subject, click here 

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Olle Johansson, former head of The Experimental Dermatology Unit, Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, and former adjunct professor of The Royal Institute of Technology, also Stockholm, Sweden, now retired and leading The Institute of Common Sense for Common Sense, Utö/Stockholm, Sweden

Here’s what we were told: An August motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, helped spread COVID-19 to more than a quarter-million Americans, making it the root of about 20 percent of all new coronavirus cases in the U.S. last month. So said a new white paper from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, at least. And national news outlets ran with it.

“Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was ‘superspreading event’ that cost public health $12.2 billion,” tweeted The Hill.

“The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally held in South Dakota last month may have caused 250,000 new coronavirus cases,” said NBC News.

“The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the ‘worst-case scenarios’ for superspreading occurred simultaneously,” the researchers write in the new paper, titled “The Contagion Externality of a Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID-19.”

Not so fast. Let’s take a look at what they actually tracked and what’s mere speculation.

According to South Dakota health officials, 124 new cases in the state—including one fatal case—were directly linked to the rally. Overall, COVID-19 cases linked to the Sturgis rally were reported in 11 states as of September 2, to a tune of at least 260 new cases, according to The Washington Post.

There very well may be more cases that have been linked to the early August event, but so far, that’s only 260 confirmed cases—about 0.1 percent of the number the IZA paper offers.

To get to the astronomical number of cases allegedly spread because of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the researchers analyzed “anonymized cellphone data to track the smartphone pings from non-residents and movement of those before and after the event,” notes Newsweek. “The study then linked those who attended and traveled back to their home states, and compared changes in coronavirus trends after the rally’s conclusion.”

Essentially, the researchers assumed that new spikes in cases in areas where people went post-rally must have been caused by those rally attendees, despite there being no particular evidence that this was the case. The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, failed to account for simultaneous happenings—like schools in South Dakota reopening, among other things—that could have contributed to coronavirus spread in some of the studied areas.

The researchers also assumed a $46,000 price tag for each person infected to calculate the $12.2 billion public health cost of the event—but this figure would only make sense if every person had a severe case requiring hospitalization.

The results of the IZA paper “do not align with what we know,” South Dakota epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said at a Tuesday news briefing.

The IZA paper “isn’t science; it’s fiction,” Gov. Kristi Noem (R) said.

It’s also good election-time propaganda, apparently. Despite the dubious nature of the IZA study, a range of Democratic consultants and cheerleaders have been using it to condemn President Donald Trump.

BREAKING: That Sturgis motorcycle event that should’ve never happened is now linked to an estimated 250,000 cases and it could cost us all up to $12 billion. Vote out Trump and every anti-mask, virus-loving lap dog Republican. This election, and the next. And the next. And so on.

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) September 8, 2020

Yet another piece of GOP stunt legislation takes aim at social media and Section 230.

Today, Senate Republicans offered another stupid, stupid, politically backwards, and stupid bill, that would amend #Section230 to change how platforms moderate content. The “Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act” — nice title. Let’s see…. 1/11 https://t.co/2pLj4hXcql

— Tarleton Gillespie (@TarletonG) September 9, 2020

Regulation alert:

It's striking that's there's almost no national media coverage of how tomorrow's FDA deadline is going to change vaping in the US. One gets the impression that not many reporters ostensibly covering the topic actually talk much to producers and consumers. https://t.co/GcHcOny4Cd

— Jacob Grier (@jacobgrier) September 8, 2020

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Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a senior editor at Reason.

Featured image: (Walter Bibikow Danita Delimont Photography/Newscom)

On Tuesday, AstraZeneca announced a pause on its experimental COVID-19 vaccine trial after a woman in the UK developed a “suspected serious reaction.” The company is also conducting trials in the U.S., South Africa and Brazil, with enrollment in all these countries on hold for now.

AstraZeneca is partnering with researchers at Oxford University to develop this vaccine, and is testing it on children as young as 5 years old. The World Health Organization’s Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan called the project a COVID-19 vaccine race “frontrunner” earlier this year.

The company asserts that a panel of independent experts will review the adverse reaction and decide whether or not AstraZeneca should lift the pause.

While AstraZeneca says the woman has not been officially diagnosed, an anonymous source told the New York Times that the woman’s symptoms were consistent with transverse myelitis (TM).

TM is a neurological disorder characterized by inflammation of the spinal cord, a major element of the central nervous system. It often results in weakness of the limbs, problems emptying the bladder and paralysis. Patients can become severely disabled and there is currently no effective cure.

Concerns over associations between TM and vaccines are well known. A review of published case studies in 2009 documented 37 cases of transverse myelitis associated with vaccines, including Hepatitis B, measles-mumps-rubella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and others in infants, children and adults. The researchers in Israel noted “the associations of different vaccines with a single autoimmune phenomenon allude to the idea that a common denominator of these vaccines, such as an adjuvant, might trigger this syndrome.” Even the New York Times piece on the recent AstraZeneca trial pause notes past “speculation” that vaccines might be able to trigger TM.

Perhaps the most infamous example of this phenomenon is the case of Colton Berrett. Berrett received Merck’s HPV vaccine at age 13 after doctors advised his mother it would help prevent cervical cancer in his hypothetical wife down the line. After the vaccine, doctors diagnosed Berrett with TM, and the boy became increasingly paralyzed as his spine became increasingly inflamed. Doctors said he’d eventually lose the ability to breathe and the family chose to intubate him. After years of living with this disability, and needing someone to carry a breathing apparatus for him at all times, Berrett took his own life.

Even if AstraZeneca’s vaccine is found responsible for the trial participant’s TM symptoms, that may not become the official conclusion. In July, another participant developed symptoms of TM, and the vaccine trial was paused. But an “independent panel” concluded the illness was unrelated to the vaccine, and the trial continued.

As Nikolai Petrovsky from Flinders University told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, these panels are “typically made up of doctors, a biostatistician and a medical representative of the sponsor company running the trial.”

It’s unclear if the panel that reviewed the first case of TM will be the same group of experts to decide if the second case of TM was caused by the vaccine, but the Oxford team seems to be laying the groundwork for another such conclusion.

“This may be due to an issue related to the vaccine. It also may not,” a spokesperson from Oxford University told ABC News Thursday.

Also of significance is the fact that researchers have yet to produce a safe and effective vaccine against any coronavirus. When researchers were experimenting on vaccines against SARS (similar to COVID-19 in that it infects the lungs), trials were halted completely, after the vaccinated animals developed even more severe (and sometimes fatal) versions of SARS than the unvaccinated animals.

But while AstraZeneca informs volunteers about the results of animal trials with experimental SARS and MERS vaccines, it leaves out the results of its own animal trials, which suggest ineffectiveness at stopping the spread of the virus.

Posing as a “trusted health authority” comedian JP Sear’s said in a recent skit: “We just published research on the CDC website that shows only 6% of COVID deaths that we’ve been reporting to you were caused by COVID alone. 94% of COVID deaths had an average of 2.6 co-morbidities. That means of the 161,392 COVID deaths that we’ve been shoving in your face only 9,210 were legitimate COVID deaths.”

While I’d be the last to defend the CDC, I disagree with JP in his comical calculations.

If we look at table 3 in the CDC report we see that of 154,000 COVID deaths listed, there are 158,000 cases of respiratory co-morbidities. Respiratory problems would be expected with COVID-19, being that its definition could be summarized as a severe respiratory distress caused by SAR-COV-2. Of course, it does seem redundant and suspicious to list respiratory illnesses as a co-morbidity of a respiratory disease. Sort of like double-dipping.

We also need to consider, as I’ve written about before, that the only way to die of COVID-19 is to die from pneumonia. Indeed, as stated in Cellular & Molecular Immunology, Chinese scientists had named the disease “novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia (NCIP)” before it was called COVID-19. Therefore, is one to assume from the CDC’s data that all 154,000 cases died of pneumonia?

It’s also interesting to see how 64,000 had “influenza and pneumonia.” Why didn’t they just say “influenza?” Should not all of the deaths have been from pneumonia? Or did they have two pneumonias at the same time? Or are these 64,000 deaths the only ones who died of pneumonia? And how do we know the coronavirus and not the influenza virus caused the pneumonia?

In the end, the data isn’t labelled and organized clearly. What we really need is a very clear count of how many of these SARS-COV-2 patients died of pneumonia.

Now, back to JP’s 6% with no co-morbidities: Did they not have pneumonia or did they? If not, then what did they die from? These would be perfectly healthy people who then somehow died for no known reason? This seems very suspect and reminds me of reports of minorities in New York who found themselves on a ventilator with eight IV drugs because they were having an anxiety attack. In such cases it seems the treatment killed them.

The data does show, however, that having cancer, diabetes, kidney failure, high blood pressure and heart problems puts people at risk of dying. If SAR-COV-2 is in their blood stream at the time of death that seems rather incidental, since the virus usually does not result in death (for more than 99% of cases).

And it would be no surprise that Americans have such a higher death count, since they are leaders in renal failure, diabetes and obesity. While a small percentage of these diseases may be caused from injuries, genes or poorly aligned stars, the vast majority are related to diet, lifestyle and lack of sleep. Which begs the question: Why are we focusing on masks, sanitizers and social distancing?

So I respectfully disagree with JP Sears and others saying that the CDC report shows only 6% died form COVID-19. All this report seems to do is confirm the lack of clear and accurate reporting of COVID-19 deaths. The actual mortality numbers remains a mystery.

It seems Dr. Zubin Damania would agree. He makes a similar argument in a recent video:

“[The report] has led to a storm of misunderstandings about what this data means, and worse yet, we’re really getting to a point where we’re just absolutely becoming scientifically illiterate.”

Nonetheless, he also points out that even if every single one of the official COVID-19 deaths are true, it still wouldn’t justify the destructive measures taken to contain the disease. Here’s a brief excerpt from his video:

“You don’t need to believe that [we’re over counting deaths] to still feel that the response is worse than the disease, that the number of deaths did not justify what we’ve done to the country – in terms of lockdowns, changing our freedoms, destroying our cultural fabric, increasing substance abuse, alcoholism, a lost generation who’s not getting educated (mostly poor people), the economic destruction that’s destroying businesses that’ll never be back.

“You can still argue those things based on those principles without lying and distorting data. You don’t need to. You have enough of a leg to stand on to have a civil debate; but we don’t do that, we politicize everything…

“If it’s an iceberg and the tip of it is the deaths, you can argue that the rest of the iceberg is important too. That’s fine, make that argument. Don’t misrepresent data and make yourself and your opinions look stupid, because that’s what it does. It really riles me up because this is simple, simple, simple science; it’s not that complicated. And we’re slave to social media, what they’re feeding us, all of this, we need to start to think critically using the skillsets that we can easily develop with a little bit of training….”

According to his about page, Dr. Damania is “a UCSF/Stanford trained internist and founder of Turntable Health, an innovative primary care clinic and model for Health 3.0.” You can watch his entire video or read the transcript.

In the end, I think there is enough evidence to show that the COVID-19 death rate is inflated. But by how much? We may never know. And it probably doesn’t matter; because even the official death count does not justify the greater number of deaths and damage that lockdowns, masking and other such new normal nonsense have caused.

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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Daily Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novel, Brave New Normal: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca

As a student of both the Kennedy brothers’ assassinations and 9/11 this writer was able to interview very interesting researchers on these topics. Ed Curtin and James DeEugenio have been very astute as to the former. They joined my radio show in the past and shed important light on what really most likely went down in Dallas and in Los Angeles. Recently I interviewed 9/11 Truth activist Phil Restino on the takedown of the Twin Towers, the ‘hole’ in the Pentagon and the suspected ‘shoot down’ of the 4th plane in Pennsylvania on that tragic day.

As with the JFK and RFK murders, 9/11 investigations by independent researchers paint a most macabre picture.

To go over the literal piles of facts that the ‘Made for Propaganda official commission’ refused to discuss and evaluate is mind boggling! Let’s just leave that basket of information to those like Restino in the 9/11 Truth movement. I just wish to list a few of what I will call  coincidences of the goings on of that Tuesday in September, 2001:

Amazing on the very day that (supposedly) Osama Bin Laden‘s group of men took over those four planes and piloted three of them into those buildings, NORAD (North America Aerospace Defense Command) along with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) were conducting war games. They called this ‘Operation Vigilant Guardian’ and it was a war game using, are you ready for this, FAKE COMMERCIAL AIRPLANE HIJACKINGS! This was a highly secret war game that no one in the news media or general public was allowed to know about. Imagine, if our enemies knew in advance of this war game, maybe they would actually use it as cover for real hijackings. Oh, isn’t that what happened? What a **** coincidence!

On that very morning of September 11, 2001 Junior Bush was scheduled to be at an elementary school in Sarasota Florida to visit with a class, and read to them. On his way into the building Junior Bush got word that the first plane crashed into one of the towers. He was heard to say ‘They should check that pilot’s license’ or something of that nature. He then sat in the classroom with the kids, on a visit that was highly pre publicized. Translated, any ‘evil doers’ could know that the president of the USA was going to be there at that time. Why is that important? Well, when the news of the 2nd plane going into the 2nd tower was relayed to Junior’s staff, his chief of staff, Andrew Card, is seen walking over to Junior and whispering it into his ear. Junior is seen sitting there and then continues to read to the kids for anywhere from seven minutes on. The exact time is not as important as this: In Clint Eastwood’s 1993 film ‘In the Line of Fire’ the Secret Service is on the lookout for a possible assassin. At a function the president is attending, as he is speaking to the assembled guests, a balloon pops. All hell breaks loose as the Secret Service literally pushes the president the hell out of the building. On 9/11 2001 they just stand by and let Junior continue, and then rush him out. Why?

On that terrible day, before the dastardly deed was done, traffic controllers had four planes out there, with two approaching NY city airspace, that were not responding. When the powers that be were notified of this, and we had McGuire AFB just 72 miles from NYC. Yet, they had interceptor jets leave from Otis AFB in Massachusetts, which is 190 miles away, IF they do a circle route. Why? Well, they failed to arrive in time. When the 3rd plane was missing and not responding, the one that (supposedly) fit that jumbo jet cone through that small hole in the Pentagon, why was it allowed to do its dastardly deed? Washington DC is the most fortified city in the world, with missile batteries surrounding the city, and Andrews AFB right nearby. Yet, they just allowed the rogue plane to continue on its course heading right in.

Read the many great books and watch the many great documentaries on the 9/11 scam as I refer to it.

Just go to 9/11 Truth.org and check out the myriad of investigative work done by an literal army of dedicated people.

Listen to my interview with Phil Restino on our website ‘ It’s the Empire… stupid!’ which will be online shortly.

Big lie

A big lie is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”.

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected]  

Featured image is from ae911truth.org

The narrative is banal and so familiar: Russia is once again accused of having “poisoned” an individual trumpeted by the Western media as threatening the Russian government’s interests. The minor political activist Alexei Navalny made the headlines after a suspicious incident at the airport in Tomsk on August 20, 2020 sickened him and necessitated emergency medical assistance. Russian doctors at the hospital in Omsk fought for his life for two days and stabilized his condition.

Questions abound concerning the way in which the events surrounding this incident have progressed. Outside of the Western media, Navalny’s importance is negligible: his occasional demonstrations in Russia have drawn small crowds, and any arrests with short detentions have come from his not obeying Russian law and giving notice to the police of the location of a given demonstration—so that police could properly secure the location for the event. Thus his ensuing arrest garners international attention as an example of the “brutality” and “arbitrariness” of Russian law enforcement.

The average Russian citizen has little to no interest in Navalny’s political aspirations or activism. Moreover, his insignificance poses no threat to any of Russia’s six major political parties. Modern Russian society is well-functioning and law-abiding, and does not possess the kind of lawlessness that would tolerate an attempt on anyone’s life. Modern Russia maintains a record of acting in accordance with international laws and norms.

Cui bono? The Russian government would benefit least of all from this kind of negative publicity. Pres. Vladimir Putin has a consistent record of policy statements, interviews, and actions seeking better and more normalized relations with the West. Anyone actually reading his detailed speeches and viewing his multi-hour international question-and-answer sessions will come away with this conclusion; it is a major theme of the Russian government’s efforts across many years.

Let us connect the dots among Navalny’s sickness, Nord Stream 2, Belarus, and the coming American presidential elections on November 3, 2020. It is striking how quickly the major outlets of the Western media moved in lockstep to condemn what happened to Navalny, first as an attempt on his life by poisoning, and soon after by identifying the poison as ‘Novichok’—the same substance allegedly used in the attack against the Skripals. (Where are the Skripals, by the way? The British government has acted with arrogance and impunity in this strange case, which to date has not been resolved fully for the public.)

Why did Navalny’s family request that he be transferred to Germany? Why not Moscow, which as one of the six most livable cities in the world would have medical facilities just as advanced as those in Germany. If this were indeed a criminal act against a Russian citizen, just because it occurred in one part of the country would not mean that the entire country would be unsafe and the person in question should be taken to a foreign country. This is patently ridiculous. If so, then why not Tokyo or Helsinki?

If the Russian government wanted to do away with Navalny, it would be easier to leave him in the Omsk hospital or at least in Moscow. But his family wanted him to be flown to Germany, as arranged by an organization with connections to the discredited, opportunistic punk rock band Pussy Riot (more on this below). Russia complied with the family’s request.

Why would German Chancellor Angela Merkel involve herself in such an unimportant event, assigning a security detail to protect Navalny—from which threat? Why was Navalny treated as a VIP in Germany? He is not a significant world political figure, and his support in Russia is minuscule—estimated at approximately 2%. Up to this point, the entire sequence of events seems stage-managed. Russia’s medical team in Omsk was perhaps too trusting that once Navalny reached Germany proper assessments of his condition would not be politicized.

The Russian doctors in Omsk acted more than honorably, sharing Navalny’s medical history with their German counterparts. The Russian doctors stated that the initial test results of the German medical team were identical to their own, but the Germans’ conclusions derived from the tests differed from the Russians’ own. Surely this would ethically require that the German doctors and military facility (has this facility been identified?) share with Russia—the country being accused of a crime by the US and EU—the toxicology reports they completed. Let us hope they will do so.

Why did a military facility become involved? Did this take place in order for the diagnosis to fit a preconceived narrative? Which military hospital allegedly identified the poison? Is it not a curious coincidence that once again it was labeled as ‘Novichok,’ and that the US / EU community immediately condemned Russia before any definitive evidence was provided? Was Chancellor Merkel simply obeying her marching orders? To add to the confusion, Pres. Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus—currently confronting an attempted coup d-état–claimed that his country’s intelligence intercepted a German-Polish communication revealing that the alleged poisoning of Navalny was a fake.[i] The German government rejected this alleged revelation.

Reasonable and perspicacious people worldwide are weary of the West’s condescending and threatening attitude towards Russia. ‘Novichok’ is possessed by a multitude of countries, and hence there exist myriad opportunities for malignant forces to obtain and use it. A headline on RT reads, “Developers of ‘Novichok’ say Navalny’s symptoms aren’t consistent with poisoning by their deadly creation, reject German claims” (Sept. 2, 2020).[ii] In addition, if this were indeed a poisoning by ‘Novichok,’ the potency of the substance itself would have affected others in the airport environment.

Navalny has diabetes and is at risk for diabetic shock due to low blood sugar. From an article in Moon of Alabama:

The hospital in Omsk said that Navalny had experienced severe hypoglycemia: The head physician of the Omsk emergency hospital, Alexander Murakhovsky, said that Alexei Navalny’s condition was caused by a sharp drop in blood sugar . . . Hypoglycemia is also known as diabetic shock . . .When a person experiences diabetic shock, or severe hypoglycemia, they may lose consciousness, have trouble speaking, and experience double vision. Early treatment is essential because blood sugar levels that stay low for too long can lead to seizures or diabetic coma.[iii]

Navalny was en route by plane for about one hour before the emergency landing, which would have exacerbated an already serious threat to his health. After stabilizing his condition, the Omsk doctors cleared him for international travel in a good faith gesture. Perhaps they should have kept him in Russia. More cynically minded professionals would have foreseen that as soon as Navalny landed in Germany, a country essentially controlled by the US and NATO, his illness would be politicized for the benefit of those who wish to stop the completion of Nordstream 2 and manipulate the outcome of the American presidential elections in November. Dmitri Babich draws similar conclusions about such incidents occurring just as the Russian and American governments encounter a positive breakthrough in their relations.[iv]

Who would want to pressure Chancellor Merkel’s government into magnifying the Navalny incident by accusing Russia of an alleged crime, thus opening the door to increased pressure from anti-Russian actors to abandon permanently the Nordstream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany? For a start, the UK government, arguably one of the most Russophobic in the world—witness the belligerent pronouncements about Russia by former PM Theresa May, her childish former defence secretary Gavin Williamson (of “Russia should go away and shut up” fame), and most recently the entitled and incompetent PM Boris Johnson. One could go back at least as far as Winston Churchill during the World War II era, but the point has been made.

Poland, the Baltic states, and western Ukraine would also be likely participants in a plan to discredit Russia, but they would not act as the prime movers.

In addition, those political forces in the US of both the Democratic and Republican parties that enjoy the benefits of the military-industrial lobby would benefit from the continued manufacturing of the non-existent “Russia threat.” In their acts of political theatre both parties are using Russia for furthering hoped-for political ends. Indeed, both the UK and US have exhibited anti-Russian behavior, trying to penetrate and conquer Russia for over one hundred years.[v]

Navalny is a useful tool of Western Russophobic politicians, as in the past was the anarchist-anti-Semitic-homophobic group Pussy Riot, famously praised by failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a photo-op: Clinton opined, “great to meet the strong and brave young women . . .”[vi] These “strong and brave young women” have a criminal history of hooliganism in Russia: they were punished for their disruptive behavior in public places according to Russian laws—which incidentally are similar to pertinent laws in other supposedly civilized countries, such as the United Kingdom. A video shows them staging in a Moscow grocery store a mock-execution by the hanging of three migrant workers and two homosexuals, one of whom was Jewish.[vii] Navalny’s chartered flight to Germany was sponsored by the Berlin-based NGO Cinema for Peace Foundation, whose founder Jaka Bizlij was contacted for this purpose by some members of Pussy Riot.[viii]

These are the kinds of activists that the West, in its misguided thinking and lack of knowledge about Russian culture and civics, would wish for readers of its corporate media to lionize. I would invite all readers to become more fully informed about these controversial figures.

All of us, and even his political opponents in Russia, wish Alexei Navalny a complete recovery from his illness, and hope that in the future he will make a positive contribution to Russian socio-political life.

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Valeria Z. Nollan is professor emerita of Russian studies at Rhodes College. She was born in Hamburg, West Germany; she and her parents were Russian refugees displaced by World War II. 

Notes

[i] https://www.rt.com/russia/499771-lukashenko-navalny-falsification/

[ii] https://www.rt.com/russia/499732-novichok-developers-navalny-symptoms/

[iii] https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/08/navalny-was-not-poisoned.html

[iv] https://www.rt.com/op-ed/499741-navalny-poisoning-western-blame-russia/

[v] See Matthew Lee Miller, The American YMCA and Russian Culture (New York: Lexington Books, 2013); also Stephen F. Cohen, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia (New York: Norton, 2001)

[vi] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/04/07/hillary-clinton-poses-with-pussy-riot/

[vii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIjeMo1cRCE&app=desktop

[viii] https://www.dw.com/en/the-german-ngo-behind-alexei-navalnys-rescue/a-54661016

Featured image is from TRPIPP

Is this article ‘fake news?’ No, because the statement in the title that reads “we have a lot of evidence that it’s a fake story all over the world” is an actual quote from a representative of the group discussed in the article.

Whether or not what the quote says is true, on the other hand, is up for you to decide or according to multiple governments, is up for the World Health Organization (WHO) to decide.

Is the title misleading or inaccurate? No, again, it’s a direct quote and represents the opinion of multiple health professionals.

Are these health professionals implying that COVID-19 is a fake virus? No, they are simply implying that it’s not as dangerous as it’s being made out to be, and I summarize some of that information below that has them coming to that conclusion.

These doctors and scientists are being heavily censored across all social media platforms, and those who write about them are experiencing the same.

Many of the claims these doctors make have been ‘debunked’ by mainstream media, federal health regulatory agencies and ‘fact-checkers’ that are patrolling the internet. Any information that does not come from the (WHO) is not considered reliable, truthful or accurate, and that would include the information presented in this article and information shared by these experts in the field. People are being encouraged to visit the WHO’s website for real and accurate information about COVID-19 instead of listening to doctors and scientists who oppose the narrative of these health authorities.

What Happened: More than 500 German doctors & scientists have signed on as representatives of an organization called “Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss.”

Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss stands for the “Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee which was established to investigate all things that pertain to the new coronavirus such as the severity of the virus, and whether or not the actions taken by governments around the world, and in this case the German government, are  justified and not causing more harm than good.

As the Corona-Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, we will investigate why these restrictive measures were imposed upon us in our country as part of COVID-19, why people are suffering now and whether there is proportionality of the measures to this disease caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus. We have serious doubts that these measures are proportionate. This needs to be examined, and since the parliaments – neither the opposition parties nor the ruling parties – have not convened a committee and it is not even planned, it is high time that we took this into our own hands. We will invite and hear experts here in the Corona speaker group. These are experts from all areas of life: Medicine, social affairs, law, economics and many more. (source)

You can access the full english transcripts on the organization’s website here.

This group has been giving multiple conferences in Germany, in one of the most recent, Dr. Heiko Schöning, one of the organizations leaders, stated that

“We have a lot of evidence that it (the new coronavirus) is a fake story all over the world.” 

To put it in context, he wasn’t referring to the virus being fake, but simply that it’s no more dangerous than the seasonal flu (or just as dangerous) and that there is no justification for the measures being taken to combat it. 

I also think it’s important to mention that a report published in the British Medical Journal  has suggested that quarantine measures in the United Kingdom as a result of the new coronavirus may have already killed more UK seniors than the coronavirus has during the peak of the virus.

Below is a press conference held by representatives of the group that took place last month, you can find more important information below that. (Unfortunately, the video has been removed by Youtube)

Why This Is Important: It can be confusing for many people to see so many doctors and many of the world’s most renowned scientists and infectious disease experts oppose so much information that is coming from the WHO and global governments.

Many scientists and doctors in North America are also expressing the same sentiments. For example, The Physicians For Informed Consent (PIC) recently published a report titled  “Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC) Compares COVID-19 to Previous Seasonal and Pandemic Flu Periods.” According to them, the infection/fatality rate of COVID-19 is 0.26%. You can read more about that and access their resources and reasoning here.

John P. A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Stanford University has said that the infection fatality rate “is close to 0 percent” for people under the age of 45 years old. You can read more about that here. He and several other academics from the Stanford School of Medicine suggest that COVID-19 has a similar infection fatality rate as seasonal influenza, and published their reasoning in a study last month. You can find that study and read more about that story here.

Michael Levitt, a Biophysicist and a professor of structural biology at Stanford University criticized the WHO as well as Facebook for censoring different information and informed perspectives regarding the Coronavirus and has claimed that, with regards to lockdown measures, that “the level of stupidity going on here is amazing.” You can read more about this here.

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, a specialist in microbiology and one of the most cited research scientists in German history is also part of Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee mentioned above and has also expressed the same thing, multiple times early on in the pandemic all the way up to today.

Implementation of the current draconian measures that are so extremely restrict fundamental rights can only be justified if there is reason to fear that a truly, exceptionally dangerous virus is threatening us. Do any scientifically sound data exist to support this contention for COVID-19? I assert that the answer is simply, no. – Bhakdi. You can read more about him here.

Below are some interesting statistics from Canada. (source)

The Takeaway

We have to ask ourselves, why are so many experts in the field being completely censored. Why is there so much information being shared that completely contradicts the narrative of our federal health regulatory agencies and organizations like the WHO?

Why are these experts being heavily censored, and why are alternative media platforms being censored, punished and demonetized for sharing such information?

Is there a battle for our perception happening right now? Is our consciousness being manipulated? Why is there so much conflicting information if everything is crystal clear? Why are alternative treatments that have shown tremendous amounts of success being completely ignored and ridiculed?  What’s going on here, and how much power do governments have when they are able to silence the voice of so many people? Should we not be examining information openly, transparently, and together?

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The powerful Global Financial Elites operating under the auspices of the World Economic Forum (WEF)  are controlling, impoverishing, and destroying world populations using a social engineering strategy of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

The truth rarely sees the light of day amidst the drone-beat of incessant fear-mongering, the psychological warfare, the fake data.

At times, key perpetrators of this crisis publicly acknowledge the truth, knowing that the Lie has been largely implanted in the collective consciousness, and the truth will be drowned, censored, despised.

Below, Dr. Fauci admits that “asymptomatic transmission” has never been the “driver of outbreaks.”

Canadian Public Health Physician Dr. Yaffe admits that tests give false positives “almost half the time” in certain populations.

In this May 14, 2020 briefing, Chris Whitty, the UK’s Chief Medical Officer, admits that to most people, coronavirus is entirely harmless.

In March, 2020, the UK government admitted that COVID was not a “High Consequence Infectious Disease”:

Status of COVID-19

As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK.

The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.

The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.

The need to have a national, coordinated response remains, but this is being met by the government’s COVID-19 response.

Cases of COVID-19 are no longer managed by HCID treatment centres only. All healthcare workers managing possible and confirmed cases should follow the updated national infection and prevention (IPC) guidance for COVID-19, which supersedes all previous IPC guidance for COVID-19. This guidance includes instructions about different personal protective equipment (PPE) ensembles that are appropriate for different clinical scenarios.

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

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In Western mainstream media, the current protests in Belarus are portrayed as a natural development, in which the country’s peaceful citizens are finally standing up against an aging dictator clinging to power after the allegedly fraudulent August 9th elections. However, with a closer look at the people and entities behind the unrest, a much less benign picture emerges: far-right regime-change activists supported by foreign backers who have an interest in (1) driving a wedge into the decades-old dependency of Belarus on Russia, (2) integrating the country into a “buffer zone” between Western Europa and Russia that is increasingly looking to the U.S. as an ally and (3) co-opting the last predominantly Russia-orientated Eastern European state into the NATO ambit.

The 2020 protests in Belarus show all the signs of yet another foreign-backed color revolution in Eastern Europe.

They are also not the first Western-backed effort to get rid of President Alexander Lukashenko’s government, which has managed to stay in power since 1994. In 2006, the country saw the so-called Jeans revolution (March 19-25, 2006), a short-lived series of protests that, similar to the current protests, erupted on the evening of the elections. At the time the protests were led by the Belarusian “democratic  opposition,” whose figurehead was then presidential candidate Alaksandar Milinkievič, then and now propped up by the West.

Top: Coat of Arms of the Belarusian People’s Republic, known as Pahonia. Bottom: Flag of the Belarusian People’s Republic.

As is the case with the current protests, during the run-up to the 2006 Jeans revolution, white-red-white flags were waved by the demonstrators. But when their usage was outlawed starting in late 2005, the Belarusian opposition adopted denim as a symbol of protest.^[1] In the former Soviet Union, denim was often identified with Western culture and the fabric symbolized the pro-Western sentiment of the anti-Lukashenko opposition of the time.

The white-red-white flag harks back to the history of the Belarusian People’s Republic, a short-lived state that emerged after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918, when Russia, in exchange for a truce, was forced to make large territorial concessions to Germany in the Baltics. Although Belarus was formally declared independent, it was nonetheless more of a German puppet state, since it was largely dependent on Germany’s army for its defense. When the German army retreated from Belarus in December 1918, after Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Red Army moved in and proclaimed the Socialist Soviet Republic of Belarusia, which in 1922 was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Anti-communist Belarusians subsequently began running a “government-in-exile,” whose “capital-in-exile” is currently Ottawa, Canada.^[2]

With the 2020 color uprisings, one need not look far to find foreign powers backing the protests.

Pressure on Belarus has been building, particularly from neighboring Poland, whose right-wing government has moved increasingly close to the U.S. in the past few years. It is no coincidence that Poland became a preferred base of operations for Belarusian exiles trying to bring down the Lukashenko government.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (left) and Poland’s Minister of Defense Mariusz Blaszczak (right) sign the U.S.-Poland Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement in the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Poland, on August 15, 2020. [Source: militarytimes.com]

As CAM reported, on August 15, 2020, not even a week into the protests in Belarus, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed a military cooperation agreement with Poland that provides for more American troops to be stationed in the country. The agreement goes hand in hand with Donald Trump’s decision to reduce the number of American troops in Germany. At the end of July, the Pentagon announced the withdrawal of 12,000 troops from Germany, of which around 5,600 are to be moved to other European countries including Poland. Furthermore, several U.S. military commands will move out of Germany, including the U.S. Army V Corps overseas headquarters, which will relocate to Poland in 2021.

Piłsudski’s post-World War I Intermarium concept ranging from Finland in the north to the Balkans in the south. See CAM’s detailed investigation on the Intermarium. (In light-green: eastern parts of Ukrainian and Belarusian territories in 1922 incorporated into Soviet Union.) [Source: wikipedia.org]

This development reflects the increasing rift in U.S.-EU relations, and U.S.-German relations in particular, which Trump’s “America First“ policies have brought into the open. It is a clear sign that Germany, which has been the U.S.’s number one military partner in Europe, will cease to play that role in the foreseeable future, with Poland likely to take it on.

The date when the deal between Pompeo and Poland’s right-wing president, Andrzej Duda, was signed is significant. It commenorates the victory of Poland against the Soviet Union in 1920 during the Polish-Soviet war and is integral to the celebration calendar of Polish fascists and anti-communists. According to the Military Times:

After the signing ceremony, Pompeo joined Duda and other Polish leaders at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to mark the centennial of Poland’s landmark victory … In the Battle of Warsaw, often called the “Miracle on the Vistula,” outnumbered Polish troops led by Marshal Józef Piłsudski defeated an advancing Red Army.

That Józef Piłsudski’s name is highlighted in this context is not surprising, since he is commonly seen as the originator of the Intermarium union, the idea to create an anti-communist bulwark between Western Europe and Soviet Russia, reaching from the Baltics to the Black Sea. U.S. military strategists seem to have picked up on the idea, but more with regard to gaining a foothold in the region by propping up right-wing governments in the “Intermarium belt,” and striving to weaken its competitors, Western Europe and Russia, economically and politically. Belarus is of no particular economic interest to the U.S. in terms of natural resources. However, it is one of the last two countries bordering Russia that is neither a NATO nor an EU member, and the last country in Eastern Europe that is intrinsically tied to Russia.

Poland’s role in the current Belarusian regime-change operation is quite significant, since the country became the base for two popular Belarusian-language news channels which have been leading a propaganda onslaught on the government in Belarus: belsat.tv and Nexta.

Nexta footage on Germany’s first public broadcasting channel, ARD. [Source: Tagesschau]

While in the course of the protests the independent Belarusian news landscape was practically shut down, only Nexta has continually managed to publish reports from inside the country, and by now has become one of the most quoted “sources” in Western mainstream media. As the BBC wrote, “Nexta … has managed to bypass many of the restrictions” and, when the protests started to intensify, the exposure of Nexta simply exploded: “Within hours, its audience grew on election night by 100,000 and then after two nights of protests it had amassed more than a million.”

If one is to believe the BBC, Nexta is a local grassroots effort that “has no website, and only a small editorial team of four in Warsaw, but it does have a YouTube and a Telegram channel.” That it is highly unlikely that Nexta has only a “small team” becomes evident when looking at the sheer mass of posts the channel pumps out. As a Twitter user aptly commented [typos removed]:

[The] organisation and coordination of “protest” actions in Belarus is done from abroad, by 3 Telegram channels. Nexta channels encourage attacks on the police. It publishes a few publications a minute, so they should have large editorial groups, working 24/7.

According to strana.ua, another medium sympathetic to the protests, Nexta started as an anti-Lukashenko YouTube channel created by a Belarusian teenager, Stepan Putila, also known under the moniker Stepan Svetlov, back in 2015. That year Putila moved from Minsk to Poland to study film production, from where he kept building the Nexta brand, e.g., creating an eponymous Telegram channel in 2018. According to strana.ua, Putila apparently had access to insider information of the Belarusian Interior Ministry, which helped to create the image of a whistleblower platform.

One year into his studies, Putila started to work for the Warsaw-based channel Belsat.tv, an anti-Lukashenko Belarusian-language TV channel financed by the Polish Foreign Affairs Ministry, for which his father worked as a sports commentator. Belsat’s motivations seem more than shady. In 2015, an article appeared on the channel that encouraged people to join as volunteers on the side of Ukraine in the war in Donbass, even providing a contact email address and phone number. In that context, Belsat presenter Daroha Via, posted a picture on Facebook, showing him together with two fighters advertising the cause. The image is subtitled^[3]:

I am rarely trying to reach out to people on my Facebook profile, but today I not only want to reach out, but also to make clear: KGB employees, you won’t be able to block us. You can get in touch with the guys here: http://belsat.eu/programs/belaruskiya-vayary-na-danbase-dobraahvotniki-stvarayuts-antyrejtyng-ukrainskaj-uladze/

Belsat.tv presenter Daroha Via with military personnel advertising to fight in the War in Donbass. [Source: Facebook]

Besides his involvement with Belsat, Daroha Via also doubles as nationalist Belarusian agitator in Poland. For example, he has taken part in demonstrations in front of the Russian embassy in Warsaw, together with Nexta-founder Putila and a comrade-in-arms (Zmicier Jahoraŭ) waving the flag of the Belarusian People’s Republic.

Top: Stepan Putila and Daroha Via protesting in front of the Russian embassy, Warsaw, in December 2019. [Source: Facebook] Bottom: Ales Karniyenka firing the protests in front of the Belarusian embassy in Warsaw in June 2020. Source: Facebook.

Another example of a belsat.tv presenter slash Belarusian nationalist agitator is Ales Karniyenka who, like Putila and Via, seemed to inflame the August 2020 Belarusian protests from Poland, on TV and in real life. For example, Karniyenka hosted a talk show in December 2019, where he advertised Nexta and encouraged people to rise up with NATO at the doorstep. His Facebook page shows him leading the protests in front of the Belarusian embassy in Warsaw on June 21, 2020. That Karniyenka touches base with neo-Nazis is indicated by the cast of his talk show guests, including Yanechak Yasav, who appeared on the show exposing his Odinist tattoos and Thor’s hammer dangling on a necklace.

Facebook post by Ales Karnyienka showing Yanechak Yasav on Belsat. Notice the Odinist tattoos and Thor’s hammer around his neck. [Source: Facebook]

The only other person known to be associated with Nexta, Roman Protasevich, seems to hail from the same swamp of nationalist regime-change operatives. He has a far-right and anti-communist background, and worked for an USAID-supported radio station in Belarus called euroradio.fm, as well as for Radio Liberty (Radio Svaboda).

Entities supporting Euroradio.fm, the former employer of Nexta’s Roman Protasevich, including USAID and the Polish Solidarnosc Foundation. [Source: euroradio.fm]

When looking at Protasevich’s Facebook page it becomes clear that he has, in recent years, been part of various far-right demonstrations and subversive activities. In his youth, Protasevich was a member of the Young Front, a nationalist and militaristic youth group based in the Czech Republic. Protasevich was part of the Maidan protests in Kiev 2013/2014, as a picture on Facebook shows him, clad in a Belarusian People’s State flag, taking part in the destruction of a Lenin statue. That he sees himself as a “Belarusian knight,” can be guessed from his Facebook pictures.

Top: Picture from a neo-Nazi rally posted by Roman Protasevich in March 2018 on Facebook. Note the Thor Steinar jacket, a brand favored by neo-Nazis. [Source: Facebook]; Bottom: Roman Protasevich as “Belarusian knight.” [Source: Facebook]

Protasevich’s long-standing connections to Ukrainian nationalists is also indicated by his sympathies for the Pahonia Detachment, a group of Belarusian volunteers fighting in the war in Donbass. The professionally armed militia has fought alongside the neo-Nazi Azov battalion in Ukraine, which now has been incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard. The prevalence of neo-Nazis among the Pahonia Detachment seems also strongly indicated. For example, a photo shows a Pahonia member in uniform showing off his Odinist skull tattoos.

Top: The Pahonia Detachment (badge with mounted knight) commemorated in an Ukrainian exhibition alongside the Azov battalion. [Source: Facebook]; Center: Picture posted by the Pahonia Detachment on April 4, 2018, on Facebook, subtitled: “On the way to the front.” [Source: Facebook]; Bottom: Members of the Pahonia Detachment. Note the Odinist tattoos on neck and face. [Source: Facebook]

The Pahonia Detachment also identifies with the historic legacy of the Belarusian People’s Party, as is apparent from the widespread use of the white-red-white flag on the detachment‘s social media accounts. [Source: Facebook]

Another murky figure in the Ukrainian-Belarusian-Polish regime-change axis, is the Polish “photojournalist” Witold Dobrowolski, traveling the world to “report” on violent uprisings, from Maidan, over Hong Kong to the recent protests in Belarus. His photos show that he is always just a step away from the neo-Nazi black block when attending demonstrations. Dobrowolski, formerly the editor of the Polish neo-Nazi magazine SZTURM, has been associated with key figures of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi scene and with entities known for their regime-change activities. He attended the first Intermarium Support Group conference, bringing together para-military specialists from the Central Eastern European far-right spectrum, particularly countries foreseen to join the Intermarium union. He also appeared as a speaker at the first Paneuropa Conference on April 28, 2017, in Kyiv, Ukraine, which brought together neo-Nazis from all over Europe who sympathized with the Azov battalion. In the conference protocol he is introduced as “one of the first to launch the Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation and cooperation along with Vladyslav Kovalchuk, on the Ukrainian part.”^[4]

Pictures by Witold Dobrowolski from protests in Hong Kong (top), Beirut, Lebanon (center), and Minsk, Belarus (bottom), always just a step away from the violent black block.

In August 2020, Dobrowolski appeared in the context of the Belarus color uprisings. He was traveling to Minsk on August 6, 2020, according to his Facebook page. Also in Belarus, Dobrowolski seems to have been “documenting” violent black block agitators, as photos on Facebook suggest. Apparently he was among the many protesters who were detained and mistreated during the protests in mid-August. Upon his release, Dobrowolski was interviewed by the BBC about his detention, where he was simply introduced as “photojournalist,” not in the least mentioning his neo-Nazi connections. On Twitter he wrote: “Kidnapped, tortured and sent to gulag but now free and safe with members of Polish diplomacy.”

Twitter post by OzKaterji showing Witold Dobrowolski on BBC. [Source: Twitter]

This nexus between Belarusian, Polish and Ukrainian nationalists, perhaps appearing as a fringe phenomenon to some, is in fact extremely relevant in hindsight of the “successful” color revolution in Ukraine that has led to a creeping Nazification of the country.

Top: Olena Semenyaka (center) supporting the Belarusian protests together with other members of the antifeminist, neo-Nazi group Silver Rose (Срібло Троянди). [Source: Facebook.]; Bottom: Silver Rose during a happening in March 2020, where they symbolically buried feminism. [Source: Facebook]

Currently, Ukrainian nationalists are cheering, since the U.S.-Polish intervention is likely to drag Belarus away from the influence of Russia, and bring the country into the aspired Intermarium buffer zone. Influential Ukrainian neo-Nazis, such as Olena Semenyaka, have shown their solidarity, reproducing the symbols of the Belarusian protests: women dressed in white holding flowers. Usually, Semenyaka rather spends her time symbolically burying feminism in the streets of Kyiv with her friends of the all-female antifeminist neo-Nazi group Silver Rose (Срібло Троянди) —dressed all in black. Semenyaka has been appearing as spokesperson of the U.S.-sponsored neo-Nazi Azov battalion, as host of the neo-Nazi Paneuropa conference, as well as of the Intermarium Support Group.

Despite relying on nasty nationalist and neo-Nazi elements to fire the Belarusian uprisings, known foreign meddlers, such as the Atlantic Council, dubbed the protests as “generally very sweet, polite, and peaceful,” and speculated that the “Belarus revolution may be too velvet to succeed.” These statements are part of a clear disinformation campaign designed to sanitize the protests for a Western audience and obscure the presence of the far-right in them.

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FOIA Research is a nonprofit research platform that focuses on transnational relations of the far right, particularly neo-Nazi and paramilitary structures. Moreover, the project seeks to identify intelligence projects that have been instrumentalizing, or propping up, far-right proponents. FOIA Research has teamed up with CovertAction Magazine to provide background information and reports on the extreme right in Europe and beyond.

Notes

^[1] “ОМОН против правды [Riot police against the truth],” charter97.org, September 16, 2005, https://web.archive.org/web/20151222084221/http://www.charter97.org/bel/news/2005/09/16/omon.

^[2] According to the Wikipedia page of the Belarusian People’s Republic, the locations of the capital-in-exile were as follows: 1919–1923 Kaunas, Lithuania; 1923–1945 Prague, then Czechoslovakia; 1948–1970 Paris; 1970-1983 Toronto; 1983–present Ottawa.

^[3] Facebook post by Daroha Via, November 3, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/daroha.via/posts/1082835665074692.

^[4] “1st Paneuropa Conference Report,” Reconquista Europe (Blog), June 15, 2017. Archived version from June 13, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180613133924/http://reconquista-europe.tumblr.com/post/161847863121/1st-paneuropa-conference-report-the-1st-paneuropa.

Featured image is from dailypioneer.com

Often a flashpoint for tensions between international rivals and a major chokepoint for much of the world’s maritime transit, the waters surrounding Yemen have become a much-vaunted prize for regional intelligence services.

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In the wake of the recent normalization of ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates in August, it is becoming increasingly clear that Tel Aviv is set to take on an increasingly active role in the war on Yemen, a war that the UAE – together with Saudi Arabia – launched over six years ago.

Yemen’s strategic islands, particularly the sparsely populated archipelago containing Socotra located at the mouth of Gulf Aden in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, is of particular importance. Often a flashpoint for tensions between Iran and the United States, Yemen and the Saudi Coalition, and a major chokepoint for much of the world’s maritime transit, the waters surrounding Yemen, particularly the island of Socotra, have become a much-vaunted prize for regional intelligence and security apparatus. Now, both the UAE and Israel are working to establish military and intelligence centers on Socotra, which lays some 240 kilometers east of the coast of Somalia and 380 kilometers south of the Arabian Peninsula.

According to one Yemeni source, the United Arab Emirates and Israel have already completed logistical operations to establish intelligence-gathering bases and new military facilities on the island. A presence on Socotra will not only allow the new alliance to establish a foothold against Yemen’s Houthi-led opposition, but will allow it to conduct surveillance on Oman, Iran, Pakistan, and China, who, in recent years, has established a presence on the nearby horn of Africa.

Last week, an Emirati ship arrived on Socotra laden with personnel from the UAE and Israel and transporting weapons and communication equipment according to a local source on the island. Even before the UAE-Israel normalization deal was announced, the two countries were sending delegations to Perim Island, known as Mayyun in Arabic, a volcanic island in the Strait of Mandeb at the south entrance to the Red Sea.

Perim Island, the gateway to the Mediterranean

In Socotra, locals report that the same Emirati-Israeli team arrived on an Emirati aircraft various times throughout the year to examine locations in the Momi district on the east of the island and the Qatnan locality on its western coast.

Issa Salem Bin Yaqoot al-Soctari, the head of indigenous tribes on the island, said in a statement recently that the UAE has brought Israel to Socotra and that both sides have already started building new bases there. With much consternation, al-Soctari complained of the UAE’s “policy of repression, starvation, and intimidation” against the island’s residents. Mirroring Israel’s policy in Palestine, al-Soctrai also accused Emirati forces of intentionally changing the Island’s demographics by housing foreigners on the island en masse.

Israel has few friends in Yemen

Israel is far from a welcome presence in Yemen and local support for the Palestinian cause is nearly universal. Large demonstrations have already taken place in Abyan, Taiz, and Shabwah against the normalization of ties with Israel and against any Israeli presence in Yemen.

In early September, a meeting of high-ranking officials was held, headed by the prime minister of the National Salvation Government in Houthi-controlled Sana’a, Dr. Abdulaziz bin Habtoor, in which a council affirmed support for the “preparation of lawsuits” to be filed with international courts against the presence of foreign “occupiers.”

All of Yemen’s political parties, including local tribes allied with the Saudi-led Coalition, staunchly reject the presence of Israel in Socotra. or any place in Yemen for that matter, yet of all Yemen’s myriad political forces, the Houthis are likely the most willing to take preemptive action against Israeli ambitions in the country. Sources in Ansar Allah, the political wing of the Houthis, reported that plans are already being made to use ballistic missiles and drones to destroy any intelligence-gathering and military facilities belonging to both Israel and UAE.

Officials in Yemen’s easternmost province of al-Mahrah told MintPress that the security cooperation between UAE and Israel is being actively supported by Saudi Arabia and aims to help the Saudi-led coalition carry out its long-held goal of tightening control over the province by gathering intelligence on the ground. Intelligence gathering operations on Socotra would also cast neighboring Oman under UAE and Israeli radars. Oman enjoys long borders and solid relations with Yemen, and much to the dismay of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, it also enjoys cordial relations with Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival Iran, a relationship that the Coalition is eager to undermine.

Socotra has been a prize for the UAE, and indeed for Israel, for years. The Emirati-backed separatist militant group, the Southern Transitional Council (STC), has already effectively captured Socotra and established a secret relationship with Israel following talks with officials in Tel Aviv sponsored by the UAE. In fact, the UAE has had its grip on the island archipelago since 2018 and has already built military bases, installed communications networks, and used its considerable oil wealth to purchase thousands of hectares of private land from locals.

The Chinese connection

The establishment of a strong central intelligence-gathering facility on the Yemeni islands not only has local and regional implications but, supported by the United States, represents a bold bid for Israel’s geopolitical and strategic dominance in the region and could pay off for the U.S.-Israeli axis along with its newly minted Gulf Arab allies.

Israeli and UAE radars on Socotra, located at the mouth of one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, could not only examine sea and air traffic in the region but also could help Israel, a strong ally to India, monitor Pakistan, a country which Israel views with animus and one that is strongly opposed to normalization. Both the UAE and Israel – and more importantly the United States – could also keep a close eye on the Gwadar Port of Pakistan. The Gwadar Port is still under development. A jewel in China’s  Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) crown, once complete, the port is slated to compete directly with Dubai and would allow China to export goods should the United States decide to block China from access to the straits of Malacca.

Yemenis are concerned that the presence of Israel on Socotra not only could pose a security risk but could also undermine China’s efforts to develop Yemen’s economy under the Belt and Road Initiative. Both Yemen and China support the inclusion of Yemen into the BRI. Chinese officials have stated that they stand ready to participate in the economic reconstruction of Yemen and officials in Sana`a are working hard to join the BRI as they hope it will present an opportunity to reconstruct the infrastructure that has been destroyed by six years of Saudi-Colation bombing.

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Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.

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Further reading: 

Yemen and The Militarization of Strategic Waterways

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2019

Here we are. No more speculation about ‘what awaits around the corner’; the jail keepers are escorting us down the concrete corridor and the cell keys are hanging from his belt. Each one of us, in turn, convicted  – without notice and without trial – of being Human and electing to express ourselves accordingly.  That is the new definition of ‘terrorist’.

The battle lines are drawn; there is no other way to honestly state it, we are in the fight of – and for – our lives. We go forward, with the courage and conviction which comes with refusing to be derailed from the path of truth. Or, capitulate to the central control system and fall into a very dark pit from which there is no charted escape.

We shall know each other by the calibre of our actions. We do not have to wear a badge announcing ‘the resistance’. The army that we are becoming is forming organically. No uniform required, no ‘uniformity’ visible. We know our task and do not need to wait for a command.

We are aware of the composition of the war being waged upon us. And we are aware of being susceptible to certain elements of its dark agenda. So we know we have to rid ourselves of those vulnerabilities in order to come out on top. That is the first lesson in the art of this form of warfare. A warrior without self discipline and self awareness, is a lost cause.

Confronting an often invisible enemy is a new game. Yet a key component of our repressor’s armoury draws upon weaponised digital, algorithmic and irradiating technologies. One deals with these by withdrawing one’s allegiance to the tools and practices of a mind controlling  ‘convenience’ culture.

The tyranny which is now directly manifesting has taken hold as a result of the inability, or unwillingness, of those in positions of responsibility to break the top-down anti-life chain of command and stand firm for truth and justice. Fear and bribery are the main tools being exerted to silence those who should not be silent.

This is leading to the complete capitulation – amongst all categories of  ‘officers of the state’ – to maintain integrity, responsibility and the imperative to uphold fundamentally civilised moral standards.

Yet there are many awakening to the realisation of their imprisonment. For some, this provokes a desire to seek shelter from the storm and, if possible, to turn a blind eye to recognising the degree to which their imprisonment stretches out into all corners of their daily lives. But others, sensing the profound implications of what lies in store should they not take action, turn to face the music and become warriors in the cause of justice, truth and liberty.

Now the beauty of turning to face the music, is that an unseen cosmic element immediately provides support in the mission one has chosen to undertake. Whereas for those who try to hide, no such propitious event occurs.

Choosing freedom makes one powerful. But carries with it a keen sense of responsibility to ‘practice as one preaches’. It is not really possible to ditch all one’s bad habits in one go, as those starting out on the conscious path find out. But is is possible, and absolutely necessary, to act on one’s key digressions without delay.

Making the decision to oppose the ways of the deep state and its corporate globalisation spider’s web cannot involve resisting it with one hand and supporting it with the other. That is the road to somewhere worse than nowhere and the antithesis of the warrior’s path. 

In order to ensure continuity between one’s words and one’s actions, one needs to take a quick scan of those daily routines that are not in line with one’s determination to stand for justice, truth and liberty.

The most obvious priorities, given the nature of our oppressors, is to withdraw one’s support (money) from the major banks; one’s food purchasing from the major supermarkets and one’s medicines from the major pharmaceutical companies. Other steps will follow, but without starting by withdrawing one’s support for these great behemoths of rampant social, ecological and economic degradation, can one really say that one is standing against fascism and for freedom? 

The dictatorship descending upon us – using the alibi of the current Covid chimera – provides the starkest opportunity most will ever have to turn to face the music. It is exactly the right catalyst to make one see, or at least seek, the truth – and then act on it.

The intentional chaos now manifesting, is our wake-up call. The preplanned ‘order out of chaos’ is the imposition of a fascist state; it’s that simple. And we have plenty of time to recognise the symptoms.

Every artery of society, in whatever part of the (post) industrialised ‘democratic’ world one might live in, has been steadily poisoned by the social engineering, predictive planning and creeping technocratic agenda emanating from the deep state’s global ambition to rule the world. 

Our political institutions have capitulated to the blueprint of the global corporate elites and most of the population have gone along with them, not realising what agenda is being played-out.

The leading edge of the ‘new’ fascism is not an army of occupation, but a digital re-programming of the human mind. A technological toxic blanket of ‘virtual’ control separating man from nature, thus destroying the foundations of human evolution.

We who are now joining together, are doing so to create an army able to resist and turn around this cult of death. That’s why our own integrity in ‘practising as we preach’ is so vital. We must use our powers of discrimination to see through our own vacillations, and to dump the supposed ‘conveniences’ that undermine and delay our active commitment to respond to the key imperatives of our time.

Then, slowly but surely, the compromises that detour us from our goal – only to refresh the pockets of those we claim to be fighting – will be deleted and done away with. The integrated beings who emerge via successfully battling with their own vicissitudes, will be the only ones capable of taking-on the seemingly immovable oppressors of this planet, its peoples and all the living entities that comprise its vast diversity.

The emancipation of all these rests upon the courage and voracity we invest into harnessing our inner and outer drives for integrity and truth. That is what it actually means to choose freedom over fascism.

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and teacher. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly prescient reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from American Friends Service Committee

Ukraine’s demand that Apple ban several Russian media apps from that national segment of its online store is a desperate infringement of free speech which shows both how insecure Kiev’s leadership is of its people having access to alternative information as well as what an embarrassment this EU-aspiring state has become for so-called “Western values”.

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A U.S. former marine and spy who had been spying on the Amuay and Cardon refineries was captured in the Venezuelan state of Falcon on Thursday.

Speaking on the twelfth anniversary of the youth wing of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the JPSUV, President Nicolas Maduro said the captured individual had served a function at CIA bases in Iraq and was found with weapons and a large sum of cash.

“He was captured with heavy weapons, specialty weapons. He was captured with a great amount of cash in dollars and with other elements which we have sent directly to the public ministry, the prosecutor’s office.”

The President, who said that evidence includes photo and video, stated that one day prior to the capture, Minister Tareck El Aissami, along with a group of experts, of engineers, scientists, discovered and dismantled a plan to set off an explosive at the El Palito refinery.

Details: U.S. marine and spy captured in Falcón, Venezuela, was spying on refineries and had lent services to CIA in Iraq. He was carrying heavy weapons & large sum of cash in USD. Two days ago @TareckPSUV dismantled plot to blow up El Palito refinery. @teleSURenglish pic.twitter.com/SnqwjLP4Cq

— Camila (@camilateleSUR) September 11, 2020

He called for increased security measures in response to this latest aggression.

“Attention workers of the refineries. We must reinforce all of the internal and external security measures of all the processes. Attention. It’s a war of revenge of the gringo empire against Venezuela to impede Venezuela from producing all of the derivatives of petroleum, gasoline, etc.”

“This spy has been captured. This plan was detected, the plan was disassembled. We are 100 percent activated to guarantee the physical security of strategic facilities, our petroleum plants. In the coming hours, I am sure that we’ll find out more about this capture.”

Former US Marine Captured Spying on Venezuelan Refineries – Dismantled Plan to Cause an Explosion in El Palito Refinery https://t.co/Y0CArjCGxU

— Orinoco Tribune (@OrinocoTribune) September 12, 2020

The U.S. government has taken explicit moves to sabotage the Venezuelan economy with its unilateral coercive measures which began under President Barack Obama but which have intensified under the Trump administration.

The sanctions have targeted every aspect of the economy including oil exports, oil tankers and transporters, Venezuelan and foreign banks and companies conducting business with the Bolivarian nation, and have resulted in massive hurdles for the oil-producing country to produce its own gas, with like El Palito reducing operations due to issues stemming from the blockade and the lack of supplies and spare parts.

Reactionary sectors of the Venezuelan opposition targeted state facilities to take down the national electric grid and other important sites in recent years, and new coup efforts by US-backed opposition figure Juan Guaido seek to lure in support by promising a supply of gasoline for the country, despite that Guaido has welcomed criminal sanctions in an aim to cripple the Venezuelan state’s production capacity.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government has announced the “Special Contingency Plan for the temporary supply of fuel” for the normalization and regularization of distribution in the short and medium-term.

#Venezuela | #Conviasa workers received #JuanGuaido with angry protests. pic.twitter.com/EvPL0g3JrT

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) February 14, 2020

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Featured image: Venezuela’s El Palito refinery (L) and President Maudro (R). | Photo: teleSUR

This Thursday (10) India and Japan held a summit dialogue (over the telephone) and announced their new Mutual Logistic Pact (for their navies). This agreement will further facilitate cooperation between Japanese and Indian Armed Forces, allowing, for example the Indian Navy to access the Japanese base in Djibouti (northeast Africa), a tremendously strategic port and military location – China itself holds it first foreign military base there in close proximity. This has to do with both India and Japan further pushing the notion of the Indo-Pacific Region to counter China. And it also has to do with Indo-Japanese plans for Africa. Here some context is needed.

The African continent has been called “the new China” in terms of it being the next frontier in global expansion. If African countries sustain some of their structural reforms, the continent could actually emulate the Chinese rapid growth of the last 5 decades. McKinsey, for instance, predicts $5.6 trillion in African business opportunities (by 2025). This is a bit of a paradox: we are talking about an unstable, war-torn continent, right? Moreover, of the 28 poorest countries globally, 27 are in sub-Saharan Africa, their poverty rate being, in all cases, above 30% (the global poverty rate is of only 10%).

However, this is changing. In fact, the overall proportion of African people living in poverty has been clearly declining since the nineties, as a result of an infrastructure expansion in rural areas, and an increased productivity in agriculture. And, it turns out, the African economy is on the rise – even though deep inequalities persist. Ethiopia, for example, is one of the fastest growing economies in the world – and so is Ghana, Rwanda, South Sudan, and the Côte d’Ivoire, according to forecasts by the IMF. In other words, five of the fastest growing economies in the world this year are located in the poorest continent. Just to give an example, while worldwide growth was forecast at merely 3.5% in 2020, Ghana is forecast at 8.79%.

In terms of potential, Africa does have 60% of the world’s (still uncultivated) arable land and it also possesses at least 40% of the world’s gold, and 10% of its oil reserves. It is the fastest-urbanizing continent: Africa is projected to have 1.49 billion people living in cities by 2050 and, according to McKinsey, by 2025, there will be 100 African cities with over one million inhabitants (twice as many as in Latin America).This means, among other things, more consumption and more manufacturing output. All such data holds profound economic and geopolitical significance.

China is still the largest financier of African infrastructure, and both the US and Israel have made Africa one of their foreign policy priorities. Japan, in its turn, has been trying to present itself in Africa not so much as a creditor (burdening its partners with debt) but rather as an economic partner with a focus on sustainable public transport infrastructure. In fact, both Japan and India, working in collaboration, have been placing great emphasis on the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor, emphasizing agriculture, health care and other areas in East Africa. Such projects are of course aimed at countering the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It must be seen also in the context of Japanese-Indian rising ties and also in the context of Japanese-Chinese and Indian-Chinese competition.

Moreover, the way India and Japan will each include Africa in their foreign policy also plays into their views for the Indo-Pacific region. Each major power in that region has been formulating its own version of the Indo-Pacific. Well, Africa might play a key role for the Indo-Pacific prosperity, providing maritime security for India and South-South cooperation in global issues. Geographically, of course, the Indo-Pacific region comprises both the Indian and the Pacific Oceans – between the American west coast and the African east coast. The Indian diaspora plays a key role in Indian-African ties in East African countries like Uganda, and Kenya, for instance.

However, there are of course many obstacles to competing with China in Africa. India still lacks enough diplomatic presence in the African continent – it currently has embassies in only 29 out of 54 African nations. To step up trade relations (in a context of competition), Japan and India will need to also promote their image and push their narratives. India does have historical ties with Africa – for example, the Afro-Asian solidarity of the 1955 Bandung Conference. For Japan, in its turn, competing with China, Russia, and even the US in that regard might prove to be a bit hard. This is why a Japan-India alliance is so important.

India so far has modest economic relations with Africa if compared to China, but it has the advantage of proximity and a soft power appeal – for example, Bollywood is very popular in Africa. Japanese direct investment in Africa, in its turn, is still but a fraction of that provided by China, which has more than doubled it in the last five years. The same goes for trade. However, Japan might provide an increasingly credible alternative, capitalizing on its commitment to high quality infrastructure development.

The time of Africa might have come, if one is to be optimistic, from an African perspective. This also means that Africa may become the very next arena for geopolitical and resource dispute among the world powers.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies – Critical and Lyrical Essays

By Jim Miles, September 14, 2020

The main theme is propaganda and how it is used by the government, the deep state, and the media that is all part of that.  Curtin brings it from the era of Bernays to the current digital era of communications technology, the latter creating a state of detachment from reality caused partly by the profusion of perspectives, but also largely due to its diversion of the self from the real world it is living through.  The digital world is one of “suspended animation”, “historical amnesia and digital dementia”, a “mediated reality”.

Can You Name One Company that Has Moved to the UK Because of Brexit?

By Jack Peat, September 14, 2020

A Brexit quandary has been making the rounds on social media as the Britain’s exit from the union looms. With just months to go until the end of the transition period and just weeks until the two sides must arrive at a deal, reminders of the potential economic fall out of the split have been circulating online.

Johnson Intended to Break the EU Withdrawal Agreement Even Before He Signed It

By Craig Murray, September 14, 2020

For Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Withdrawal Agreement provisions on Northern Ireland were only ever a device to get him over an immediate political difficulty. The fact he simply lied throughout the election campaign that the Withdrawal Agreement imposed no new checks or paperwork between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, should have made plain he was not serious about it. He had simply lied to the countries of the EU in signing a treaty he never had an intention to honour.

Civilization in the Overdrive: A Conversation at the Edge of the Human Future

By Richard Falk and Konrad Stachnio, September 14, 2020

It is not possible for someone without access to highly classified materials to assess accurately the policy significance and content of the Black Budget in the years since 1945, including the financing of a range of intelligence activities and a variety of covert intervention projects. It is possible to put forward the view that the CIA and special operations forces are both partially financed by the Black Budget that has been integral to the formation and execution of American grand strategy since the end of World War II, building its unaccountable claims on government spending for global security as a byproduct of Cold War imperatives.

The Sudden Reversal on Facial Masks: Mandated Public Masking in Wisconsin, USA

By Prof. Bill Willers, September 14, 2020

Wisconsin, USA: In the contained environment of Wisconsin, the Governor ordered citizens to wear masks in public, effective August 1, 2020. On July 3, 2020, the State’s Chief Medical Officer, in a televised interview, stated “Now the science is in”. [Because of] “recent studies with large numbers of patients in large numbers of countries….  we have hard evidence that risk of transmission goes down dramatically when people wear masks.” “Hard scientific evidence” would necessarily indicate randomized controlled trials so persuasive as to counter the wealth of previous studies.

Chinese Military Calls US “Destroyer of World Peace”, Citing Millions Dead & Displaced in Iraq, Syria, Libya

By Zero Hedge, September 14, 2020

Following the US and China imposing tit-for-tat restrictions on each other’s diplomats and embassy staff, China’s defense ministry on Sunday blasted the US as the “destroyer of world peace”.   The statements are specifically in response to the Department of Defense releasing a report earlier this month which predicted that “Over the next decade, China’s nuclear warhead stockpile — currently estimated to be in the low 200s — is projected to at least double in size as China expands and modernizes its nuclear forces.”

A Truly Poisonous Foreign Policy. The Blame Putin Narrative…

By Philip Giraldi, September 13, 2020

If one had been reading America’s leading newspapers and magazines over the past several weeks the series of featured stories suggesting that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is some kind of latter day Lucrezia Borgia would have been impossible to avoid. Putin, who was simultaneously being branded as some kind of totalitarian monster, apparently does not just go around chopping off heads.

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Talks between Afghan authorities and the Taliban, which began in Doha on Saturday with the goal of ensuring lasting peace in Afghanistan and the withdrawal of American and NATO troops after almost 19 years, were called historical by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. However, the question is whether this is just a spectacle to portray another foreign policy “victory” for US President Donald Trump on the eve of the upcoming November presidential elections, or whether this can bring true peace to Afghanistan.

The negotiations in Doha can be described as historic because Afghanistan was the first country targeted by the US when it launched its so-called “War on Terror” after the September 11 attacks that was blamed on the Taliban’s allies, Al-Qaeda. As a result of this war and the following invasion of Iraq in 2003, the international system dramatically changed as US unilateralism saw the country become bogged down in endless wars in the Middle East. China, however, has peacefully risen, leading to the end of the short-lived US-dominated unipolar world system that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The so-called War on Terror is responsible for millions of victims, and so far has cost the US well over $6 trillion. In 2001, China was not in the international picture as it only had a GDP of $1.3 trillion with hundreds of millions of citizens still living in poverty. The world’s focus was also almost exclusively on Islamic terrorism. Today, and in a matter of less than 20 years, China’s GDP is now over $14 trillion and the government in this period oversaw a massive human poverty reduction never seen before in human history. Beijing is undoubtedly a world leader today in an emerging multipolar world system. The US spent nearly half of China’s total growth in the past 20 years only on war. From the financial angle, reaching a peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan would be very important for the American government as it can reallocate resources to challenging China’s rise rather than fighting so-called Islamic terrorism.

The most important repercussion for a successful peace deal in the immediate future is the impact it would have on the political situation in the US ahead of November’s presidential election. Under the auspices of the US, important agreements have been signed in recent weeks, such as Israel’s normalization of relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as well as the economic deal between Serbia and the Albanian administration in Kosovo. Another major peace agreement, especially one that includes the Taliban after nearly two decades of US military involvement, would certainly serve Trump’s re-election campaign positively. However, it is very difficult to say whether this will really lead to a lasting, stable and comprehensive peace in Afghanistan since those who oppose the agreement believe the US military should completely withdraw from the country. The presence of American soldiers is undoubtedly a strong stabilizing factor for the current Afghan government. When it is left without that kind of support, the big question is how long the internal peace in Afghanistan will be maintained.

Trump is not only interested in a peace deal with the Taliban because of his immediate electoral interest, but also because of strategic planning against China. Having a stable and American friendly Afghanistan is important as it can serve as a pressure point against China’s growing influence in the Central Asian region. However, having a stable Afghanistan that could oppose China will be difficult as the Taliban are not the only militant force in Afghanistan and there are other groups that can maintain chaos in the country, such as ISIS. Another problem facing Trump is that Afghan policy towards China is a non-existent issue in finding a peace deal for the country and there are no guarantees or reasons that post-peace deal Afghanistan will adopt an anti-China policy.

Negotiations with the Taliban have been going on for two years, and an intra-Afghan agreement was almost concluded in Qatar a year ago. However, disagreements in the American administration prevented the signing of the peace deal. Trump had the idea of turning last year’s agreement efforts into a mini spectacle. Trump wanted to bring the Taliban and the Afghan president to Camp David, the jewel of the American presidential representation and famous for being the location of the 1978 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. On September 1 last year, Taliban leaders and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, initialled copies of the agreement and left them with the Qatari authorities. However, there were great disagreements and quarrels then, because the then National Security Adviser, John Bolton, not only vehemently opposed the presence of the Taliban in the US, but also the signing of an agreement because he believed it would not last. US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, on the other hand, supported Trump’s initiatives for a peace deal in Afghanistan.

The peace talks aim to conclude the terms of a permanent ceasefire, disarmament of Taliban fighters and militias loyal to their commanders, the rights of women and minorities, constitutional changes and divisions of power. If Trump is successful in finalizing a peace deal, he will be remembered as the president that achieved what former president Barack Obama had promised to do himself, which will surely be a blow to the Joe Biden Democratic presidential campaign considering he was Obama’s Vice President. An Afghan peace deal will also give Trump more resources to reallocate against China in his continued trade hostilities against the Asian giant.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from Fabius Maximus Website

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by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN Number: 9780973714715

List Price: $24.95

click here to order

Special Price: $18.00

In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

There’s nothing spontaneous about weeks of public demonstrations in Belarus, largely in the capital Minsk.

What’s going on was Made in the USA, planned long before the August 9 Belarusian presidential election, handily won by incumbent Alexander Lukashenko.

Claims otherwise by US dark forces and establishment media otherwise don’t pass the smell test.

Washington’s plot is all about wanting Belarus to go the way of Ukraine — violently transformed into a US vassal state after CIA-orchestrated late 2013/early 2014 street protests in Kiev.

Democratic Ukraine became a fascist police state, a nation unsafe and unfit to live in.

According to former Deputy Prosecutor-General (2010 – 2013), current MP in Ukraine’s parliament Renat Kuzmin:

“There is a large group of people who are dissatisfied with the incumbent president (Vladimir Zelensky) and are ready to join the coup d’etat in government agencies, law enforcement agencies, security agencies, including the army” to oust him.

Are US dark forces involved? Kuzmin claims former president Poroshenko is part of the plot.

Is something similar underway in the US in the run-up to November 3 presidential and congressional elections — a scheme by anti-Trump dark forces to deny him a second term, a coup plot to install Biden as president?

Preventing Belarus from going the way of Ukraine is vital for Russia.

On Monday, Putin and Lukashenko are meeting in Sochi, Russia.

According to the Kremlin’s press service, they “plan to discuss the prospects of promoting integration processes within the Union State and implementing joint energy projects,” adding:

“During the talks, they plan to discuss key issues of further development of Russian-Belarusian relations of strategic partnership and alliance.”

“A special focus will be placed on the implementation of major joint projects in the trade-economic, energy and cultural-humanitarian spheres, as well as the prospects for promoting integration processes within the Union State.”

On Sunday, orchestrated anti-Lukashenko demonstrations continued in Minsk, hundreds detained by security forces, according to a Belarusian Interior Ministry press release.

Joint Russian/Belarusian military exercises are being held in Belarus from September 13 – 25, a statement by Russia’s Defense Ministry saying the following:

“In accordance with the schedule of international events for 2020, the planned joint Belarusian-Russian tactical exercise Slavic Fraternity, which has been held annually since 2015, will be held from 14 to 25 September at the Brestsky training ground in Belarus.”

They come at a time when Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin warned about “NATO…at the gates” encroachment, adding:

“The movement of NATO troops is taking place in territory adjacent to us, within the framework of the Enhanced Forward Presence and Atlantic Resolve operations.”

“In particular, the 2nd Battalion of the 69th Armor Regiment is being deployed to the Pabrade training ground (in Lithuania) 15 kilometers from our border.”

“The fact that about 500 people, 29 tanks, and 43 Bradley Fighting Vehicles will be in such close proximity to our border cannot do anything but worry us.”

According to an Estonian Defense Forces press release:

“US Army multipurpose UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters will arrive at the Amari airbase on Sunday (September 13).”

“Next week, the helicopters will conduct missions around the airbase, central training ground and the Tapa army base.”

“Their task will be to cooperate with the Estonian Defense Forces” — despite neither country threatened by any others.

The made in the USA plot to oust Lukashenko shows no signs of ebbing.

A 1999 Russia/Belarus treaty calls for economic integration and mutual cooperation to defend both nations from foreign threats — with the intent of Belarus integrating with Russia to again become one of its republics.

Will Lukashenko and Putin agree that this is the best way forward?

Will Belarus’ leader hold a national referendum for the country’s citizens to vote up or down on the issue?

Earlier I stressed that this is what democracy is all about.

If majority Belarusians wish to rejoin Russia, integrating both countries makes most sense.

It’s also a key way to defeat Washington’s coup plot.

Protests would likely continue for a while in diminished size and energy, then fade away and end.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

I am posting below a long interview with Konrad Stachnio on wide-ranging questions, which stretched by knowledge past its breaking point, especially in assessing where the technological innovations on the horizons will lead us. It is one of 17 conversations published by Clarity Press under the title, Civilization in Overdrive: Conversations at the edge of the Human Future.

I recommend the book strongly. It can be ordered here.

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“If a digital Fukuyama tells the world that ‘the end of history’ has been reached, he should be scorned this time around.”

KONRAD STACHNIO: Do you know what is the role of the so-called Black Budget in building the power of the USA as a global security state?

RICHARD FALK: It is not possible for someone without access to highly classified materials to assess accurately the policy significance and content of the Black Budget in the years since 1945, including the financing of a range of intelligence activities and a variety of covert intervention projects. It is possible to put forward the view that the CIA and special operations forces are both partially financed by the Black Budget that has been integral to the formation and execution of American grand strategy since the end of World War II, building its unaccountable claims on government spending for global security as a byproduct of Cold War imperatives. The Black Budget has, above all, provided a cover for unlawful encroachments on the sovereign rights of foreign countries, mainly those of adversaries, but also extending to thwarting leftist political movements from controlling governments in countries whose foreign policy was under the tutelage of the United States. The Black Budget has also evidently been used to keep secret the financing of the research and development of new weapons and surveillance technologies. As with other bureaucratic innovations, the removal of an original justification for an undertaking does not easily lead to its abandonment or even downgrading, especially if shielded from scrutiny by its secrecy and related non-accountability. In this respect, although the size of the Black Budget steadily grew as one side effect of the Cold War, its ending in the 1990s did not lead to reduced appropriations.

Most modern states finance their secretive activities through some form of “Black Budget.” What distinguishes the U.S. Black Budget is its scale, global projection dimensions, and integration into an overarching design for establishing and maintaining a global state, and its ties to unlawful policies and practices outside the domain of territorial sovereignty, and most of all, its linkages to sustaining the United States as the first “global state” in history. It is not just a matter of its planetary interpretation of American security, but of its subsuming under the banner of security a wider hegemonic agenda of economic dominance, cultural hegemony, and ideological influence. There is no serious pretension that after the Cold War the U.S. Government was taking over responsibility for global peace and security as envisioned in the Charter of the United Nations, although there was a brief claim to this effect in 1990–91 when the American president, George H.W. Bush, proclaimed “a new world order” based on UN authority and international law in response to defending Kuwait against Iraqi aggression. Such a claim was never subsequently repeated.

The idea of the U.S. as a global state is a geopolitical endeavor related to power and wealth rather than on any normative (based on law and morality) or cosmopolitan (meta-nationalist) conceptions of security. It is rationalized and justified by reference to national interests as measured by military superiority, economic advantage, alliance cohesion, and by the exercise of global leadership supposedly for the benefit of all humanity. The substantive priorities of the Black Budget are designed by American political realists who are by training and disposition distrustful of any loss of sovereign control over national policies and practices, are suspicious of the UN and international law, and seek to validate foreign commitments by reference to the promotion of national interests.

There is every indication that the Black Budget has been over the years “bipartisan” in the sense that it receives equal support from the U.S. Congress whether the occupant of the White House is a Democrat of a Republican. This bipartisanship extends to overall support for the defense budget and for a capitalist approach toward financial and labor markets, environmental protection, and corporate regulation. Donald Trump was opposed by part of the national security establishment when he sought the presidency in 2016 because he was perceived as a threat to this bipartisan consensus, and especially the commitment to maintaining control over a global security system. Trump did challenge aspects of the consensus, but when it came to militarism there has been no rupture since he entered the White House. The Black Budget has been rising during his presidency, reaching $81.1 billion in the last fiscal year, suggesting that Trump, despite withdrawing from economic, humanitarian, and environmental internationalism and asserting a belligerent brand of chauvinistic nationalism, is not willing to dismantle the American state apparatus of global surveillance, secrecy, and control, and even more tellingly, to abandon the network of overseas military bases, the far flung naval presence in the world’s oceans, and even the militarization of space.

Underlying questions arise as to whether the Black Budget of the United States and others is an inevitable implication of the military technology now available to many states, its range and accuracy that overcomes distance and time, precluding targeted states from defensive responses to threats. These conditions create multiple vulnerabilities of societies throughout the world, however powerful, to subversive violence from within and transnational violence from without, making readiness for war a permanent feature of political life. The global security state is reinforced by a trend toward autocratic national leadership throughout the world. It is important to associate the Black Budget with both innovative military software and hardware as well as with the surveillance/secrecy impulses of governance at the national, regional, and global levels of political organization. More concretely, the threats of terrorism and more recently, of contagious disease, give surface rationalizations for security capabilities that penetrate the most private activities of citizens as well as the secret undertakings of foreign governments, whether friendly or not. Such technologically driven circumstances bearing on the shrinking of time and space, if correctly and humanely interpreted, would encourage rapid shifts in emphasis and ideology from national and militarized security to human and ecological security. There are no signs that this desirable shift is happening, and so the roots of militarism grow deeper into the soil of political life in all its operational contexts.

KS: Are we currently entering the era of global digital dictatorship? Over those who colonize other countries technologically as well as on those that are colonized?

RF: I am not convinced that the core reality of this epoch will be shaped by “digital dictatorship,” and I am not entirely sure what is meant by the term. There seem to be contradictory tendencies arising from digitization, providing pathways to both domination and autonomy. It is true that vulnerability to cyber-attacks will give potential dictatorial control to the more technologically sophisticated political actors, but to what ends is impossible to anticipate, as well as what counter-moves might be taken by less digitally sophisticated states. There are also possibilities of non-state actors acquiring control or neutralizing capabilities with respect to such technologies. I suspect that the greatest dangers will arise at the interface between artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, with drones already prefiguring such militarized applications of digital technology. As with other weapons innovations, it is not at all clear that political outcomes will be determined by military superiority. The historical novelty of the anti-colonial wars of the last century was that they were won by the side that possessed inferior military capabilities. There is as yet no evidence that digital technologies will be able to impose stable dictatorial governance at home or compliant colonies abroad. The dynamics of national resistance must be taken into account. What could happen is a weakening of the legitimacy and effectiveness of the state-centric world order, which has dominated the international scene since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Digitization could result in new configurations of authority and power, mergers of weaker and more vulnerable states to augment postures of digital anti-colonialism.

The near future of geopolitics may be shaped by the agendas and undertakings of the two global states, U.S. and China, the former declining, the latter ascending, and poised for rivalry, if not confrontation. The dynamics of their interaction is likely to shape the geopolitical structure of world order, at least for the remainder of the first half of the 21st century. Which of these two global states comes to possess superior mastery of digitization may give a clue as to how this rivalry will play out historically, but still may not reveal whether digital dominance will be translated into usable forms of geopolitical leverage or transnational structures of political dictatorship both within sovereign territory and within the sovereign domains of foreign countries or regions. For the foreseeable future there will be a variety of intensifying tensions between the territorial dimensions of authority and the non-territoriality of influence and behavior. At present, autocratic nationalism is obstructing transnational flows of people (walls at militarized borders, anti-immigration policies and practices), capital (retreat from neoliberal globalization), and goods and services (trade wars, sanctions). What the prospects are for digital internationalism, especially if hegemonically motivated, remains obscure.

KS: Will the new apartheid of our time be division into people who are “technologically enriched” (through, for example, embedded microchips or gene editing, thus being more adapted to the technological environment) and those who do not have these embedded enrichments?

RF: At present, the clearest historical examples of apartheid involve race and nuclear weaponry, although the structures of domination and victimization are specific to each instance in both categories. The idea of apartheid derives from South Africa’s racist political regime of a white minority imposing its exploitative will on a large black majority. It has been applied in two different ways to Israel’s control over Palestine: territorially by reference to Israel’s occupation policy as implemented in the West Bank since 1967 exemplified by applying Israeli law to Jewish settlers and military administration to the Palestinians; ethnically by reference to Palestinian people whether living in refugee camps in neighboring countries or as involuntary exiles, or in pre-1967 Israel as a minority in East Jerusalem, or in Gaza under occupation. This is a dynamic of ethnic domination that generates structures designed to subjugate the Palestinian people as a whole, however dispersed, and not as in South Africa under the territorial control of the Afrikaner government.

Nuclear apartheid relates to the Nonproliferation Treaty and its implementing geopolitical regime. Despite treaty provisions calling for nuclear disarmament as urgent priority, the existing nuclear weapons states retain possession, development, and deployment options while other states are prohibited from acquiring the weaponry even if possessing convincing security reasons for gaining a deterrent capability (as could be argued on behalf of Iran), and risk an aggressive regime-changing intervention if perceived as seeking to cross the nuclear threshold. This provided the rationale for attacking Iraq in 2003. In effect, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are the self-appointed custodians of the weaponry, and all others are subject to an unconditional prohibition relating to their acquisition and possession, and selectively subject to geopolitical enforcement. Various exceptions to the prohibitions exist, including Israel, India and Pakistan, and more ambiguously for North Korea.

The prospect of a technological apartheid is situated somewhere between envisioned scientific capabilities and science fictional fears (e.g. of designer genetics; mass produced clones or warrior robots) and dreams (e.g. of eternal life, perfect health, and supplanting God as the master of the universe). There is a great deal of uncertainty as to whether countries that are geopolitically dominant in the world will also be able to control the frontiers of technological innovation in a number of areas. Religious scruples and legal prohibitions might also dissuade a political actor from acquiring those technological capabilities that are premised on hegemonic control, exploitation, and victimization. Unlike apartheid as an international crime, the metaphoric suggestion of a technologically based apartheid, is not based on race or religion, and therefore the emotive relevance of the allegation of apartheid seems less justifiable. Nuclear apartheid is metaphorical but it is premised on clear demarcation lines between having and not having the weaponry, although the distinction is blurry with respect to countries such as Japan and Germany that have the technological capabilities to become a nuclear weapons state in a matter of months. Unlike the racial and religious forms of apartheid, its metaphorical extensions do not have clearly identifiable boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. Despite its lesser technological capability to cross the nuclear threshold, Iran is treated as a greater threat to the nonproliferation regime than is Germany or Japan.

Against this background, I am not sure that “technological apartheid” is a helpful way of distinguishing between beneficiaries and victims of various technological innovations. Class may be the biggest divider as it has been for many devices associated with the digital age. The impact of technology on state/society relations via face recognition surveillance is another dimension of hegemonic control, but again a thin application of the apartheid metaphor as the markers of differentiation are unclear and contested. Unlike “nuclear apartheid,” which considers a single menacing technological sector, the projection of “technological apartheid” projects technological domination across the spectrum of human concerns, which somewhat characterized the colonizing period following the Industrial Revolution, which gave Europe control over both military hardware and navigational maneuverability.

It may be timely to worry about “digital dictatorship,” and I am sure its attainment is on the secret long-range operational investigations of geopolitical actors, both to avoid being left behind and potentially subjugated, as well as to achieve a controlling upper hand.

KS: How do you perceive the future of Fatah and Hamas?

RF: It is a difficult time of challenge for the Palestinian struggle, which casts a dark cloud of uncertainty over the future of both Fatah and Hamas. This uncertainty pertains, especially, to Fatah, which provides the main organizational underpinning for the Palestinian Authority that has represented the Palestinian people on an international level ever since the Oslo Framework of Principles was agreed upon in 1993. This framework presupposed a negotiating process that was widely expected by the UN, governments, and the general public to be committed to the establishment of an independent Palestinian sovereign state on the territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 War. This solution was accepted internationally, giving rise to the two-state consensus on how the conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs could be resolved and the competing claims of self-determination accommodated.

If the formal annexation of a substantial part of the West Bank takes place in coming months it will not only be the final nail in the two-state coffin, but also draw into question the viability of the Palestinian Authority as the voice of the State of Palestine. There are other relevant arenas that give the PA a rationale for a continuing existence, especially if it can find alternate funding for its rather elaborate governmental structures, including the pursuit of its grievances in the International Criminal Court, but most of all, by taking advantage of the situation to seek joint and unified leadership of the Palestinian struggle and arrange more authentic representation in international arenas, which would involve bringing Hamas in from the cold. The representation of the Palestinian people has been weakened by the persisting inability to obtain sufficient political unity to establish legitimate leadership of the Palestinian struggle for rights. Israel has contributed to this Palestinian diplomatic weakness by its continuous efforts over the years to keep the Palestinian movement factionalized and the Palestinian people ideologically, geographically, and diplomatically fragmented.

Hamas, in contrast to Fatah, and the PLO, has never endorsed the two-state approach as a tenable basis for reaching a sustainable peace between the two peoples. Hamas has challenged the underlying legitimacy of the Israeli State, and its exclusivist claims to be the State of the Jewish people. In recent years, following the electoral successes of Hamas in Gaza in 2006 and its takeover of governance from Fatah in 2007, it has claimed and controversially exercised a right of resistance, but most characteristically in defensive and retaliatory modes, and not as a strategy of liberation through armed struggle. Hamas has also negotiated, usually by way of Egypt, several short-term ceasefires with Israel, and in recent years, has proposed publicly and by back channels long-term ceasefires, including in a proposal for a 50 year ceasefire, although conditional on Israel lifting the blockade on Gaza and withdrawing to 1967 borders, an action long ago unanimously prescribed in UN Security Council Resolution 242.

Hamas also apparently reached out by discreet diplomacy to the Bush presidency in the years after its electoral successes in 2006 to exert pressure on Israel to agree upon some kind of long-term pause in hostilities with respect to Gaza. Yet neither Israel nor the United States, nor the PA, seemed at all interested in any kind of accommodation with Hamas if it did not include a recognition of the legitimacy of the Israeli State and a renunciation of any Palestinian right of resistance. It should be remembered that the U.S. Government had encouraged Hamas to participate in the 2006 elections, to shift their behavior from a reliance on armed struggle to the pursuit of its goals on a so-called “political track.” It was believed at the time that Washington assumed that the people of Gaza would repudiate Hamas, and this would solidify the political control of Occupied Palestine under Fatah influence and control, which was viewed as more moderate in relation to both means and ends. When these expectations were frustrated, the U.S., together with Israel, refused to treat Hamas as a legitimate political actor. Hamas was blacklisted as a terrorist organization that engaged in unlawful violence, pointing to the rocket attacks directed at Israel following the Israeli “disengagement” from Gaza in 2005, which involved withdrawing IDF troops across the border and dismantling the Israeli settlements. The time line between Israeli provocation and Hamas retaliation remains contested, and hard to unravel and. resolve, but what seems evident is that the Hamas provocations were indiscriminate, yet doing far less damage and being much less intrusive with respect to the Israeli civilian population than did the Israeli attacks and indirect control mechanisms continuously imposed on the people of Gaza often in the form of harsh collective punishment prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

It is now difficult to tell whether various developments in the present context will bring about any changes relevant to Fatah and Hamas. It is possible that Israeli annexation of large portions of the West Bank will give rise to renewed and more successful efforts at achieving political unity among Palestinian political factions. Given the failure of several past attempts, it would be irresponsible to predict success for such an effort, although a sustainable achievement of political unity with respect to representation, leadership, and the tactics of struggle would be a very favorable development from a Palestinian perspective, improving prospects for some sort of eventual political compromise. The issues facing the Palestinians have taken several turns for the worse in the last few years, principally due to overt and unconditional support given to unlawful Israeli expansionism by the presidency of Donald Trump and shifts in the regional balance as a result of Arab priorities now emphasizing the rivalry with Iran as to regional supremacy and an accompanying willingness to abandon support for the Palestinian struggle. For Israeli politicians, there is present the window of opportunity provided by Trump’s unconditional support of Israeli ambitions, but this window could close, at least part way, if Trump loses to Biden in November. Similarly, unrest in the Arab World could at any point lead to a second phase of the Arab Spring, possibly bringing to power a leadership in either Egypt or Saudi Arabia more responsive to renewed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. How Fatah and Hamas will relate to such future developments remains a black box at present. Also, whether the experience of the COVID-19 health crisis alters Palestinian priorities relating to their political alignments, agenda, and tactics is impossible to discern at this stage as is its impact on the regional and global play of relevant geopolitical play of forces.

KS: Will Hezbollah become the biggest threat to Israel in the future? Because of military training in Syria and the weakening role of the U.S.?

RF: My understanding of these issues is limited. Although Hezbollah has had the benefit of battlefield experience in Syria, I think this enhanced capability would be relevant more to discourage Israel from repeating its 1982 ground inducing Israel to withdraw in 2000. I believe that Israel is mostly concerned at present about Hezbollah’s augmented defensive and retaliatory capabilities if Israel were to launch the kind of land invasion that culminated in the siege of Beirut that occurred almost 40 years ago. It is my understanding that Hezbollah has acquired accurate long-range missile capabilities that could cause heavy damage to Israeli cities, but if used offensively, it would likely bring about a disproportionate Israeli response with ruinous consequences for Lebanon. Hezbollah has demonstrated its capabilities to maintain a sustained campaign of territorial resistance, and possibly possesses a sufficient deterrent capability to discourage Israel from mounting an aggressive military campaign even from the air and sea. Overall, with the internal strife and tensions experienced by Lebanon in recent months, and still unresolved, Hezbollah seems to have become a weaker political actor in the internal Lebanese balance of forces, and highly unlikely to take any initiative that would provoke Israel to take major military action. An aspect of Hezbollah’s apparent political decline in Lebanon is the perception among the Lebanese people that Hezbollah became too close to Iran, which funded its activities and was a principal supplier of its advanced weaponry.

KS: How do you see Europe’s future in the context of Islamic fundamentalists returning to their home countries in Europe after the defeat of ISIS?

RF: Much depends on whether the “victory” over ISIS as projected is seen as the end of the story. If perceived as only a pause in violent challenges directed at Europe, or even with uncertainty as to the future, there will be public hostility to readmitting such individuals, especially former ISIS fighters. ISIS was itself a reaction to the U.S./UK occupation of Iraq after 2003, suggesting that such fundamentalist responses can arise whenever civilizations clash, and particularly when the West seeks to assert control over the political life of a non-Western society in the post-colonial era.

Against this background, the repatriation of ISIS fundamentalists is a very difficult issue to speculate about, and is likely to reflect diverse national policies that are put in practice rather than a common European Union approach. The treatment of ISIS applicants for reentry will likely depend on whether the vetting process will be willing and able to draw reliable distinctions between hardened militants and disillusioned recruits, and how families of ISIS fighters will be viewed in the overall context. It is likely that most European governments will be reluctant to issue visas to those ISIS families who are without valid passports, yet seek to return to their native countries. There are issues associated with uncertainty as to how particular individuals participated

in ISIS, what sorts of connections they have with their families in Europe, what job opportunities would await them, what effects their repatriation would have on domestic political tensions. Some of these issues are explored fictionally, with great intelligence, by Kamila Shamsie, in Home Fire (2017). My guess is that there will be a great reluctance by most European governments to permit the return of anyone closely associated with ISIS, and over the age of 18. A problem of their statelessness is likely to emerge.

KS: Would you agree with the statement of Chris Hedges that currently the only way to survive as human beings is disobedience to the elites?

RF: I think there is provocative value in taking seriously this injunction from a commentator on the current scene who is as thoughtful and justice-oriented as is Chris Hedges, and yet to serve as any guide to action, or even as a source of reflection, there is a need for greater particularity. Such a general call for disobedience is vague, and dependent on interpretation within a great variety of contexts. We need to know far more clearly what Hedges means by “survive as human beings” and by “disobedience to the elites.” Is it a call for the defense of human dignity against the state by establishing appropriate and effective forms of resistance? Is resistance limited to nonviolent tactics or does it depend on the context? Is the primary concern here with the word “human” (as in the quality of life) or with “survival” (as “bare life” in terms of subsistence)? Above all, is it a clarion call for the transformation or abolition of predatory capitalism and global militarism?

If we try to respond more concretely to Hedges based on personal perceptions and circumstances we will end up with a wide array of responses. From my perspective, I think Hedges is speaking within an American context, and delivering a central message that our constitutional democracy is faltering, and needs renewal by way of a movement of radical reform, possibly in imitation of the civil rights movement of the 1960s as guided by Martin Luther King, Jr.. In my darker moods I think even this degree of reformism is not sufficient, and that the challenges faced need to be conceived in the more activist framework of radical social action associated with the thinking and tactics of Malcolm X. Even in the somewhat less polarized times of the 1960s both of these charismatic leaders were assassinated, although King’s demands for access and equality became more fully realized and endorsed by elites than were the economic and social demands of Malcolm. Many might have thought that King’s vision was fully realized by the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, but such an assessment overlooked King’s anti-militarism and planetary humanism. These earlier expressions of semi-authorized “disobedience to the elites,” even when seemingly effective, can be reversed. The very success of anti-racism occasioned racist reactions, exemplified by the Trump presidency and the accompanying revival of a white supremacy movement to previously unimagined heights of influence.

If the idea of disobedience and resistance is directed at American militarism and foreign policy via a renewed peace movement, it evokes memories of the anti-war movement that became influential in the final years of the Vietnam War and in reaction to fears of nuclear war that emerged at various stages of the Cold War. Again, as with civil rights, short-term policy modifications were achieved, but the structures of militarism adapted, and regained control over policy and behavior in ways that resumed the old patterns only recently deemed unacceptable. Adjustments were made to remove the triggers that arouse popular opposition and unrest, but the structures of abuse are resilient, and can be imaginative in evading mandates for change. Militarists reestablished their influence after the Soviet collapse by exaggerating a range of security threats and identifying new enemies, exerting greater control over media coverage of war zones, and by professionalizing the armed forces and modernizing its tactics so that the politically sensitive draft could be ended. The justifications for inflated military budgets gained political support, and the former patterns of military intervention, thought to be discredited after the Vietnam experience, were re-stabilized.

Underlying Hedges’ call to action by citizens is his acute distrust of and opposition to the status quo, and his lack of confidence that political elites can be persuaded to adopt policies and programs that benefit the majority of American citizens, let alone humanity in general. National challenges, whether climate change, pandemics, or social justice, are not being properly addressed, and reliance on the traditional constitutional correctives of electoral politics seems to lack the vision and leadership needed. The critique of “choiceless democracy” strikes many of us as convincing given the absence of proposals for structural change by the major political parties. In this respect, an “extraordinary” politics of a people’s movement needs to challenge the established order of elites by embracing a transformative vision that transcends the “legal” channels of Congress and electoral politics to win its mandate for revolutionary change. Arguably, Bernie Sanders was somewhat animated by such an assessment of the political situation and recognized the need for movement politics more than trusting traditional electoral politics to get desired results. His goal of gaining the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 2016 and again in 2020 was fueled by the hope that the imbalances of society, dramatized by gross inequalities, would lead the DNC gatekeepers to permit entry to a candidate advocating the necessity of a certain amount of structural change. Despite his popularity as a candidate, Sanders’ defeat was a recognition that he posed too great a threat to the established order regarded as beneficial to the political and economic elites of both political parties to permit his candidacy. Sanders was seen as posing a structural threat, whereas Obama was not, despite the color of his skin. In this sense, race is less structural than capitalism, militarism, or even support for Israel in the current American scheme of things.

Keeping the focus on the American setting, the central force of Hedges’ outlook is to remind the citizenry that the party system will not generate the leaders or policies required to achieve necessary and desirable change. And feasible change is not enough, nor even durable, as Obama’s presidency confirmed. My own way of interpreting this condition of political closure at the policy levels of governance is to make reference to the “bipartisan consensus” that joins Republicans and Democrats on the most crucial policy issues of the day. This consensus emerged as the Cold War produced common ground between the mainstream elites of both political parties as a sequel to the politics of national unity achieved during World War II. The bipartisan consensus had three pillars that had ups and downs as to the extent and character of its leverage, but enjoyed basic continuity of support: (1) trust and deference to the priorities of Wall Street in managing the economy; (2) full funding of the military, diplomatic, and ideological infrastructure required to oversee global security by becoming the first “global state” to remain vigilant during times of peace and war; and (3) uphold the “special relationship” of unconditional support for Israel, with special implications for engagement and alignments in the Middle East.

The pragmatic and normative limitations of the bipartisan consensus have not yet shattered the Satanic grip of this marginalization of democratic choice. The idea of living in “a choiceless democracy” reflected the weight of the bipartisan consensus on the political life of the country. Donald Trump seemed to challenge this reality when a presidential candidate in 2016, but despite his assault on the post-1945 traditional verities of presidential leadership, the bipartisan consensus has been as powerfully implemented during his years in the White House as previously.

The pragmatic shortcoming of the bipartisan consensus is most vividly revealed in the consistent inability to translate military superiority into successful political outcomes. This is the great unlearned lesson of the last half of the twentieth century. Military superiority based on technological innovations and battlefield tactics lack their earlier capability of imposing Western dominance. The Asian resurgence of the last half century was based not on countervailing military capabilities but on superior economistic relations between the state and society, exemplified by China’s rise to ascendancy through mastery of the instruments of soft power expansionism. The West, especially the U.S., is entrapped in an outmoded and self-destructive militarist paradigm that no longer is capable of maintaining American geopolitical interests at acceptable costs, and is experiencing imperial decline due to the weakening of geopolitical morale at home and a dispiriting series of foreign policy defeats when relying on its military superiority. The crucial uncertainty is whether this dynamic of decline will at some point engulf the world in an apocalyptic war or whether the political will needed to reconstruct the geopolitical agenda along more constructive lines emerges as if by magic.

KS: Are we now at the end of the unipolar world and entering the multipolar era? Or are we rather heading towards a world completely centralized like never before in history by combining military power and technology? As we know, some countries in the Middle East where war was, and North Korea as well, do not belong to the Bank for International Settlements.

RF: In my view, the image of a “unipolar world” was a mistaken interpretation of world order after the Soviet collapse in 1992 that nonetheless correctly marked the end of the “bipolar world.” Such conceptual metaphors were based on the salience of the superpower military standoff and ideologically charged geopolitical rivalry that was at the core of the Cold War, especially as it played out in Europe. The limits of such metaphors should have become evident after the defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War, the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and the remarkable rise of China after the Cultural Revolution.

There was a period in the U.S. during the 1990s when neo-conservatives criticized the Clinton presidency for its reliance on an economistic geopolitics of neoliberal globalization at the cost of foregoing its earlier emphasis on a more militarist foreign policy. Neoconservatives were arguing that American foreign policy in the 1990s missed opportunities to take advantage of the removal of the Soviet Union from the geopolitical equation by recognizing the unipolar moment of military dominance as a window of opportunity to extend the reach of its global security system, especially urging “democracy promotion” schemes in the Middle East to be achieved if necessary by forcible intervention. This triumphalist atmosphere was epitomized by Francis Fukuyama’s insistence that the defeat of the Communist challenge was tantamount to reaching the end of history. Such an illusion was soon shattered forever by the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, although these attacks were the apparent work of a non-state actor with minimal military capabilities, and no sovereign territorial base, thus eroding the major premise of state-centric world order.

Trump’s seeming retreat from the U.S. role as global leader has been evident since 2017. Trump made this point by over and over declaring himself elected president of America and not of the world, a message clearly signaling the end of any pretension of geopolitical unipolarity. This assessment was underscored by rising chauvinistic nationalism in many leading countries, which expressed a trend toward less hierarchical structuring of global security policy, more dependence on national self-reliance, less on multilateral alliances. After the Cold War, alliances played a much smaller role except possibly in Europe, giving world order a more statist character, which resulted in increased decentralization of international authority at the level of the state. Also, by and large, the global security agenda was far less concerned with great power competition than in earlier decades. Prolonged major violent conflict came to be preoccupied with the interplay in these countries of civil strife and regime- changing geopolitics (as in Syria, Yemen, Congo, Libya). It was also associated with transnational violence taking the form of the threats mounted by non- state actors (al Qaida, ISIS). In neither setting did the rhetoric of geopolitical polarization seem illuminating.

Perhaps, this will change with the waning of the global war on terror launched by the United States in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. This dynamic is partly a reflection of the reduction of terrorist incidents in the West and partly the reenergizing of great power rivalry, with China now somewhat displacing post-Soviet Russia. Whether this rivalry will be perceived as a new phase of bipolarity is doubtful as the confrontation is not shaped, as was the U.S./Soviet standoff, by reciprocal threats of annihilation—partly because there is, at this stage, much less at stake with regard to ideological differences and also less emphasis on militarized conflict, alliances, and Europe, which was the former locus of direct confrontation. The U.S./China rivalry seems to be most intense around issues of trade and investment, with much less emphasis on the militarist preoccupations with defense of homeland, superior battlefield capabilities, containment, and competition with respect to new weaponry than was the case during the 45 years of U.S./Soviet confrontations. For this reason, it seems unlikely that the language of polarity will be relied upon to describe the new geopolitical alignment of principal adversaries on a global scale. To be sure, there are contentions, based on historical analogies, that China as an ascending great power is threatening to the United States in its role as preeminent great power, posing what Graham Allison has labeled “The Thucydides Trap” in a book bearing this title.

By projecting these concerns to the future, we do receive an impression of increasing multipolarity with respect to the world economy, taking the primary form of greater regionalization of trade, investment, and technological transfer. Whether this will produce a corresponding retreat from Bretton Woods and World Trade Organization frameworks, the institutional foundations of the American-led establishment of a rule-based liberal international order is not yet clear. If such a retreat occurs and is accompanied by a new wave of regional institution-building, it will lead to a new kind of multipolarity resting on the leveling of the technological foundations of power, having a depolarizing and equalizing impact, the opposite of the feared digital dictatorship and technological categorization of have and have not societies.

What can be said with reasonable confidence is that the language of unipolarity, bipolarity, and multipolarity is unlikely to be widely employed to describe the currently emergent central conflict patterns within global settings. Multipolarity as an alternative rhetoric to that of regionalization possesses somewhat greater relevance, although in contexts other than war/peace which had given rise to reliance on notions of bipolarity and unipolarity to capture the central feature of the Cold War. In this regard, future developments bearing on world order are most likely to be depolarized, either emphasizing global patterns of cooperation (climate change, biodiversity, global commons, migration, s) and statist patterns of self-reliance (border control, import substitution, restrictions on investment, trade barriers). In this respect, the near future of international relations seems most likely to resemble geopolitics of prior eras but in a technological environment dominated by transnational networking, automation, and digitalization.

KS: Would you agree with the statement that the control system in its nature is always analog and not Digital? Therefore, all Digital systems such as blockchain, Bitcoin, etc., can exist only until control is exercised analogously by the army? If any government wants to outlaw a given crypto currency, it can be done very easily, because in the last instance, control is always analog, on the ground, i.e. military force. Is therefore the concept of so-called “decentralization” a fiction?

RF: Yes, in the last analysis, so far as we know, the side that succeeds in controlling the armed forces in a revolutionary situation almost always determines the political outcome and exerts control over markets, including the authentication of currencies. This was one of Lenin’s greatest contributions to revolutionary thought. Digital modes of resisting and mobilizing can challenge the established analogic structures of control, and even gain temporary victories, but transforming these structures is often a very different story. This was illustrated rather spectacularly during the course of the Egyptian political unfolding of what was being called the Arab Spring in 2011, and seemed for a short period to signal the potency of digital agency through the dynamics of mass mobilization through the Internet on behalf of freedom and democracy. It did not take long for analogic forces to regroup under the aegis of armed forces and elements of the former Mubarak rulership in the bureaucratic setup, likely prodded and guided by external actors. In the end, the digitally powered challenge was brutally and effectively crushed. The political outcome restored a harsher form of repressive autocracy than what had been generated by the seemingly irreversible digital rising against the Mubarak regime of repression and elite corruption. Yet we still do not know for sure whether this return to autocratic governance will last. It is possible that future digital challenges will be mounted in ways that are transformative, as well as merely disruptive, and that such a movement will be alert and adept enough to defeat countermoves by analog forces seeking to regain control of the Egyptian state and society once again.

We need also to inquire whether the analysis of political conflicts can be usefully reduced to the analog/digital divide as it has operated up to now. Digital organizing has so far been ineffectual from the perspective of historical transformation, but this could change. As recent elections in the United States and elsewhere have shown, digital platforms are sites of struggle. Trump’s use of Twitter-fused digital agitation with analogic state terror as earlier pioneered by pre-digital forms of European fascism. It should also be kept in mind that digital activism is still in a rather primitive phase of development, and is being exploited by a wide range of extremist political movements on both the right and left, by libertarians as well as by anarchists and others dreaming of emancipation from analogic modes of control.

Whether or not digital politics has revolutionary and transformative potential is a matter that can only be resolved in the future. The uprisings comprising the Arab Spring were blocked partly because of organizational failings related to program and leadership, as well as due to its vulnerability to the pushback of political forces, which retained control of the apparatus of state power and never genuinely subscribed to the democratizing goals despite pretensions to the contrary. Lenin’s valuable insight rested on an understanding that a revolutionary movement could not hope to sustain a challenge to the status quo unless it smashed the old state, and reconstructed a new state in its image from top to bottom. Without any outward show of allegiance to Leninism, the Iranian Revolution of 1978–79 achieved its goals in ways that contrasted with the failures of the Arab Spring. The essential learning experience of this early phase of digital politics is that it is not enough to overthrow an autocrat unless there also occurs a drastic reconstruction of analog structures of control. In this respect, the tragic error of those who so bravely massed in Tahrir Square to demand the end of the Mubarak dictatorship was to accept the good faith of the institutions of Egyptian governance against which the masses had risen up in passionate resistance. This is not to ignore other factors at play, including above all the degree to which this spontaneous uprising heralded a new leadership under the aegis of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the secular supporters of the anti-Mubarak movement had grossly underestimated.

I remember having a meal with a Russian friend in Moscow during the early period of Gorbachev’s reformist efforts. His assessment bears on aspect of digital politics. He said we in Russia now have glasnost but not perestroika. He meant that now we can talk freely and critically, but we still lack the capacity to change the repressive and corrupt structure of the Soviet power machine. This will be the agency test for digital politics. Can digital transformative visions go beyond rhetoric and mobilized enthusiasm to get their followers to mount the barricades, at least figuratively? So far, the organized military, para-military, police, and propaganda capabilities and long experience of the analog world has prevailed, but the final interplay of this interaction awaits disclosure in the future. If a digital Fukuyama tells the world that “the end of history” has been at last truly reached, he should be scorned this time around.

For the present, although worried by the recent erosions of democratic governance, I would not foreclose the prospect of digital radicalism in forms capable of recovering revolutionary charisma. It is unlikely to resemble past radicalism, and is more likely to be a set of reactions to the bio-ethical crises of neoliberal modernity (climate change, biodiversity, migration, statism, militarism, inequality, alienation) than to reflect the growing influence of a digital proletariat faced with dark destinies of ecological collapse and worsening labor conditions in an increasingly automated future, perhaps accompanied by fears of species extinction. In this respect, overcoming the deficiencies of analog politics rests on a struggle in the domains of the unknown, forging a politics of impossibility that defies the expectations of think-tank gurus and societal life coaches.

We should have learned by now that the future is not only unknown and unknowable, but full of good and bad surprises, giving an edge of uncertainty and destiny to our individual and collective lives. To recall a few momentous examples, the outcome of colonial wars, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the transformation of apartheid South Africa into a multiracial constitutional democracy, the Arab Spring, the presidency of Donald Trump, the COVID-19 Pandemic—each seemed impossible until it actually happened, and was only anticipated by a handful of oddballs.

KS: Can Transhumanism be the new totalitarianism of our time after Nazism and communism? Previous totalitarian ideologies only wanted to change the social structure. The ideology of Transhumanism goes much further, wants to change the structure of life itself.

RF: There is no doubt that the totalitarian potential of Transhumanism is more radical than any previous political ideology, but is it a realistic prospect at this time? In theory, robotics, AI, and genetic redesign seem capable of producing whatever kind of being is sought after, whether creative genius or destructive monster, but will it happen? The time lines are difficult to discern, partly because the research and development of transhuman innovations are undoubtedly hidden in the black budgets of governments and the even blacker budgets of a variety of private sector actors, including rogue scientists and mad engineers, as well as the grandiose fantasies of eccentric billionaires and their underworld counterparts. There is money to be made, power to be achieved, and fantasies to be realized in these domains.

From one historical perspective, all that was possible by way of technological innovation relevant to power and wealth has been in the past actually developed. The most apocalyptic examples are drawn from the military realm. Weaponry of mass destruction and demonic manipulation of human behavior has long been the subject of secret research and development carried on without moral scruples or respect for legal and political restraints, including chemical, biological, and nuclear weaponry. The horrors of chemical weapons in World War I and atomic bombs and biological weapons in World War II created some pushback in the form of taboos, regimes of prohibition, and technical safeguards against accidental use, but research especially on the control of nuclear weapons during the Cold War has shown how precarious are these restraints, and the record of non-use, as documented in relation to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, reflects luck more than it does the effectiveness of arrangements designed to avoid use. There is a race of sorts between perfecting spyware and surveillance technology and the efforts to transcend what were hitherto the limits of the human through the magic of technological innovation, including more and more sophisticated brain implants as well as the prospect of highly cerebral robots.

The threat of gangster Transhumanism has long been a central theme of science fiction, and now more recently with cloning and genetic manipulation becoming technically feasible, it has become an ambition of science and probably of individuals who seek absolute peace or total domination, with maybe some aspiring to harvest the fruits of artistic or scientific genius. It would seem that to preserve the human species as it has naturally evolved, including its mental qualities, urgent steps need to be taken to discourage some further technological developments, but whether this is practical in a politically decentralized world is doubtful. The fear that technology would create a dystopian reality for humanity is of pre-modern origins, and can be traced back to the Greek figure of Prometheus who stole “fire” from the Greek pantheon or Daedalus who crafted wings of wax and feathers for his son Icarus, whose flight led to the melting of his wings when he flew too close to the sun, sending him plunging toward earth. It was given a. powerful literary expressions in 1818 by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and more recently in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 Brave New World. Transhumanist discussions are often dialogues between utopian expectations of life without end, prosperity for all, a Shakespeare in every household and dystopian fears of mass slavery under the watchful evil eye of technological elites or of a global dictatorship crafting policies in accordance with robotic algorithms.

Whether freedom can withstand either Transhumanism or the effort to con- trol the bio-technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities of the future without creating intolerable totalitarian surveillance and suppression is itself uncertain. There seems a likely circumstance where efforts to provide protection against the advent of Transhumanist forms of governance gives rise to an emancipatory political ideology. Contending that itself presupposes plan- etary domination. Such a liberating humanistic movement would likely under- mine freedom because of its unavoidable reliance on subversion, secrecy, and lawlessness to establish a political order that preserved the human and limited the relevance of the transhuman

Perhaps, Transhumanism should sever its imaginative ties with science fiction and lend support to more modest goals that do not purport to shake the foundations of the human condition. We are accustomed to life-enhancing technological innovations to improve health, fitness, and comfort without encountering many red flags. Although TV, smart phones, computing, and social media have raised concerns about sociability, the encouragement of passivity of lifestyle. and political pacification, as well as declining reading and writing skills, there is no movement to prohibit Transhuman expectations. The humanistic fundamentals of contingency, individuality, and mortality are not at risk. Designs and invention that allow us to live longer and better seems fine. The haunting question is whether our health and enjoyment and our collective existence as a species can continue to be improved without crossing the boundaries to the never-never land of technologies that transform our brains and deprive our lives of freedom, responsibility, mystery, and spirituality.

Perhaps, the best stance to take with respect to the Transhuman challenge is to apply the Precautionary Principle, which counsels extreme caution in the presence of incalculable risks of great harm. This Principle has been adopted in authoritative formulations bearing on climate change, and environmental risks more generally, but its implementation has been disappointing because government and the private sector are preoccupied by short-term performance and profits, and are not subject to accountability procedures when it comes to long-term harm, however foreseeable. It is one thing to welcome software that can defeat the best chess player the world has ever known, and another to genetically design or clone with the objective of eliminating creativity, resistance, empathy, and conscience. To discuss the dangers, while appreciating the contributions, neither rejects nor succumbs to the alluring promises and alarming pitfalls of Transhuman advocacy.

On the basis of my limited knowledge, the transition to an existential, as distinct from an imagined, transhuman future remains quite remote, although various technological advances are likely to arouse hopes and fears in the context of AI, robotics, genetic engineering, surveillance, and virtuality. There are already debates and dialogues about what it means to be human, as well as whether it is desirable and practical to prohibit certain forms of technological activity by national and international regulation. On the one side are life enhancing breakthroughs in health, education, entertainment, and communications, and on the other side are troublesome “improvements” such as the dehumanization of policing and warfare, through a reliance on drones, robots, bio-weapons, incapacitating chemicals, and the like. A serious concern is the lack of transparency with respect to research and development, as well as the agenda of “deep state” maneuvers seeking global domination and the possibility of rogue breakaways of varying scale.

KS: How do you perceive the future of Mega-cities? The Pentagon clearly states that this is the greatest military challenge of the future and that the strategies previously used in Iraq or Afghanistan are ineffective in mega- cities. In this context, how do you perceive the privatization of military forces serving international corporations?

RF: These questions relate to the fundamental nature of conflict in the 21st century, which tend to involve internal struggles for control of state power or tensions between states and extremist non-state actors. In both settings traditional means of waging war are rarely of decisive relevance if the principal sites of struggle become large urban conglomerates. Military superiority and battlefield superiority rarely any longer control the outcome of protracted conflict whether involving conflicts in the countryside or cities. This shift in the balance of power became clear, as earlier suggested, in anti-colonial wars in the 1960s and 1970s that were won by the militarily inferior side because it could mobilize popular resistance by appeals to national identity with dedication so strong as to be able to absorb heavy losses and outlast the “foreign” adversary.

Two categories of conflict are of particular interest. The first category involves a largely internal struggle between the state and an insurgency, which may have its base area in less accessible parts of the countryside. Such struggles often go on for decades, and if ended, it is usually by a negotiated agreement that represents a political compromise. This happened in the Philippines. and Colombia, but without addressing the roots of the conflict, and hence what was heralded as “peace” achieved nothing more than a ceasefire. The second category involves an internal struggle that also features military intervention by a regional or global political actor as was the case with the colonial wars of the last century and the geopolitical wars of the past twenty years.

The American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan illustrates this new reality, as does the strife in Syria and Yemen, in which the capability to destroy without limit does not lead to effective pacification of violent political resistance. The adversary can “hide” in the city, and resume the fight on another day. The foreign intervening power or the state is faced with the dilemma of prolonged insurgency and resistance or destroying a city, dispossessing and killing large numbers of civilians and devastating the city to the extent that it becomes an urban ruin as in Falluja or Aleppo.

The city is also filled with soft targets whose destruction can inflict fear and a sense of vulnerability on the urban population, and yet not dislodge the current regime’s elites. A permanent condition of insecurity does not usually lead to peace or change.

KS: How would you comment on the statement of the Italian writer Roberto Saviano, the author of the book Gomorrah, that now we are dealing more with clash of criminal mafia groups than a clash of civilization. According to Saviano, the European financial system (Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, London) is funded by the mafia’s money, where cocaine generates the same profits as crude oil.

RF: I think the transnational rise of criminal Mafia groups is a shadowy reality that is difficult to depict accurately, partly as a result of fuzzy boundaries between what is criminal and what is legal. The behavior of banks and corporations around the world cannot be separated from the activities of criminal syndicates. Even the relationship between crimes of states and private sector crime cannot be sharply demarcated, and many of their linkages are kept secret. Of course, Saviano as a writer has alerted us to the criminal penetration of the economic life of society in Mafia formats, but by treating the Mafia phenomenon as a particularly reprehensible feature of European modernity, we are exposed to the middle and lower-end of for-profit private sector operations. My main point is that predatory capitalism, through its alignments and standard operating practices, involves crimes against humanity and crimes against nature, and should be the central point of inquiry to gain a proper understanding of what has gone wrong in the contemporary world, including the dangerous disregard of ecological limits. We need to reformulate our understanding of the nature of “business” and the character of “crime.”

Whether it is useful to draw a comparison between the clash of civilizations and the clash of Mafia criminal groups can be debated. There is no doubt that comparing Mafia earnings with the revenue earned from oil sales catches our attention, but is it illuminating, and is it really true? As suggested, if the systemic distortions arise from the policies, practices, and logic of neoliberal capitalism, then focusing on the challenge posed by the Mafia underworld is mostly a distraction even if their abusive ways of dominating certain supply chains, e.g. drugs or garbage collection, is dangerous for human security. Maybe calling attention to the magnitude of the challenge will over time help people recover control over the social forces that demean and dominate so many societies in the world. Again, we have to ask whether the “legal” opioid crisis bringing billions to big pharma is worse than the trade in cocaine that lands its principal operatives in jail for life. Is this not a matter of lifestyle for different strata of the social and economic order?

KS: What can we, what will we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic? How can we explain the unexpected interim result of the pandemic as exposing American greater unpreparedness and incompetence in responding to the challenge than that of almost any other country? How will the opposed tendencies of overall species vulnerability and chauvinistic nationalist social control be resolved in a post-pandemic atmosphere? Will the experience of the pandemic incline governments toward great reliance on globalized mechanisms of problem-solving or toward a further retreat in the direction of ultra-nationalism and self-reliance?

RF: In the midst of this unprecedented COVID-19 experience, generalizations about what has happened and what is to come, should be put forward cautiously, and in a spirit of humility.

Several observations seem helpful points of departure. (1) Although there were some warnings about the likelihood of a lethal pandemic sounded in the last several years, they were not heeded by almost all politicians. (2) The COVID-19 outbreak was a grim reminder of the precariousness and vulnerability of contemporary life on the planet, and the deficient attention accorded to human security as distinct from national security, and as a result reinforced dire parallel warnings of ecological instability and potential collapse. (3) The degree of competence exhibited in responding to the health challenge reflected both the varying strength of national health systems and the uneven quality of national leadership, perhaps highlighted by the irresponsible and militarist style of autocratic figures such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro as contrasted with the impressively disciplined responses of such countries as South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. (4) Even more than war, the COVID pandemic produced sudden and drastic economic and social dislocations that seem unlikely to be fully overcome even quite long after the health crisis has ended, if ever. (5) During the pandemic there was evident a clash between the logic of global cooperation, including granting resource and respect to the World Health Organization (WHO), and the divisive logic of autocratic nationalism, exhibiting the absence of empathy for the suffering outside the borders of the state, and in some instances, even for socio-economic sectors of the national citizenry.

Thinking ahead to imagine the consequences of the COVID-19 is, of course, beset by various levels of uncertainty. On one level it will make a great difference for the global response if Trump is reelected rather than replaced. If reelected, there will continue to be a leadership vacuum at the global level, and only the most cosmetic adjustments at the national level, at least in the United States.

It is to be expected that European countries that endured high rates of fatalities will remedy the deficiencies of their readiness to meet such health challenges in the future. Sweden is likely to rethink its permissive response in light of the number of fatalities relative to population size. In effect, those countries that did well in meeting the COVID-19 challenge are likely to reinforce their capabilities to do the same in the future, and those that did poorly are more likely to invest more heavily in their national health system if funding is authorized. Most governments are driven by short-term performance goals, which works against such health threats that are generally perceived as occurring beyond the normal political horizons of accountability.

If we extend our conjectures beyond health there are three broad lines of possible impact of the pandemic on the politics of the near future. First, there is what might be called a restorative approach that places emphasis and hope on getting back to the “old normal” without attempting social and economic reforms to address the disproportionate vulnerability of the poor and ethnically marginalized parts of society. In effect, capitalism and militarism will continue to provide the main organizing forces of world order. Political and economic elites can be expected to favor restoring the pre-pandemic realities, and in the process inadequately responding to the urgencies of the ecological policy agenda.

Secondly, there is the reformist approach that seeks a new normal that exhibits meaningful recognition of the need to address inequalities that deprive parts of society of an equitable share of national wealth and income, and make a concerted effort to create social harmony and ecological stability, which might be proclaimed “a social contract for the digital age.” While this might increase taxes on corporations and wealthy persons, it will not challenge the legitimacy or operational modalities of either militarism or capitalism. The reformist momentum is likely to vary from country to country, but in its more successful examples, it will soften the sharp edges of capitalist modes of accumulation and somewhat reallocate funds to welfare, infrastructure programs, and environmental priorities. This reformist approach is likely to win support from liberal elites in the West, especially if these elites become worried about the twin challenges of fascism and socialism to their values and self-interest.

And thirdly, the transformative approach directs its attention to the structural excesses exposed by the pandemic. It directs its energy toward reconstructing the economic and social order in ways more responsive to the issues of justice and equity, as well as addressing ecological challenges as prime threats to humanity. It is likely to seek a stronger UN as well as a political culture more respectful of international law. Transformative perspectives are likely to meet resistance from economic and political elites and find support from disadvantaged sectors of society expressing their discontents through a movement approach to political change that is skeptical of relying on electoral politics as a trustworthy source of authority. Whether the transformative movement emerges and sustains itself is currently unknowable, as is whether it would be expressed by way of left populism or through some kind of merger of national and transnational movements for a sustainable and just human future.

In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic will either be remembered by future generations as a notable global health emergency that once over, passed quietly without leaving a lasting imprint on world history or as an unexpected revolutionary moment that made previously unattainable fundamental political developments start to happen. The deeply flawed and contentious American response to the extraordinary health crisis took a further decisive turn in an unexpected direction in response to a video capture of the police murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 occurring in one of America’s most progressive cities, Minneapolis, Minnesota. There has not been such an earth-shattering lethal event since an angered and humiliated young street fruit seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, in an interior Tunisian town, set himself on fire to protest his hopeless socio-economic circumstances, leading to an explosive national and transnational outpouring of empathy, hope, and rage on city streets across the Middle East and beyond. As an occurrence comparable to a societal volcano, Bouazizi’s act of self-immolation on December 17, 2010 produced a national upheaval that not only ignited the Tunisian uprisings at the end of 2010 that led to the fall of the corrupt dictatorial leader Ben Ali, but inspired uprisings across the Arab world of masses of people chanting slogans against injustice, abuse of state power, and widespread corruption.

As with Bouazizi, the death of George Floyd, a previously obscure individual, inflamed public consciousness and illuminated and exposed the criminal cruelties of “law and order” governance. The unexpected results were riots, looting, and demonstrations that continued for many days in cities across the length and breadth of the United States (and spreading to many foreign venues), stimulating strident calls for an end to racism in all its manifestations, as well as defunding of police forces, and even their disbanding. Floyd’s last telling words, “I can’t breathe,” as a police officer kept his knee on his throat for more than eight minutes, 46 seconds, with three other policemen lending assistance while Floyd lay helpless and handcuffed on the ground, gave his death an unforgettable vividness, at once tragic and epic. Unlike earlier similar recent instances of police murder (including Michael Brown, Trayyon Martin, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor) Floyd’s dying ordeal will not be forgotten, even as racism and injustice persists, and new provocations occur.

As might be expected, the events also magnified the polarization that has been the defining feature of the Trump presidency, with the leadership relying on law and order and the folks in the streets calling for an end to police brutality and, more generally, for greater equality with respect to persons of color in American society, especially African Americans as still suffering from some of the ugliest residues of slavery including being lynched by mobs or killed without reason or mercy by police who act confident of impunity, if coverups by police departments should somehow fail to hide their wrongdoing from any scrutiny. If the Floyd video didn’t remove reasonable doubts about the allegations of murder, there might have been a much more muted response. As it was, this incident occurred against the background of a series of recent police killings of innocent black men, making the call of Black Lives Matter this time resonate strongly even with many white middle class Americans who had previously been silently compliant, or at least passive when it came to police or criminal justice reforms. The highly charged present atmosphere emboldened Muriel Bowser, the embattled African American mayor of Washington, DC, who dared oppose Trump’s militarized responses to the protests, to have the words “black lives matter” painted in large bright yellow letters on an avenue passing close by the White House. It was akin to a declaration of cultural war against Trumpism, quite unimaginable a month ago.

The response to Floyd’s death was undoubtedly magnified by the social and economic societal trauma created by COVID-19, providing disoriented citizens with a worthy rationale for venting frustrations after weeks of prolonged self- isolation. Focusing on this racial incident offered the public temporary respite

from the more private anguish of lost jobs, bleak future employment prospects, and the deaths of friends and relatives. The sustained display of anger and solidarity over Floyd’s death amounted to an electrifying outpouring of massive grief and outrage, coupled with a growing antagonism not only toward the police, but also toward Trump’s lethal antics, and toward municipal, state, and federal authorities who have been speaking out against racism and promising reform for decades, but doing too little to bring about change. It should surprise no one that the atrocities keep happening and a badly broken criminal justice system has become a flourishing for-profit business.

The lingering question on the lips of many is: “what will come of this?” Will the momentum be strong and deep enough to lead American politics in a robustly progressive direction? Or will the system in place be able to wait out this interlude of storm and fury, and resume a relentless slide toward a fascist future for the country and ecological disaster for the world?

Racism in America has proved itself resilient and opportunistic ever since it was forced into hiding briefly in the shadows of political life after the American Civil War. We need to remember the racist torments of the Ku Klux Klan, White Citizen Councils, continued lynching, Jim Crow Laws, and the vicious tactics used against activists during the Civil Rights Movement. Will these current uprisings survive the storm after Floyd’s death to become a movement that is strong enough to avoid the recurrence of abusive behavior not just toward black Americans but toward all persons committed to the human dignity of all who share life on the planet and need to learn the art and benefits of peaceful coexistence? Will the current arisings lose their momentum while the old order regroups or even mounts a pro-police campaign? The months and years ahead will determine whether the country has a “soul,” and if has, what is its core reality?

We all know that what happens in the United States has multiple implications for the world. This is more the case in this instance as widespread anguish about Trumpist world politics occurred amid the pandemic igniting solidarity events in many of the world’s major cities, and worries spread about a second cold war between China and the U.S. as Trump irresponsibly shifted blame for American COVID deaths to Beijing, and even to the WHO. If the American election goes forward as scheduled in November 2020, Trump is defeated, and lets a new leadership take over, the international situation will likely appear somewhat calmer, but it will still be treading water with respect to racism, militarism, and predatory capitalism, devoting its main energies to overcoming the economic damage from the pandemic that has undermined the livelihoods and wellbeing of vulnerable people throughout the world. It is too soon to see a humane future for global governance on the political horizons of struggle, but it remains more reasonable than a while ago to recognize a renewed plausibility of drastic change, given a societal mood far more receptive to messages of resistance and transformation, and taking into account the severity of the mounting eco- bio-ethical crisis that is warning us not to settle for restoring pre-pandemic normalcy.

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Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Distinguished Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global Studies, UCSB, author, co-author or editor of 60 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Falk to two three-year terms as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and associated with the local campus of the University of California, and for several years chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is On Nuclear Weapons, Denuclearization, Demilitarization, and Disarmament (2019).

In the introduction to “Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies – Critical and Lyrical Essays” Edward Curtin writes,

“…We live in the era of massive fraud where the transnational wealthy elites, led by the American war and propaganda machine, continue to try to convince the gullible that they are the saviours of humanity even as they lie and cheat and murder by the millions.”

The subtitle ‘critical and lyrical essays’, added another meaning as being mostly philosophical essays in nature. That is both right and wrong as while it has many lyrical and literary references it also has a hard hitting…persona…seems to be the word to describe it, a book that argues with your mind and presents its arguments from a variety of perspectives.

For that reason it makes a great read, neither history nor current events nor philosophy but all of those in essays ranging from mostly critical to mostly lyrical and even whimsical but all involving elements of each.  For some readers the literary and lyrical references may be a bit obtuse although the manner in which they are presented helps the not so philosophical-literary reader understand the meaning within the given context.  It challenges all manner of topics and modes of thinking as indicated as well in the introduction:  “propaganda, wars, government assassinations, work, nature, time, the CIA, poetry, digital dementia, etc.”

Towards the end of the book, Curtin states it quite obviously about what the book reveals,

“…the truth that…the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world and our society rests on keeping the poor poor and under the vicious thumbs of the rich.”

Propaganda and ignorance

The main theme is propaganda and how it is used by the government, the deep state, and the media that is all part of that.  Curtin brings it from the era of Bernays to the current digital era of communications technology, the latter creating a state of detachment from reality caused partly by the profusion of perspectives, but also largely due to its diversion of the self from the real world it is living through.  The digital world is one of “suspended animation”, “historical amnesia and digital dementia”, a “mediated reality”.  In essence we are not living authentic lives in a world based on propaganda and the many devices – psychological and physical – that keep us from contemplating the nature of our self, between suffering and joy, nothingness and infinity. “The high tech companies together with the national-security state are grinning with glee at our stupidity.”

One particular phrase that has become common is from Chomsky and Herman, “manufactured consent.”  From that comes the idea of “wilful ignorance” wherein people may either know what is happening and simply choose to deny it, or know that something is happening but refuse to find out what it is all about.  For Curtin that becomes “a turning away from…truth and to ignore its implications can only be described as an act of bad faith and culpable ignorance, or worse.”

The “worse” could be another derivation of the term, ‘contrived ignorance’.  It is the situation in which one knows the truth about what has been done or what is being done, yet figures out a way, a preconceived rationale, that allows it to be ignored, pushed away and denied, and then if questioned, to find all sorts of contrived reasons why the subject is of no or little consequence and need not be explored further, or has been dealt with fully and the answers already supplied.

The CIA and its creation of the “conspiracy theory” meme is a prime example of this, and applies to the CIA actions with the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X (among many other actions) and the subsequent highly improbable if not impossible official accounts.

Lyrical and whimsical

The lyrical and critical are intermingled both in sequence of the essays and within the essays themselves.  Few are purely critical as Curtin draws in a mixture of literary and philosophical considerations for different perspectives on a given topic.  A few essays begin seemingly entirely whimsical but through their lyrical references and associations with some of the oddities of life and society become more critical and pointed.

Curtin draws upon Serpico, Vincent van Gogh, Albert Camus, George Orwell, Walter Thoreau and other writers and artists in order to define his perspectives on many aspects of personal life and historical realities.  Discussions about time, falling in love, walking in the rain, and poetry all add significant meaningful ideas to his overall theme.

Back to reality

In order to end where this all started, with propaganda, allow Curtin to end with the CIA and the JFK and RFK cover-ups.  In citing Lisa Pease, author of “A Lie Too Big To Fail”, it is recognized that “We’ve come perilously close to losing democracy itself because of fake, CIA-sponsored stories about our history.”

That loss of course, could be a reference to the Trump presidency,

“He’s us.  Did it ever occur to those who fixated on him that if those who own and run the country wanted him gone, he’d be gone in an instant?  ….but as long as he protects the super rich, accepts Israel’s control of him, and allows the CIA-military-industrial complex to do its worldwide killing and looting of the treasury, he will be allowed to entertain and excite the public,” [opposed by the Democrats] “whose intentions are as benign as an assassin’s smile.”

In short a complex, challenging, wonderful read.  Take some time from your digital world and find a copy of “Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies – Critical and Lyrical Essays” to read in a quiet place where the individual essays may be read at leisure, and your mind is entertained, informed, and challenged all at the same time.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies

Author: Edward Curtin

ISBN: 9781949762266

Published: 2020

Options: EBOOK – Epub and Kindle, paper, PDF

Click here to order.

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As bargaining at the Detroit 3 automakers kicks off in Canada, union members are fighting back against a longstanding undemocratic contract ratification process. In an unprecedented development, the Solidarity Movement, a rank-and-file movement within Unifor, has launched a petition to demand full disclosure of the collective agreement before voting takes place. Since the launch in early August around 1,600 members have signed.

Though the collective agreement is one of the most important documents to shape a worker’s life, Canadian auto workers at General Motors, Fiat-Chrysler, and Ford are not allowed to see it before we are asked to ratify it. Unifor, the largest private sector union in Canada, represents nearly 17,000 auto workers at the Detroit 3.

The petition calls on Unifor leadership to “provide full disclosure of the contents of the contract, 5 days before ratification, by publishing all revisions, additions, deletions and changes to the contract, clearly marked, on the Unifor National website and the websites of the locals involved in ‘Detroit Three’ bargaining.” It also requests “that the ratification highlights include a clear statement of all money and benefits negotiated on behalf of union representatives and any money or benefits negotiated to be paid to the Locals and/or National Union.”

In the U.S., the United Auto Workers publishes the full contract with all changes on its website, where Detroit 3 members can read it before they go to their ratification/information meetings—a longtime demand of American union reformers. The UAW began posting the tentative Detroit 3 contracts online in 2011.

Unifor National President Jerry Dias has been dismissive. When asked for comment by Automotive News, Dias was reported as saying “the petition was not on his radar.” “I’ll take my lead from the leadership, and leadership will make a decision on what they want to do internally within their own workplaces,” Dias said. “I don’t chase mice when I’m hunting elephants.”

The Solidarity Movement asks, Who does Jerry think are the mice? The members’ concerns should be acknowledged, not simply dismissed. Real democracy means taking our lead from the members.

Behind Closed Doors

Historically, auto negotiations are secretive. Once contract demands are collected by leadership, workers are nearly shut out of bargaining, which take place behind closed doors. At the completion of bargaining, information/ratification meetings are immediately scheduled.

As members enter the meeting they are given a handout called a “Bargaining Report.” The Bargaining Report contains highlights of the tentative agreement and includes messages from the national president and other leaders encouraging ratification. Union leadership and staff make a presentation on the highlights of the agreement. Members are given limited time and opportunity to ask questions and no opportunity to meaningfully discuss with each other before being required to vote. Historically, voting has taken place at the information meeting. This year, because of COVID-19, it has been announced that ratification will be electronic.

Casting an informed vote is a critical component of democracy. While the Bargaining Report and the presentations are important, they are not enough. This undemocratic ratification process has been used to sell the contracts that delivered major concessions.

For examples of items not included in previous Bargaining Reports, check out the Solidarity Movement’s FAQs.

What’s at Stake?

More than a decade of concessions have left Canadian auto workers with a two-tier workforce. Second-tier workers have a 10-year grow-in that still doesn’t lead to parity, and they have lost the defined-benefit pension plan. The massively expanded use of temporary workers is eroding union solidarity as workers with grossly different incomes and protections try to find common ground.

Yet predictably, the job security promised in exchange for the concessions has not appeared. Despite record profits, in the billions of dollars, the number of jobs in Canadian Detroit 3 facilities continues to shrink. It is against this backdrop that 2020 bargaining is taking place.

In Bargaining Update #3 posted September 6, Unifor leaders are vague about their goals, as is their custom, leaving members with not much of a yardstick to measure outcomes. “We have expressed to the company that job security is critical and that we aim to discuss product and program allocations in each of our facilities over the course of negotiations. Additionally, we have made clear to the companies that there is no intent to negotiate a concessionary agreement. Rather, it is our objective to make monetary improvements for all Unifor members. This also includes proposed improvements to the 2012 New Hire Program.”

On a positive note, the union says it seeks a three-year agreement, to align with U.S. Detroit 3 contract expirations, instead of what has become the expected four-year term.

With the stakes so high, the complexities of the collective agreements, and the closed bargaining process; being able to cast an informed vote has never been more important.

Democracy in the Constitution

The Unifor constitution makes it clear that Unifor is intended to be a democratic organization and for the members to control the union. Article 2, Section 1 states, “Unifor is a voluntary organization that belongs to its members. It is controlled by members and driven by members. Its role is to serve their collective interests in the workplace and in our communities. The life of Unifor is shaped by the essential ingredient of democratic participation. Democratic values are the foundation of all that we do. Our commitment to the principles and practices of democratic unionism define who we are and are reflected in our rules, structures, and processes.”

Our constitution cannot just be words on paper. If union leadership doesn’t live and breathe to empower and engage the membership, if leadership limits worker agency, participation, discussion, and debate, then the inevitable outcome is a weak, disempowered membership that can’t fight back when the bosses are trying to walk all over us.

Unifor members are often told to just trust our leadership. But ratifying a collective agreement isn’t about rubberstamping whatever the leadership brings. If that were the case, why would we even go to the time and trouble of having a ratification vote? With technology today, it couldn’t be cheaper or easier to make the contract available ahead of ratification.

For more information please go to SolidarityMovement.ca.

Unifor has announced Ford as the target company to set the pattern in 2020 bargaining. The strike deadline is September 21.

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Rebecca Keetch is on the education and political action committees of Unifor Local 222. Contact her at [email protected] or by Facebook Messenger.

Featured image: Canadian auto workers are petitioning for full disclosure of their contracts before they vote. This meme was captioned “Is it really a tough decision?” (Source: Labor Notes)

Businessman Trump is a political novice, a geopolitical know-nothing.

Longtime Washington insider Biden has been active politically since 1973 as a US senator, vice president, and presidential aspirant.

He never met a US war of aggression against a nation threatening no one or color revolution he didn’t wholeheartedly endorse.

Throughout his public life, he’s been pro-war, pro-business, anti-progressive, anti-labor, anti-governance serving everyone equitably— anti-what matters most to ordinary Americans.

If “elected” in November by fair or foul means, he’ll likely continue or escalate ongoing wars on invented enemies and perhaps launch new ones.

He bragged about being Obama’s geopolitical expert, once saying he was picked as vice president because his boss “lacked background in foreign policy.”

Obama bragged about bombing seven countries in eight years — Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia.

Did he order preemptive strikes on these countries without just cause based on advise given him by Biden?

According to Washington Post articles published last December, chickenhawk Biden as senator and vice president promoted US aggression in Afghanistan from inception, opposing its resolution.

Wanting his warrior past reinvented, he lied saying “I’m the guy, from the beginning, who argued that it was a big, big mistake to surge forces to Afghanistan. Period.”

“We should not have done it, and I argued against it constantly.”

He’s one of many “guys” in Washington who backed every US war of choice against invented enemies throughout his near-half century in politics — opposing none of them.

Like many figures in the nation’s capital, he disagreed at times on tactics, not fundamental imperial policy.

WaPo “won release of more than 2,000 pages of ‘Lessons Learned’ interviews conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” it reported, adding:

“Those interviews reveal there was no consensus on the war’s objectives, let alone how to end the conflict.”

WaPo also obtained “confidential” Bush/Cheney regime memos. Material it reviewed showed that from inception to 2019, US ruling authorities “failed…for nearly two decades to deliver on their promises to end the war” in Afghanistan they want continued.

Biden shares guilt with others in high places. According to retired Army Col. Bob Crowley, a counterinsurgency advisor in Kabul from 2013 to 2014:

US “strategy became self-validating. Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible.”

The pretext for attacking Afghanistan in October 2001 was fabricated.

Countless trillions of dollars have been poured down a bottomless black hole of waste, fraud, abuse, Big Lies, and mass deception on all US preemptive wars of choice.

Biden supported them all wholeheartedly. As US senator in 1998, he told Senate Foreign Relations Committee members that “taking down Saddam” was the only way to eliminate his WMDs he knew were eliminated and no longer existed.

He told chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who confirmed the elimination of Saddam’s WMDs, that as long as he remained in power, there’s no way “to guarantee” that they don’t exist.

In 1995, Saddam’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel defected to the West.

In debriefings, he explained that “(a)ll weapons – biological, chemical, missile (and radiological) – were destroyed…Nothing remained.”

Interviewed by CNN’s Brett Sadler at the time, he was asked: “Can you state here and now – does Iraq still to this day hold weapons of mass destruction?”

Kamel responded “(n)o. Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction. I am being completely honest about this.”

After US forces invaded and smashed Iraq in 2003, Western inspectors found no WMDs.

They were eliminated as Kamel and Ritter explained, what Biden knew at the time but pretended otherwise.

He supported genocidal sanctions on ordinary Iraqis and Bush/Cheney’s 2003 aggression.

As foreign policy advisor to Obama, he backed preemptive US war on Libya and Syria, along with terror-bombing five other countries during two terms in office.

If he succeeds Trump in January, he’ll likely ramp up unlawful occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Perhaps he’ll preemptively strike Iran and other sovereign independent countries free from US control.

His near-half century in Washington leaves no doubt that he’s pro-endless wars of aggression, pro-corporate predation, pro-dirty business as usual, anti-peace, equity, justice and the rule of law.

Followers of my writing know I’m sharply critical of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy, his serving privileged interests over public health and welfare, his serial lying and much more to his discredit.

Yet unlike the Clintons, Bush/Cheney, and Obama/Biden, he launched no new hot wars on his watch.

I deplore his failure to end ongoing ones and wars by other means on Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and other countries, along with surrounding himself with right-wing extremists Pompeo, Elliott Abrams, and others cut from the same cloth.

A Biden presidency will likely end the string of years with no US wars of aggression.

For over the past century, Dems initiated many more wars than Republicans, warrior Biden likely to continue that recklessly dangerous tradition.

It’s what Hillary would have done if elected in 2016, in her case, perhaps launching WW III by accident or design — with nukes able to kill us all.

Biden is too pro-endless wars of aggression to trust as president and commander-in-chief with his finger on the nuclear trigger, perhaps willing to squeeze it.

Trump hasn’t gone that far. As a billionaire businessman-turned politician, he’s more interested in moneymaking, further self-enrichment, and serving likeminded privileged interests than waging endless wars.

Time and again, politicians reinvent themselves when campaigning for office, making promises to be broken if elected.

It’s why nothing members of the US political class say can be believed, none trusted.

Throughout his time in Washington, he pledged one thing campaigning, then did something entirely different.

Interviewed by Stars and Stripes last week, he expressed support for ending US “forever wars,” adding:

“I support drawing down the troops (sic). But here’s the problem. We still have to worry about terrorism (sic).”

He knows but failed to say that ISIS, al-Qaeda, and likeminded jihadists were made-in-the-USA, used by the Pentagon and CIA as proxy forces — heavily armed, funded, trained, and directed to serve US interests in nations US dark forces want transformed into vassal states.

As president, Biden is certain to continue endless US new millennium wars of aggression.

He wouldn’t be Dem standard bearer otherwise. Peaceniks don’t qualify for US high office, clearly not the highest.

Biden’s warrior credentials got him the Dem nomination to assure continuity if elected.

He also told Stars and Stripes that reductions in the US war budget won’t happen on his watch, increases alone for certain.

Last week, US CENTCOM commander General Frank McKenzie said US forces in Iraq will be reduced by around 2,200, force strength in Afghanistan cut by around 4,100, as Trump ordered.

Will Biden as president ramp up what Trump draws down? His pro-endless wars suggest it.

After Obama ended US occupation of Iraq in 2011, thousands of Pentagon forces again occupied the country.

According to Stars and Stripes, Biden said as president and commander-in-chief, he’ll “press for (US) military strength…to maintain (the Pentagon’s) dominant position as the world’s most powerful force.”

The publication quoted him saying “(f)irst thing I’m going to have to do, and I’m not joking.”

“If elected, I’m going to have to get on the phone with the heads of state and say America’s back.” You can count on us.”

What he means is that the worst of the Clintons, Bush/Cheney, and the Obama regime he was part of will be prioritized on his watch — virtually guaranteeing endless US aggression will continue in current war theaters, new ones perhaps launched.

A vote for Biden supports an agenda hostile to what just societies cherish.

His longstanding record in office proves it.

It’s why I urge voting independent to make a statement or stay home.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

This video was first published in 2015.

Naval Concepts of Chemical and Biological Warfare (1952), Department of Defense Film Production, National Archives and Records Administration Catalogue 428.MN.9170A.

Obtained by GovernmentAttic.org via the Freedom of Information Act on 30 September 2015 (Direct link here).

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Featured image is by Mikhail Semenov /Shutterstock

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its relentless march across the globe, the unanticipated consequences are reaching every corner of our crowded planet. One such corner is Delaware Bay on the northeast seaboard of the United States, an estuary whose vast expanse of salt marsh wetlands serves as a breeding ground for the Atlantic (or American) horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus). With its bizarre helmet-like appearance, which has remained virtually unchanged for many millions of years, this species is what is known as a “living fossil.” Having survived repeated mass extinctions, this amazing blue-blooded animal is under siege from the biomedical industry, and conservationists warn that current efforts to develop and test coronavirus vaccines could accelerate its disappearance from the seas.

Blue Bloodletting

The nexus of the biomedical industry’s interest in the horseshoe crab lies in its blue blood —oxygen is transported by copper, not iron, giving it a blue colour— which contains a protein that is extremely sensitive to bacterial contamination, forming a clot when it encounters a pathogen. The clotting agent, called limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL, the most sensitive indicator of bacteria ever discovered, is widely used to test implants and injectable medicines, including vaccines, for the presence of bacterial contaminants, called endotoxins, which can lead to aseptic shock and even death.

Image on the right is from Needpix

To obtain the highly coveted LAL —currently valued at around 25,000 euros a litre— an industry has emerged that transports hundreds of thousands of these marine arthropods annually to nearby facilities where laboratory technicians puncture the animal’s shell and drain about 30% of its blood from a vein near the heart. After the bleeding process, the disoriented animals are released back into the wild, although some reports claim that unscrupulous operators have sometimes sold the bled crabs for baitinstead of returning them to the water.

Larry Niles, a wildlife and habitat-restoration biologist associated with the conservation organization Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition, explained to OpenMind that “it takes about 300 crabs to make a quart [of LAL] and the international industries bleed about 600,000 crabs a year, mostly coming from Delaware Bay.” While most animals do survive the arduous process, “numerous papers have shown the mortality rate is twice that reported by the industry, not 15% but closer to 30%,” explains Niles, adding that “published studies show that bleeding reduces the potential for breeding.”

Conservationists fear that the billions of doses of coronavirus vaccine coming down the pipe will drastically increase the demand for LAL and “open the door to the massive killing of crabs.”

An Animal-friendly Alternative

A synthetic substitute for LAL known as Recombinant Factor C (rFC) has been available for nearly two decades and has recently been approved for widespread use by the European Pharmacopeia Commission. However, on May 29, 2020, the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP), the organisation that makes decisions about drug safety in the USA, announced that the rFC test requires two more years of study before it can be approved for use in the USA.

Image below is from domdomegg

USP’s decision means that U.S. drug manufacturers wishing to use the more sustainable synthetic test will need to invest more time and money to demonstrate its equivalency to the LAL test, and companies that want to export medicines to the USA, including potential coronavirus vaccines, will have to continue testing them using LAL from horseshoe crab blood. Industry observers such as Niles are suspicious: “The USP was ready to adopt rFC, then abruptly changed course, saying that one stakeholder requested it. We think the bleeding companies intervened, but the process is secretive.”

Niles would like biomedical laboratories to “adopt a no mortality goal and conduct an open adaptive management process to reduce kills that can be verified independently,” and that the USP approve the use of rFC as a replacement for LAL. He also calls for the end of the practice of using horseshoe crabs as bait.

Scary-looking but Harmless

Although referred to as crabs, Limulus polyphemus are actually marine arthropods, more closely related to spiders, and especially scorpions, but unlike their venomous cousins, these armoured creatures are completely harmless. While their long, pointed tail (called a telson) may look menacing, it contains no venom and is used to help them if they get flipped over by a wave. Their set of ten spindly legs and pinchers may inspire nightmares, but they are only used to mash food (primarily clams and mussels) before pushing it into their toothless mouth situated between the legs.

Image on the right is from Pxhere

The horseshoe crab gets its name from the horseshoe shaped exoskeleton that protects its interior. Ten different eyes (or light sensing organs) are distributed around the body, the study of which led in part to the awarding of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Ragnar Granit, Haldan Keffer Hartline and George Wald for discoveries concerning the visual processes of the eye.

Millions of Eggs Support an Ecosystem

As a keystone species, the horseshoe crab “is a vital source of almost unimaginable natural wealth,” says Niles. During the spawning season, which normally occurs in May and June, females lay two clusters totalling about 80,000 eggs, about 15 centimetres into the sand. “Six of the most threatened Arctic nesting shorebirds rely on horseshoe crab eggs to build fat reserves to fuel the flight to the Canadian Arctic and the start of incubation,” he tells OpenMind. The eggs and larvae also feed a variety of young fish and “the dead crabs help to provide nutrients for buried developing eggs,” he adds.

Image below: Asturnut

While the Atlantic horseshoe crab population seems to have stabilised somewhat after crashing during the 1990s due to overharvesting for bait for commercial fisheries, the other three horseshoe crab species, all located in Asia, are all trending downward under intense pressure from human consumption, the production of TAL (the Asian equivalent to LAL), rapid habitat loss and global warming.

However, one should think twice before betting against the horseshoe crab’s continued long-term survival, given that the species has been inhabiting the oceans for at least 450 million years (predating flying insects and flowering plants), while successfully navigating inconceivable climate change and surviving several previous extinction events, including the meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This is clearly a species with an impressive track record for survival, something that cannot yet be said of the humans drawn to its remarkable blue blood and the riches it contains.

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A Brexit quandary has been making the rounds on social media as the Britain’s exit from the union looms.

With just months to go until the end of the transition period and just weeks until the two sides must arrive at a deal, reminders of the potential economic fall out of the split have been circulating online.

Last year it was reported that a raft of companies have left the UK to safeguard themselves from the negative effects of withdrawing from the union.

Sporadic and random fire damage looks like its spreading along roads a lot more than dense vegetation.

Look how clean the paved streets are!

Not much wind during this event?

Meanwhile, a random homeless man is charged with arson.

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As I wrote 11 months ago, Raab and Johnson sought legal advice on breaking the Withdrawal Agreement even before signing it, in a truly shocking example of bad faith negotiation. If mainstream journalists did the slightest actual journalism, they would have realised this was always Johnson’s plan.

As I wrote on October 15 2019, while the Withdrawal Agreement was being negotiated with the EU:

There is currently considerable alarm in the FCO that Legal Advisers have been asked about the circumstances constituting force majeure which would justify the UK in breaking a EU Withdrawal Agreement in the future. The EU did not fall for Johnson’s idea that a form of Northern Irish “backstop” would only come into effect with the future sanction of Stormont, as this effectively gives a hardline unionist veto, and Barnier was not born yesterday. The situation that Johnson and Raab appear now to contemplate is agreeing a “backstop” now to get Brexit done, but then not implementing the agreed backstop when the time comes due to “force majeure”.

There are two major problems with this line of thinking. The first is that it will give unionists an incentive to foment disorder in order to justify breaking the backstop agreement – indeed there is a concern that might be the tacit understanding Johnson is reaching with the DUP. Remember the British state conspired with the same people to murder the lawyer Pat Finucane and destroyed the evidence as recently as 2002.

The second problem is one of bad faith negotiation, and this is what is troubling the diplomats of the FCO. To negotiate an agreement with the secret intention of breaking it in future is a grossly immoral proceeding, and undermines the whole principle of good international relations. I should like to be able to say that I am sure this cannot be the intention. But when I look at Johnson, Raab and Cummings, I am really not so sure at all. It is possible that Johnson will succeed in the apparently insurmountable challenge of securing a deal all parties can agree, by the simple strategy of promising some parties he has no intention of honouring it.

For Johnson, the Withdrawal Agreement provisions on Northern Ireland were only ever a device to get him over an immediate political difficulty. The fact he simply lied throughout the election campaign that the Withdrawal Agreement imposed no new checks or paperwork between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, should have made plain he was not serious about it. He had simply lied to the countries of the EU in signing a treaty he never had an intention to honour. He simply does not see himself as bound by any notion of honour or honesty.

The UK is acting grossly illegally in continuing to occupy the Chagos Islands against the firm direction of the International Court of Justice and the UN General Assembly. It is a rogue state. It is led by a man whose word cannot be trusted even when he signs a treaty. Other states do notice this kind of thing. Whether you are in favour of Brexit or against it, nobody can sensibly suggest this kind of gross insult to the European Union is a sensible way to start a future relationship.

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Featured image is from TruePublica

The UK’s Royal Air Force is refusing to release video footage that shows fighter pilots from Saudi Arabia conducting air attacks in Britain, as part of a controversial military training scheme which involves 25 civilian airports.

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Saudi air force pilots are being allowed to conduct “air-to-ground training sorties” in Britain, Declassifiedhas found.

Video recordings of the bombing sorties are being withheld by the RAF, which refuses to release the footage in case it upsets diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

An oil-rich dictatorship, Saudi Arabia is one of the UK’s closest military allies. The RAF is providing support to the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

British officials felt the footage was so sensitive that they decided it was not in the public interest to disclose the tapes.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) said in response to a freedom of information request by Declassified that disclosure would reveal the “effectiveness and capability” of Saudi pilots, as the videos show “the impact of the air-to-ground attacks, such as how much damage they can initiate”.

Details about the types of missiles used, the Battle Damage Assessment and Collateral Damage Estimation are also being withheld.

The MOD even “requested the consent” of the Saudi air force “about releasing information on RSAF pilots” but declined Declassified’s request before the Saudis had “provided their views on the matter.”

The cover-up comes while the Saudi-led coalition stands accused of conducting airstrikes on civilian targets in Yemen, including hospitals and weddings.

According to the Yemen Data Project, at least 18,500 civilians have been killed or injured in airstrikes since the war began in 2015.

Campaign Against Arms Trade told Declassified the Saudi tapes should be published. Its spokesman Andrew Smith said: “UK-trained Saudi pilots have had a devastating impact on Yemen, where they are flying UK-made fighter jets and dropping UK-made bombs. We should have every right to see these videos and to know the full details of what training is being done in our name and on UK soil.

“The fact that these tapes will expose how much damage these weapons can initiate is precisely why they must be made available, because these weapons are being used right now in Yemen, and the impact has been terrible.”

Training

Saudi Arabia’s air force heavily relies on British training, support and equipment to stay in operation.

More than 100 Saudi air force pilots have learnt to fly at RAF bases in the UK over the last decade, with some undergoing training as recently as July.

All of the Saudi pilots “are trained to the same standards as RAF combat ready pilots,” according to the MOD.

Yahya Assiri, a former Saudi air force officer, told Declassified:

“Saudi Arabia couldn’t continue its violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Yemen without the support of its Western allies.”

Assiri, who now runs the ALQST human rights group, added:

“There’s no support inside the country for these violations – even the royal family is now divided on the issue. And by training these Saudi pilots, and enhancing their capacity to attack Yemeni civilians, the UK is participating in war crimes and contributing to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”

Around a third of the UK’s training for Saudi pilots has taken place at RAF Valley in north Wales, where cadets have learnt how to fly the Hawk jet despite local opposition to the scheme.

The Hawk is made by British arms giant BAE Systems, which has supplied £15-billion worth of equipment and support to the Saudi military since the Yemen war began.

When challenged in court over the arms sales, MOD officials have sought to defend the exports by highlighting the training it has provided to the Saudi air force.

In August 2016, the MOD’s director-general of security policy, Peter Watkins, said in a witness statement:

“This has included training them in the use of specific precision guided munitions, such as Paveway IV and Storm Shadow.”

An RAF Typhoon drops a Paveway IV missile on Garvie Island in Scotland (Photo: RAF / YouTube)

The Paveway IV is a 500-lb smart bomb whose guidance system is made by the arms company Raytheon UK at a site in Glenrothes, Scotland. Raytheon’s UK operation is chaired by Conservative peer Lord Strathclyde.

Human Rights Watch believes the Saudi-led coalition may have committed a war crime when it used a Paveway IV missile to bomb a food warehouse near Yemen’s Hodeidah port in January 2016.

Although the MOD refuses to release videos of Saudi pilots training with such weapons in the UK, the RAF has previously published footage on its YouTube channel of a British pilot dropping a Paveway IV missile on Garvie Island in northern Scotland.

Garvie Island, near Cape Wrath, is one of five locations in the UK which RAF pilots use as “air weapons ranges” to practise bombing. The other sites are Tain in the Highlands, Pembrey Sands in south Wales, and Donna Nook and Holbeach in eastern England.

Civilian airports

As well as using bombing ranges in Britain during their flying lessons, Declassified can also reveal that the Saudi military pilots are allowed to use dozens of civilian airports in the UK for practice.

Although it was already known that Saudi pilots at RAF Valley can use the nearby civilian airport at Ronaldsway on the Isle of Man, the full extent of this arrangement has remained hidden until now.

The MOD told the Celtic League movement last year that: “The RAF utilises several local airfields within the vicinity of RAF Valley, including civilian airfields on the Isle of Man to practise visual approaches and departures.”

“International trainee pilots conduct the same training as their RAF colleagues and none are limited in their use of local airfields for training.”

Declassified can now reveal that in addition to Ronaldsway, Saudi pilots at RAF Valley and RAF Cranwell, in Lincolnshire, are allowed to use 24 civilian airfields in Britain during their flying lessons.

However, the MOD refused to specify exactly which sites are used. The RAF said it would have to spend 13 days “to manually cross-reference flight records with the appropriate forms from each sortie for each day, to ascertain if Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) Pilots will have used a civilian airfield”.

Instead, it provided a list of 25 civilian and commercial airfields in the UK and Isle of Man which Saudi pilots “may have used during their flying training” at RAF Cranwell and Valley, on the basis that such sites are routinely used for practising.

Cardiff and Liverpool

The list includes airports in Cardiff and Liverpool, cities which both have long established Yemeni communities dating back to the 19th century when sailors from the then colonial port of Aden arrived in Britain.

Recent months have seen peace protests across the UK by Yemeni activists, with the number of asylum claims from the country rising steeply since the war began. The latest Home Office figures show that in the 12 months from June 2019, 410 Yemenis claimed asylum in the UK, a 93% rise on the previous year.

Rehab Jaffer, a British-Yemeni lawyer from Liverpool, said the Saudi air force training was “abhorrent”. She told Declassified:

“They are conducting ‘training’ exercises only a few miles away from the relatives of those they seem to be targeting in Yemen – with UK supplied arms. If we arm them and bring them here to train them, whose hands is the blood of Yemeni civilians really on?”

The revelation that Saudi pilots can use Britain’s network of small civilian airports raises the prospect that local councils – which often invest in such sites – could object to the scheme. Ten percent of Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport is owned by Liverpool City Council, which is controlled by Labour. The party’s 2019 Manifesto called for a suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Jaffer commented:

“Liverpool’s economy has benefited from the thriving Yemeni community within it. The least the city council can do is refuse to endorse or allow the training of the Saudi forces who go on to target their families in Yemen.”

Mounting concerns

On Wednesday, the UN’s expert group on Yemen criticised Britain and other states’ continued “support of parties to the conflict including through arms transfers, thereby helping to perpetuate the conflict”.

The group also warned the Saudi-led coalition for failing to “take all necessary measures to minimise civilian casualties” during its airstrikes on Yemen.

Last month British soldier Ahmed al-Batati was arrested by the Royal Military Police in London for protesting against UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

The UK has an extremely close military and intelligence relationship with Saudi Arabia. Declassified has previously revealed details of a secretive communications project the UK runs for Saudi Arabia’s National Guard and that a British military mission in the country trains the Saudis in “internal security”.

UK intelligence agencies also trained a senior Saudi official at a course in the UK last year, Declassified found.

Declassified did not contact the MOD for comment before publishing this story, as its press office has said it will “no longer deal” with our publication.

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Phil Miller is staff reporter at Declassified UK, an investigative journalism organisation that covers the UK’s role in the world. Follow Declassified on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up to receive Declassified’s monthly newsletter here.

Featured image: Saudi air force Hawk jets, which Saudi pilots have learnt to fly in Britain (Photo: Gian Marco Anzellotti / Creative Commons 2.0)

It was no surprise to hear US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declare at the weekend that the UAE and Israel have agreed to form a security and military alliance against Iran to ‘protect’ US interests and the Middle East after normalising relations via their so-called ‘Abraham Accord’. The two states have never been in a state of war, and the UAE has never harmed a single Israeli either directly or indirectly since its establishment. It had until recently been considered a ‘peaceable’ country — its only direct war having been waged against fellow Arab Yemen. But this characterization is set to change as it turns into the frontline on the Arabian Peninsula of a military confrontation against its eastern neighbour Iran.

All previous Arab-Israeli peace and normalisation agreements may have put an end to actual states of war and hostilities on the ground as they were concluded with confrontation states. But they did not condone any continued Israeli military presence on Egyptian or Jordanian soil and restricted security cooperation within limits. The exception was the Oslo Accords, one of whose key stipulations was the creation of Palestinian security forces (which came to be known as ‘Dayton’s Forces’ after the American general who oversaw them) as an adjunct to Israel’s to prevent any actions against the occupation and its settlers.

The UAE-Israel deal takes things to a whole new level, breaking all former taboos under the new guise of ‘peace-for-protection’. The focus is mainly on the security and military aspects and permitting an Israeli presence in bases and outposts on Emirati soil. The presence of Israeli National Security Advisor General Meir Ben-Shabbat and Mossad chief Yossi Cohen on the El Al flight that took Jared Kushner from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi makes this plain. The Israelis are being welcomed to the Arabian Peninsula not just as guests or tourists but as protectors and allies.

The latest sermon from Saudi official cleric Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, Imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, singing the praises of normalisation with ‘the Jews’ and upholding their rightful possession of the land is a sign of things to come.

This agreement and those that will follow mean there will be an Israeli military and security military presence just across the water from Iran’s oil and military infrastructure on the Gulf’s eastern coast, right on the borders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman, and within striking distance of Yemen. According to Pompeo, this agreement will transform the conflict in the Middle East from Arab-Israeli to Arab-Iranian, and perhaps Arab-Turkish later on. And while Israel is certainly interested in commercial and financial deals with the Emirates, security and military considerations take precedence due to the supposedly existential threat posed by Iran according to both US and Israeli assessments.

A key Israeli priority is control of maritime routes, and the agreement positions Israeli forces just a few kilometres from the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman. If reports of Israel’s intention to establish military bases in Aden in coordination with its new UAE ally are true, that would entail control over the Bab al-Mandeb Strait that governs access to the Red Sea, Suez Canal and Gulf of Aqaba.

The Trump administration is no longer trying to create an ‘axis of moderation’ joining the Gulf states with Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. These three countries lost their enthusiasm for the idea after it became clear this coalition would be Ied by Israel and could involve them in wars to consolidate its dominance against Iran and Turkey, the Middle East’s other two rising powers. So Washington has settled for the consent of most (if not all) of the Gulf states, at least in principle.

We have still only seen the tip of the iceberg of the UAE-Israeli agreement. All we have to go on are leaks and briefings by US and Israeli officials which give only a small part of the picture. Saudi and Bahraini airspace has now been opened to allow Israeli civilian and military aircraft to fly through en route to the UAE. They may later do so to bomb Iranian nuclear reactors and infrastructure. We cannot anticipate the next shocking surprise. But it is not unlikely that Abu Dhabi has been urging Washington to compel other Gulf states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman to sign their own ‘peace’ agreements with Israel too, so that the UAE does not remain standing alone in a position which most of the Arab peoples find abhorrent. This would explain the growing direct or indirect applause and diminishing criticism of the UAE’s move in the overwhelmingly state-controlled Arab media.

The UAE-Israeli agreement is ostensibly about peace but implicitly about war. Why else would the UAE be purchasing F-35 stealth aircraft with US approval? Israel’s objections to this deal are purely theatrical. It knows these planes would never be used against it. They are to be used against Iran and its Axis of Resistance, and to provide their manufacturer Lockheed Martin with additional funding.

Israel is already engaged in war by stealth against Iran by bombing its allies and bases in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon and sabotaging its vital infrastructure. It is currently preparing for this war to be transferred to the Iranian heartland, and to be waged directly from the soil of its new Gulf allies. Secret talks between Tehran and Washington on an amended nuclear deal could conceivably avert that. But Israel remains the biggest winner in all this, if only temporarily.

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Featured image is from Raialyoum

A US judge ordered Saudi Arabia to make 24 current and former officials, including a former ambassador to the United States, available for questioning in a lawsuit claiming it provided assistance for the attacks that took place on 11 September 2001, lawyers for the victims said on Friday.

Saudi Arabia has long denied involvement in the attacks, in which almost 3,000 people died as hijacked jetliners crashed into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside Washington, and a field in western Pennsylvania. Friday marked the 19th anniversary of the attacks.

The Saudi government’s media office did not immediately respond to a request for comment after business hours, Reuters said, and a Washington-based lawyer for the country declined to comment.

US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn‘s decision was made public on Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

It followed another judge’s March 2018 rejection of Saudi Arabia’s bid to dismiss the litigation, in which families of those killed, as well as tens of thousands of people who suffered injuries, as well as businesses and insurers, are seeking billions of dollars in damages.

While rejecting some of the plaintiffs’ requests for depositions, Netburn said those who could be questioned include Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was the Saudi ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005 and is a member of the Saudi royal family, Reuters reported.

She said Saudi Arabia “persuasively” argued that documents did not suggest the prince oversaw the work of two officials the plaintiffs linked to the attacks.

Still, the judge said the plaintiffs’ materials indicated he “likely has first-hand knowledge” of the role one official “was assigned by the Kingdom and the diplomatic cover provided to the propagators” working in the United States.

A drawn-out legal battle

It was not immediately clear how Saudi Arabia might arrange for or compel testimony by its citizens, including those no longer in the government.

James Kreindler, a lawyer for the victims, called the decision a “major development” because Saudi Arabia had produced little documentation concerning its government officials working in the United States before the attacks.

The almost two-decade-old lawsuit has faced several major obstacles over the years.

In March, a legal team representing survivors and families accused Saudi authorities of trying to silence at least four of their witnesses in the case, saying they had been threatened or intimidated by alleged Saudi agents.

On those grounds, the plaintiffs’ legal team requested that the identities of the witnesses in the drawn-out legal battle be protected and kept secret.

The lawyers of the 9/11 victims invoked the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi officials in Turkey as evidence of the kingdom’s potential threat against their witnesses.

Lawyers representing the Saudi government denied allegations of witness tampering, saying the claims were “based on hearsay within hearsay”.

The defence also accused the plaintiffs’ lawyers of trying to gain a “tactical advantage” in legal deposition interviews with witnesses.

In 2016, both chambers of the US Congress voted to override president Barack Obama’s veto of the bill that gave 9/11 families the right to sue Saudi Arabia.

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Featured image: The World Trade Center south tower (L) bursts into flames after being struck by hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 as the north tower burns following an earlier attack by a hijacked airliner in New York City in this September 11, 2001 file photo. REUTERS/Sean Adair/Files  (UNITED STATES DISASTER POLITICS)

Following the US and China imposing tit-for-tat restrictions on each other’s diplomats and embassy staff, China’s defense ministry on Sunday blasted the US as the “destroyer of world peace”.

The statements are specifically in response to the Department of Defense releasing a report earlier this month which predicted that “Over the next decade, China’s nuclear warhead stockpile — currently estimated to be in the low 200s — is projected to at least double in size as China expands and modernizes its nuclear forces.”

Chinese defense ministry spokesman Col. Wu Qian responded,

“Many years of evidence shows that it is the U.S. that is the fomenter of regional unrest, the violator of the international order and the destroyer of world peace.”

He listed US regime change and destabilizing actions in Iraq, Syria, Libya and other countries, according to the AP:

U.S. actions in Iraq, Syria, Libya and other countries over the past two decades have resulted in the deaths of more than 800,000 people and displacement of millions, Qian said.

“Rather than reflecting on itself, the U.S. issued a so-called report that made false comments about China’s normal defense and military construction,” he said in the statement. “We call on the U.S. to view China’s national defense and military construction objectively and rationally, cease making false statements and related reports, and take concrete actions to safeguard the healthy development of bilateral military relations.”

“Rather than reflecting on itself, the U.S. issued a so-called report that made false comments about China’s normal defense and military construction,” he added.

“We call on the U.S. to view China’s national defense and military construction objectively and rationally, cease making false statements and related reports, and take concrete actions to safeguard the healthy development of bilateral military relations.”

This also follows days ago the Chinese government’s senior diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi charging that Washington is “the biggest driver of militarization” in the region, particularly the South China Sea.

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Donald Trump’s unorthodox approach to the conduct of diplomatic relations has been a persistent thorn in the side of America’s national security establishment for the last four years. Like a typical American, he regards America’s allies, like Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau, as subordinates beholden to him personally; whereas he treats adversaries, such as Russian President Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, as independent leaders deserving (from a public relations standpoint) a semblance of “equal treatment and respect”.

The conspiracy theories perpetuated by the establishment-controlled media that Trump is Putin’s stooge and alleged Russian interference in America’s domestic politics are brazen fabrications.

Russian netizens indeed lent moral support to the Trump campaign in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential race but simply because they despised Hillary Clinton, who the Russians regarded as an interventionist hawk responsible for initiating proxy wars in Libya and Syria in 2011 as Obama’s secretary of state, and also because she was the wife of Bill Clinton who was responsible for the break-up of former Yugoslavia in the nineties.

Despite the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary by a margin of 2.87 million votes. Had it not been for the archaic electoral college system and James Comey, then the director of FBI, opening last-minute investigation into Hillary Clinton using personal computers for official communications, Hillary was the favorite to win the elections.

According to Washington’s own intelligence estimates, three powers are currently vying for interference in upcoming presidential elections slated for November 3. Two of those, China and Iran, favor Joe Biden because Trump initiated the trade war with China and cancelled the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, whereas Russia allegedly supports Trump.

Trump is a conservative, and it’s a known empirical observation that conservatives typically are considerably more patriotic than liberals. Collaborating with foreign powers to undermine one’s national interest doesn’t appeal to the conservative mindset. Throughout its four-year tenure, the Trump administration has continued with the policy of its predecessors. If anything, diplomatic relations between Washington and Moscow have significantly worsened during Trump’s tenure.

In Syria, for instance, the Trump administration has continued with the policy of its predecessor Obama administration. In order to understand the backdrop of the proxy war in Syria, when Russia deployed its forces and military hardware to Syria in September 2015, the militant proxies of Washington and its regional clients were on the verge of drawing a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of the Bashar al-Assad government.

With the help of the Russian air power, the Syrian government has since reclaimed most of Syria’s territory from the insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by the Turkish-backed militants and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington and its regional clients.

Moreover, several momentous events have taken place in the Syrian theater of proxy wars and on the global stage that have further soured the diplomatic relations between Moscow and Washington.

On February 7, 2018, the US B-52 bombers and Apache helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces in Deir al-Zor province of eastern Syria that reportedly [1] killed and wounded scores of Russian military contractors working for the Russian private security firm, the Wagner Group.

The survivors described the bombing as an absolute massacre, and Moscow lost more Russian nationals in one day than it had lost during its entire military campaign in support of the Syrian government since September 2015.

Washington’s objective in striking Russian contractors was that the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which is mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the control of some areas east of the Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military Council (DMC), which was the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the onslaught of the Turkish armed forces and allied Syrian militant proxies during Ankara’s “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s northwest that lasted from January to March 2018.

Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil refinery located to the east of the Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of Deir al-Zor.

The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and inclusive in outlook – was simply not a match for the superior training and arms of the Syrian troops and Russian military contractors, consequently causing a carnage in which scores of Russian nationals lost their lives.

Two months later, an alleged chemical weapons attack took place in Douma, Syria, on April 7, 2018, and Donald Trump ordered a cruise missile strike in Syria on April 14, 2018, in collaboration with the Theresa May government in the UK and the Emmanuel Macron administration in France. The strike took place little over a year after a similar cruise missile strike on al-Shayrat airfield on April 6, 2017, after an alleged chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun, though both cruise missile strikes didn’t accomplish anything and were nothing more than a show of force.

But the fact that out of 105 total cruise missiles deployed in the April 14, 2018, strikes against a military research facility in the Barzeh district of Damascus and two alleged chemical weapons storage facilities in Homs, 85 were launched by the US, 12 by the French and 8 by the UK aircraft demonstrated the unified resolve of the Western powers against Russia.

It bears mentioning that the American air and missile strikes in Syria are not only illegal under the international law but are also unlawful according to the American laws. While striking the Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, Washington availed itself of the war on terror provisions in the US laws, known as the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), but those laws do not give the president the power to order strikes against the Syrian government targets without prior approval of the US Congress which has the sole authority to declare war.

The Intercept reported last year [2] that the Trump administration had derived the authority to strike the Syrian government targets based on a “top secret” memorandum of the Office of Legal Counsel that even the US Congress couldn’t see. Complying with the norms of transparency and the rule of law were never the strong points of the American democracy but the Trump administration has done away with even the pretense of accountability and checks and balances in the conduct of international relations.

Moreover, over the years, Israel has not only provided medical aid and material support to the militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force has virtually played the role of the air force of Syrian militants and conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the eight-year conflict.

In an interview to New York Times [3] in January last year, Israel’s outgoing Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his shift in strategy in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently, more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched against the Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018, as revealed [4] by the Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September 2018.

In 2018 alone, Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria. The purpose of Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s guided missile technology provided to Damascus and its Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to Israel’s regional security.

Though after Russia provided S-300 missile system to the Syrian military after a Russian surveillance aircraft was shot down by Syrian air defenses during an Israeli incursion into the Syrian airspace, on September 2018, killing 15 Russians onboard, the Israeli airstrikes in Syria have been significantly scaled down.

Following the incident, though Israel has conducted occasional airstrikes in Daraa and Quneitra in southern Syria and Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria, Israeli airstrikes in northwest Syria, which is within the range of missile defense systems deployed at Hmeimim Air Base near coastal Latakia, have almost entirely ceased.

Taking cover of the Israeli airstrikes, Washington has conducted several airstrikes of its own on targets in Syria and Iraq and blamed them on Israel, which frequently mounts air and missile strikes against Iranian operatives and Hezbollah militia in Syria and Lebanon.

Besides the airstrikes on the missile storage facilities of Iran-backed militias in Iraq, it is suspected that the US air force was also behind an airstrike last year at the newly built Imam Ali military base in eastern Syria at al-Bukamal-Qaim border crossing alleged to be hosting the Iranian Quds Force operatives. In the nutshell, if Trump is a stooge of Putin, he must be the most ingrate and treacherous stooge who has stabbed his benefactor in the back.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.

Notes

[1] Russian toll in Syria battle was 300 killed and wounded:

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-casualtie/russian-toll-in-syria-battle-was-300-killed-and-wounded-sources-idUKKCN1FZ2EI

[2] Donald Trump ordered Syria strike based on a secret legal justification even Congress can’t see:

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/14/donald-trump-ordered-syria-strike-based-on-a-secret-legal-justification-even-congress-cant-see/

[3] An interview with Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s chief of staff:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/opinion/gadi-eisenkot-israel-iran-syria.html

[4] Israel Katz: Israel conducted 200 airstrikes in Syria in 2017 and 2018:

https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/benjamin-netanyahu-admits-israel-to-blame-for-damascus-strikes-1.812590

Featured image: Russian President Vladimir Putin By Harold Escalona/shutterstock And President Trump By Drop of Light/Shutterstock

Weeks after Belarusian President Lukashenko’s overwhelming August 9 reelection and foiling of an attempt by US dark forces to topple him in favor of pro-Western puppet rule, orchestrated street protests in the country continue.

What’s going on was planned long before he won another term in office, likely to continue for some time, perhaps months longer, similar to US-orchestrated violence, vandalism and chaos in Hong Kong last year and sporadically in 2021.

The Trump regime and CIA aim to eliminate a Russian ally and gain another US client state at the same time — despite long odds against achieving their objectives.

Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun is heading US efforts for regime change in Belarus.

On Friday, he defied reality, saying “the (US) wants to see a sovereign, independent, successful Belarus in which the Belarusian people themselves have the right to choose their own future (sic).”

“We commend the unwavering courage of the protesters who we’ve seen on the streets of Belarus, peacefully asserting their right to choose their own leaders in a free and fair election and not subject to unjustified violence or repression by their own ruler (sic).”

Most Belarusians support Lukashenko, despite his authoritarian rule.

A minority in the country were enlisted by US dark forces to take to the streets straightaway after his reelection.

Events were and continue to be orchestrated in Washington, similar to previous US new millennium color revolution attempts — some succeeding, others foiled.

Loyal to Lukashenko Belarusian security forces successfully defended the country’s sovereignty so far against efforts by US dark forces to eliminate it.

Washington seeks control over all other nations, their resources and populations by brute force if other tactics fail.

It tolerates governance of, by, and for everyone equitably nowhere, not at home or abroad — democracy the way it should be considered an anathema notion.

The aim of US dark forces in Belarus and elsewhere is polar opposite wanting ordinary people to “be able to determine their own path free from outside interference or threats,” as Biegun falsely claimed.

Belarus borders Russia. The US seeks control over the country to use as another dagger pointed at its heartland.

Hardline-run Lithuania is a virtual US colony, its ruling regime obeying a higher authority in Washington.

On Sept. 11, the Belarusian Telegraph Agency (BelTA) slammed Lithuanian MPs for unanimously voting on Thursday to recognize overwhelmingly defeated, political nobody, US designated puppet-in-waiting Svetlana Tikhanovskaya as Belarusian president — a farcical Guaido scenario 2.0 with no legitimacy.

Lithuania’s unlawful action was the first of its kind against Belarus.

BelTA quoted Belarusian International Affairs Commission parliamentarian Andrey Savinykh’s response to the resolution passed by Lithuanian MPs, saying the following:

“We have to state with regret that the resolution of the Seimas of Lithuania (its parliament) on 10 September is an unceremonious and awkward attempt to intervene in the domestic affairs of Belarus.”

“It is another testimony to the clumsy efforts of the Lithuanian side to give seriousness and meaning to their political actions.”

“More than that, by doing this they undermine trust in all the proposals of external mediation laying bare their real, not declarative goals” — acting as a US proxy.

So far, EU authorities in Berlin, Paris, Rome, and Brussels oppose blacklisting Lukashenko as urged by US puppet regimes in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

On Saturday, Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said the Pentagon deployed a tank battalion to Lithuania around nine miles from the border between both countries, adding:

“The movement of NATO troops is taking place in territory adjacent to us, within the framework of the Enhanced Forward Presence and Atlantic Resolve operations.”

“The fact that about 500 people, 29 tanks, and 43 Bradley Fighting Vehicles will be in such close proximity to our border cannot do anything but worry us.”

The Pentagon also increased surveillance flights along Belarusian border areas.

Separately, BelTA reported that Belarusian Deputy Prosecutor General Aleksei Stuk increased efforts by security forces to learn who’s involved in organizing anti-government street actions that aim to destabilize the country.

He issued a statement saying the following:

“I would like citizens to think about whether their actions violate rights of other people or not before taking such actions.”

“Maintaining public order is a necessary condition for a dialogue in the society.”

Last week, Lukashenko said the following:

“Regardless of foreign control, there are many active organizers and proponents of the policy of these Telegram channels inside the country.”

“They control tens, hundreds, thousands of people. They organize these protests, organize in advance.”

“Many cells were created before the presidential election: cells of 3-5 people at small enterprises and cells of up to ten people at large enterprises.”

“They have been preparing for (street actions to take place) after the parliamentary elections. We lived in a calm country and thought that things will stay calm. No way! And today they’ve popped up.”

Lukashenko called on public prosecution officers and the Constitutional Court to “take more powerful, more aggressive prosecution measures in response to” what’s been going on for weeks.

Events in Belarus are what a made in the USA color revolution attempt is all about — so far foiled by security forces.

A Final Comment

On Monday, Lukashenko will meet with Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia.

According to St. Petersburg Politics Foundation head Mikhail Vinogradov, “Belarus is of huge importance” to Moscow. “Putin doesn’t want to end up on the losing side.”

He doesn’t want a Ukraine 2014 scenario repeated.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Indian media reported over the weekend that Russia promised Defense Minister Singh that it won’t sell arms to Pakistan out of respect for New Delhi’s security interests, which if true, it wouldn’t matter all that much in terms of the Russian-Pakistani rapprochement since military ties were never a major component thereof but it would definitely be a big deal as regards Russian-Chinese relations since it would raise uncomfortable questions about why Russia continues to sell arms to the South Asian state despite its current tensions with the People’s Republic whose security interests Moscow also supposedly respects.

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What’s going on regarding Alexey Navalny repeats the great 2018 poisoning by novichok of the Skripals in Britain hoax.

Whatever caused their illness, from which they recovered, had nothing to do with exposure to a deadly nerve agent, Russia falsely blamed for what it had nothing to do with.

What’s essential to explain, establishment media suppress time and again.

Whenever something like a Navalny incident occurs, they’re quick to blame Russia or other nations targeted by the US for regime change.

Whatever happened to Alexey Navalny wasn’t from exposure to a novichok nerve agent able to kill in minutes.

He’s very much alive and able to communicate three weeks after falling ill aboard a flight from Tomsk, Russia to Moscow.

Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia explained what’s obvious, saying:

“This whole incident cannot but raise questions about some foul play being staged.”

Key is who benefits and who’s harmed. Russia clearly gained nothing from the Navalny incident.

Potentially it has much to loose. Nothing remotely connects the Kremlin to what happened to him.

On Friday, German BND Federal Intelligence Service head Bruno Kahl said a “secret meeting” was held on what he called a “harder” form of novichok the country’s military lab claims poisoned Navalny with no further elaboration, Der Spiegel reported, adding:

A delegation from the (pro-Western imperial tool) OPCW visited Navalny in Berlin’s Charite Hospital where he’s being treated.

In response to Reuters’ request for more information, a BND statement said the following:

“The Federal Intelligence Service will comment on any findings exclusively to the federal government and the responsible committees of the German Bundestag that meet in secret.”

In its latest edition, Der Spiegel reported the following:

“Leading politicians in Germany from all mainstream parties are demanding that construction on the natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 be suspended as a result of the poisoning of Alexey Navalny.”

“Merkel’s government is so far resisting such calls,” adding:

It’s “clear that Germany’s relationship with Russia will change significantly.”

It’s “likely that the Kremlin was behind the poisoning (sic). And Russian President Vladimir Putin (sic).”

“(A) debate has erupted over which sanctions the German government should now consider applying.”

“The only penalty that would primarily hurt Moscow would be a construction stop on the almost completed Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline.”

Some members of “Merkel’s governing coalition…are increasingly demanding that the pipeline project be abandoned.”

“Within the government, however, that step remains off limits. Officially at least.”

Merkel supports its completion. At the same time, she seeks an EU response to what happened to Navalny.

Abandoning the project in favor of 30% more expensive US LNG will be economically harmful to Germany, what cool heads in the country and Merkel understand.

On Thursday, an EU Political and Security Committee meeting was held in Brussels, the Navalny issue discussed.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc is considering “restrictive measures” against Russia.

At the same time, his spokesman said as long as there’s uncertainty over who may be responsible for Navalny’s condition, discussing punitive measures is premature.

Without verifiable evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that does not exist, blaming Russia for what happened has no credibility.

EU officials in Berlin and Brussels admitted that numerous nations in Europe and elsewhere have access to novichok and other deadly toxins.

Despite nothing connecting Russia to Navalny’s condition, Pompeo blamed the Kremlin, saying the following:

“I think people all around the world will see this kind of activity for what it is (sic),” adding:

“And when they see the effort to poison a dissident, they recognize that there is a substantial chance that this actually came from Russia (sic).”

He declined to say how the Trump regime will respond.

DJT stressed that “(w)e haven’t had any proof yet but I will take a look.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry slammed what it called “unfounded accusations and ultimatums,” accusing Berlin of using Navalny’s condition “as a pretext to discredit our country” unjustifiably.

In its latest edition, Germany’s DW news said “Berlin’s Justice Ministry on Friday approved a request from Moscow for legal assistance in the investigation of the suspected poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny,” adding:

“Germany has tasked state prosecutors with working with Russian authorities.”

On the same day, Russian police said they asked permission from Germany authorities to question Navalny, a request virtually certain to be denied.

Russia’s Interior Ministry said it wants to send a team to work with German investigators on the Navalny case to ask “clarifying and additional questions,” adding:

It requested the presence of its team to “carry out investigative activities with Navalny, medics and (German) experts.”

On Friday, Berlin said it hadn’t received a request so far, DW adding:

“The public prosecutor’s office in Berlin said it had been instructed by state authorities in the German capital to provide legal assistance and information on Navalny’s health to Moscow.”

He “must however agree to this, the prosecutor said in a tweet.”

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow rejects false accusations and threats regarding what happened to Navalny, adding:

No evidence to open a criminal case exists.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet lost credibility by supporting US-led Western war on Venezuela’s social democracy.

Earlier she defied reality by falsely accusing President Nicolas Maduro of “profoundly erod(ing)” the rule of law, including “human rights violations…abuses and crimes (sic).”

She’s at it again, saying through her spokesman without evidence the following on Navalny:

“There was a very serious crime committed on Russian soil (sic).”

“There appears to to be no doubt this exotic and highly deadly substance — novichok — was used (sic).”

“(I)t’s incumbent on the Russian authorities to investigate a crime of this severity that took place on their own territory (sic).”

No evidence of a crime against Navalny exists.

Thus, there’s no reason to conduct a criminal investigation.

As long as German authorities refuse to provide Russia with evidence of a crime it claims was committed against Navalny, the accusation is baseless.

No legitimate tribunal would pronounce guilt in a criminal case  without proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

In the case of what happened to Navalny, nothing suggests Russian responsibility for his illness.

Claiming otherwise is part of longstanding unjustifiable US-led Western/establishment media supported Russia bashing.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

If one had been reading America’s leading newspapers and magazines over the past several weeks the series of featured stories suggesting that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is some kind of latter day Lucrezia Borgia would have been impossible to avoid. Putin, who was simultaneously being branded as some kind of totalitarian monster, apparently does not just go around chopping off heads. Instead, he prefers to slip military grade poison into people’s tea or wipes it onto their doorknobs. The case of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England is being cited as evidence that poisoning is a routine way of cleaning out the closets, so to speak, together with that of Aleksandr Litvinenko, who died in England in 2006 under mysterious circumstances after reportedly drinking a radioactive isotope that had been placed into his cup of tea while dining at a sushi restaurant in London. Apparently the raw fish had nothing to do with it.

There are, of course, parts of the story that just don’t fit no matter how hard one tries. The Skripals, father and daughter, lived in Salisbury within walking distance of Britain’s chemical and biological weapons lab located at Porton Down, an option for poisoning that was never fully explored. And there was no real reason to kill them in 2018 as they no longer posed any threat to Russian interests, having escaped to England twelve years before. In fact, they did not die, which in itself seems odd since the lethal agent was eventually reported by the British to have been Novichok, which may have been smeared on their from door latch. Novichok is designed for battlefield use and reputedly kills instantly.

Poisoning is certainly a convenient short cut when one is unable or unwilling to persevere with the basic principle of politics among nations, often referred to as Diplomacy 101. The first rule in Diplomacy 101 is that you prioritize your interests so that you are not wasting your time and energy by pursuing objectives that are either essentially inconsequential or even meaningless at the expense of authentic vital national interests. By all accounts, Vladimir Putin is an astute politician who would recognize that killing political opponents is counter-productive. Far better to let them live to demonstrate that Russia is truly a country that allows dissent.

At the same time, if one wants to witness ignorance and hubris combined in news reporting, at its worst, it is only necessary to journey through the stories on Russia and Putin that comes out of the strange world inhabited by the punditry at newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post.

Bret Stephens, a self-proclaimed conservative voice at the New York Times, makes no attempt to conceal his hostility to nations like Russia, China and Iran. His latest foray into the unknown is to advocate congressional legislation to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin. He calls it the “Navalny Act.” The eponymous Navalny is Alexei Navalny, a leading Russian dissident who is currently in Germany being treated for what has been described as a poisoning carried out by unknown persons using a somewhat unidentifiable poison for an unknown objective, which is presumed to be killing him as he is a critic of the Putin regime.

Stephens advocates a law by Congress that would empower the U.S. government to both initiate and increase sanctions while also placing travel bans on those individuals who might be implicated in the claimed poisoning of Navalny. It is, in effect, direct interference in a foreign government’s domestic activities, which might have the consequence of inviting foreign governments and the U.N. to start inquiring into just how the U.S. does business. Stephens goes beyond sanctions and travels by further advocating linking his Navalny Act to the Senate’s proposed Defending American Security From Kremlin Aggression Act, or DASKA, that is being promoted by none less than Lindsey Graham. It would require inter alia that intelligence agencies issue available to the public reports on Vladimir Putin’s personal wealth.

There are inevitably a number of problems with the blame Putin narrative. As Israel Shamir observed shortly after the fact, it was at first by no means completely clear if Navalny was actually poisoned at all. He fell ill while flying from Siberia to Moscow and was tested for poisons before it being determined that he might have suffered a diabetic attack. When in Germany for treatment, a mysterious water bottle was produced by his family that the Bundeswehr labs are now claiming had traces of Novichok on its surface. If Novichok truly were on the bottle Navalny, his family and the air crew would all be dead, as well as the Bundeswehr technicians.

If Putin was behind the poisoning of a prominent dissident, it would have served no purpose beyond freeing oneself up from a political nuisance, so there would have been little in the way of motive. Quite the contrary, as Russia is, in fact, in the final stages of setting up the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project with Germany, which with be highly profitable to both countries and is being strongly opposed by the Trump regime.

The White House has been trying hard to kill the project on “national security grounds” to benefit potential U.S. gas suppliers, so much for Trump being a tool of Putin. That rather suggests that the U.S. might have more motive than the Kremlin to poison Navalny, namely to create a cause celebre damning Putin. At the moment, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in fact reported to be hesitant about completing the project due to the Navalny furor and pressure from Washington.

Interestingly, Stephens quotes his good friend Bill Browder, who was enthusiastic about the prospects for a new piece of legislation to beat Putin over the head with. Browder, the original darling of the war party who has described himself as Vladimir Putin’s “number one enemy,” was the driving force behind much of the original legislation to punish Russia, but his story has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese.

Browder is much loved by Congress as he embodies Russo-phobia. He is a major hedge fund figure who, inter alia, is an American by birth. He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1997 in exchange for British citizenship to avoid paying federal taxes on his worldwide income. He is what used to be referred to as an oligarch, having set up shop in Russia in 1999 as Hermitage Capital Management Fund, a hedge fund registered in tax havens Guernsey and the Cayman Islands. It focused on “investing” in Russia, taking advantage initially of the loans-for-shares scheme under Russia’s drunkard President Boris Yeltsin, and then continuing to profit greatly during the early years of Vladimir Putin. By 2005 Hermitage was the largest foreign investor in Russia.

Similar to the proposed Navalny Act and central to the tale of what Browder really represents is the Magnitsky Act, which the U.S. Congress passed into law to sanction individual Kremlin officials for their treatment of alleged whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, arrested and imprisoned in Russia. Browder has sold a narrative which basically says that he and his “lawyer” Sergei Magnitsky uncovered massive tax fraud and, when they attempted to report it, were punished by a corrupt police force and magistracy, which had actually stolen the money. Magnitsky was arrested and died in prison, allegedly murdered by the police to silence him.

The Magnitsky Act asserts American “rights” to punish crimes occurring anywhere in the world, a right that is claimed by no other nation. By it, the U.S. asserted its willingness to punish foreign governments for human rights abuses. The Act, initially limited to Russia, has now been expanded by virtue of 2016’s Global Magnitsky Act, which enabled U.S. sanctions worldwide. The proposed Navalny Act coupled with Lindsay Graham’s DASKA would together go well beyond even that bit of draconian legislation.

The basis for the Magnitsky Act was essentially fraudulent, just as might turn out to be the case with the Navalny story. Contrary narrative to that provided by Browder concedes that there was indeed a huge fraud related to as much as $230 million in unpaid Russian taxes, but that it was not carried out by corrupt officials. Instead, it was deliberately ordered and engineered by Browder with Magnitsky, who was actually an accountant, personally developing and implementing the scheme, using multiple companies and tax avoidance schemes to carry out the deception.

The pending legislation dreamed up by Stephens is undeniably driven by extreme hatred of Putin and of Russia, using contrived and evidence-free scenarios to condemn the Russian government for crimes that do not even make sense from a risk-gain perspective. The Magnitsky Myth alone has already done more even than the contrived Russiagate to launch and sustain a dangerous new Cold War between a nuclear-armed United States and a nuclear-armed Russia.

It would perhaps not be too off base to suggest that the Navalny poisoning has the smell of a possible false flag operation by the U.S. with the possible collusion of anti-Russian elements in Germany. Moscow had no real motive to kill Navalny while the White House is certainly keen on terminating Nord Stream 2. That the U.S. media also continues to be attracted to schemes like Stephens’ is symptomatic of just how far the Russia-phobia current in America and Europe has robbed people of their ability to see what important even when it is right in front of them. Good relations with Russia are more important than either getting involved in Moscow’s politics by validating Navalny or selling gas. To suggest that yet more foreign meddling as advocated by Brent Stephens of the New York Times could well lead to tragedy for all of us would be an understatement.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Oppositionist Alexei Navalny looks up into the sky on a march in memory of politician Boris Nemtsov, who was killed in Russia. Credit: Michal Siergiejevicz/ Flickr)

In an op ed titled “Losing Both Elections” (Common Dreams) Gwynne Dyer sees Trump’s presence in the White House as exposing the U.S.’ racism leading to its being “extinguished”, a “necessary evolution of American history.”  That is a very positive summation, but it comes about through some very strange presentation of information.

Dyer is a Canadian historian/journalist with degrees in military history and military philosophy (military rationales?) but surprisingly misses out large components of what history has actually recorded.

He begins the article noting how Europeans have a “deep well of respect” for the U.S.  That may or may not be true but the arguments used to arrive at that statement are simply wrong.

Wars

His first joint is “Even if the United States was years late to both world wars, it showed up both times in time to save the day.”  This is not true.

World War I didn’t save any days, and would have ended in the full attrition of the warring empires of the day (Russia, France, Britain, Germany, Turkey [Ottoman Empire], Austria-Hungary) and a long process of unwinding the mess.  As it was, the Paris Peace of 1919 created a long process of unwinding the mess – and in truth it is still not unwound today as the U.S. revives its Cold War policies against Russia.

World War II was already ‘won’ by the time the U.S. entered into the European fighting.  The Soviet Union/Russia had decimated several German armies and were well on their way to conquering Germany itself.  This came at a huge cost to the Russian defenders who incurred the largest personnel losses of any country in the war.

His next argument is “And American troops stayed in Western Europe to protect it from Soviet power throughout the Cold War.”  This is not true either.  The U.S. stayed in Europe to realize and optimize its new found position as the world’s industrial global leader and strongest economy – thanks mainly to the war and the fact that none of it was fought on U.S. territory.

He does argue correctly “Most Eastern Europeans see the United States as the instrument of their liberation from the Soviet Union,” but the other side of that coin is the unilateral decision by Russia to withdraw its troops and allow that freedom on the provision – partly – that NATO would not move “an inch closer” to the Russian border.  Admittedly, the East Europeans feel liberated from Russian dominance, but their economies have not benefited greatly from the western imposed austerity programs and the rising right wing governments currently supported by the U.S.

Democracy

His conclusion from the above is “But would two terms of Trump mean the end of American democracy? Not necessarily.”

The fallacy here is that the U.S. is actually a democracy, if the word democracy is correctly defined as ‘people + power’ as the root words indicate.  The U.S. is truly an oligarchy, a government run by the wealthy, who also happen to have a strong militaristic viewpoint, the military solution being the main solution for most U.S. problems (domestically, “law and order”; foreign affairs, “rule of law” but mainly oil and the petrodollar).

Solutions?

Dyer’s argument then proceeds into the race problem and ends with “Having been so exposed, it will probably finally be extinguished….It is a necessary evolution of American history, for which some people living elsewhere may also pay a substantial price.”

This conclusion is somewhat bizarre.  Whether Trump  is re-elected or not, the race problem will not go away.  The U.S. has since its inception been a racist state, a heritage of the British Empire, indeed of all western European thought especially after the “Doctrine of Discovery” was formally announced as early as 1452 in Papal Bulls.  Strangely enough, and supporting the idea of U.S. racism is the Doctrine’s usage as recently as 2007 to remove indigenous land from the original inhabitants. [see this].  The chances of racism being extinguished any time soon are very remote.

The final statement –  “some people living elsewhere may also pay a substantial price” – is also bizarre.  Ever since its inception, and even before it, “people living elsewhere” have always paid a substantial price – in their lives, their resources, their environment, their freedoms, their land.  This began with the Indian Wars, runs through the Spanish War and its long ongoing battles for control (including 1965-67 Indonesia slaughter of  up to a million peasants and workers labelled ‘communists’, a U.S. inspired slaughter), through the World Wars (ending with the unnecessary slaughter of millions of Japanese civilians from fire bombing and nuclear bombing), and continues on today through the many covert and overt actions of the militarized state (the Pentagon, the CIA, and the many mercenary companies making their living from these operations) as it fights to retain its military and financial hegemony of the world.

There is no part of the world where U.S. actions have not had a negative impact on the people living there, and have not had a “substantial impact”.  This extends throughout the Americas with the Monroe Doctrine which is essentially a doctrine in violation of all current norms of international “rule of law”.  It covers all of Asia, most spectacularly in Vietnam and also with the overflow effects in Laos and Cambodia and the brutal Pol Pot regime, the latter partly supported by the U.S.  More recently it is obvious in South Asia, where the U.S. forever war still runs in Afghanistan, started when the U.S. supported the mujahideen freedom fighters of the Taliban against the Soviets, creating in the long run al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The impact is most strong in the Middle East with U.S. support of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the U.S. support of the dictatorial Saudi Monarchy (where there is not even the pretence of democracy), both combining into other wars of aggression in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and for the U.S., Iran next.  These wars are a combination of Christian fundamentalism, oil, the US$, and the military, a symbiotic unitary expression of the greed and racism of the struggling U.S. empire.

There are no real solutions offered, just a vague warning of more of the same “substantial price” being paid.  The race issue will not be solved even though it is currently a large highlight of domestic politics.  The overall problem with the U.S. is that of a fully racialized state of violence attempting to rule the world – that is not a problem that will be settled whether Trump is re-elected or not.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Vox

It is astonishing to me that we still have 287 million gasoline vehicles on our roads and that 20 percent of our electricity comes from burning dirty coal. We just go on blithely pumping over 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, a powerful and dangerous heat-trapping gas, into the atmosphere annually. It is like setting off atomic bombs in the atmosphere. We know this. And yet as a society we are virtually paralyzed. Our Neanderthal-in-chief actually promotes coal burning, and the Republican Party is a Siamese twin with Big Oil.

The presidential candidates aren’t even talking about it much, and it was an issue largely excluded by the corporate press and the party machines from the primary debates.

While individuals with the resources can cut down on their carbon footprints with solar panels and electric cars (they are a good combination), the problem can’t be tackled effectively without government action. And there, the United States has failed. It has been made to fail by Big Carbon and greedy politicians and ignorant journalists and an apathetic public that apparently doesn’t care if their children or grandchildren face a choice of being burned up or drowning.

If you go back and look at the predictions of climate scientists about 2020, you’ll see that they gave a range, of best- and worst-case scenarios. In every instance, it is the worst case scenario that has come to pass. Even the most jaded and alarmed scientists in 2000 were not pessimistic enough.

Mother Nature is trying to tell us something but we are not listening.

Diana Leonard and Andrew Freedman at WaPo write,

“These wildfires are what is known as a compound disaster, in which more than one extreme event takes place at the same time, across a varied geography. While climate scientists have been warning that compound disasters are an inevitable result of human-caused climate change, a spate of simultaneously burning, rapidly expanding fires spanning the entire West Coast was not expected for several more decades if greenhouse gas emissions remain high.”

1. 3.1 million acres of California have been scorched this year by wildfires, the largest number in recorded history, and thousands of homes have been destroyed. Some 200,000 are going without electricity in a bid to stop more fires. Christina Walker at CNN reports that California wildfires have increased 8x in size since 1970, and the number of acres burned is up 500%.

CNN quotes Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research: “climate change has not just made the extreme heat waves that coincided with the fires worse. The bigger effect is the more subtle, long-term warming,” he said. “That couple of degrees of (average) warming over decades … you don’t notice it as much, but it’s still there lurking in the background, sucking extra moisture out of the vegetation and the soil.”

A study has just demonstrated that the number of extreme-danger fire days has doubled since 1980 in California because of global heating.

2. Wildfires have burned a million acres in Oregon, and Timothy Bella, Marisa Iati and Hannah Knowles at WaPo report that state officials are worried about a “mass fatality incident” that will overwhelm local health care facilities. Fully 10 percent of the state’s population, some 500,000 people, have been ordered evacuated.

3. Joseph O’Sullivan reports at the Seattle Times that Washington state has seen over 600,000 acres burned. It is also part of the expanding Compound Disaster. This is the most acreage burnt in recorded history except for 2015. Governor Jay Inslee, in keeping with the spirit of Compound Disaster, is trying to provide shelter to some of the 500,000 fleeing Oregonians.

4. Nature is not disconnected from human society or from the economy, as Trump and his ilk imagine. Jeff Dukes writes in the Chicago Tribune about the effect of global heating on the Midwest:

“In the Midwest, we regularly see crops ruined by droughts or floods. We expect wetter springs, bigger downpours and more variable precipitation during hotter summers to crash yields more often. The agricultural banks that many farmers depend on for credit are typically small and disproportionately exposed to these regional extreme weather events.”

The Midwest is facing the opposite problem from the West, of increased downpours and crop damage. What we seldom stop to think about is the rolling farm bankruptcies it will produce and hence the rolling bank failures.

5. Hurricane Laura visited devastation on Louisiana and struck up to Arkansas. It landed as nearly a Category 4 Hurricane, and if it had hit more populous areas it would have been an even bigger disaster. Sarah Gibbons at National Geographiclays out the dangers of such enormous storms. They are causing coastal erosion, literally just taking away the state’s land. As the icecaps melt, the Gulf of Mexico is rising (and the water is heating, so it expands). That sea level rise is exacerbating the sinking of the Delta because levees no longer let the Mississippi lay down silt.

Hot sea water and extra moisture in the air from heat-driven evaporation is fueling super-hurricanes in the Gulf that are more powerful and cause more downpours than anything in recorded history. This heating is from us driving our cars and burning our coal and other ways we generate heat-trapping gases.

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In an editorial [1] last week, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, lambasted Donald Trump for canceling a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 due to rain, and accused him of disparagingly mentioning military veterans as “losers” and “suckers.”

But in order to substantiate his allegations, Goldberg came up with a rather bizarre example. While noting Donald Trump wasn’t invited to the funeral of Republican Senator John McCain, who died battling cancer in 2018, Goldberg observed:

“Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. ‘He’s not a war hero,’ Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. ‘I like people who weren’t captured.’”

Alluding to Goldberg’s article, Trump said during a Labor Day press conference on September 7 held at the White House:

“I’m not saying the military’s in love with me, the soldiers are, the top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”

Though a decorated Vietnam War veteran, McCain was a highly polarizing figure as a senator and was regarded by many leftists as an inveterate neocon hawk, who vociferously exhorted Western military interventions in Libya and Syria.

McCain was a vocal supporter of the 2011 military intervention in Libya. In April 2011, he visited the anti-Gaddafi forces and National Transitional Council in Benghazi, the highest-ranking American to do so, and said that the rebel forces were “my heroes.”

Regarding Syria’s proxy war that began in 2011, McCain repeatedly argued for the US intervening militarily in the conflict on the side of the anti-government forces. He staged a visit to rebel forces inside Syria in May 2013, the first senator to do so, and called for arming the Free Syrian Army with heavy weapons and for the establishment of a no-fly zone over Syria.

Following reports that two of the people he posed for pictures with had been responsible for the kidnapping of eleven Lebanese Shia pilgrims the year before, McCain disputed one of the identifications and said he had not met directly with the other.

In the aftermath of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Ghouta in 2013, McCain vehemently argued for strong American military action against the government of Bashar al-Assad, and in September 2013, cast a Foreign Relations committee vote in favor of Obama’s request to Congress that it authorize a military response.

Charlie Wilson was a Democratic Congressman representing Texas in the House of Representatives from 1973 to 1996. He was a vocal supporter of training and arming Afghan jihadists during the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s, and on one occasion, he praised the leader of fearsome Haqqani Network Jalal-ud-Din Haqqani as “goodness personified.” He was a subject of a Hollywood feature film “Charlie Wilson’s War,” in which Tom Hanks played the role of Charlie Wilson.

In more than one ways, Senator John McCain was the hawkish equivalent of Charlie Wilson and Syria’s proxy war was the re-enactment of the Soviet-Afghan War.

If we were to draw parallels between the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the 1980s and Syria’s proxy war 2011-onward, the Western powers used the training camps located in the Af-Pak border regions to train and arm Afghan jihadists battling Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

Similarly, the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan were used by the CIA and Pentagon to provide money, training and weapons to militants battling the Syrian government with the collaboration of Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies.

During the Soviet-Afghan jihad, it is a known historical fact that the bulk of the so-called “freedom fighters” was comprised of Pashtun jihadists, including the militant factions of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf and scores of other militant outfits, some of which later coalesced together to form the Taliban militant group.

Similarly, in Syria, the majority of purported “moderate rebels” was comprised of Islamic jihadists, such as Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State and myriads of other militant groups, including a minuscule fraction of defected Syrian soldiers which went by the name of Free Syria Army (FSA).

Apart from Pashtun militants, various factions of the Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks constituted the relatively “moderate” segment of the Afghan rebellion, though those “moderate” warlords, like Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abul Rashid Dostum, were more ethnic and tribal in character than secular or nationalist, as such. Similarly, the Kurds of the so-called “Syrian Democratic Forces” can be compared to the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan.

During the last few years, the Islamic State’s purported “terror franchises” in Afghanistan and Pakistan have claimed a spate of bombings against the Shia and Barelvi Muslims who are regarded as heretics by Takfiri jihadists. But to contend that the Islamic State is responsible for suicide blasts in Pakistan and Afghanistan is to assert that the Taliban are responsible for the internecine conflict in Syria and Iraq.

Both are localized militant outfits and the Islamic State without its Baathist command structure and superior weaponry bankrolled by Western powers and oil-rich Gulf States is just another ragtag, regional militant outfit. The distinction between the Taliban and the Islamic State lies in the fact that the Taliban follow Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam which is a sect native to South Asia, whereas the jihadists of the Islamic State mostly belong to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi-Salafi denomination.

Secondly, and more importantly, the insurgency in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan is an indigenous Pashtun uprising which is an ethnic group native to Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan, whereas the bulk of the Islamic State’s jihadists in Syria and Iraq was comprised of Arab militants and included foreign fighters from the neighboring Middle Eastern countries, North Africa, the Central Asian states, Russia, China and even radicalized Muslims from as far away as Europe and the United States.

The so-called “Khorasan Province” of the Islamic State in the Af-Pak region is nothing more than a coalition of several breakaway factions of the Taliban and a few other inconsequential local militant outfits that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in order to enhance their prestige, and draw funds and followers, but which doesn’t have any organizational and operational association with the Islamic State proper in Syria and Iraq.

The total strength of the Islamic State-Khorasan is estimated to be between 3,000 to 5,000 fighters. In comparison, the strength of the Taliban is estimated to be between 60,000 to 80,000 militants. The Islamic State-Khorasan was formed as a merger between several breakaway factions of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in early 2015. Later, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Pakistani terrorist group Jundullah and Chinese Uyghur militants pledged allegiance to it.

In 2017, the Islamic State-Khorasan split into two factions. One faction, based in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, is led by a Pakistani militant commander Aslam Farooqi, who was reportedly arrested in May, and the other faction, based in the northern provinces of Afghanistan, is led by a former Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) commander Moawiya. The latter faction also includes Uzbek, Tajik, Uyghur and Baloch militants. 

In Pakistan, there are three distinct categories of militants: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants; and foreign transnational terrorists, including the Arab militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Chinese Uyghur jihadists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Compared to tens of thousands of native Pashtun and Punjabi militants, the foreign transnational terrorists number only in a few hundreds and are hence inconsequential.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s security apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) like to couch their rhetoric in religious terms, it is the difference of ethnicity and language that enables them to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.

Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which are regarded as a security threat to Pakistan’s security apparatus, as far as the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as “strategic assets” by Pakistan’s security agencies.

Therefore, recent allegations by regional power-brokers that Washington provided material support to splinter groups of Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) as a tit-for-tat response to Pakistan’s security agencies double game of providing support to the Afghan Taliban to mount attacks against the Afghan security forces and their American backers cannot be ruled out. In fact, a UN report in July [2] estimated that more than 6,000 Pakistani militants had sought refuge in Afghanistan following Pakistan’s military operations in tribal areas in 2014.

In November 2018, for instance, infighting between the main faction of the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada and a breakaway faction led by Mullah Mohammad Rasul left scores of fighters dead in Afghanistan’s western Herat province.

Mullah Rasul was close to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, and served as the governor of southwestern Nimroz province during the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. After the news of the death of Mullah Omar was made public by the Afghan intelligence in 2015, Mullah Rasul broke ranks with the Taliban and formed his own faction.

Mullah Rasul’s group is active in the provinces of Herat, Farah, Nimroz and Helmand, and is known to have received arms and support from the Afghan intelligence, as he has expressed willingness to recognize the Washington-backed Kabul government.

Regarding Washington’s motives for providing covert support to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani militants, the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack, and toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance comprised of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek warlords.

The leadership and fighters of the Pashtun-majority Taliban resistance movement found sanctuary in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, and mounted an insurgency against the Washington-backed Kabul government. Throughout the occupation years, Washington kept pressuring Islamabad to mount military operations in the lawless tribal areas in order to deny safe havens to the Taliban.

However, Islamabad was reluctant to conduct military operations, which is a euphemism for all-out war, for the fear of alienating the Pashtun population of the tribal areas. After Pakistan’s military’s raid in July 2007 on a mosque (Lal Masjid) in the heart of Islamabad, which also contained a religious seminary, scores of civilians, including students of the seminary, died.

The Pakistani Taliban made the incident a rallying call for waging a jihad against Pakistan’s military. Thereafter, terror attacks and suicide bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus peaked after the July 2007 Lal Masjid incident. Eventually, under pressure from the Obama administration, Pakistan’s military decided in 2009 to conduct military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The first military operation was mounted in the Swat valley in April 2009, the second in South Waziristan tribal agency in October the same year, and the third military operation was launched in North Waziristan and Khyber tribal agencies in June 2014. In the ensuing violence, tens of thousands of civilians, security personnel and militants lost their lives.

Although Pakistani political commentators often point fingers at the Washington-backed Kabul government in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s arch-foe India for providing money and arms to the Pakistani militants for waging a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment, reportedly Washington has provided covert support to the Pakistani Taliban in order to force Pakistan’s military to conduct military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Keeping this background of Washington’s covert support to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban that have waged an insurgency against the US-backed Kabul government and to the Pakistani Taliban that have mounted a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment in mind, the allegations that Washington has provided material support to militant groups in the Af-Pak region in order to divide and weaken the Taliban resistance against American occupation of Afghanistan are not entirely unfounded.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. 

Notes

[1] Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/

[2] UN says thousands of anti-Pakistan militants in Afghanistan:

https://apnews.com/ab3668337f310b4be8e1ed2442470992

Featured image is from FAIR

In the last half-century, journalists James Bamford, Ben Bradlee, Seymour Hersh, and Neil Sheehan were each threatened with prosecution under the Espionage Act. But the U.S. government never followed through with Espionage Act charges against a journalist until 2019, when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested and charged.

Trevor Timm, the executive director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), told a magistrate court judge, “[President Donald] Trump’s administration is moving to explicitly criminalize national security journalism, and if this prosecution is allowed to go forward, dozens of reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere would also be in danger.”

FPF is a nonprofit organization that Timm said “protects, defends, and empowers public interest journalism in the 21st century.” It developed SecureDrop, an “open-source platform for secure communications between sources and media organizations.”

WikiLeaks, as Timm noted, is widely recognized as a “pioneer” of this kind of “secure submission system for journalistic sources.” The system that FPF developed is available in 10 languages. “More than 70 media organizations worldwide, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, USA Today, Bloomberg News, CBC, and the Toronto Globe and Mail” are using the system to “solicit” or accept leaked documents.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which published the “Panama Papers” investigation, has a page on their website that says, “Leak to us.” Dropboxes for leaks are even advertised by news organizations on social media platforms.

It is these common newsgathering practices that the United States Justice Department’s prosecution of Assange explicitly criminalizes. However, James Lewis of the Crown Prosecution Service, who represents the U.S. government, attempted to undercut testimony from Timm.

Lewis stated it was the prosecution’s position that Assange is “not a journalist.” Timm acknowledged this position but maintained “it doesn’t matter whether the U.S. government considers Assange a journalist.” The New York Times does not need an “issued press pass to have First Amendment rights.” Plus, it is beside the point whether Assange is a journalist because he “engaged in First Amendment activities.”

Timm refused to accept the prosecution’s argument that the indictment against Assange is carefully tailored to only criminalize the publication of documents that contained the names of informants working for the U.S. government.

Three of the charges deal specifically with U.S. diplomatic cables that allegedly endangered informants. But other charges relate to all documents and assert that Assange’s possession of the documents was a crime. If Assange committed a crime, so have other journalists, Timm added.

Lewis asked Timm if a “responsible journalist” or in fact any journalist would publish the name of a third party when it was unnecessary to publish that name and when publishing that name would put that person’s life in danger.

Prior witnesses at least partly agreed with Lewis’ point. However, Timm astutely declared that the “idea of who is or is not a responsible journalist is different from what is illegal or legal conduct.” No U.S. court has ever said such publication would be illegal.

Back in 2010, as documented by Wired Magazine, Senator Joseph Lieberman and other lawmakers “introduced legislation that would make it a federal crime for anyone to publish the name of a U.S. intelligence source.” It was a response to WikiLeaks.

Timm recalled Congress debated the legislation—the Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination (SHIELD) Act—which would have amended the Espionage Act. Yet, the bill never became law so apparently Congress did not think it was necessary to make the publication of intelligence sources by anyone illegal.

Lewis referred to an editorial by former media partners of WikiLeaks that condemned the media organization for publishing over the entire cache of uncensored U.S. diplomatic cables. Although WikiLeaks was not responsible for leaking the password that led to the decryption of a file that contained the cache, the Guardian, New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde, along with other human rights organizations, were appalled at WikiLeaks for supposedly endangering lives.

Timm maintained the U.S. government should not be in the business of determining which newspapers or media organizations exercise sound editorial judgment or not. The question should be whether what WikiLeaks did in publishing those cables was illegal, and it was not.

Furthermore, Timm called the prosecutor’s attention to the fact that former media partners, which were upset with WikiLeaks, are opposed to the prosecution of Assange.

In Timm’s statement to the court, Timm highlighted how Trump has “attempted to stifle press freedom at all levels.” The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which FPF uses to track press freedom violations in the U.S., has tallied over 2,000 examples, where Trump tweeted “negative remarks, insults, or threats to the press” since his presidential campaign in 2016. He has referred to journalists as “enemies of the people.”

The strong testimony of Timm in defense of press freedom and the First Amendment was hard for Lewis to undermine. So, he asked, “Why should your opinion be preferred over the opinion of courts in the United States?”

“My opinion is in line with previous court opinions,” Timm answered. “There’s never been a publisher charged in this manner before,” and, “Supreme Court precedent is almost wholly on the side of Mr. Assange in this case.”

There are guidelines known as the federal rules of prosecution that Justice Department employees are expected to follow. Lewis absurdly cited these rules as evidence that the Assange prosecution could not be a part of a “war on journalism.”

If the decision to prosecute Assange was part of a “war on journalism,” Lewis added, wouldn’t prosecutors in this case be acting contrary to federal rules of prosecution?

“Yes,” Timm answered, “and if they did breach those obligations,” one should hope there would be accountability.

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Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure.”

Featured image is from Another Day in the Empire

With today being another anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it’s important to recall why it was that that deadly event came about.

No, the terrorists didn’t attack us because they hated our “freedom and values,” as U.S. officials and American interventionists claimed after the attacks. Instead, the attacks occurred in retaliation for what the U.S. national-security establishment, specifically the Pentagon and the CIA, had been doing to people in the Middle East prior to the 9/11 attacks.

Recall the Persian Gulf War in 1991, when the U.S. government intervened in a conflict involving their old partner and ally, Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq. Iraq had gotten in a territorial dispute with Kuwait, which ended up with Iraq invading Kuwait.

U.S. officials felt that they could not let Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait to stand, which is somewhat strange given that the U.S. government supported Iraq when it invaded Iran in the 1980s. Without the congressional declaration of war the Constitution requires, the U.S. government went to war against Iraq, killing multitudes of Iraqi people in the process and wreaking untold destruction across the country.

During the conflict, the Pentagon ordered the destruction of Iraq’s water-and-sewage treatment plants, after a study revealed that such destruction would help spread infectious illnesses within the Iraqi populace.

Then once hostilities were ended, the U.S. and UN enforced one of the most brutal systems of sanctions in history against the Iraqi people, which proceeded to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, especially since the sanctions prevented those destroyed water and sewage treatment plants from being repaired. The U.S. government’s ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, declared that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children were “worth it.”

There was also the Pentagon’s intentional stationing of U.S. troops near Islamic holy lands, knowing full well the effect that such an action would have on Muslims.

There was also the brutal “no-fly zones” over Iraq, which enabled the U.S. planes to wreak even more death and destruction in Iraq.

There was also the unconditional support given by U.S. officials to the Israeli government.

The rage that all that interventionism produced within people in the Middle East is what brought on the 9/11 attacks. It also brought on the anti-American terrorism that preceded 9/11 attacks: the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on the USS Cole, and the attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Unfortunately, rather than acknowledge what their pre-9/11 interventionism produced, the Pentagon and the CIA doubled down and used the 9/11 attacks to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Those interventions were followed by interventions in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.

All that new interventionism added fuel to the pre-9/11 rage, which produced more anti-American terrorism, which then caused the Pentagon and the CIA to react even more forcefully against the terrorism.

That’s how we have ended up with an endless supply of terrorists, an perpetual war on terrorism, and the destruction of liberty and prosperity here at home, all of which, of course, has kept the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA in high cotton in terms of both money and power. It’s quite possibly the biggest racket in U.S. history.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews atLewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

Unfortunately, this time around Serbia was not lucky to have a guileless but unquestionably upright public servant like James Stewart (playing the role of the endearing Mr. Smith) to represent it in Washington. (image left). 

Referring to the fictional Mr. Smith, who turns up in Washington as the newly-elected senator from some distant prairie state, the movie trailer says that “his plans promptly collide with political corruption, but he doesn’t back down”.

One wishes the trailer blurb could be applied to what happened in Washington on September 3 and 4, at what was misleadingly billed the “Kosovo Economic Conference.”

But instead, it would be more correct to say that unlike the lucky people of Kansas or Nebraska, or wherever Mr. Smith happened to come from, Serbia was represented in Washington, figuratively speaking, by the chicken-hearted Dr. Emil Hácha, yes, the famous Czech statesman of post Munich fame who on March 15th, 1939 signed the document stating he had “confidently placed the fate of the Czech people and country in the hands of the Führer of the German Reich.” (See also Avalon Law, Yale Edu)

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But history does not necessarily repeat itself.

Trump, Pence, Grenell and the lot of them did not have to chase president Aleksandar Vučić  (image right, with Pres Trump) around the table to make him sign anything; he was happy to do it of his own volition, glowing with puerile pride at the end of the ceremony when the American president magnanimously rewarded him with his pen.

Little did the Balkan country bumpkin know something that every American schoolboy who watches television could have told him. This particular act of regal generosity is a standard feature of Presidential signing rites, as some YouTube homework done before departure from Belgrade would have made clear.

But juvenile swooning over a Presidential pen is scarcely the gravest and most unstatesmanlike impropriety that marked Aleksandar Vučić’s whirlwind Washington tour, an episode that will, as a real statesman once remarked, live in infamy, at least in the annals of Serbia’s diplomatic relations.

What was actually signed, albeit with a different pen, was incomparably worse than the silly caper with the Presidential pen.

Screenshot, White House, Sept 4, 2020 (VOA) 

For starters, the supposedly “economic” summit of the parties had little to do with their shipwrecked economies, or with finding ways to resuscitate them. The principal points to which the Balkan parties committed were beneficial exclusively to third parties.

Serbia is to diversify its “energy sources,” i.e. renounce its perfectly satisfactory energy arrangements with the Russian Federation.

By implication, that must lead to abandoning the South Stream project that would have been highly beneficial to its treasury.

It must also “prohibit the use of 5G equipment supplied by untrusted [Chinese] vendors” but after “removal” it must substitute for it equally harmful 5G equipment manufactured by trusted American firms. (The Agreement is a hilarious mixture of cowboy diplomacy and fanciful posturing; are there still US factories capable of producing 5G equipment, or may “trusted” products still be manufactured in China but by American firms, as long as it is not Huawei?)

Finally, Serbia is informed that it will move its Tel Aviv embassy to Jerusalem by this time next year and that Israel will establish diplomatic relations with “Kosovo.”

The precious moment when Trump breaks the news to the obviously out of the loop President Vucic has gone viral, but the undoubtedly best version of this memorable scene was posted by the Turkish press agency, with the (to Serbian viewers) hysterical acronym TRT. One of the TRT reader’s reactions to this burlesque in the TRT comments section wraps it all up: “I bet that Serbia and so called Kosovo signed peace agreement between Israel and Palestine but they don’t even know it yet”.

To the extent that the meeting to which the two Balkan chieftains were summoned did have any relation to economics, it was to bolster US economic interests in the region, to be sure.

The Fox News post about the Oval Office proceedings makes that abundantly clear. The “great” and “fantastic” (some of the President’s favorite hyperbole that he used lavishly) thing about this economic conference is that it opens up business opportunities for the United States “in these two countries” [at 9:27 minutes video below]. While ravaged in 1999 by NATO depleted uranium munitions on the surface, Kosovo is literally a pot of gold just underneath.

Whose capital will now claim the fabulous mineral resources of the Trepca mine complex?

.

 

Last but not least, this “economic agreement” between “Serbia and Kosovo” features also several enigmatic infrastructural provisions: completion of the “Peace Highway,” rail link between Pristina and Merdare, and rail link between the south Serbian city of Nis and Pristina.

For whom are these communication facilities being built and how exactly will they generate jobs and prosperity for local citizens?

The operationalization of these projects (some of which have already been started) is to proceed under the auspices of the U. S. International Development Finance Corporation, described as “America’s development bank.”

So the projects enumerated in the Agreement under the guise of stimulating the local economy have in fact nothing to do with invigorating the flow of tomatoes and potatoes, but have got everything to do with completing NATO’s Balkan infrastructure network, with Camp Bondsteel (US military base) in Kosovo (image left) as its obvious hub.

What ultimate purposes that infrastructure is being built to serve it does not take much imagination to fathom.

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

While our nation was busy spending a considerable amount of time discussing racial inequalities (as we should) or whether or not public schools and colleges were going to open or start online, or debating the upcoming national political conventions, our federal government, specifically, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued his 3^rd amendment to The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP).

The Act was first enacted this year by a declaration from the Secretary of HHS on March 10, 2020. 

The 3rd amendment, issued on August 24^th, 2020, allows pharmacists to administer vaccines to children ages 3-18. Many states had previously established restrictions on who could administer childhood vaccinations. 

I must admit that this announcement slipped past me last week. I was alerted to it when talking with a parent advocate one evening. I could not believe it and thought it must be just for a specific state.

Later, I searched the internet to find a few articles dated August 19^th, 20^th and 21^st. The Federal Register listed the action on Monday, August 24, 2020. [1]

 

This action by the Secretary of HHS allows certain licensed pharmacists to order and administer, and pharmacy interns (who are acting under the supervision of a licensed pharmacist) to administer, any vaccine that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends to persons ages 3 through 18.

This amendment was prompted by a report from the CDC in which it found a significant decrease in rates of routine childhood vaccinations. [2]

Now with the federal announcement of this declaration, how will this play out in the states? How much weight does this declaration have regarding state law which traditionally regulates the activities of state licensed pharmacists?

So the question now to be answered, does this declaration by the Secretary of HHS supersede state law? 

In the last couple of years, there were many proposed legislative bills introduced to allow pharmacists to administer childhood vaccines that did not go anywhere in state legislatures around the country.

Is this declaration a product of those legislative failures?

Or is this a flare shot high in the air to signal to state health departments to use their rule-making authority to modify statutes to allow pharmacies to enter the childhood vaccination arena?

Even my home state of Minnesota passed legislation in May, 2020 to allow pharmacists to administer any FDA-approved COVID vaccine to children as young as 6 years of age.

This is not a mandate, but rather setting up a horrible scenario for which pharmacists are clearly not trained to handle. The method of passing legislation during a Peacetime Emergency declaration by governors to circumvent public testimony is very troubling.

The PREP Act has been previously amended twice prior to this declaration.

Previous amendments of The PREP Act include:

• The 1st amendment on April 10^th to extend liability immunity to covered countermeasures authorized under the newly passed CARES Act. [3] This declaration provides limited immunity to manufacturers of masks, plastic shields, gloves and other protective equipment.
• The 2nd amendment on June 4^th for the purpose of clarifying that covered countermeasures include qualified countermeasures that limit the harm COVID-19 might otherwise cause. [4] Basically, allowing the use of therapeutics and other measures that were not designed for COVID, to be used if necessary.

Now comes the problem of allowing pharmacists to administer childhood vaccines.

In the Vaccine Court currently, the number one petition filed for compensation is for shoulder injury as the result of a vaccination (SIRVA). Most of the injured persons (adults) received influenza or Tdap vaccinations from their local retail pharmacy such as Walgreens, CVS, RiteAid or Target. 

If these retail pharmacies cannot properly administer a vaccine to an adult, why would we allow this for children?

One of the biggest problems when filing a petition claiming shoulder injury is the failure of the retail pharmacies to accurately record in the medical records which arm the vaccine was administered in and who did it. These pharmacies can barely keep up with adults receiving one vaccine at a time.

What happens when a parent brings their child into the business to get several vaccines? Will the pharmacy tech or pharmacist record the date, time, which arm or leg?

Probably not.

Will they be able to obtain and examine a thorough review of medical records prior to administering the vaccine?

Probably not.

Most doctors lack any comprehensive training of what a vaccine injury is or adverse reactions in a child, let alone a pharmacist receiving this type of training.

This has all the makings for a disaster.

But why is our government transferring the responsibility of administering vaccines to retail pharmacies instead of doctors’ offices or clinics? 

It just might be the pushback from doctors who claim it is not profitable or too costly to administer basic vaccinations in their office. From their point of view, it would be more cost effective in a pharmacy setting.

Or is it something more sinister? It does appear that our government, with pressure from Pharma, is trying to “gut” the NVICP and slowly move injury compensation into the CounterMeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).

This is clearly the landing spot for the COVID vaccine. And it is the black hole for those who are injured or have perished because of a vaccine.

If the public is withheld case decisions and information about CICP, then vaccine injury claims will no longer exist.

So many agendas by our government agencies and medical community have no regard for the best interest of the people. 

The BIG problem here is The PREP Act being used as a vehicle to circumvent Congress. The real concern is will we see a federal mandate for COVID vaccine at some point in the future via The PREP Act?

They are adopting policy via fiat without proper and necessary public comments and testimony. Will the PREP Act become the vehicle to advance vaccine policy in the United States?

I believe that we will see a few more amendments to The PREP Act if Congress will not address the liability issue for businesses, schools, colleges to open up. There are lawsuits already filed by employees for wrongful death (WalMart) and hospitalizations of employees claiming being infected by COVID while employed.

We must remain vigilant, we must be prepared to act, and we must educate our elected officials on a federal level, state and local level as well.

The PREP Act is in force as declared in March, 2020 until October, 2024 unless revoked by the Secretary of HHS or POTUS, or another health care emergency emerges.

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Wayne Rohde is the author of The Vaccine Court. He has an upcoming Podcast of NVICP, The PREP Act, CounterMeasures Injury Comp Program and COVID vaccine legal issues starting Mid-October.

Notes

[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-08-24/pdf/2020-18542.pdf

[2] https://www.seyfarth.com/news-insights/third-amendment-to-prep-act-declaration-further-expands-scope-of-liability-immunity-for-medical-countermeasures-against-covid-19.html?utm_source=Mondaq&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=LinkedIn-integration

[3] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-04-15/pdf/2020-08040.pdf

[4] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-06-08/pdf/2020-12465.pdf

Featured image is from Health Impact News

On Monday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that dubious claims about Navalny’s alleged novichok nerve agent poisoning appear to be following a “script (that) was written in advance.”

Russophobic establishment media reports about what happened have the distinct aroma of fake news like countless times before on issues relating to Moscow.

In response to Russia’s request for Berlin to provide verifiable evidence of what it claims happened to Navalny, “nothing, zero” was sent, nothing publicly revealed, said Zakharova.

Did Navalny fall ill naturally or from foul play? If the latter, cui bono?

Clearly not Russia. Dark forces in the US and their imperial partners alone benefit.

It’s also clear that claims by a German military lab that Navalny was novichoked were dubious at best.

Exposure to even a minute amount of the most deadly known substance causes death in minutes.

Navalny is very much alive over two weeks after falling ill, and according to reports from Berlin, his condition is improving.

Scratch the fake novichoking claim. Navalny either experienced a metabolic disorder as diagnosed by Russian doctors or became ill from something else yet to be revealed.

The former explanation seems most likely, the latter very much possible, perhaps foul play, and if proved from further independently verified analysis, nothing suggests Kremlin responsibility.

Moscow fosters cooperative relations with other countries, confrontation with none, Germany a valued economic and trade partner.

Wanting bilateral relations expanded to benefit both countries, clearly Kremlin officials would do nothing to undermine ties — what dark forces in Washington clearly seek.

Completing construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany is vital for both nations.

On Monday, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert downplayed linking completion of the project’s construction to what happened to Navalny, saying it’s “too early” for a punitive response.

The gas pipeline is vital for other European countries besides Germany.

Russia proved time and again that it’s a reliable political, economic and trade partner.

Fostering the relationship between European capitals and Moscow is warranted. Undermining it is detrimental to the continent.

According to Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Russian authorities do not believe that Berlin wants Nord Stream 2 suspended or halted.

Asked about some remarks from German politicians related to undermining the project, Peskov said:

“(W)e see that for each such new statement, two statements appear, which speak about the absurdity of such proposals.”

Abandoning the pipeline would amount to Germany shooting itself in the foot to please Washington and its own Russophobic hardliners.

Moscow urged mutual cooperation with Germany to resolve things beneficially to both countries and other European ones that very much want low-cost Russian natural gas Nord Stream 2 will supply when completed.

According to German Eastern Business Association head Michael Harms, “(l)egally I think that is hardly possible” to stop completion of the pipeline, adding:

“All permits have been granted. The contracts are watertight — not only in Germany, but also in five countries plus under European regulations.”

While Angela Merkel doesn’t rule out punitive actions against Russia over what happened to Navalny, it makes no economic sense for her to halt completion of the project.

Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once said “those who trade with each other do not shoot each other.”

Russo/German relations are largely positive. In January, RT noted that bilateral relations were “thawing. It’s good news for all Europeans.”

Russia and Germany are the continent’s two most important countries.

Positive relations are beneficial to both sides. Nurturing and developing them makes sense.

Without access to Russian hydrocarbon and other resources, Germany’s economy would be harmed.

Relations between Merkel and Putin are positive. Months after the Obama regime’s coup in Ukraine, followed by Crimeans voting overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia weeks later, Putin said the following about Russia’s relations with Germany’s chancellor in November 2014 at the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia:

“(W)e are guided by interests instead of sympathies and antipathies,” adding:

“(S)he (Merkel) (is) also…guided by the same interests just like any other leader of a nation, state or government.”

“This is why I see neither considerable changes nor any substantial alterations in the nature of our relations.”

At the time, Merkel stressed the importance of dialogue with Russia despite differences over Ukraine.

Later she said “the fact that there are many serious conflicts around the world stresses the need to search for solutions.”

“We are responsible — both Germany and Russia as permanent members of the UN Security Council.”

“We must work on finding solutions…I hold the view that disagreements can only be resolved through negotiations.”

Her current view of bilateral relations with Russia is highly likely to be unchanged.

When both leaders met in Moscow in January this year, RT reported that they shared common views on ending conflict in Libya, preserving the JCPOA, and completing construction of Nord Stream 2 “in the face of US sanctions” that aim to undermine the project.

At the time, Putin said talks with Merkel focused on “most hot” issues.

Ahead of their meeting, deputy German government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said the following:

Berlin “noticed with regret that the sanctions initiated by the US Congress against Nord Stream 2 and Turkstream (pipelines) came into force after being signed by the US president,” adding:

“The federal government rejects such extraterritorial sanctions. They affect German and European companies and represent interference in our domestic affairs.”

If foul play was responsible for Navalny’s illness with the objective of undermining Nord Stream 2’s completion, achieving this aim is highly likely to fail.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The global call for an objective investigation that will inevitably establish facts into the alleged “poisoning” of opposition leader and a Russian citizen, Alexei Navalny, in August has started yielding results. President Vladimir Putin has decided, as the first step, to set up an independent committee to investigate the cruel and inhumane attempt on his life.

As globally known, Navalny is a Russian opposition politician and “anti-corruption activist”. He came to international prominence by organizing demonstrations and running for political office, advocating against corruption in Russia and contributing to public discussions on reforms that could help Putin’s government.

He fell ill on a domestic flight last month and was treated in a Siberian hospital, and later evacuated to Berlin. Germany has said that toxicology tests conducted by its armed forces found “unequivocal evidence” that Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok, the substance used in the 2018 attack Skripal family, on a former Russian double agent and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury.

Navalny’s case undoubtedly bears similarities to other poisoning incidents in the political history of Russia. There are many ordinary Russians, who believe that the world must know the truth about this brazen attempt on the life of a Russian opposition leader. In addition, it would clear the air, or instead to have an increasingly tainted image.

In an interview with the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte made by Di Claudio Cerasa from an Italian media, Il Foglio, on September 10, 2020, focused on Alexei Navalny:

“Navalny? The German position coincides with the Italian one. Recovery? We will start with the Commission’s recommendations. Oppositions? My invitation to dialogue is always valid. School? There are reasons to be optimistic.” (Interview with the Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, the headline reads, original Italian translated into English).

The Head of the Government chooses to speak on an important issue that has nothing to do with economic dossiers or with the future of the government, but with a delicate issue of a diplomatic and geopolitical nature. The theme is this: but exactly, where does Italy stand on the Alexei Navalny case? Alexei Navalny, as you know, is one of the most prominent opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin and was taken to Germany to be treated after being poisoned in Russia.

The German government said it had acquired “no doubt” evidence that Navalny was poisoned. Angela Merkel herself said she “condemned this attack in the most severe way” and has askied the Russian government “to urgently clarify because there are questions that only the Russian government can and must answer. The world is waiting for explanations.”

It was revealed that investigators found a new, more lethal variant of Novichok on Navalny’s hands and water bottle: for this reason, investigators believe that the perpetrators of the attack are Russian services authorized by the Kremlin. Up to now, we point out to Conte, the government has chosen to handle the issue with great caution – even too much. But in this conversation with Il Foglio, the prime minister puts aside a little diplomacy and agrees to answer a specific question, according to the published article.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has told Italy’s prime minister that he would set up a committee to investigate the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Giuseppe Conte quoted on as saying on September 10.

“President Putin has assured me (in a recent conversation) that Russia intends to clear up what has happened, and told me that he would set up a committee of inquiry and was ready to collaborate with the German authorities,” Italy’s Conte told the newspaper Il Foglio in the interview. “Collaboration is the best way to prevent this dramatic event from negatively affecting relations between the EU and Russia,” Conte added.

This step taken by the Kremlin could scale down escalating tensions between European Union members, especially, Germany and Russia. It tension relating Navalny threatens to cause lasting damage to diplomatic relations and the economies of both countries, and as a whole the European Union.

Over the ongoing situation, among others, relating to Navalny, European Union has threatened more sanctions against Russia. What is really at stake here also is the Nord Stream-2. This pipeline is expected to provide Europe with a sustainable gas supply while providing Russia with more direct access to the European gas market.

The Nord Stream-2 is a pipeline project slated to transport natural gas from eastern Russia to northern Germany, where it would link up with infrastructure that carries fuel to Western Europe. It would run 1,200 kilometers, mostly under the Baltic Sea along the existing Nord Stream pipeline – hence the name Nord Stream 2.

On September 9, in connection with the demarche undertaken by the Group of Seven on the Alexei Navalny case, the Foreign Ministry has issued the following statement. Russia insists that Germany provide data on Alexei Navalny’s medical examination, including the results of the biochemical tests, as per the official request for legal assistance submitted by the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation on August 27. Berlin has not been willing to respond to our repeated requests in a prompt and constructive manner.

“Without the above-mentioned information, the Russian law enforcement agencies are unable to engage all the necessary procedural mechanisms in order to establish the circumstances of the incident. Meanwhile, the frenzy that is being stirred up around this case is only growing,” according to the statement posted to its official website.

“We note that Russian doctors proposed establishing close dialogue with their German colleagues in order to discuss the available data on Alexei Navalny’s health that is held in Russia and in Germany. Unfortunately, the German side has been thwarting this process,” it further said.

The unconstructive approach by the German authorities is accompanied by groundless accusations against Russia. The massive misinformation campaign that has been unleashed clearly demonstrates that the primary objective pursued by its masterminds is to mobilize support for sanctions, rather than to care for Alexei Navalny’s health or establish the true reasons for his admission to hospital, it concluded.

Russia has different relations with individual member states of the European Union. But, all the members unite around policies either for or against Russia. Since 2014 annexation of Crimea, for example, the EU has collectively imposed sanctions initially involving visa bans and freeze of assets of 170 individuals and 44 entities involved in these operations. The EU sanctions have been extended and are in force until 2020.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

This article was originally published on Asia Times.

9/11 was the foundation stone of the new millennium – ever as much indecipherable as the Mysteries of Eleusis. A year ago, on Asia Times, once again I raised a number of questions that still find no answer.

A lightning speed breakdown of the slings and arrows of outrageous (mis)fortune trespassing these two decades will certainly include the following. The end of history. The short unipolar moment. The Pentagon’s Long War. Homeland Security. The Patriot Act. Shock and Awe. The tragedy/debacle in Iraq. The 2008 financial crisis. The Arab Spring. Color revolutions. “Leading from behind”. Humanitarian imperialism. Syria as the ultimate proxy war. The ISIS/Daesh farce. The JCPOA. Maidan. The Age of Psyops. The Age of the Algorithm. The Age of the 0.0001%.

Once again, we’re deep in Yeats territory: “the best lack all conviction/ while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

All along, the “War on Terror” – the actual decantation of the Long War – proceeded unabated, killing Muslim multitudes and displacing at least 37 million people.

WWII-derived geopolitics is over. Cold War 2.0 is in effect. It started as US against Russia, morphed into US against China and now, fully spelled out in the US National Security Strategy, and with bipartisan support, it’s the US against both. The ultimate Mackinder-Brzezinski nightmare is at hand: the much dread “peer competitor” in Eurasia slouched towards the Beltway to be born in the form of the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Something’s gotta give. And then, out of the blue, it did.

A drive by design towards ironclad concentration of power and geoconomic diktats was first conceptualized – under the deceptive cover of “sustainable development” – already in 2015 at the UN (here it is, in detail).

Now, this new operating system – or technocratic digital dystopia – is finally being codified, packaged and “sold” since mid summer via a lavish, concerted propaganda campaign.

Watch your mindspace

The whole Planet Lockdown hysteria that elevated Covid-19 to post-modern Black Plague proportions has been consistently debunked, for instance here and here, drawing from the highly respected, original Cambridge source.

The de facto controlled demolition of large swathes of the global economy allowed corporate and vulture capitalism, world wide, to rake untold profits out of the destruction of collapsed businesses.

And all that proceeded with widespread public acceptance – an astonishing process of voluntary servitude.

None of it is accidental. As an example, over then years ago, even before setting up a – privatized – Behavioral Insights Team, the British government was very much interested in “influencing” behavior, in collaboration with the London School of Economics and Imperial College.

The end result was the MINDSPACE report. That was all about behavioral science influencing policymaking and most of all, imposing neo-Orwellian population control.

MINDSPACE, crucially, featured close collaboration between Imperial College and the Santa Monica-based RAND corporation. Translation:

the authors of the absurdly flawed computer models that fed the Planet Lockdown paranoia working in conjunction with the top Pentagon-linked think tank.

In MINDSPACE, we find that, “behavioral approaches embody a line of thinking that moves from the idea of an autonomous individual, making rational decisions, to a ‘situated’ decision-maker, much of whose behavior is automatic and influenced by their ‘choice environment’”.

So the key question is who decides what is the “choice environment’. As it stands, our whole environment is conditioned by Covid-19. Let’s call it “the disease”. And that is more than enough to beautifully set up “the cure”: The Great Reset.

The beating heart

The Great Reset was officially launched in early June by the World Economic Forum (WEF) – the natural habitat of Davos Man. Its conceptual base is something the WEF describes as Strategic Intelligence Platform: “a dynamic system of contextual intelligence that enables users to trace relationships and interdependencies between issues, supporting more informed decision-making”.

It’s this platform that promotes the complex crossover and interpenetration of Covid-19 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution –

conceptualized back in December 2015 and the WEF’s choice futuristic scenario. One cannot exist without the other. That is meant to imprint in the collective unconscious – at least in the West – that only the WEF-sanctioned “stakeholder” approach is capable of solving the Covid-19 challenge.

The Great Reset is immensely ambitious, spanning over 50 fields of knowledge and practice. It interconnects everything from economy recovery recommendations to “sustainable business models”, from restoration of the environment to the redesign of social contracts.

The beating heart of this matrix is  – what else – the Strategic Intelligence Platform, encompassing, literally, everything: “sustainable development”, “global governance”, capital markets, climate change, biodiversity, human rights, gender parity, LGBTI, systemic racism, international trade and investment, the – wobbly – future of the travel and tourism industries, food, air pollution, digital identity, blockchain, 5G, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI).

In the end, only an all-in-one Plan A applies for making these systems interact seamlessly: the Great Reset – shorthand for a New World Order that has always been glowingly evoked, but never implemented. There is no Plan B. 

The Covid-19 “legacy”

 

The two main actors behind the Great Reset are Klaus Schwab, the WEF’s founder and executive chairman, and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. Georgieva is adamant that “the digital economy is the big winner of this crisis”. She believes the Great Reset must imperatively start in 2021.

The House of Windsor and the UN are prime executive co-producers. Top sponsors include BP, Mastercard and Microsoft. It goes without saying that everyone who knows how complex geopolitical and geoeconomic decisions are taken is aware that these two main actors are just reciting a script. Call the authors “the globalist elite”. Or, in praise of Tom Wolfe, the Masters of the Universe.

Schwab, predictably, wrote the Great Reset’s mini-manifesto.  Over a month later, he expanded on the absolutely key connection: the “legacy” of Covid-19.

All this has been fully fleshed in a book, co-written with Thierry Malleret, who directs the WEF’s Global Risk Network. Covid-19 is described as having “created a great disruptive reset of our global, social, economic and political systems”. Schwab spins Covid-19 not only as a fabulous “opportunity”, but actually as the creator (italics mine) of the – now inevitable – Reset.

All that happens to dovetail beautifully with Schwab’s own baby: Covid-19 “accelerated our transition into the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. The revolution has been extensively discussed at Davos since 2016.

The book’s central thesis is that our most pressing challenges concern the environment – considered only in terms of climate change – and technological developments, which will allow the expansion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

In a nutshell, the WEF is stating that corporate globalization, the hegemonic modus operandi since the 1990s, is dead. Now it’s time for “sustainable development” – with “sustainable” defined by a select group of “stakeholders”, ideally integrated into a “community of common interest, purpose and action.”

Sharp Global South observers will not fail to compare the WEF’s rhetoric of “community of common interest” with the Chinese “community of shared interests” as applied to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is a de facto continental trade/development project.

The Great Reset presupposes that all stakeholders – as in the whole planet – must toe the line. Otherwise, as Schwab stresses, we will have “more polarization, nationalism, racism, increased social unrest and conflicts”.

So this is – once again – a “you’re with us or against us” ultimatum, eerily reminiscent of our old 9/11 world. Either the Great Reset is peacefully established, with whole nations dutifully obeying the new guidelines designed by a bunch of self-appointed neo-Platonic Republic sages, or it’s chaos.

Whether Covid-19’s ultimate “window of opportunity” presented itself as a mere coincidence or by design, will always remain a very juicy question.

Digital Neo-Feudalism

The actual, face-to-face Davos meeting next year has been postponed to the summer of 2021. But virtual Davos will proceed in January, focused on the Great Reset.

Already three months ago, Schwab’s book hinted that the more everyone is mired in the global paralysis, the more it’s clear that things will never be allowed (italics mine) to return to what we considered normal.

Five years ago, the UN’s Agenda 2030 – the Godfather of the Great Reset – was already insisting on vaccines for all, under the patronage of the WHO and CEPI – co-founded in 2016 by India, Norway and the Bill and Belinda Gates foundation.

Timing could not be more convenient for the notorious Event 201 “pandemic exercise” in October last year in New York, with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security partnering with – who else – the WEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. No in-depth criticism of Gates’s motives is allowed by media gatekeepers because, after all, he finances them.

What has been imposed as an ironclad consensus is that without a Covid-19 vaccine there’s no possibility of anything resembling normality.

And yet a recent, astonishing paper published in Virology Journal –  which also publishes Dr. Fauci’s musings  – unmistakably demonstrates that “chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread”. This is a “relatively safe, effective and cheap drug” whose “significant inhibitory antiviral effect when the susceptible cells were treated either prior to or after infection suggests a possible prophylactic and therapeutic use.”

Even Schwab’s book admits that Covid-19 is “one of the least deadly pandemics in the last 2000 years” and its consequences “will be mild compared to previous pandemics”.

It doesn’t matter. What matters above all is the “window of opportunity” offered by Covid-19, boosting, among other issues, the expansion of what I previously described as Digital Neo-Feudalism – or Algorithm gobbling up Politics. No wonder politico-economic institutions from the WTO to the EU as well as the Trilateral Commission are already investing in “rejuvenation” processes, code for even more concentration of power.

Survey the imponderables

Very few thinkers, such as German philosopher Hartmut Rosa, see our current plight as a rare opportunity to “decelerate” life under turbo-capitalism.

As it stands, the point is not that we’re facing an “attack of the civilization-state” . The point is assertive civilization-states – such as China, Russia, Iran – not submitted to the Hegemon, are bent on charting a quite different course.

The Great Reset, for all its universalist ambitions, remains an insular, Western-centric model benefitting the proverbial 1%. Ancient Greece did not see itself as “Western”. The Great Reset is essentially an Enlightenment-derived project.

Surveying the road ahead, it will certainly be crammed with imponderables. From the Fed wiring digital money directly into smartphone financial apps in the US to China advancing an Eurasia-wide trade/economic system side-by side with the implementation of the digital yuan. 

The Global South will be paying a lot of attention to the sharp contrast between the proposed wholesale deconstruction of the industrial economic order and the BRI project – which focuses on a new financing system outside of Western monopoly and emphasizes agro-industrial growth and long-term sustainable development.

The Great Reset would point to losers, in terms of nations, aggregating all the ones that benefit from production and processing of energy and agriculture, from Russia, China and Canada to Brazil, Indonesia and large swathes of Africa.

As it stands, there’s only one thing we do know: the establishment at the core of the Hegemon and the drooling orcs of Empire will only adopt a Great Reset if that helps to postpone a decline accelerated on a fateful morning 19 years ago.

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Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is 2030. Follow him on Facebook. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

As James Lewis QC for the prosecution, representing the US government, revealed, “I’m just saying about my charger.  It’s in court and I’m going to run out of battery.”  It was one of those moments that said much about the fourth day of proceedings at the Old Bailey regarding one Julian Assange, publisher, Australian national and wanted by the US Department of Justice for incongruous charges of espionage.  

It all had the appropriate Orwellian shades and show trial trimmings.  The US prosecution team had gone remote; Assange’s legal team was physically present and masked.  Technology again did its bedevilling magic at the Central Criminal Court.  At one point, Joel Smith for the prosecution was attempting to get the attention of Judge Vanessa Baraitser to inform her that nothing could be heard in the court room.  The screen of chief prosecutor Lewis had also frozen.   

Unlike the previous three days of these extradition proceedings, the central contentions were not Assange the public interest journalist, the discloser of informant names, or President Donald J. Trump’s war on the Fourth Estate. It was the revelation that COVID-19 had found its way into the Old Bailey. On Wednesday night, Judge Baraitser was told that a member of one of the legal teams may have been exposed to the coronavirus.  As was announced on Court News,

“Julian Assange’s extradition hearing at the Old Bailey today will not be going ahead because the husband of one of the US lawyers has come down with COVID-like symptoms.  Once he gets the result of a test the judge will determine how best to proceed.”

Assange would have had reason to reflect upon this moment with bitter mockery.  His conditions in Her Majesty’s Belmarsh Prison have been a picture of shoddy treatment, both physically and symbolically.  Access to his legal team has been scandalously scant, exacerbated by pandemic lockdown conditions.  The entire institutional treatment of the Australian has been considered nothing less than that of a tortured figure, “shocking and excessive”, to use the words of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.   His supporters, fearful, see him at risk of contracting coronavirus and suffering, in his frail state, the gruelling effects of COVID-19.

His efforts to seek bail in order to escape the dangers of viral transmission have been foiled by the pitiless Baraitser.  In March, Edward Fitzgerald QC attempted to convince the judge that medical “experts consider that [Assange] is particularly at risk of developing coronavirus and, if he does, that it develops into very severe complications for him.”  Should he contract it, “it would be very doubtful that Belmarsh would be able to cope with his condition.” 

Swatting such concerns away, Baraitser saw little reason for concern: there were no instances of COVID-19 at Belmarsh, a reckless conclusion to draw given the self-isolation measures imposed upon a hundred personnel at the time.  The group Doctors for Assange were shaken by the ruling. In their March 27 statement, they vented.  “Despite our prior unequivocal statement that Mr Assange is at increased risk of serious illness and death were he to contract coronavirus and the evidence of medical experts, Baraitser dismissed the risk, citing UK guidelines for prisons in responding to the global pandemic.”  The editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson was furious.  “To expose another human being to serious illness, and to the threat of losing their life, is grotesque and quite unnecessary.”

In June, Doctors for Assange reiterated the call that Assange be granted bail, having met “internationally recommended criteria for prisoner release during COVID-19.”  Globally, prisons were being emptied of inmates to prevent the march of COVID-19.  Assange remained the exception.

On September 10, 2020, history grimaced with irony. It was the prosecutors for the United States, Assange’s incessant harassers, who had been potentially infected.  Notwithstanding this, Judge Baraitser was not averse to pushing onto a fifth day of proceedings, a point that agitated the legal teams and seemed to be as quixotic as it was indifferent.

Fitzgerald, representing Assange, urged the court to accept the logical assumption that “COVID will be in the courtroom.”  The staff of the court would themselves be “at risk, and you yourself may well be at risk.”  It was a good ploy on Fitzgerald’s part to mention the court as the primary consideration, reserving the concerns of his client for last.  “Finally, our client Mr Assange, who is vulnerable you are aware, would be at risk in court.”  His request for adjournment struck a common chord with Lewis.  Proceedings will be postponed until September 14, awaiting the test results.  In the meantime, the defence and prosecution will make interest of justice submissions on how they wish to proceed in the event the test is positive for coronavirus.

In the meantime, the rest of the Old Bailey will continue to grind.  A spokesperson for the City of London Corporation was businesslike in moving forward.  “The Central Criminal Court is deep cleaned every day in accordance with government guidelines and will remain open.”

It was left to Kevin Gosztola of Shadowproof to sum up the day’s sentiment in wry fashion: “Looking forward to the courtroom sketch of Assange in a glass box with only the judge in the room as we proceed virtually.  That’ll be [sic] quite appropriate image for this case.”  Lewis, in the meantime, might be able to obtain his charger.

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

There is a great brouhaha over foreign nations interfering in United States’ elections. Russia, we are told, not only interfered in the 2016 presidential election catastrophe, but is back at it again, trying to get their candidate re-elected.

How, one asks in righteous, democratic anguish, can such a thing be tolerated? What is more sacred to democracy than a free and unfettered right to vote? The thought of such interference in U.S. elections is enough to make the angels in heaven weep!

This writer is a firm believer in reality checks, and now is as good a time as any to take one.  Let us look at just how much the U.S. government believes in free and fair elections. The following is only a small sampling.

• In 1953, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, and installed the brutal Shah of Iran as monarch. The U.S. government supported his decades-long reign of terror.
• Following the Geneva Accords that separated Vietnam into two nations, North Vietnam and South Vietnam, elections were scheduled for 1956 that would have been a referendum on reunification. The South boycotted them, with U.S. support. “President Eisenhower wrote later in his memoirs that if in fact the elections had been held, Ho Chi Minh would have gotten 80 percent of the vote.”[1]
• Following Chile’s fair and democratic elections in 1970, President Richard Nixon said this: “I don’t see why we need to stand idly by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”[2] Please note that Salvador Allende was a Marxist, not a Communist. The U.S. spent millions of dollars to foment economic and civil problems that eventually resulted in the overthrow of Allende. He was replaced by the U.S.’s choice, the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet, who ruled for 17 years. “Truth commissions set up after Chile’s return to democracy concluded that Pinochet forces tortured some 29,000 people and killed more than 3,000.”[3]
• In January of 2005, Hamas won a decisive victory in the Gaza Strip of Palestine. Then Senator Hillary Clinton (later Secretary of State) said this: “’I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,’ said Sen. Clinton. ‘And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.’” (Emphasis added).[4]

It is clear that the U.S. doesn’t disapprove of election meddling, as long as it is the one doing it. But do government officials really object to foreign nations’ interference in U.S. elections? Perhaps not. In 2020, pro-Israel lobbies have poured millions of dollars into the campaigns of various candidates. The haul by just the top 20 recipients, this year alone is $5,647,895.00.[5] And once their candidates are elected, the lobby groups write legislation for them, that is then introduced to be voted on.[6] And one is naïve indeed if one thinks that pro-Israel lobbyists write legislation for the benefit of the average U.S. citizen. No, they write legislation to curtail the rights of U.S. citizens to boycott; to increase foreign aid to Israel (let’s remember that places like Flint, Michigan, still have to buy bottled drinking water), and to otherwise benefit Israel.

It would be incorrect for the reader to think that pro-Israel lobbies are only busy during a presidential election year. In 2018, the top 20 recipients received $4,372,220.00. And the top 20 for 2016, another presidential election year, received $6,454,498.00. And remember, please, that these number only show the top 20 recipients of each year. Many other politicians, children of lesser gods, apparently, still received huge amounts of funding from pro-Israel lobbies.

Is this not foreign interference in U.S. elections? When lobbies representing foreign governments donate millions of dollars to get their chosen candidates elected, and then write legislation for those candidates who are now elected officials (this writer cannot bring himself to call them ‘representatives’) to introduce as bills, can interference be more obvious?

Russia, apparently, is going about this all wrong. All that country needs to do is establish a lobby group in the U.S.; say, the America-Russia Political Affairs Committee (ARPAC). ARPAC members can meet with candidates and officials running for re-election; take them and their families on ‘fact finding’ junkets to Russian resorts, and donate generously to their campaigns. There will be no more of this talk of Russian interference; that country will simply be using the same method that has been so successful for Israel, and look at how beneficial that has been for that racist, oppressive, apartheid nation.

But, one might say, there may be some anomalies, but that doesn’t negate the U.S. government’s deep commitment to free and fair voting. Well, let’s take a closer look at voting within the U.S.

• In some poor and rural areas, photo identification is required. Many people in those areas don’t have driver’s licenses, or photo IDs from college, and getting a photo ID card may require an hours-long bus commute. So, in many cases, they simply can’t vote.
• Under the current administration, countless numbers of mailboxes, into which people can deposit their mail-in ballots, have been removed.Where the nearest mailbox is located may be difficult to discern. Following a hue and cry about mailbox removal and voter disenfranchisement, the Post Office said it would no longer removed these letter collection boxes in 16 states, although it will not replace those that have thus far been removed. And there is no word about mailbox removal in the remaining 34 states. And is it just coincidence that according to surveys, more Democrats than Republicans are concerned about in-person voting due to Covid-19, and so are more likely to vote by mail? This writer thinks not.
• The U.S. Postal Service has high-speed mail sorters, which the current head of the Post Office, Louis DeJoy, who just happens to be a major donor to President Donald Trump’s campaign, has chosen to disable.

Let us take a small flight of fancy. Imagine, for a minute, that you heard the following facts about a nation:

• An election is approaching.
• The current president, a white racist, is behind in the polls, and removes mailboxes into which an unprecedented number of ballots are expected to be deposited, due to a pandemic that is raging in that nation. Most of those mailboxes have been removed from population centers of people of color, with whom the president is not particularly popular.
• A close associate of the president, who is a major donor to his political campaign, is appointed to lead the postal service, and disables high-speed mail sorting machines.
• The president, his main opponent and many members of their political parties benefit from the financial donations of foreign nations.
• The number of polling places, and their hours or operation, will be limited, mostly in communities of color.
• Corporations are allowed to donate unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns.

Does this not conjure thoughts of a banana republic, a backward nation, kept that way by the oligarchs who have long run it? This belies the repeated U.S. government proclamations that that nation is a shining city on a hill, the envy of the world for its democratic principles, the upholder of justice and human rights everywhere. These myths have long been perpetrated by the U.S., but seldom believed outside its own borders. It is long past time for them to be dispelled within, as well. With civil unrest still raging coast to coast due to racism and police brutality; with voter suppression at home and imperial wars abroad, change must come about. The 2020 election will not be the vehicle which ushers it in; Democratic Candidate Joe Biden may be the lesser of two evils, but evil is still evil.

If the people of the United States knew the power that they hold, change would happen. Unless and until they learn this important lesson, there will be little alteration in the business of U.S. governance.

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Notes

[1] Jayne Werner, “A Short History of the War in Vietnam,” Monthly Review, Vol. 37, June, 1985

[2] [2] Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile under Pinochet (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 23.

[3] Benjamin Witte-Lebhar, “Chile’s Dictatorship-Era Spy Chief Manuel Contreras Dead at 86,” NotiSur – South American Political and Economic Affairs, August 28, 2015.

[4] https://observer.com/2016/10/2006-audio-emerges-of-hillary-clinton-proposing-rigging-palestine-election/

[5] https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?ind=Q05++

[6] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/05/01/statehouse-model-bills-bds-protest-bans/3575083002/

Featured image is from Eureka Street

For anyone old enough to have been alive and aware of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and of so-called COVID-19 in 2020, memory may serve to remind one of an eerie parallel between the two operations.  However, if memory has been expunged by the work of one’s forgettery or deleted by the corporate media flushing it down the memory hole, or if knowledge is lacking, or maybe fear or cognitive dissonance is blocking awareness, I would like to point out some similarities that might perk one up to consider some parallels and connections between these two operations.

The fundamental tie that binds them is that both events aroused the human fear of death. Underlying all fears is the fear of death.  A  fear that has both biological and cultural roots. On the biological level, we all react to death threats in a fight or flight manner. Culturally, there are multiple ways that fear can be allayed or exacerbated, purposely or not. Usually, culture serves to ease the fear of death, which can traumatize people, through its symbols and myths. Religion has for a long time served that purpose, but when religion loses its hold on people’s imaginations, especially in regard to the belief in immortality, as Orwell pointed out in the mid-1940s, a huge void is left.  Without that consolation, fear is usually tranquilized by trivial pursuits.

In the cases of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the current corona virus operation, the fear of death has been used by the power elites in order to control populations and institute long-planned agendas.  There is a red thread that connects the two events.

Both events were clearly anticipated and planned.

In the case of September 11, 2001, as I have argued before, linguistic mind-control was carefully crafted in advance to conjure fear at the deepest levels with the use of such repeated terms as Pearl Harbor, Homeland, Ground Zero, the Unthinkable, and 9/11.  Each in its turn served to raise the fear level dramatically. Each drew on past meetings, documents, events, speeches, and deep associations of dread. This language was conjured from the chief sorcerer’s playbook, not from that of an apprentice out of control.

And as David Ray Griffin, the seminal 9/11 researcher (and others), has pointed out in a dozen meticulously argued and documented books, the events of that day had to be carefully planned in advance, and the post hoc official explanations can only be described as scientific miracles, not scientific explanations. These miracles include: massive steel-framed high-rise buildings for the first time in history coming down without explosives or incendiaries in free fall speed; one of them being WTC-7 that was not even hit by a plane; an alleged hijacker pilot, Hani Hanjour, who could barely fly a Piper Cub, flying a massive Boeing 757 in a most difficult maneuver into the Pentagon; airport security at four airports failing at the same moment on the same day; all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies failing; air traffic control failing, etc.  The list goes on and on.  And all this controlled by Osama bin Laden. It’s a fairy tale.

Then we had the crucially important anthrax attacks that are linked to 9/11. Graeme MacQueen, in The 2001 Anthrax Deception, brilliantly shows that these too were a domestic conspiracy.

These planned events led to the invasion of Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the invasion of Iraq , the ongoing war on terror, etc.

Let us not forget years of those fraudulent color-coded warnings of the terrorist levels and the government admonition to use duct tape around your windows to protect against a massive chemical and biological attack.

Jump to 2020.  Let me start in reverse while color-coded designs are fresh in our minds. As the COVID-19 lockdowns were under way, a funny thing happened as people were wishing that life could return to normal and they could be let out of their cages. Similar color-coded designs popped up everywhere at the same time.  They showed the step-by-step schedule of possible loosening of government controls if things went according to plan. Red to yellow to green. Eye catching. Red orange yellow blue green.  As with the terrorist warnings following September 11, 2001.  In Massachusetts, a so-called blue state where I live, it’s color chart ends in blue, not green, with Phase 4 blue termed “the new normal: Development of vaccines and/or treatments enable the resumption of ‘the new normal.’” Interesting wording.  A resumption that takes us back to the future.

As with the duct tape admonitions after 9/11, now everyone is advised to wear a mask. It’s interesting to note that the 3 M Company, a major seller of duct tape, is also one of the world’s major sellers of face masks.  The company was expected to be producing 50 million N95 respirator masks per month by June 2020 and 2 billion globally within the coming year.  Then there is 3 M’s masking tape…but this is a sticky topic.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, we were told repeatedly that the world was changed forever.

Now we are told that after COVID-19, life will never be the same. 

This is the “new normal,” while the post-9/11-pre-Covid-19 world must have been the old new normal. So everything is different but normal also.

So as the Massachusetts government website puts it, in the days to come we may be enabled to enact “the resumption of ‘the new normal.’”  This new old normal will no doubt be a form of techno-fascist transhumanism enacted for our own good.

As with 9/11, there is ample evidence that the corona virus outbreak was expected and planned; that people have been the victims of a propaganda campaign to use an invisible virus to scare us into submission and shut down the world’s economy for the global elites.  It is a clear case, as Peter Koenig tells Michel Chossudovsky in this must-see interview, that is not a conspiracy theory but a blatant factual plan spelled out in the 2010 Rockefeller Report, the October 18, 2019 Event 201, and Agenda 21, among other places.

 

Like amorphous terrorists and a war against “terrorism,” which is a tactic and therefore not something you can fight, a virus is invisible except when the media presents it as a pale, orange-spiked bunch of floating weird balls that are everywhere and nowhere.  Watch your back, watch your face, mask up, wash your hands, keep your distance – you never know when those orange spiked balls may get you.

As with 9/11, whenever anyone questions the official narrative of Covid-19, the official statistics, the validity of the tests, the effectiveness of masks, the powers behind the heralded vaccine to come, and the horrible consequences of the lockdowns that are destroying economies, killing people, forcing people to despair and to commit suicide, creating traumatized children, bankrupting small and middle-sized businesses for the sake of enriching the richest, etc., the corporate media mock the dissidents as conspiracy nuts, aiding the viral enemy.  This is so even when the dissenters are highly respected doctors, scientists, intellectuals, et al., who are regularly disappeared from the internet.

With September 11, there were initially far fewer dissenters than now, and so the censorship of opposing viewpoints didn’t need the blatant censorship that is now growing daily.

This censorship happens all across the internet now, quickly and stealthily, the same internet that is being forced on everyone as the new normal as presented in the Great Global Reset, the digital lie, where, as Anthony Fauci put it, no one should  ever shake hands again. A world of abstract images and beings in which, as Arthur Jensen tells Howard Beal in the film, Network, “All necessities [will be] provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”  A digital dystopia that is fast approaching as perhaps the end of that red thread that runs from 9/11 to today.

Heidi Evens and Thomas Hackett write in the New York Daily News (September 12, 2001):

With the nation’s illusion of safety and security in ruins, Americans begin the slow and fitful process of healing from a trauma that feels deeply, cruelly personal…leaving citizens throughout the country with the frightening knowledge of their vulnerability.

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To order Edward Curtin’s Book, directly from Clarity Press click here 

 

 

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is the author of the new book: https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/

The Washington regimes’ demand that the Chinese firm ByteDance sell the U.S. presence of its video sharing app TikTok to a U.S. tech company is not a smart move. This follows related demands that the Chinese mobile app WeChat cease operating in the U.S., and that Chinese Huawei’s 5G mobile phone technology be banned from the U.S. and from use by any of its international allies.

In blocking Chinese tech the U.S. regime in effect deprives American people and American companies of advanced technologies which their competitors will use in other countries. TikToks AI and big data functions for social media and other uses are two years ahead of anything produced in the U.S. The Wechat mobile app is far better and more powerful than its U.S. mobile counterpart Whatsapp; Huawei’s 5G technology is ahead of all world competitors.

The recent appearance of these leading-edge technologies from China is not by chance. And more are undoubtedly to come. Beijing is now a world center of research and innovation in information technology, bio-technology, and more. And its combined capital value for its hi-tech companies is greater than that of Silicon Valley; Shenzhen in southern China, once a tiny fishing village, has also emerged in recent years as an innovation hot-house; and other hi-tech hubs are arising in other cities in this nation of 1.4 billion people.

Every move to block Chinese tech will, moreover, inevitably be met with reciprocal defensive measures by China to ban export to the U.S. of advanced Chinese technology and/or to block U.S. tech sales in China, and the Chinese tech market is *much bigger* than the U.S. one.

How Can the U.S. Block TikTok?

How precisely will the Washington regime stop U.S. residents from using Tik-Tok and other Chinese apps if the U.S. rights are not sold? Will they ban it outright at the network level? That would be an action without precedent in the U.S. and put paid to its claim to be a champion of ‘free markets’.

Alternatively, the Washington regime could demand that Apple and Google remove Chinese apps like TikTok from their app stores where U.S. users download them. That could seriously cut into their future use, though offshore apps stores would no doubt still offer them. U.S. companies could also be forbidden to do business with Tiktok in terms of advertising or other commercial relationships, as has already been done with Hawaii.

But here too the Washington gang would be playing a very dangerous commercial game. For the basis of their anti-Tiktok campaign and anti-WeChat campaigns is the unsubstantiated claim that they may provide private users information to the Chinese government. On the other hand, It is a proven fact, well-known to the Chinese government, that U.S. app makrets such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have actively collaborated with the U.S. so-called National Security Agency (NSA) to infiltrate China and purloin millions of our text messages and phone information and computer data, including tapping of former Chinese president Hu’s phone.

Unlike the claims against Tiktok, the past U.S. NSA cyber penetration of China, including its sensitive military labs, is a proven fact due to the documents released by the courageous whited-blower Edward Snowden.

If the U.S. regime continues the anti-Chinese app trend on security grounds, China may very well reciprocate by banning  Apple, Google, and other U.S. apps and phones from its market on the same security grounds as a defensive measure. In China’s case, this measure would be supported by the proven record of NSA collaboration with the U.S. tech giants, and would represent massive financial losses for those firms.

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Eric Sommer is an international journalist living permanently in China.

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Why 9/11 Matters 19 Years Later. The Spinning of 9/11, “Political Trickery”

By Michael Welch, Anthony Hall, Richard Gage, and Prof. Graeme MacQueen, September 11, 2020

Now, on the 19th anniversary of 9/11, some people might be doubting whether the narrative still connects with a dreary and desolate planet. Resources have shifted away from countries supporting terrorism to a new cold war with Russia and China. In the last seven years or so, Putin alone was found responsible (or so the story goes) of illegal violence in Ukraine, stirring up trouble in Syria, poisoning an ex-Russian spy and his daughter (they recovered), and now taking on his political rival, opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Heck, he is even responsible for putting Trump in the White House!

The Truth behind 9/11: Who Is Osama Bin Laden?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 11, 2020

At eleven o’clock, on the morning of September 11, the Bush administration had already announced that Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon. This assertion was made prior to the conduct of an indepth police investigation.

That same evening at 9.30 pm, a “War Cabinet” was formedintegrated by a select number of top intelligence and military advisors.  And at 11.00 pm, at the end of that historic meeting at the White House, the “War on Terrorism” was officially launched.

Examining 9/11 and America’s “War on Terrorism”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 10, 2020

From the very outset, I questioned the official story, which described nineteen Al Qaeda sponsored hijackers involved in a highly sophisticated and organized operation. My first objective was to reveal the true nature of this illusive “enemy of America”, who was “threatening the Homeland”.

The myth of the “outside enemy” and the threat of “Islamic terrorists” was the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s military doctrine, used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, not to xii America’s “War on Terrorism” mention the repeal of civil liberties and constitutional government in America.

The “Inside Job” Hypothesis of the 9/11 Attacks: JFK, 9/11 and the American Left

By Prof. Graeme MacQueen, September 09, 2020

On November 23, 1963, the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Fidel Castro gave a talk on Cuban radio and television.[1] He pulled together, as well as he could in the amount of time available to him, the evidence he had gathered from news media and other sources, and he reflected on this evidence.

The questions he posed were well chosen: they could serve as a template for those confronting complex acts of political violence.  Were there contradictions and absurdities in the story being promoted in the U.S. media? Who benefitted from the assassination? Were intelligence agencies claiming to know more than they could legitimately know? Was there evidence of foreknowledge of the murder? What was the main ideological clash in powerful U.S. circles and how did Kennedy fit in? Was there a faction that had the capacity and willingness to carry out such an act? And so on.

From 9/11 to Covid-19: 19 Years of Media Lies.

By Dr. Eric Beeth, September 08, 2020

Here in Brussels, we usually have a solemn ceremony every Sept 11th in front of a large twisted metal beam from one of the top floors of the North WTC tower that is called the “9/11 and Article 5 Memorial”.  It reminds not only about the strange things that happened to the WTC that day, but also that these events led Europe to join in the “War on Terror” that Pres. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld initiated on that day.  I never go to that Memorial : it is situated in the same Commune as where I live, but on the restricted grounds of NATO, where even journalists are no longer welcome, due to that strange SARS-virus everyone is talking about.

9/11 News Coverage: How 36 Reporters Brought Us the Twin Towers’ Explosive Demolition on 9/11

By Ted Walter and Prof. Graeme MacQueen, September 06, 2020

The widely held belief that the Twin Towers collapsed as a result of the airplane impacts and the resulting fires is, unbeknownst to most people, a revisionist theory. Among individuals who witnessed the event firsthand, the more prevalent hypothesis was that the Twin Towers had been brought down by massive explosions.

This observation was first made 14 years ago in the article, “118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers.” A review of interviews conducted with 503 members of the New York Fire Department (FDNY) in the weeks and months after 9/11 revealed that 118 of them described witnessing what they interpreted that day to be explosions. Only 10 FDNY members were found describing the destruction in ways supportive of the fire-induced collapse hypothesis.

Video: 9/11 and the Global War on Terrorism

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and James Corbett, September 06, 2020

Millions of people have been misled regarding the causes and consequences of 9/11.

9/11 marks the onslaught of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT), used as a pretext and a justification by the US and its NATO allies to carry out a “war without borders”, a global war of conquest.

It’s being widely reported that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to circumvent certain parts of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement negotiated with the EU last year. The internal market bill, published on Wednesday, effectively negates the legal force of parts of the withdrawal agreement in areas relating to state aid and Northern Ireland customs.  It gives the British government the power to unilaterally change some of the arrangements made for the Northern Irish border – the UK’s only land frontier with the EU.  The Johnson government says that such a bill is needed to stop “damaging” tariffs on goods travelling from the rest of the UK to Northern Ireland if negotiations with the EU on a free trade agreement fail. It will be up to Michael Gove, Minister for the Cabinet Office, to persuade EU Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic, of the necessity of the bill, when he meets with him. However, although the government is adamant the move amounts to little more than a safety net, many have been left unconvinced.

The head of the government’s legal department, Sir Jonathon Jones, has reportedly resigned in protest at the attempt to undermine the Brexit deal, particularly the parts relating to Northern Ireland. Despite government claims the bill is to protect the Northern Ireland peace process, a former cabinet minister told the BBC that the opposite is the case. “I cannot allow anyone to get away with saying the government is doing this to protect the peace process. This does the precise opposite. It is about the internal market in the UK and is more likely to lead to a hard border [between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland] which will imperil the peace process.”

Senior Conservatives, together with EU officials, have warned that such a bill would undermine international law, and therefore negatively affect the UK’s reputation. Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, stated Britain would “lose the moral high ground” if it was to proceed with the bill.  Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee concurred, stressing “Our entire economy is based on the perception that people have of the UK’s adherence to the rule of law’.

The word ‘perception’ should of course be stressed here, as the current government’s record on adhering to the rule of law is rather inconsistent. Why, only last year Boris Johnson illegally prorogued parliament in his plan to push through a No Deal Brexit. Although presented back then as a standard suspension of parliament prior to the Queen’s speech, it was clear the Prime Minister had ulterior motives as the break would have prevented any proper debate of the EU withdrawal agreement, and increased the chances of a No Deal Brexit. Parliament only resumed due to a fight led by Scottish Nationalists in court.

Indeed the Scottish government, which has been consistently opposed to Brexit, and in particular a No Deal Brexit, has its own reservations with the Internal Market Bill.  Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, proclaimed yesterday that it was nothing short of a ‘naked power grab’ as it would claim back certain powers which had been devolved to the Scottish Parliament decades ago. She decried it ‘an abomination’ which would ‘cripple devolution’; explaining that it would prevent the Scottish Parliament from legislating over areas such as animal welfare and food safety standards. Scotland may be forced to accept, she said, sub-standard chlorinated chicken imports from the US if a transatlantic trade deal was negotiated with Britain.  Sturgeon vowed to ‘fight tooth and nail’ against Johnson’s proposed bill, but she stressed that Scottish independence would now be the only certain way to defend Scotland’s interests. With polling now at 55% in favour of independence, it seems as if the majority of Scots currently agree with this.

Scottish politicians are joined by their EU counterparts in denouncement of the Internal Market Bill. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said she was ‘very concerned’ and that it would ‘undermine trust’ during the negotiations with the EU. It’s even been reported that the EU could effectively sue the UK for not adhering to the deal, even before the Internal Market bill was voted for in Westminster. By applying huge fines and sanctions, it would hope to persuade British MPs to vote against Johnson’s bill. With so much opposition to it already, since its announcement on Wednesday, it’s not clear whether Johnson would indeed get the legislation passed by parliament.

Regardless of whether it is passed or not, arguably a certain amount of damage has already been done to the UK-EU relationship. The very proposal of such a bill has been enough to harm relations going forward. Indeed a cynic would argue that Johnson never intended to adhere to certain aspects of the Brexit deal. On the contrary, he has always shown determination to get exactly what he wants on Brexit, and if it means a No Deal Brexit, whereby Britain would have to adhere to WTO rules, then so be it. The withdrawal agreement signed last October was a political move to boost Johnson’s popularity prior to the December election. Last year we were used to Johnson saying one thing but doing the other; despite his claims of wanting to secure a withdrawal agreement, his actions led many to believe he and his band of Brexiteers were intent on a No Deal Brexit. EU sources are now speculating that No Deal is exactly what Johnson wants. Indeed, Johnson himself on Monday said that leaving the EU without a trade deal would still be a ‘good outcome’ for the UK.

That remains to be seen. But what it won’t be good for is trust. Johnson’s unreliability will jeopardise Britain’s overall future at a time when it needs to be forging trade deals in the post-Brexit world. If the UK does not adhere to the agreement, it will unlikely bee seen as a steadfast ally in future. In addition, it bodes badly for the constitutional integrity of the UK as he will lose any remaining trust of the Scottish people. By attempting to pull the wool over their eyes, Britain is set to make more enemies than friends amongst its neighbours in the post-Brexit era.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

During a Thursday Security Council session on Syria, Alexey Navalny’s alleged novichok nerve agent poisoning was discussed.

So far, Germany failed to present evidence that supports its claim about his condition.

Is it because there is none? Did Russophobic hardliners in Angela Merkel’s government convince her to accuse Russia of something no evidence suggests it had anything to do with?

What possible motive could Moscow have to want a political nobody with scant public support harmed?

What possible Kremlin benefit could be achieved? Who benefits from what happened to Navalny and whose interests are harmed?

The answers are self-evident. Nothing remotely suggests Russian responsibility for committing an act that would only bring it grief.

The US and its imperial partners alone benefit from Navalny’s alleged poisoning.

Whatever caused his illness has no Russian fingerprints on it.

At Thursday’s Security Council session, Trump regime acting deputy UN envoy Normal Chalet defied reality by falsely claiming that the Russian Federation “used chemical nerve agents from the novichok group in the past (sic).”

He referred to the 2018 father and daughter Skripal incident. Not a shred of evidence proved Russian responsibility for what happened to them in Britain.

Claims otherwise by the Theresa May regime at the time were fabricated.

To this day, no evidence was ever presented to show novichok poisoning caused their illness — the world’s most deadly toxin able to cause death in minutes from exposure.

They’re alive. So is Navalny, his condition improving, nearly three weeks after becoming ill on onboard a flight from Tomsk, Russia to Moscow.

Chalet and his Western Security Council partners unacceptably suggested Russian responsibility for Navalny’s condition at Thursday’s session.

Calling on Moscow “to be fully transparent and to bring those responsible to justice” flies in the face of reality.

No evidence indicates Kremlin responsibility for what happened to Navalny — nothing but baseless allegations and accusations that don’t stand up in the light of day.

At Thursday’s SC session, Russian UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia debunked the false accusation of Moscow’s connection to Navalny’s illness, saying the following:

“Today we are eye-witnessing another attempt at a scenario which is nothing new. We have seen it before.”

“It was tested on the Skripals case, to which, by the way, we still didn’t receive answers to still pending questions,” adding:

“As for Alexey Navalny’s case, everything we said was crystal clear.”

“We are the most interested party to know what happened, but even a first-year law student knows that any investigation should be preceded by evidence and by facts, based on available to us evidence. Or, rather, lack of it.”

“Our law enforcement authorities do not have grounds to open an investigation” — because no evidence was presented to indicate a crime was committed.

“Our doctors who, by the way, saved Alexey Navalny did not find any chemical weapon substances in his analyses.”

“The German laboratory claims it did. But we received no evidence from Germany that would allow us to make a conclusion that it was a crime by attempted poisoning and thus start an investigation.”

Medical analysis by Russian doctors indicated a metabolic disorder. They found no chemical, biological, or other toxins in his system.

Claiming he was novichoked by a German military lab has clear earmarks of an anti-Russia false flag.

When accusations lack supportive evidence, they’re groundless.

Russia’s request for Germany to provide information it claims to have about Navalny’s illness went unanswered since August 27.

Nebenzia stressed that Moscow’s request for Berlin to provide facts about Navalny’s condition is “absolutely legitimate and natural…and it should be honored in accordance with the agreement between our countries.”

Fulfilling its obligation is essential “to establish the truth by investigating an alleged crime.”

Instead, Russia was told that Berlin will not provide information it claims to have because “it could enable Russia to learn how much the Bundeswehr (military lab) knows about chemical substances.”

“Then we heard that the results were classified. How should we interpret this. What do you think?”

At the same time, Merkel’s government shared its findings with the US and other Western states.

The obvious double standard needs no elaboration.

In US judicial proceedings, parties are required to share relevant information relating to admissible evidence, including from documents and interrogations — what’s called the principle of discovery.

It can also be obtained from non-parties through subpoenas. Failure to disclose what’s required can result in mistrials or dismissal of charges.

Criminal case defendants notably have the right to relevant documents, witness depositions, questions and answers from interrogations, crime scene and other forensic evidence, including toxicology results, police reports, “raw evidence,” arrest and search warrants, grand jury testimony, and other relevant data.

Prosecutors are prohibited from concealing the above information.

Unlike Hollywood-style courtroom dramas, actual ones hardly ever  include surprise Alfred Hitchcock/Perry Mason-type evidence by any party during proceedings, especially anything introduced near their conclusion.

No legitimate tribunal would accept accusations without hard evidence. What’s learned through discovery is essential to present during proceedings.

Nebenzia stressed that Berlin’s failure to provide Russia with information on Navalny’s condition “goes against the rule of law” it pretends to “champion,” adding:

“If you demand explanations, put the facts on the table and we will compare notes.”

“Why should we trust allegations uncorroborated by evidence…As of yet, we received nothing that would allow our relevant authorities to conduct their own de-jure investigation, although they started a de-facto (one) which is called pre-investigation procedures.”

Article VII of the Chemical Weapons Convention states the following:

“Each State Party shall cooperate with other States Parties and afford the appropriate form of legal assistance.”

If Germany and its Western partners are committed to uphold the CWC, why are they breaching the above provision?

Instead of comparing Russian and German analyses of Navalny’s medical condition, Berlin continues to suppress its findings, cooperation with Russia ruled out.

Cooperation cuts both ways. Because of stonewalling by Germany, Russia is “unable to engage in all the necessary procedural mechanisms to start an investigation,” Nebenzia explained.

The fault lies in Berlin, not Moscow. Unless corrected in compliance with the CWC and rule of law overall, the Navalny incident suggests “foul play being staged,” said Nebenzia, adding:

“Cui bono” from what’s going on? “Is fecit cui prodest.”

“Who is to benefit from this?”

The responsible part(ies) gain by falsely blaming Russia for what no evidence or motive indicate it had anything to do with.

If Navalny was poisoned by exposure to novichok in Tomsk, Russia, he’d have died before boarding a flight to Moscow.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Land Destroyer Report

Since March, weekly US claims for unemployment insurance (UI) were greater than ever before in the nation’s history for 25 straight weeks.

What seemed unimaginable when 2020 began is cold, hard reality.

Over one million jobless US workers continue to file weekly claims for vitally needed help.

For the last two reporting periods, unemployment claims exceeded the previous week’s total at a time when TV talking head experts expected numbers to decline.

Economist John Williams noted that “(m)eaningful quality and credibility issues continue to plague…headline labor numbers.”

On August 19, downside labor market revisions won’t show up in monthly BLS reports until February 2021, he explained.

Based on how US unemployment was calculated pre-1990 — before the books were cooked to artificially improve the labor market’s appearance — US unemployment today is 28%, not the phony BLS reported so-called U.3 8.4% figure.

Current US unemployment exceeds the depths of the Great Depression when numbers of jobless Americans peaked at 25%.

On Friday, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reported that “UI claims (keep) rising as jobs remain scarce,” adding:

In the latest weekly reporting period, UI claims rose “from 1.6 million to 1.7 million,” broken down as follows:

Applications for “regular state UI (totaled) 884,000.”

Another “839,000” jobless Americans “applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA).”

PUA is the federal program for jobless Americans who don’t qualify for regular UI.

EPI explained that it provides “up to 39 weeks of benefits and expires at the end of this year” if not renewed.

What’s happening in the US jobs market is unprecedented in the nation’s history.

Instead of meaningful congressional action to address economic collapse in the country, both right wings of the one-party state keep politicizing the issue ahead of November elections — a shocking indictment of a hugely corrupted system that’s too debauched to fix.

According to The Economic Collapse blog, “more than half of all households in some of our largest cities ‘are facing serious financial problems,’ ” at a time when so-called experts forecast improving conditions, adding:

A “new NPR/Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation survey” of respondents in the four largest US cities — NYC, LA, Chicago, and Houston — reported disturbing findings.

Half or more of households in these cities reported serious financial conditions — from 50% in Chicago to 63% in Houston.

Because of mass unemployment and underemployment, millions of Americans are increasingly unable to pay for food, shelter, and other essentials to life and well-being in the world’s richest country.

Instead of improving economic conditions, things keep deteriorating.

During daily exercise walks along Chicago’s upscale Magnificent Mile, the usually bustling avenue appears to have scant retail traffic in shops not boarded up and either closed or only partly operating.

In August, CBS Chicago reported that avenue shops are “at risk for massive…closures,” adding:

“A Chicago icon, the Magnificent Mile’s 13 blocks are known across the world.”

“It’s a draw for tourists and a serious boost to the city’s bottom line. What would the city look like without all of this?”

Some locations along the avenue are vacant, some “still boarded up, others dealing with plummeting sales (and) a spike in thefts.”

According to City Council Alderman Brian Hopkins:

“We’re losing tax revenue, and we are losing sales tax on a daily basis.”

“If this trend continues, we won’t have a viable downtown.”

“And it’s not going to be that long. We’re talking a few years.”

“Privately (retailers are saying) they can’t sustain this. They can’t continue at the level they’re at right now, and if it keeps up, we are going to see a rash of business closures in the downtown area” — including along the Magnificent Mile.

To minimize vandalism and theft, the avenue is heavily patrolled by Chicago police on foot, bicycles, as well as in marked and unmarked vehicles.

An officer I chatted with explained that plainclothes cops are protecting the Magnificent Mile and other downtown areas daily round-the-clock along with others in uniform.

On Friday, the Chicago Sun Times reported results of polling data that show “more than 1 in 3 Chicagoans…use(d) up all or most of their savings,” adding:

“(M)any have fallen behind in rent and mortgage payments, with 1 in 4 Chicagoans reportedly having trouble paying their rent or mortgages.”

“And about 20% of people reported skipping or delaying major bill payments to” buy food.

Polling data showed that “69% of Black households and 63% of Latino households reported having serious financial problems.”

What’s true of Chicago is replicated nationwide during conditions that exceed the worst of the Great Depression without an array of New Deal jobs creation programs and other initiatives to improve things.

Most worrisome is that things may worsen ahead and remain dire for countless millions of the nation’s most disadvantaged because of inaction to address things responsibly by politicians in Washington.

EPI explained that most US states provide 26 weeks of UI.

When exhausted, eligible individuals “can move onto Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which is an additional 13 weeks of state UI benefits that is available only to people who were on regular state UI.”

Millions of jobless Americans also lost health insurance coverage.

With scant or no savings, they’re unable to pay medical expenses if become ill and need professional care.

Regardless of whether Republicans or Dems control the White House and/or Congress next year, unprecedented hard times in the US for countless millions are likely to continue for some time — maybe for years to come.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The Chinese currency is expected to increase its 2% share in the world market to somewhere between 5% and 10% within the next 10 years. This could mean that the Chinese yuan will become the world’s third largest currency by 2030, second only to the US dollar and the euro, according to analysts from Morgan Stanley. The yuan achieving a third place position with up to 10% market share within 10 years would be a phenomenal achievement for Beijing, but falls well short of increasing speculation that the yuan will topple the US dollar in only a matter of time.

The analysts, led by Robin Xing, highlight the increasing global demand for Chinese securities from investors. In July, the net inflow of foreign capital in Chinese securities reached $21.3 billion, the highest value since 2014 when statistics began. The total value of securities held by foreign investors reached $360 billion, 13.7% more than in 2019. In addition, according to the company’s report, in 2020 the total amount of portfolio investments attracted to China will be $150 billion, and this annual value will increase to $200-300 billion between 2021 and 2030.

According to the International Monetary Fund, in the first quarter of 2020, the US dollar had a 61.9% share of world reserves. The euro had 20.05%, the yuan had 5.70%, and the pound sterling had 4.43%. There are several factors that limit the yuan’s internationalization, however, the most important is how restricted it is to foreign investors. China has not yet fully opened the yuan to international investors and this severely limits the internationalization of it.

Opening up China’s financial markets would attract more foreign investment, which, in turn, could support high growth rates. On the other hand, Morgan Stanley believe that as China seeks to change the growth model of its economy from exports to domestic consumption, the country will inevitably absorb more than it produces. The Morgan Stanley researchers believe that by 2030, China’s deficit is projected to be 1.2% of its GDP. In this situation, to finance this deficit between 2025 and 2030, China needs a net inflow of at least $180 billion of foreign capital annually, a motivating factor for Beijing’s push for the Belt and Road Initiative.

Foreigners who invest in the yuan in Chinese markets earn higher returns than those who invest in Western markets because Chinese bonds are higher than their Western counterparts. This is the most important factor in attracting foreign investors. Chinese authorities are taking steps to facilitate foreign capital access to the Chinese market, including simplified rules for foreign investors to access the Chinese securities market.

Although at the end 2019 there were approximately 70 central banks around the world holding reserves of yuan, an increase from 60 at the end of 2018, the rapid rise of the Chinese currency and the quick demise of the US dollar that has often been speculated has not yet occurred, and will not in the short-term, according to Morgan Stanley. Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University, shared the same sentiment, saying “I continue to be very skeptical about any dramatic rise in the [yuan] as a major reserve currency.”

As the petrodollar still dominates the international economic system, the yuan overtaking the US dollar is not foreseeable in the short or medium term. As Saudi oil has played a major role in the US dollar becoming the world’s reserve currency in the aftermath of the 1970’s oil crisis, China would have to convince oil-producing states to sell their crude in yuan’s. Considering how little market share the yuan has internationally at the moment, it is unlikely that oil-producing states will want to switch from the dollar to the yuan, especially considering that the US guarantees the security of Saudi Arabia in exchange for the Saudi’s backing the petrodollar system.

Some have even touted that the digital yuan, which would not be a cryptocurrency as it would be backed by a central bank, could one day topple the US dollar. However, Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University, does not believe that a digital yuan would be a “game changer.”

“Because the digital currency is little different from the yuan itself, it will on its own ‘not be a game changer’ that elevates the [yuan’s] role in international finance,’ wrote Prasad. “After all, the Chinese government still restricts capital inflows and outflows, and the People’s Bank of China still manages the [yuan’s] exchange rate. Neither policy is likely to change significantly anytime soon.”

Speculation continues that the collapse of the petrodollar is near and the rise of the yuan is imminent. However, in the foreseeable future, this remains fanciful so long as countries continue to sell oil for dollars and China keeps its restrictions on foreign investors. Short of an unpredictable factor, the yuan does not yet have the means or capability to challenge the US dollar in a serious way just yet. This will inevitably change however in the coming decades as China continues to infrastructurally rise domestically while it creates a network of transportation hubs all across the world that will inevitably lead to a massive increase in demand for the yuan.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics