Canada is supporting US efforts to overthrow Nicaragua’s government.
A recently leaked USAID document highlights “the breadth and complexity of the US government’s plan to interfere in Nicaragua’s internal affairs up to and after its presidential election in 2021.” The stated aim is to replace president Daniel Ortega with “a government committed to the rule of law, civil liberties, and a free civil society.” HighlightingWashington’s aim, Ben Norton notes, “the 14-page USAID document employed the word ‘transition’ 102 times, including nine times on the first page alone.”
Recently Canada’s representative to the Organization of American States, Hugh Adsett, joined five other countries in calling on the OAS’ Secretary General to organize a special session focused on human rights and democracy in Nicaragua. At the recent OAS meeting Adsett criticized Nicaragua, saying the Covid-19 pandemic “should not be used to weaken democracy”.
Ottawa has supported a number of OAS resolutions and initiatives targeting Nicaragua’s government. Along with the US, Paraguay, Jamaica and Argentina, Canada was part of the 2019 OAS High-Level Diplomatic Commission on Nicaragua, which Managua blocked from entering the country. The commission claimed there was an “alteration of constitutional order that seriously affects the democratic order” in Nicaragua. But, the group failed to win majority support at the OAS General Assembly.
Ottawa has severed aid and sanctioned officials from a government former US national security adviser John Bolton listed as part of a “troika of tyranny” (Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua). Ortega’s government is part of the Venezuela-led Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA), which is a response to North American capitalist domination of the hemisphere.
Since the Sandinistas’ won power in 2007 poverty rates dropped substantially in the nation of six million. The government expanded access to electricity in rural areas and doubled the proportion of electricity from renewable sources to over half. Access to drinking water has increased as have health indicators improved. Women’s role in parliament grew sharply and Nicaragua’s murder rate remained a fraction of its northern neighbours. According to a July 2019 UN report, there were 8.3 murders per 100,000 Nicaraguans compared with nearly 70 murders per 100,000 in El Salvador and Honduras.
A little more than a year after his third consecutive election victory a protest movement challenged Ortega’s presidency. Ostensibly what unleashed the uprising was a social security reform pushed by the International Monetary Fund. But, pension benefits were largely maintained with the government offloading most of the cost on to employers. Despite a relatively working-class friendly reform, many student organizations and NGOs aligned with the major employer federation, the wealthiest Nicaraguans and the conservative Catholic church to oppose the government. Many of these groups were financed and trained by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and Freedom House, which is close to the CIA. The movement was greatly influenced by Washington, which has long been powerful in the small, impoverished, country.
The protests quickly turned violent. At least 22 police officers were killed and as many as 300 lost their lives in politically related violence during 2018. The North American media and internationally connected NGOs blamed the government for all the rights violations. But, this was absurd, as the death toll of police highlight. It was also public knowledge that opposition rebels had been attacking government supporters for years. In March 2016 the New York Times published a long sympathetic story headlined “Ortega vs. the Contras: Nicaragua Endures an ’80s Revival” about a small number of anti-government rebels targeting police stations and Sandinistas in rural areas.
Still, Canadian officials blamed the government — either implicitly or directly — for the violence. Between April 23 and July 18, 2018, Global Affairs put out at least four press releases critical of the situation in Nicaragua. Chrystia Freeland’s statements became steadily stronger with the former foreign minister eventually demanding an immediate end to the “violence, repression, arbitrary detentions and human rights violations” and for “the government of Nicaragua to help create the conditions for safe, peaceful, and constructive discussions.” Subsequently Canada’s foreign minister questioned Ortega’s democratic legitimacy. In June 2019 Freeland declared, “Canada will continue to stand with the people of Nicaragua and their legitimate demands for democracy and accountability.” But, Ortega won the election in a landslide and it’s hard to imagine that he suddenly lost all support.
In March 2016 the New York Times reported, “Mr. Ortega enjoys strong support among the poor” while eight months later The Guardian noted he “cementedpopular support among poorer Nicaraguans.” At the end of 2016 Ortega was re-elected with 72% of the vote in an election some in the opposition boycotted.
The Liberals raised the conflict in Nicaragua in international forums. At a Women Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Montréal in September 2018 Freeland said “Nicaragua” was one of “the pressing issues that concern us as foreign ministers.” The “situation in Nicaragua” was discussed between Freeland and foreign minister Aloysio Nunes at the third Canada-Brazil Strategic Partnership Dialogue a month later.
In August 2018 the Liberals officially severed aid to Nicaragua. Canadian funding for five major government backed projects was withdrawn.
Ten months later Canada sanctioned nine Nicaraguan government officials, including ministers and the president of the National Assembly. Individuals’ assets were frozen and Canadians were prohibited from dealing with said persons. The sanctions were adopted in co-ordination with Washington. “United States and Canada Announce Financial Sanctions to Address the Ongoing Repression in Nicaragua”, noted the US State Department’s release.
The Liberals’ stance towards Nicaragua contrasts sharply with its words and actions towards its Central American neighbour Honduras. While Canada condemned Ortega, severed aid and sanctioned officials, it maintained friendly relations and aid spending after Juan Orlando Hernandez defied the constitution by running for a second term as president and then brazenly stole the election.
The Liberals regime change efforts in Nicaragua are part of a broader pro-US/corporate policy in the hemisphere rife with hypocrisy.
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Featured image: A woman stands near a burning barricade holding Nicaraguan flag, April 2018 (Source: Yves Engler)
Politologist Georgii Bovt gave an interview recently in which he said: ‘A movement which doesn’t have a leader, program, or strategy, will die’. In fact, the expert gave the Belarus protest movement one more month at best. A pessimistic prognosis no doubt for the thousands who protested against the re-election of Alexander Lukashenko over the weekend; but nonetheless it remains to be seen how long the Belarussian opposition can encourage people out on to the streets. As the colder, autumnal weather sets in, will the people of Minsk be as keen to venture out in support of opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya?
This remains to be seen. For as Georgii Bovt aptly put it, this is an opposition movement which is lacking all the necessary components to enforce change. In any political or ideological campaign, one of the most important factors is leadership, and indeed the personality of the leader. As German political and social theorist Max Weber noted, a charismatic leader is vital for the success of political movements; in this case it is essential if one is intent on unseating an incumbent president of 26 years together with the system he has in place. It has been identified, for instance, that the success of the Bolshevik revolution was down to, in part, the immense role played by Vladimir Lenin. Charisma, energy, and drive are necessary traits of an effective leader, and typically, such charismatic individuals emerge at times of change, like the one Belarussians are experiencing now.
However, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is lacking all these qualities. In fact, her presentation is so poor it’s cringeworthy to watch. She looks positively bored when interviewed and has this annoying habit of sighing before answering the question, as if she genuinely can’t be bothered. In addition, she is nervous and unsure of herself, seeming incapable of answering questions without reeling off scripted answers. Her press conference last week was a prime example of this; in answer to two very separate questions she gave an identical response, which did not in fact answer the question. The only reply which appeared to reveal her own genuine thoughts was her answer to the final question asked, to which she expressed that she very much hoped that the President would listen to the Belarussian people:
‘You know, what I want to say is…I very much hope and I believe that the leadership will listen to its people, and the fact that we are always told that the President loves his people and country and what he sees just now will show him that people want change. And I hope he will come to his senses and the people will be listened to and he will come round to holding new, transparent elections.’
After these words, her press conference was abruptly, and unexpectedly cut short. It was as if she had strayed off target, had said something she wasn’t supposed to. And indeed she had. For the reality is that in this statement Tikhanovskaya reveals to us that she does not consider herself leader of Belarus, and has no interest in the position. She is simply a puppet; it’s just not clear who is pulling the strings. The very fact that she acknowledges the ‘leadership’ contradicts her assertions that she, not Lukashenko is the elected President. Her reference to the fact that Lukashenko ‘loves his people and country’ contrasts with her movement’s message that he is a brutal dictator. It is an extraordinary statement from an opposition candidate attempting to oust the President. It plainly contradicts her other, scripted, sleek videos in which she adopts a defiant, authoritative tone and doesn’t hold back in condemning Lukashenko.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is the most reluctant leader there ever was. But others are determined to push her into the limelight. Maria Kolesnikova, for example, who was at Tikhanovskaya’s side during the election campaign, is quite a different character, and much less modest. A musician and arts manager, she lived for 12 years in Germany and is described as having a ‘certain affinity for the West’. She has been involved in protests in Belarus for over a decade and was campaign manager for former presidential hopeful Viktor Babariko (arrested by the authorities on corruption charges and therefore unable to run in the election), with whom she worked at Belgazprombank. As she said in one interview: ‘I share his values completely — they’re exactly the same as mine’. Recently she presented a video instructing Belarussian civils servants and military personnel to reject orders, saying that they would be handsomely rewarded for doing so. Just exactly where the funding is coming from for such ‘bribes’ is not clear. But given her clear ideas, defiance and motivation for change in Belarus, it’s not clear why Kolesnikova herself is not presenting herself as a candidate. Is it because, unlike Tikhanovskaya, she lacks good spoken English, a desirable skill for communication with western diplomats?
Who knows. But the opposition will no doubt live to regret their decision to choose Tikhanovskaya to head up the movement. After three weeks of protests in Belarus, the government has made no concessions and no promise to hold new elections. Emmanuel Macron was in a weaker position in France back in 2018/19 when he was forced to concede to the Yellow Vests with promises of raising the minimum wage and cutting taxes. The momentum of the post-election demonstrations in Belarus has been lost. In one interview Tikhanovskaya was asked why people were not listening to her demands to strike; she responded by saying that people were striking. She isn’t in touch with reality, and the reality is that people need to put food on the table, and therefore need to keep working. Lukashenko knows this and so has the upper hand. Although he is unlikely to last in the long-term, Alexander Grigoryevich is going nowhere soon.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
US war on China by other means because of its growing prominence on the world stage has both countries on a potential collision course toward direct confrontation if cooler heads in Washington don’t step back from the brink.
Unacceptable US actions against China and its enterprises are reminiscent of FDR’s economic war on imperial Japan that led to full-blown global war.
In the age of super-weapons, another one could destroy planet earth and all its life forms if things go this far.
US imperial rage risks the unthinkable. Its aim for unchallenged global dominance threatens everyone everywhere.
Bipartisan US policy toward China is all about wanting its economic, industrial, and technological growth undermined, along with wanting the country isolated politically.
Beijing earlier vowed to retaliate against unacceptable US actions appropriately at a time and ways of its choosing.
Since Trump took office, scores of Chinese enterprises were blacklisted from the US market, notably communications and high-tech ones on the phony pretext of protecting national security.
The policy is all about aiming to give corporate America a competitive advantage — and not just against Chinese firms.
Blacklisted ones on the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (SIC) Entity List are barred from purchasing US technology with Washington’s permission.
The exclusionary list includes “businesses, research institutions, government and private organizations, individuals, and other types of legal persons — that are subject to specific license requirements for the export, reexport and/or transfer (in-country) of specified items.”
On Saturday, China announced tightened export controls on nearly two dozen cutting-edge technologies — the first such changes since 2008.
According to China’s Ministry of Commerce and Science and separate Technology Ministry, revised controls apply to nuclear equipment and materials, seaborne satellite launching pads, equipment used in building manmade islands, artificial intelligence interface, drone technology, ultra-high voltage transmission and clean coal power generation, quantum encryption and early warning technology, metal 3D printing, as well as advanced drilling tools and software used in oil and gas extraction.
Xinhua explained that new controls apply to China’s privately-owned TikTok video sharing firm that the Trump regime banned from operating in the US under ownership of its ByteDance parent company, adding:
If the firm intends “to export related technologies, it (must) go through licensing procedures” that can take up to 30 days for approval if granted.
TikTok’s technology in question is the company’s algorithm for its “For You” page that recommends more videos to watch based on known user preferences.
According to China trade expert Cui Fan, ByteDance will have to “consider whether it is necessary to suspend” TikTok’s sale to a US firm based on Beijing’s revised export controls.
China’s Foreign Ministry expressed strong opposition to Trump’s ban on TikTok, forcing the company to seek a US buyer so it can continue operating in the country.
China expert Gao Lingyun said tightened Ministry of Commerce and Science requirements were likely because of hardline Trump regime policies toward the country’s enterprises, adding:
They’re China’s response to the US Entity List.
The Wall Street Journal reported that new restrictions may “throw a wrench into talks between…ByteDance and potential buyers.”
So far the firm and the White House haven’t responded to Beijing’s new export requirements.
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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.”
33rd Anniversary of Brian’s Surviving the US Train Assault in California, September 1, 2020 in front of the US embassy, Managua, Nicaragua
Buenos dias. I am here today in front of the US Embassy in Managua to protest US intervention in Nicaragua and also to publicly deliver a letter in which I and others request a meeting with Ambassador Sullivan to denounce US intervention in Nicaragua.
I first came to Nicaragua in 1986 to study Spanish and to learn about the Nicaragua’s Revolution.
I came back three more times in 1986 and 1987 to document the criminal conduct of President Reagan’s so-called terrorist “Freedom Fighters”, trained, armed and funded by the US people through their Congress and President. Upon doing research, several of us discovered that most of the weapons – mortars, assault rifles, pistols, land mines, grenades, rockets, small arms ammunition, etc. – coming to El Salvador and Nicaragua, originated from the Concord, California Naval Weapons Station (CNWS). We acquired copies of the shipment orders.
In addition, we gained more information after young Nicaraguan soldiers shot down on October 5, 1986, a US CIA C-123 weapons supply plane with a surface-to-air missile (SAM), twenty miles from the Costa Rican border north of San Carlos, Nicaragua. One of the four crew members, mercenary Eugene Hasenfus from Wisconsin, USA, parachuted to safety before being captured. The three other crew members were killed in the crash. It was Hasenfus’ tenth air supply drop of weapons to awaiting Contra terrorists. The plane was carrying thirteen thousand pounds of military supplies, including sixty AK-47s, fifty thousand rounds of ammunition, grenades and their launchers, jungle boots, and water packets originating from Brooklyn, New York. I and two other US military veterans were able to interview Hasenfus for several hours in his Tipitapa prison cell gathering many additional details of the US arms shipments.
The US continued to relentlessly fund the criminal terrorist war against the Nicaraguan people despite it being in violation of both international and US Constitutional law, and a ruling of the World Court. Thousands of people were murdered and maimed. The US Congress and President have never been held to account for these vicious crimes, enjoying virtual immunity. Thus, some of us US citizens chose to act in direct efforts to stop the US murder policy being conducted in all of our names as US citizens.
Thirty-three years ago, on a bright sunny day on September 1st, 1987, I went to the Concord, California Naval Weapons Station (the Pentagon’s largest storage arsenal on the US West Coast) at about 11 am, with two other military veterans, along with about 50 supporting witnesses. We took our positions to begin our permanent human blockade ON the Station’s railroad tracks. Everyday, locomotives hauled boxcars full of various armaments from the interior storage bunkers carried on three miles of tracks to be loaded on ships in the Sacramento River. Destination: To murder peasants in El Salvador and Nicaragua, 3,500 miles further south.
This US Navy base had a history of citizen civil disobedience. It had been used during the unpopular US War against Viet Nam sending armaments to Asia where many civil blockades had attempted to interfere with movement of those weapons. There was an official protocol for the military to call local police to make arrests, before moving the weapons train whose legal speed limit was but 5 mph. We had notified the US military authorities in writing, and in person, several days in advance of September 1, and again on that day, of our plans for beginning our veteran’s blockade. The large sign posted within a few feet of the location of our human blockade warned of the penalties for interfering with movement of munitions: one year in prison and a $5,000 fine. We expected that sooner or later we would be arrested and imprisoned.
There was a contingent of armed US Marines who protect the base grouped some 30 feet from our position. And there was mumbling from them about “we hear there is going to be violence today”. We said, “no, we are nonviolent”.
Near High Noon, the first weapons train became visible some 700 feet or so down the tracks. The other two veterans and I took our firm positions between the rail’s two tracks, to wait for our arrests. I was sitting in a lotus position, the other two were crouched but firmly planted on their feet. Our many witnesses were observing along the outside of the tracks, including one friend with a video camera who was to document our treatment by police during the arresting process. As the train came closer and closer, it appeared that it might be accelerating above its 5-mph speed limit, but that seemed extraordinarily unlikely in light of official protocol and violation of security requirements operating this dangerous munitions train.
But, as fate would have it, the train was accelerating, and as it got closer and closer to our human blockade, it was clear it had no intention of stopping. Our autonomic nervous system urgently responded with adrenalin, and our bodies moved accordingly. One veteran jumped at the last second to the left off the tracks. The second veteran, 67 years old, jumped straight up in the air and grabbed onto the railing above the cowcatcher platform where two train spotters were standing in phone contact with the operating engineer at the rear of the locomotive. As I had been sitting, I tried to bolt to the right off the tracks but was too late and my body went completely under the locomotive and its trailing boxcars. The train continued for another 500 feet before it stopped and was surrounded by dozens of armed US Marines.
I spent one month in the hospital recovering from my injuries – double leg amputations below the knee, fractured skull with destruction of right frontal lobe, facial reconstruction including re-attaching severed outer left ear, two broken elbows, broken right wrist, many cracked ribs, broken right shoulder blade, damaged right kidney, and many skin abrasions, including 100 stitches inside my mouth. I left the hospital with two prosthetic legs and a walker.
We learned that the FBI had investigated me and one of the other two veterans as “domestic terrorist suspects” since 1986. A local Sheriff investigation claimed a fear that we were planning to hijack the train, and that the three-man train crew was ordered that day to NOT stop the train. A formal Navy investigation concluded that the train was accelerating to 17 mph, more than three times its legal speed limit. At the time of impact; that the crew could see us for at least 650 feet, but they never attempted to brake the train, which was what I expected (naturally) per protocol and legal regulations. I had no intentions to play chicken with a 200,000-pound locomotive.
The US never apologized, and no local, state, or national agency ever brought criminal charges against the navy or its train crew. After a three-year series of motions and countermotions, a court settlement was reached.
Current US Criminal Plans to overthrow the Democratically elected, sovereign Nicaragua government.
Examining US State Department, NDI (National Democratic Institute) and USAID (US Agency for International Development) and NED (National Endowment for Democracy) communications from 2010 to 2018, it is clear that the US has been preparing for an illegal change of government before, but no later than, the 2021 elections. Their extensive and continuous communications reveal:
“final goals” of “regime change” to a government “akin to the interest of the US government”;
“promote mobilizations against the government of Daniel Ortega”;
“the US government, through its Embassy and the USAID have been preparing the conditions to carry out a non-violent coup d’etat against the Nicaraguan government”;
“create a mass of young people critics of the government”;
“create a negative opinion about Daniel Ortega”;
“discredit the electoral process”;
“promote antigovernment awareness in vulnerable sectors of the society”;
“training young leadership and exerting control over the ‘independent’ means of communication…. looking out on the 2021 elections”;
“undermining the image of the Nicaraguan government”;
“strengthening the civil society organizations, the media war and the creation of a platform for young leaders, and, at the same time, guaranteeing an international following”; and
“training in data journalism and data visualization…to influence on the Nicaraguan public opinion and to create a negative opinion about the Daniel Ortega’s government”, using funds from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
On July 31, 2020, we learned that the US has launched a new brazen, criminal and arrogant plan to overthrow Nicaragua’s government. A well-orchestrated plan financed by the United States to launch a coup d’état in Nicaragua over the next two years was leaked in a document from the US embassy. US official are fearful that President Ortega and the FSLN will win the 2021 scheduled elections. The document’s title is RAIN, Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua, and indicates an intention to contract a US company (Blackwater or its successor?) to take charge of carrying out the coup. The plan’s criminal purpose is to “destroy public order” and “do other violent actions” before, during and/or after the 2021 elections. The funds to implement this plan are or have been allocated through the International Development Agency (AID) which is also the US institution that has provided the most money openly in recent years to the Nicaraguan opposition for coup activities. USAID will fund these destabilizing activities, using local partners: public opinion analysts, media, businesspersons, NGOs, students, and social networks to orchestrate false news reports. USAID provided millions of dollars to fund the 2018 US-attempted coup operators against Nicaragua.
The new coup government must immediately submit to the policies and guidelines established by the United States, including persecution of Sandinistas, dissolving the National Police and the Army, among other institutions. The document seeks to aggravate the COVID 19 pandemic, which is well under control at present, unlike in the United States, despite US sanctions. The opposition has already received more than $31 million from the United States between the end of 2017 and May 1, 2020. The document also details the participation of the US Embassy in Managua, currently under leadership of US Ambassador Kevin K. Sullivan, who will be in charge of executing a series of diplomatic actions such as the creation of a commission to delegitimize the ousted government while legitimizing the new government imposed by a coup d’état.
Therefore, today, a group of US citizens and Nicaraguans are requesting a meeting with Ambassador Sullivan, to ask him to denounce the RAIN coup plan, or any other plan to destabilize the Nicaragua society and government. We want to also remind him of the laws being violate by current US foreign policy against Nicaragua. These laws include:
United Nations Charter [Article 2(4) reads as follows: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations], and [51: Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security”].
II. Any United States military and paramilitary intervention in the affairs Nicaragua is illegal under domestic law, specifically the War Powers Resolution, the Foreign Assistance Act, the Neutrality Act, and the United States Constitution [US Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
III. 1956 Treaty of Friendship with Nicaragua.
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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal.
I set out to write a commentary on current economic events for this engagement, with a focus on monetary issues. But the current nightmarish scenario in the U.S. is so confusing and is moving at such a rapid speed, that I decided to offer a broader perspective. However, I don’t believe anyone knows how our unfolding national catastrophe is going to be resolved, or what the U.S. will look like even a year or two from now, or even if there will be a U.S.
The situation may actually be far more serious than most of us think. Are we seeing the last days of the American republic? Many would dismiss such a question as unduly alarmist. But to one who has studied history, events seem eerily similar to the end of the German Weimar Republic in in 1933.
Who can any longer doubt that we have our own fascist cabal ready to strike? Many people in Germany laughed off Hitler and the Nazis until it was too late. So we shall see. We now have “our own” named Donald Trump and “the Republicans”. In my opinion, we’ve already had rehearsals with the carefully staged Reagan takeover of 1980 and the Bush-Cheney putsch of 2000, with complicity going all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Are we awaiting another “Reichstag fire”—like 9/11—with the provocations being staged by hidden forces “rioting” in Portland and elsewhere as a prelude? We also have the deliberate destruction of the U.S. Postal Service by the Trump administration taking place in full public view, with the obvious aim of discrediting and canceling an anti-Trump vote in the November general election based on mailed-in ballots if Biden should win. Another thing history teaches is that aggressors usually announce their intentions beforehand.
“Democracy” is certainly no safeguard. U.S. presidents are always elected by a minority of the total population, Do the math—in 2016, Trump was elected by 19% of the people living in the U.S.—63 million votes out of a population of 326.7 million. Elections today are won by craft, guile, money, false flag events, and propaganda—above all, by propaganda. The Republicans are masters in this arena, especially when they have a sitting president.
But this history focuses on money. I do think I have something to say in this forum, because, since retiring as an analyst with the U.S. Treasury Department, I have played a public role in the monetary debate for quite a few years. So I am going to focus my remarks on my own personal journey and what I feel I have learned and experienced along the way. I will also talk quite a bit about public events as I have seen them. So please bear with me.
I feel an affinity with Edward Snowden. When I read Snowden’s account of his revelations of the government’s pervasive and unconstitutional collection of electronic information on all U.S., citizens, it struck me that Snowden, now in exile in Russia, was descended from some of Maryland’s earliest settlers. The family dutifully served our country as soldiers and public servants as far back as the Continental Army. Ironically, the National Security Agency, whose lawlessness Snowden exposed, is located at Fort Meade, Maryland, on land the Snowdens once owned!
My own ancestors, mostly English, have also been in North America for a long time. On my father’s side, I am descended from an English settler named Thomas Bliss, who arrived in 1635 at the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts. His grandfather and namesake was a prominent Puritan dissenter who was dragged by a mule through the streets of London on orders of Archbishop Laud, then thrown into prison. It was a quest for religious freedom that got us here.
In America the family grew and moved west, migrating from New York to Illinois, and eventually to Oklahoma. My male ancestors served in many of America’s wars. In Illinois, my ancestor got land as payment for serving in the army during the War of 1812. Ancestors on both sides of the family fought for the Union in the Civil War. My great great grandfather’s New York Heavy Artillery unit was with General Grant at Appomattox. My two grandfathers both served during World War I, and my father was in the Navy in World War II.
My maternal grandfather was of French-Canadian descent. We have Native American ancestry through him. My great-grandfather on my father’s side rode in the 1889 Oklahoma land rush and ran a general store that traded with the Indians. He was especially close to the Shawnee, the tribe of the great Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet.
I was born in Missoula, Montana, and grew up in Midland, Michigan, where my father was a chemist with Dow Chemical. When I was in the 9th grade, we moved to Williamsburg, Virginia. The big event during my high school years was the assassination of President John Kennedy in 1963. This was deeply scarring personally but got me to look beneath the surface of things.
It wasn’t too many years before I stopped believing the government’s cover story of a lone assassin, thanks to Mark Lane’s book, Rush to Judgment. The assassination of John F. Kennedy, with its cover-up, was a crime committed by the U.S. national security apparatus with participation by foreign parties. This crime has never been atoned for and is still part of the karmic baggage of the nation that so many people are blind to. People on the government payroll think they can perpetrate something like this without consequence? Incredible.
It wasn’t long after Kennedy’s death that the Vietnam War got going in a big way. War has always been a very big deal in the U.S., and it was in the 1960s, but I personally never much cared for it, to say the least. I have always found the militaristic mentality repugnant. By this I mean the idea that use of military force is an “option” to be exercised by rational human beings to achieve policy goals. Rather we should do everything possible between and within human communities to resolve our differences openly, peacefully, and fairly. There should be no hidden agendas, no jockeying for advantage. There should be no prejudice and no assumptions that one particular group is a “chosen” or “exceptional” party.
Those we perceive as “different” should be treated with respect. Physical force should be a last resort and should cease once stability in relationships is restored. Even “justice” is too nebulous a concept, as justice often means no more than “an eye for an eye.” Justice without mercy and forgiveness leads to the cruelty of the jungle.
I also believe deeply in the sanctity of “The Family of Man,” which was the title of a famous book of the 1950s and 60s. I feel this concept is particularly necessary in a nation as racially and socially diverse as the U.S., with its history of oppression and genocide against Native Americans, African-American slaves, and conquered peoples in places like the Philippines and Puerto Rico.
In high school, I wanted to become a diplomat. I made a start in being accepted at Yale. But due to personal and family circumstances, I dropped out after a few weeks. This caused me little heartburn, as I did not feel comfortable at all in a privileged bastion of American Cold War ideology. After leaving Yale, I attended the College of William and Mary in my home town of Williamsburg, where I studied literature. I now wanted to be a writer.
But I also wanted to move to Washington, D.C., and needed a paycheck. I was able to get a job as a report writer with the federal government, going to work in 1970 as an analyst with the U.S. Civil Service Commission. I then taught history at a private high school in Washington, D.C., for two years, then went back to the Commission. After that I worked at the Food and Drug Administration for two more years in the office of Commissioner Donald Kennedy, then served on special assignment in the Jimmy Carter White House.
I’d like to dwell a bit on what was going on in the U.S. when I went to work at the Carter White House in 1979-80. The Vietnam War, thank God, was over. Nixon and Ford were gone, and Carter had been elected in 1976 in what we thought was a return to normalcy. But it was not to be.
Carter was a good man who wanted to be a peacetime president. His first act on assuming office was to issue a blanket pardon for all Vietnam draft dodgers. But he was no match for the powerful forces that wanted to get rid of him. They came up with Ronald Reagan, a mediocre but glib movie actor who had become a right-wing figurehead as governor of California.
Reagan was maneuvered into the White House through a recession engineered by the Federal Reserve starting in 1979-80, combined with the plot to discredit Carter as a weakling after the Iranian seizure of American hostages in their Islamic revolution. As an aside, Carter was made to look bad by Reagan’s debate performances after his followers stole Carter’s debate notebook. Reagan and his ilk were disgusting. I agreed with Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill when he said of Reagan, “It’s sinful that this man is president of the United States.”
I continued working in the White House office while all this was going on. I had thought about volunteering for Carter’s presidential campaign, but was glad I didn’t. Instead, I was able to keep my civil service appointment and was assigned to do PR chores on Reagan’s behalf until I couldn’t stomach it any more and quit the government in 1983. I moved with my family to a small farm we had purchased in West Virginia. I was now completely disenchanted with government.
Despite all this, it was during my brief stay in the Carter administration that I discovered the world of monetary reform.
I was an avid student of history who, like many others, was baffled by the disasters of the 20th century. The usual explanations, including those of Marxism, failed to satisfy me. In my reading, I came across the ideas of a Scottish engineer named Major Clifford Hugh (C.H.) Douglas. A prominent figure in the U.K. in the 1920s, Douglas pointed out a key fact: that the source of economic instability in modern western industrial nations is the fact that national production consistently outpaces the availability of collective income to purchase it. The primary cause is not just underpayment of workers, as Henry Ford realized, but the withdrawal of income from sales for purposes of savings, hoarding, and reinvestment.
JM Keynes
This “gap” between production and income had also been discovered by John Maynard Keynes, whose entire program was built upon making up the difference by government borrowing. Because this debt-based solution was so appealing to creditors; i.e., the banks, it was that set of policies that became enshrined within the capitalist world of macroeconomics. “Keynesian Economics” was the answer, except it didn’t work.
Douglas, by contrast, argued that the “gap” actually showed the strength of the producing economy and should be filled by a “national dividend” paid directly to individuals. He called his system “Social Credit.” Political movements based on Douglas’s ideas were started in Canada and New Zealand. In New Zealand today, there is a political party devoted to Social Credit.
Douglas’s idea of a national dividend is similar in some respects to today’s proposals for a universal basic income. It is an idea deeply respectful of the spiritual autonomy of individuals, which neither Marxism nor market capitalism offers.
Without such a measure, Douglas explained, nations would try to fill the production-income gap by consumer and government debt, which the banks obviously clamored for, or by a favorable balance of trade, where the gap would be filled either by sales of products to other nations or by their purchase of the debt instruments of debtor nations. With such an imbalanced system, the obvious result would be endless war.
As far as I was concerned, Douglas had explained the 20th century: why it was so awful and what could have been done about it. I convened a meeting of friends and colleagues at the Executive Office Building but no one else was able to understand what Douglas was talking about. Soon events had overtaken me with the 1980 election. So I put Douglas’s ideas on the back burner for the time being. But I was grateful to have learned from him that economics should be oriented to respect the spiritual autonomy of the human individual.
Returning to the early 1980s, there we were, living on a small farm in Union County, West Virginia, where I was going broke. So we sold the farm and got ready to move back to Washington. After doing some work for a temporary agency, I was surprised to be offered a job as an analyst on NASA’s space shuttle staff. This was new and different. Back in the government and working for NASA to boot!
As fate would have it—and I do believe in fate—my first assignment was to interview the engineers for the space shuttle solid rocket boosters and find out what was going on with problems with the “O-rings.” I did find out. For years, these round rubber washers that fit between rocket segments had been showing signs of burning through during flights. A complete burn-through would mean the shuttle would blow up and all the astronauts would die. NASA was keeping this a secret while they tried to redesign the rocket joints. In the meantime, on January 28, 1986, there was a burn-through, and Challenger did blow up with its seven-member crew. A cover-up then began.
For whatever reasons, I felt I could not go along with the cover-up and gave a collection of O-ring papers to the New York Times. My name got in the news, and I testified that NASA had known about this problem for quite a while. I never returned to NASA, though I published some newspaper articles of my own and gave a few interviews. A journalist told me, “They’ve killed people for less than what you did.” But within a week of my testimony I had transferred to a very obscure job in the U.S. Treasury Department, where I stayed for 21 years. The job was not all that demanding, so I had plenty of time to study the machinations of government finance and its relation to private sector economics. Eventually I was teaching training courses for Treasury on U.S. financial history.
Life went on as I commuted to Washington from a small farm we had bought in Virginia a couple of hours from the city. I spent time with my kids as they grew up, including a lot of camping and backpacking trips. I grew vegetables, raised poultry, and drove a vanpool to work. Life was starting to seem somewhat normal. I was even able to pursue my spiritual interests by trying to learn meditation.
But the world was changing.
The turning point had come in 1979-80, when the Federal Reserve, under David Rockefeller’s protégé Paul Volcker, crashed the producing economy with interest rates in excess of 20 percent. This was supposedly to fight inflation, but the real reason was to reduce our industrial core to rubble for hidden political and financial motives.
The actions of the Fed were documented brilliantly in William Greider’s landmark book, The Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. Small business in particular was devastated, and the planned hollowing out of America’s industrial cities was underway. Vast stretches of our urban landscape eventually became what are still aptly called “Death Zones.”
Through the so-called “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s that followed the Fed’s mischief, we saw the complete takeover of the U.S. economy, along with much of the rest of the world, by the Money Power that owns the banks, investment houses, hedge funds, and other controlling institutions. It was the Republican Party, now with Reagan as its figurehead, that was the instrument of the Money Power, as it had been since it was founded in the late 1850s.
Let’s pause for a moment to make note of the fact that the Money Power exercises its control through the practice of usury. The ancient Hebrews and the early Christians, as well as many in the Greek and Roman world, saw usury as ruinous to individuals, to nations, and to civilization as a whole. Some even saw usury as equivalent to murder.
Yet the whole of the Western economic system has been turned over to banks and other financial institutions that live off interest charged to businesses and consumers for almost everything. The burden on society is enormous, amounting cumulatively of to up to 40 percent of the costs of all goods and services, according to some estimates. Any moron can see that the unrestrained result of interest compounded at regular intervals will be the gradual accumulation of all of society’s wealth in the hands of the money-lenders. So why won’t economists admit this?
Jesus said to lend freely to our neighbor in need but without asking anything in return. For almost 1400 years, the Christian world outlawed usury. The Islamic world continues to outlaw it today. Contrary to what many believe, usury didn’t sneak into Western culture through the agency of the Jews. Yes, there were Jewish money-lenders during the Middle Ages, but they were small scale. Usury became the norm in Western capitalist society through the practices of the Roman Catholic Church led by the Renaissance Popes in league with the merchant banks of Florence and other Italian city-states. Many Catholic priests even ran pawn brokerships. From there the contagion spread throughout Europe. It took over much of Germany through the Fugger banking family and Great Britain through the Bank of England, established in 1694. The usurers’ control gradually gained ground in the U.S. until the final takeover through the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.
Back to the 1980s, which also saw the militarization of the economy hit high gear with Reagan’s trillion-dollar military buildup, claiming an increased threat from the Soviet Union at a time when U.S. intelligence knew the Soviet empire was in steep decline. In collusion with the Reagan White House, the CIA under William Casey and his protégé Bob Gates falsified intelligence reports to make the Soviet Union seem a far more formidable power than it really was. (See Whistleblower at the CIA by Melvin Goodman.) While he was expanding military spending, Reagan gave huge tax cuts to the rich.
By destroying the savings and loans, the deregulated banks now took over mortgage lending. With the later repeal of Glass-Steagall, the commercial banks could lend in the investment markets, leading to entire industries going on the sales block and the export of millions of jobs overseas. In order for Americans to save for retirement, they had to turn their money over to the stock brokers who managed the IRAs. To buy anything substantial meant massive consumer lending. Today kids can’t even go to college without ruinous debt.
With their financial control, the Money Power, aka Wall Street, sealed its grip on the political life of the nation, including both major political parties. The Democratic Party was once the party of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Under Bill Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, and the Democratic Leadership Council, they became “Republicans Light.” Both the Republicans and Democrats now base their programs on trickle-down, or “supply-side” economics, where the working class is expected to live on what is left after the Money Power skims its take from the producing economy.
This is why it is so imperative for politicians to demand economic “growth.” The worst calamity that can befall a nation is “negative growth,” or recession. Never mind that this growth never creates the purchasing power needed to buy the increased output. So the banks then step in with more and more lending, as inflation, bankruptcies, and war all ramp up as natural consequences of the production-income gap I had learned about by studying C.H. Douglas. Of course governments love all these things as it gives them more work to do and increases taxes along with their power.
It is through the Money Power that St. Paul’s maxim is expressed most vividly: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” They would deny it, but if you examine the psychology at work, I think you would agree that the Money Power could only operate as they do through an abiding hatred of those they exploit, including the growing army of homeless, those kicked out of their homes through the now common practice of foreclosure, and the victims of wars abroad, especially after 9/11.
The Money Power despises all those who actually work honestly for a living, even though the workers at the bottom of the heap generate the production the world needs for daily life. Marx was right in pointing this out, though wrong in proposing just another totalitarian system as a solution.
My study of U.S. financial history showed me that today’s ruling paradigm had kicked into high gear when the Money Power took over the U.S. through the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Leading the charge was J.P. Morgan’s Money Trust, a bastion of Republican Party strength, though they had to call in German bankers such as Paul Warburg to dupe American politicians like Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. The coup was facilitated by the Schiff banking family that had set up shop on Wall Street in the late 19th century.
It was then that a collection of sinister forces gained control of the U.S., as they already had in Great Britain through the Bank of England and the 19th century takeover of Britain by the Rothschilds. Soon came World War I, a conflict among nation-states and ideologies that has been continuous through today.
It was also the American Money Power, particularly the Schiffs, who financed Lenin and Trotsky in perpetrating the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1918 and financing the Red Army’s victory in the Russian Civil War. In the 1930s, it was the American Money Power who financed Hitler’s rise to power, allowing Hitler’s rearming of Germany. These financiers grew even richer as they watched the start of World War II then Hitler’s launch of the suicidal German invasion of the Soviet Union.
The Money Power aims at one thing: to rule the world and destroy anyone who stands in their way. They exercise this power in both communist and capitalist societies, as well as today’s system which is a hybrid of both. Of course Jesus foresaw all this when he threw the money changers out of the Temple and called the powerful of his day hypocrites and murderers. I think we can fairly call the ruling class of the U.S. and most other nations the same. Jesus also spoke of, “Your father the devil.” These words are also applicable.
You can see the effects of these malignant forces worldwide during the past century or more, including, as I said, not only the emergence of communism and its millions of victims but also the ravages of market capitalism. Evil is metaphysical, though it’s still the fault of human individuals who allow their will to be taken down wrong paths. And real religion has faded away proportionate with the assaults from materialistic philosophies. Instead, we have today’s fundamentalist pseudo-religions that use their creeds to mask their delusions. Evangelical fascism has been the result. So have the preachers and churches that depend on a steady flow of cash for their survival. Probably the best example of this corruption is what is going on today with Liberty University.
Back to the chronology: 9/11 came. 9/11—another massive crime against the nation and humanity. Another conspiracy, another cover-up. The karma that few acknowledge remains and acts on us every day, especially through the massive military build-up, similar to Reagan’s perpetrated through the criminal Bush-Cheney cabal.
By the Friday after 9/11, at a memorial service that should have been, but was not, denounced by church leaders, Bush was calling for war against—who knows whom? I knew something deeply wrong had happened, but not the way the government claimed. I had to find out what was going on. The U.S. had again been taken over—by something very ugly. Today, through reports appearing only in Veterans Today, we know how the false-flag event was carried out and by whom.
I next returned to the study of monetary theory I had started years before. About this time I read Stephen Zarlenga’s book The Lost Science of Money which particularly called into question fractional reserve banking. I contacted Zarlenga and soon we were in regular touch. I invited him to Washington to speak with Treasury officials, none of whom understood what he was talking about, especially in his critique of the Federal Reserve.
Zarlenga asked me to help him write a draft of legislation that would implement his ideas. This became the American Monetary Act. I also suggested that he contact Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who eventually got on-board with monetary reform, especially after I gave him an hours-long briefing on U.S. monetary history focusing on the damage done through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
The one area where Zarlenga and I disagreed was on insistence that monetary reform include a citizens’ dividend along the lines of C.H. Douglas’s Social Credit. Despite our differences, we remained in close touch as long as I continued to work for the government, including my attendance at some of Zarlenga’s American Monetary Institute conferences in Chicago.
My book on the Challenger disaster was published in January 2007, shortly after my retirement after 32 years of federal service. The title was Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age. I concluded that the underlying cause of the Challenger disaster, and the reason so many shortcuts were taken, was the militarization of the space shuttle program to service Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative boondoggle—“Star Wars.” The trigger for the decision to launch Challenger in cold weather against engineers’ recommendations, was to have the shuttle with the Teacher-in-Space, Christa McAuliffe, in orbit in time for Reagan’s state of the union speech that night.
I would also like to mention two developments I witnessed at the U.S. Treasury Department of major historic import that affected my writing and analysis. The first was the conversion of all financial transactions in the government and indeed in the broader society to electronic funds transfer that took place at breakneck speed in the 1990s. Treasury promoted this conversion for its own purposes in being able to move its financial balances into the Federal Reserve nightly and thereby receive interest payments, while at the same time cutting staff and saving on its payroll budgets by eliminating manual or human-aided processing as much as possible.
But beyond its self-interest, Treasury also facilitated conversion to EFT for the Federal Reserve and the private sector. This vastly increased the power and reach of the Money Power and the global banking industry. Without EFT, money laundering would never have come into its own as a staple of organized crime, nor would the world of derivatives and hedge funds come into being. With he imposition of these processes on the producing economy, where money is a mere electronic blip, and the creation of money out of thin air through bank lending, today’s system is the greatest act of grand larceny the world has ever known. It destroys nations and individuals. Nixon had opened the door to this tsunami of unsecured bank-created credit by taking the U.S. off the international gold standard in 1972.
I also witnessed, following 9/11, an entirely new and extremely comprehensive focus on real and imagined security measures, including the designation of the financial system of the United State as “critical infrastructure.” This designation entitled the Money Power, and its banking cartels, to protection and promotion from the military and the national security state. The banking system now became a means of waging war against enemies of the U.S. and its corporate/financial structure. We have seen this in the last two decades in the constant imposition of financial “sanctions” against our declared “enemies,” especially Russia, Iran, and China. It is interesting that the U.S. labels as “authoritarian” any nation that utilizes the power of its central government to prevent takeover and domination by the Money Power, such as happened to Iraq after it was conquered by the U.S. in 2003 and Libya by NATO in 2011.
Returning to where I was in 2007 after my Challenger book came out, I began publishing articles on economics and monetary reform on the internet, with the most receptive site being Global Research, run by Michel Chossudovsky out of Canada. By mid-year I had compiled enough material to package it in book form and found a publisher who came out with We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform the following year. I also began annual trips to New York to make presentations for the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, where I introduced them to the work of C.H. Douglas.
Unfortunately, I was not making much money as a writer. Though my Challenger book was to be recognized by some as the definitive work on the Challenger disaster, it was ignored by the mainstream press that only had eyes for works flattering to the national security state. So I decided to return to my old home town of Williamsburg, where I lived with my mother for a couple of years while I continued to write. In 2008 I met my wife Karen. The following year we decided to move to Roanoke, Virginia, where we bought a house in the Grandin Village neighborhood of the city.
Roanoke was a lot of fun. We spent time roaming the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains, and guided people in meditation at the Lifestream Center and our home. We rented out the upper floors of our home, managed a rental house, and I did maintenance work for local realtors while We also flipped a couple of houses that we had rehabbed.
We also traveled—to Ireland, to Mexico, where I gave the keynote address on the benefits of the barter economy at the annual meeting of the International Reciprocal Trade Association, and to various other places for short vacations. I also traveled to California in 2011 to speak at the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster at Chapman University and later to San Rafael to speak on universal basic income at the annual meeting of the Public Banking Institute. I continued to publish articles, broadening my scope to a range of political issues, and made the acquaintance of numerous readers around the world. Particularly rewarding was contact with monetary reformers in New Zealand, who I found to have a stronger understanding of the fallacies of bank-based monetary systems than almost anyone on the globe.
Also during our Roanoke days, the work I had done with Steve Zarlenga came to fruition in 2011 when Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced the NEED Act in Congress. This stood for the National Emergency Employment Defense Act.
The NEED Act was based on the American Monetary Act I had helped Zarlenga draft five years earlier. The NEED Act would replace the Federal Reserve System with a central federal monetary authority having the power to enter money directly into circulation through federal expenditure. It would abolish fractional reserve banking but would allow lending of money borrowed by banks from the central authority. The entire banking system would thereby be managed as a public utility. The NEED Act also included a citizens’ dividend similar to a basic income guarantee. Unfortunately, soon after introducing the Act, Kucinich’s congressional seat was gerrymandered out of existence.
Note that this new financial system would be perfectly compatible with our market economy and would allow businesses and individuals to save for the future.
The new system would remove the monetary system from the realm of larceny and greed that is helping destroy our nation and the world. It would modify or eliminate credit bubbles and their deflation. It would eliminate most of the problems that make life in the U.S. a financial hell for much of our population.
The temptation, of course, would be for the government itself to create money for non-legitimate purposes, such as its usual menu of wars of aggression. One shudders to think what might happen if the sovereign power of currency creation lay unrestrained in the hands of madmen like Trump. But this temptation will always exist. It’s what got European governments so deeply in debt to the Money Power in the first place. But in the end, the only thing that can ensure the health and survival of any nation is the character and virtue of its citizens. Once that is gone, the nation is gone, regardless of the system it operates under. So no monetary system is a panacea. But we can do much better than what we have today.
We stayed in Roanoke for about four years. But we found we were too far from our grown kids and siblings in the Washington area, so we decided to move back. We found a small stone cottage in Washington County, Maryland, near the Antietam battlefield, where we continue to live today. So we still reside in the Blue Ridge Mountains as we did in Roanoke, but now four hours to the north.
We have been here now for six years where I work on our house and property. We have done a major renovation while trying to retain the qualities of the 200-year-old structure. My writing has slowed down, though it is still going on, and I have also worked during the summers at a local state park as a part-time interpreter. This has involved presentations on geology and history to local groups, including a slide show on Native American heritage.
In the meantime, I have done my best to separate myself mentally from the ongoing disaster that the U.S., has turned into. I do not see any reason to hope that the U.S. will reform or redeem itself before the onset of worldwide catastrophe, perhaps the world war against Russia and China that already seems to have been decided upon. Maybe this war is inevitable. But I am not going to worry about it.
The U.S. carries overwhelming karma, but “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” In the meantime, at age 73, I will do everything I can to help my friends and family, live my life, tend my garden, and stay out of the way. But my admiration and support for those in younger generations who are fighting the battle for truth and compassion has no bounds. And for anyone who cares to listen I would say forget about your prayers for the future of this nation if you are not willing to change the system right now.
The question remains, though, where do we look for inner strength and inspiration? Increasingly, and perhaps ironically, I look to Germany. I have family members in Germany and have traveled there a bit, as well as to Austria and Switzerland. This has motivated me to undertake a deep study of German history and culture, including revisionist history of World Wars I and II. I have concluded that Germany has been given a raw deal. The world wars of the 20th century have as their root cause, in my opinion, the drive of Great Britain, the U.S., and, increasingly today, Israel, for world domination. Germany certainly had its own ambitions, but was eliminated as a competitor through two world wars that weren’t all its own fault. In fact the destruction of Germany as a cultural entity was probably the main goal of the Money Power during much of the 20th century.
I won’t dwell on specifics here, and will certainly point out the wrong turn Germany took with Hitler in charge—but I will not say the German people as a whole chose that path. Beneath the unhappy events of 1917-1945 lay an ancient and deeply spiritual culture that manifested through such figures as Meister Eckart, Wolfram von Eschenbach, theTheologia Germanica, Martin Luther, Johann Arndt, Jakob Boehme, Emanuel Kant, Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Herman Hesse, Karl Barth, Bô Yin Râ, Eckart Tolle, and many others. These are the teachers I study today. This culture lives on, and now as a linchpin of the European Union the German heritage can help guide the West to a better fate, while the English-speaking powers are bankrupt, morally, spiritually, and increasingly economically.
Let’s hope the U.S. can eventually be part of a better fate as well, but not given its current direction and leadership and not with its unpaid karmic debts. Will there even be a U.S. much longer? No one really knows. The U.S. government is collapsing, its moral authority is gone, and it is not difficult to see why. Least of all is the utter state of dishonesty at all levels and in all sectors in a failed attempt to hide that it serves mainly the rich, powerful, and influential—and Israel.
Lately this situation has been brought home to me as I have been reading several books by Melvin Goodman, including Whistleblower at the CIA, an amazingly revealing work. Goodman provides first-hand documentation of how, starting with the Reagan administration, the CIA ceased providing objective analysis of contemporary events, and began falsifying intelligence to satisfy the political desires of the White House.
The leaders of the CIA at the time were William Casey and his top aide Robert Gates, later made CIA director by George H.W. Bush and Secretary of Defense under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The administrations most eager for skewed intelligence were Reagan’s and that of Bush/Cheney, particularly after 9/11. But the corruption continues today, particularly after Obama’s CIA director John Brennan combined that agency’s operational and analytical directorates, removing its last vestige of independent thinking
I am not the only one to say we are looking at a failed state. The U.S. government has squandered any natural affection our populace or that of other nations may once have had for it. The U.S. government at all levels now rules primarily by bureaucratic rules at home and violence abroad—i.e., by fear. But authority divorced from honesty and compassion cannot last long. The U.S. is on a downward trajectory in a descent into a totalitarian police state. It has been captured by a criminal gang led by lying gangsters like Trump—and Netanyahu. And if things do go over the brink, “We the People” have stood by and watched it happen.
It’s a good time to remember the words of the song, “The Gambler”: “Sometimes you hold ‘em and sometimes you fold ‘em. Sometimes you walk away, and sometimes you run.” Your choice.
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Richard C. Cook is a retired federal analyst who served in the executive branch of the federal government for 32 years, retiring in 2007. Cook worked in several agencies, including the Jimmy Carter White House. He worked at NASA at the time of the Challenger disaster, where he became a well-known whistleblower for his testimony on NASA’s past knowledge of the flaws that destroyed the space shuttle in January 1986. After leaving NASA, Cook spent the next 21 years with the U.S. Treasury Department, working at all levels of policy and operations, and spending much time learning and teaching about the history of U.S. financial systems. When he retired, he published his massive history of the Challenger disaster entitled, “Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age.” He predicted the financial collapse of 2007, and over the next several years, wrote on financial and political issues, including his book, “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform.” He served as an informal advisor to Stephen Zarlenga, head of the American Monetary Institute, and to Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Cook is an advocate for a basic income guarantee and is in close touch with monetary reformers around the world, including members of the Green Party in the U.S. and Ireland. Most of his articles are available on the website of Global Research.
Si prevede che il traffico aereo civile in Europa calerà quest’anno del 60% rispetto al 2019, a causa delle restrizioni per il Covid-19, mettendo a rischio oltre 7 milioni di posti di lavoro. Cresce in compenso il traffico aereo militare.
Venerdì 28 agosto, sei bombardieri strategici B-52 della US Air Force hanno trasvolato in un solo giorno tutti e 30 i paesi della Nato in Nordamerica ed Europa, affiancati nei diversi tratti da 80 cacciabombardieri dei paesi alleati. Questa grande esercitazione denominata «Cielo Alleato» – ha dichiarato il segretario generale della Nato Jens Stoltenberg – dimostra «il potente impegno degli Stati uniti verso gli Alleati e conferma che siamo in grado di scoraggiare l’aggressione». Evidente l’allusione alla «aggressione russa» in Europa.
I B-52, trasferiti il 22 agosto dalla base aerea Minot in Nord Dakota a quella di Fairford in Gran Bretagna, non sono vecchi aerei della Guerra fredda usati ormai solo per le parate. Continuamente ammodernati, hanno conservato il loro ruolo di bombardieri strategici a lungo raggio. Ora vengono ulteriormente potenziati.
La US Air Force, con una spesa di 20 miliardi di dollari, doterà tra breve 76 B-52 di nuovi motori, che permetteranno ai bombardieri di volare per 8.000 km senza rifornimento in volo, trasportando ciascuno 35 tonnellate di bombe e missili a testata convenzionale o nucleare.
La US Air Force, lo scorso aprile, ha affidato alla Raytheon Co. la costruzione di un nuovo missile da crociera a lungo raggio, armato di testata nucleare, per i bombardieri B-52.
Con questi e altri bombardieri strategici da attacco nucleare, compresi i B-2 Spirit, la US Air Force ha effettuato sull’Europa dal 2018 oltre 200 sortite, soprattutto sul Baltico e il Mar Nero a ridosso dello spazio aereo russo. A queste esercitazioni partecipano i paesi europei della Nato, in particolare l’Italia.
Quando il 28 agosto un B-52 ha sorvolato il nostro paese, gli si sono affiancati caccia italiani per simulare una missione congiunta di attacco. Subito dopo cacciabombardieri Eurofighter Typhoon dell’Aeronautica italiana sono partiti per schierarsi nella base di Siauliai in Lituania, supportati da un centinaio di militari specializzati. A partire da oggi 1° settembre vi resteranno per 8 mesi, fino all’aprile 2021, per «difendere» lo spazio aereo del Baltico.
È la quarta missione Nato di «polizia aerea» effettuata nel Baltico dalla nostra Aeronautica. I caccia italiani sono pronti 24 ore su 24 allo scramble, al decollo su allarme per intercettare aerei «sconosciuti», che sono sempre aerei russi in volo tra qualche aeroporto interno e l’exclave russa di Kaliningrad attraverso lo spazio aereo internazionale sul Baltico.
La base lituana di Siauliai, in cui sono schierati, è stata potenziata dagli Stati uniti, che ne hanno triplicato la capacità investendovi 24 milioni di euro. Il perché è chiaro: la base aerea dista appena 220 km da Kaliningrad e 600 da San Pietroburgo, distanza che un caccia tipo l’Eurofighter Typhoon percorre in pochi minuti.
Perché la Nato schiera a ridosso della Russia questi e altri aerei a duplice capacità convenzionale e nucleare?
Non certo per difendere i paesi baltici da un attacco russo che, se avvenisse, significherebbe l’inizio della guerra mondiale termonucleare. Lo stesso avverrebbe se gli aerei Nato attaccassero dal Baltico le città russe limitrofe. La vera ragione di tale schieramento è quella di accrescere la tensione, fabbricando l’immagine di un pericoloso nemico, la Russia, che si prepara ad attaccare l’Europa.
È la strategia della tensione attuata da Washington, con la complicità dei governi e dei parlamenti europei e della stessa Unione europea. Tale strategia comporta un crescente aumento della spesa militare a scapito di quella sociale.
Un esempio: il costo di un’ora di volo di un caccia Eurofighter è stato calcolato dalla stessa Aeronautica in 66.000 euro (compreso l’ammortamento dell’aereo). Una somma, in denaro pubblico, superiore a due retribuzioni medie lorde annue.
Ogni volta che un Eurofighter decolla per «difendere» lo spazio aereo del Baltico, brucia in un’ora, in Italia, due posti di lavoro.
Todos somos testemunhas de como a China planeja meticulosamente seus principais movimentos geopolíticos e geoeconômicos até 2030 e além.
O que lerão a seguir teve origem numa série de discussões privadas multilaterais entre analistas de inteligência e pode ajudar a traçar os contornos do panorama geral.
Na China, o caminho claramente aponta para aumento da demanda interna e para a mudança da política monetária para criar crédito que consolide a construção de indústrias domésticas de renome internacional.
Paralelamente, há debate sério em Moscou no sentido que a Rússia deva seguir o mesmo caminho. Nas palavras de um analista, “a Rússia não deve importar coisa alguma, além da tecnologia absolutamente necessária, e só até que possa criá-la. Além disso, deveria exportar exclusivamente o petróleo e gás imprescindíveis para pagar por importações – que devem ser severamente limitadas. A China ainda necessita de recursos naturais, o que faz dos dois países aliados especiais. Todas as nações devem ser tão autossuficiente quanto possível.”
Acontece que essas declarações espelham perfeitamente a estratégia do Partido Comunista Chinês, como delineado pelo Presidente Xi Jinping na reunião do Comitê Central em 31 de julho passado. Também vai de encontro a uma robusta ala neoliberal no PC Chinês – colaboracionistas? – que sonham com converter o partido à democracia no estilo ocidental, subserviente aos interesses do capital ocidental.
Comparar a velocidade econômica de China e de EUA é comparar um Maserati GranTurismo Sport (equipado com motor V8 Ferrari) e um Toyota Camry. Proporcionalmente, a China tem enorme reserva de gerações jovens muito bem educadas; migração acelerada do ambiente rural para o urbano; erradicação crescente da pobreza; mais poupança; sentimento diferenciado de satisfação; mais disciplina social – confucionista; e respeito infinitamente maior pela mente racionalmente educada. Na China, o processo de crescimento do comércio interno será mais que suficiente para manter a dinâmica, em andamento, do imprescindível desenvolvimento sustentável.
O fator hipersônico
Enquanto isso, no front geopolítico, o consenso em Moscou – do Kremlin ao Ministério do Exterior – é que a administração Trump é “incapaz para acordos”, eufemismo diplomático para se referir ao que se descreve também como bando de mentirosos; e também “incapaz para a legalidade”, outro eufemismo, desta vez para designar, por exemplo, o lobby para forçar que os EUA disparem o gatilho das sanções, quando se sabe que Trump já abandonou há tempos o JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, também “Plano de Ação Conjunta Global”).
Recentemente, o Presidente Putin comentou que negociar com a equipe de Trump é como jogar xadrez com um pombo: o pombo anda pelo tabuleiro e espalha merda, derruba peças, declara vitória e some.
Por outro lado, os mais altos níveis do governo russo empenham esforço concreto para consolidar uma aliança eurasiana definitiva, unindo Alemanha, Rússia e China.
Mas essa aliança consolidada só será possível na Alemanha, depois de Merkel. De acordo com um analista (norte)americano, “o que segura a Alemanha é o medo de perder suas exportações de automóveis e outros bens para os Estados Unidos, mas não é difícil explicar que isso acontecerá em breve, por causa da taxa de câmbio dólar/euro, com o euro cada vez mais caro.”
No front nuclear, para além da situação dramática na Bielorrússia – já que não haverá Maidan em Minsk – Moscou já tornou bem claro, em termos contundentes, que qualquer ataque de mísseis da OTAN será interpretado como ataque nuclear.
Acredita-se que o sistema de mísseis defensivos russos – dentre eles o já testado sistema S-500, e a seguir o sistema S-600, já projetado – possa ser 99% efetivo. Significa que a Rússia ainda sofrerá danos, em caso de ataque. Não por outra razão, a Rússia construiu uma extensa rede de abrigos antibombas nucleares nas grandes cidades, com capacidade para pelo menos 40 milhões de pessoas.
Analistas russos veem a mesma tendência também na atitude chinesa de defesa. Pequim pode desenvolver – se já não o fez – um escudo defensivo; e mesmo assim preservar a possibilidade de contra-atacar os Estados Unidos com mísseis nucleares.
Os melhores analistas russos, dentre eles Andrei Martyanov, sabem que as três principais armas em uma suposta guerra no futuro serão os mísseis ofensivos/defensivos e submarinos combinados com capacidades para guerra eletrônica.
Atualmente, a principal arma – e os chineses compreendem-no muito bem – são os submarinos nucleares. Os russos observam como a China constrói sua frota de submarinos – carregados de mísseis hipersônicos –, mais rapidamente que os Estados Unidos. Frotas de superfície estão obsoletas. Uma alcateia de submarinos chineses pode derrotar facilmente um porta-aviões e respectivo grupo de combate. De fato, todos os 11 porta-aviões dos EUA já são obsoletos.
Assim, na possibilidade horrenda de que se torne impossível navegar por mar, no caso de EUA, China e Rússia bloquearem todo o tráfego marítimo, pode-se ver a principal razão estratégica pela qual a China optou por manter por terra, a partir da Rússia, as rotas pelas quais circulam muitos de seus recursos naturais.
Dutos de transporte terrestre de petróleo e gás podem ser rapidamente reparados, no caso de serem bombardeados. Essa é a enorme importância que tem, para a China, o gasoduto Poder da Sibéria – e também da gama estonteante de projetos da empresa russa Gazprom.
O fator Ormuz
Segredo guardado a sete chaves em Moscou é que, logo depois de a Alemanha ter imposto sanções em função da Ucrânia, um grande operador global de energia apresentou proposta, à Rússia, para desviar para a China nada menos que 7 milhões de barris diários de petróleo, além de gás natural. Aconteça o que acontecer, essa impressionante proposta permanece sobre a mesa de Shmal Gannadiy, alto conselheiro do Presidente Putin para assuntos de petróleo e gás.
No caso de a proposta vir a ser implementada, a China assegura-se de que receberá, a partir da Rússia, todos os recursos naturais de que precisa. Nessa hipótese, reação lógica da Rússia seria contornar as sanções da Alemanha e levar suas exportações de petróleo para a China, a qual, do ponto de vista russo, tem tecnologia de consumo melhor que a Alemanha.
Claro que tudo isso pode mudar com a iminente conclusão do Gasoduto Ramo Norte 2 (ing. Nord Stream 2) – apesar de a equipe Trump manter sua política de não carregar prisioneiros, ao sancionar tudo e todos relacionados ao assunto.
Conversas de inteligência nos bastidores deixam bem claro para os industriais alemães que, se a Alemanha perder sua fonte russa de energia em petróleo e gás natural, combinado com o eventual bloqueio do Estreito de Hormuz, no caso de ataque (norte)americano contra o Irã, a economia alemã pode simplesmente colapsar.
Conversas de inteligência acontecem por todo o país, sobre alguma possível Surpresa de Outubro patrocinada pelos Estados Unidos – um ataque sob falsa bandeira pelo qual o Irã seria responsabilizado. A equipe de “pressão máxima” da administração Trump contra o Irã nada tem a ver com o JCPOA. O que importa é que, mesmo indiretamente, a parceria estratégica Rússia/China tornou claro que Teerã será protegida como ativo estratégico importante – e ponto crucial da integração da Eurásia.
As considerações de inteligência centram-se no possível cenário da – muito improvável – queda do governo iraniano. Neste caso, o primeiro movimento de Washington seria desconectaro sistema SWIFT de compensações bancárias internacionais. O alvo seria a economia russa, para ser destroçada. Por isso Rússia e China estão trabalhando aceleradamente para inaugurar e pôr em operação seus próprios sistemas de compensação: MIR russo e CIPS chinês. E para deixar de lado o dólar, no seu comércio bilateral.
Pequim já percebeu que caso se confirme este cenário, a China pode perder de uma só vez dois aliados cruciais; nesse caso, estaria sozinha para enfrentar Washington, apanhada em estágio no qual pode não ser capaz de assegurar o fornecimento dos recursos naturais que tanto necessita. Trata-se de ameaça existencial real. Isso explica o raciocínio por trás da crescente interconexão na parceria estratégica entre China e Rússia, e o acordo com duração de 25 anos no valor de $400 bilhões de dólares, com o Irã.
A volta de Bismarck
Outro possível acordo secreto já discutido nos mais altos escalões da inteligência é a possibilidade de um Tratado de Resseguro Bismarckiano, a ser estabelecido entre Alemanha e Rússia. A consequência inevitável seria uma aliança de fato Berlin-Moscou-Pequim abrangendo a Iniciativa Cinturão e Estrada, com criação simultânea de uma nova moeda – digital? – para toda a aliança eurasiana, que incluiria atores periféricos, mas importantes, como França e Itália.
Muito bem. Pequim-Moscou está feito. Pequim-Berlin é trabalho em andamento. Falta cuidar do Berlin-Moscou.
A situação representa não só tremendo pesadelo para a elite anglo-norte-americana infartada de Mackinder, mas na realidade, implica também a passagem do bastão geopolítico, da mão dos impérios marítimos, de volta à mão da massa terrestre da Eurásia interior.
Deixou de ser ficção. Está sobre a mesa.
Aproveitando o ensejo, voltemos um pouco no tempo, até o ano de 1348.
Os mongóis da Horda Dourada estavam na Crimeia, sitiando Kaffa – porto comercial no Mar Negro controlado pelos genoveses.
De repente, o exército mongol começa a ser dizimado pela peste bubônica. E passa a catapultar cadáveres contaminados, para dentro da cidade da Crimeia.
E o que aconteceu, quando os navios começaram a navegar, de Kaffa para Gênova? Levaram a praga para a Itália.
Em 1360, a Morte Negra estava literalmente em toda parte – de Lisboa a Novgorod, da Sicília à Noruega. Talvez tenha dizimado cerca de 60% da população da Europa – mais de 100 milhões de pessoas.
Pode-se argumentar que a peste teria retardado por um século o Renascimento.
Covid-19 não é peste medieval, longe disso. Mesmo assim, cabe perguntar: que Renascimento estaria sendo retardado?
Bem, o que se pode dizer é que, na realidade, a pandemia de Covid-19 já está fazendo avançar o Renascimento da Eurásia. Ocorre justamente quando o Hegemon, ex-“fim da história”, explode internamente [“Sobre faces tensas repuxadas pelo tempo”] “Distraída da distração pela distração” [“Cheias de fantasmagorias e ermas de sentido]”,[3] para citar T. S. Eliot. Atrás do nevoeiro, nas excelentes pastagens à sombra, os movimentos vitais para reorganizar a massa terrestre do interior da Eurásia já estão em movimento.
[1] Ver Pepe Escobar, “Teatro de sombras: O Novo Grande Jogo na Eurásia”, 10/1/2017, Blog do Alok, orig. Asia Times(NTs).
[2] T. S. Eliot, Quatro Quartetos, parte V, BURNT NORTON, in T.S.Eliot, Poesia. Tradução Ivan Junqueira. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1981.
[3] T. S. Eliot, “Quatro Quartetos”, parte III, BURNT NORTON, in ELIOT, T.S. Poesia. Tradução Ivan Junqueira. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1981. p.199-204.
South Korea has been the object of praise and envy of the world for its great success in anti-virus war, off-line presidential election despite the virus crisis and the best performance in GDP growth among the OECD countries. In fact, the year on year GDP growth in the second quart of 2020 was -3.2% for Korea as against – 9.8% for the whole of OECD and even -24.2% for the UK.
Unfortunately, South Korea may have to go back to day-one of the anti-virus war started in January. This time, the propagation wave of the virus is, most likely deliberately, planned by the far-right coalition of the conservatives.
On August 15, at the Gwang-hwa-moon Square near the Seoul city hall, there was a huge rally of 20,000 people who were against the progressive government of Moon Jae-in. Most of the participants did not wear masks; they ignored social distancing. Many of them had been already infected but they came; they shouted; they sang; they did spit at the personnel of the public health bureau. The obvious objective was to spread the virus as much as possible.
The rally was forbidden by the Korean Centers for Disease Control (KCDC), but the court allowed knowing very well the danger. It is suspected that the judge who allowed the rally was a member of the conservative force which tries to discredit the progressive government of Moon Jae-in
What is happening is, perhaps, a major battle between the conservative oligarchy and the progressive people of Korea. The outcome of this battle will surely affect not only the peace process in the Korean peninsula but also the regional security.
The rally was organized by the conservative oligarchy led by a self-ordained pastor called Jun Kwang-hoon. Since the rally, the cumulated cases of infection have increased from 12,410 on August 15 to 15,502 on August 26, a daily increase of 281. On August 14, only 85 new cases were reported.
This paper has three parts.
First, the paper analyses the dynamics of the inter-force fight, especially, the formation and the evolution of these forces.
Second, the paper looks into how the inter-force can affect the corona-virus war. The conservative oligarchy is doing its best to spread the virus in order to topple the progressive government of Moon Jae-in. As for the progressive force, it is trying hard to win the anti-virus war without lockdown and the use of police power.
Third, the paper argues that the fierce inter-force fight in Korea will have significant implications not only for the peace on the Korean peninsula but also for the regional security and even world peace.
1. The Dynamics of the Inter-Force Fight
1.1. The conservative Oligarchy
The conservative oligarchy is composed of conservative party, the Unified Future Party (UFP), far-right protestant church, new-right intellectuals, conservative media, the conservative judiciary system, and the Chaebols (large industrial and financial conglomerates).
All these groups have one thing in common; they are all pro-Japan, anti-North Korea and anti-progressive government. This oligarchy is a powerful vested-interest group with enormous wealth and privileges cumulated since seventy years through illegal and immoral activities.
The oligarchy forms a tightly interconnected corrupted community, the function of which is to protect and expand their vested interests at the expense of the welfare of the people.
The Conservative Political Party: The present conservative party, the UFP, is the linear descendant of the long line of dictatorship: the police dictatorship of Rhee Syngman (1948-1960) (right), the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee (1962-1979) and Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1987). The government of Lee Myung-bak (2008-2012) and that of Park Geun-hye (2013-2017) were constitutionally democratic governments, but, in reality, the presidents acted as de facto dictator through the complete control of the legislative, the judiciary and the executive and, of course, the media.
The Protestant Church: The unfortunate part of Korea’s history is the North-South division of the country and pathetic reaction of the protestant church. The protestant church came to Pyongyang in North Korea during the 19th century and flourished until 1945, when the country was divided and North Korea was occupied by communist Russia which treated religion as poison. There was one protestant pastor, Rev. Han Kyun-jik, who found himself obliged to close his church and flee with his followers to the South, where he created a church called Young-rak Church, now, one of the largest protestant churches in Korea.
Han sent some of his English speaking members to the American military government and the government of Rhee Syngman. Han and Rhee had one thing in common, the hatred for communism and North Korea. Rhee needed someone who could get rid of those who were not with his dictatorship. Rhee then decided to label those who were not with him as communists. Rev. Han formed a terrorist gang with his young and tough church members called “Seo-buk Youth Gang-the North-West Youth Gang” , which took part in most of the killing fields ordered by Rhee.
The youth gang of Rev. Han were brainwashed to believe that the communists were red-faced devils who challenged the angel of God, the Church. There are these passages in the Book of Revelation, the last Book of the Bible (12:3 and 7).
“There was a huge ‘red’ dragon with seven heads…Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon who fought back with his angels; but the dragon was defeated.”
Here, the red is communism which must be condemned just like the red dragon was condemned. Hence, it is the duty of Christians to kill communism. No doubt, the brainwashed terrorist youth believed this and President, Rhee Syngman was more than happy to use this group to liquidate those who were against his dictatorship.
The protestant church goers who participated at the 8.15 rally believe that North Korea is the biblical red dragon and that Moon Jae-in is the defender of the red dragon.
The Intellectuals: Most of the Korean conservative intellectuals are those who have studied abroad with money coming from pro-Japan parents who had acquired huge wealth by receiving the Japanese colonial assets distributed by the American military government and Rhee’s government.
At present, many of them receive huge funds from Japan for studies designed to justify and glorify the Japanese invasion in Korea. One of the channels of transmission of Japanese money to Korea is the Center for Academic Studies which is installed in one of the leading universities in Seoul. This study center would have received US $ 30 million from Japan.
The conservative intellectuals have organized a group called “New Right” with the mission to rewrite, in Japan’s favour, the Japanese colonial history. In fact, a book was completed in which Japan was described as a benevolent power which came to Korea for the good of Koreans. Fortunately, as soon as Moon Jae-in took over the power in 2017, the book was abolished.
The Media: The role of the media in Korea has little to do professional journalism; they do not investigate; they write and say what the money provider asks; they are a profit seeking business. To be more precise, they are there to make money by fabricating stories, making lies to protect the vested interests of the conservative oligarchy in exchange of fat bribe money.
The media is the most corrupted entity led by the ardent pro-Japan media giants comprising the Chosun Ilbo, the Dong-ah Ilbo, which were created and flourished during the Japanese occupation owing to their collaboration with the Japanese colonial government in justifying the Japanese occupation and helping the fight against Korean patriots. In addition, there is the Joong-ang Ilbo created by the Samsung Group. In Korea, these journals are labelled as Cho-Joong-Dong which are the most pro-Japan and which are the most effective guardian of the conservative oligarchy’s vested interests.
Most of the journals, TV stations with the exception of KBS, MBC and other government funded TV stations are funded by the Chaebols led by Samsung, construction firms and other members of the oligarchy.
The Judiciary System: The corrupted oligarchy has survived all these years owing to the protection of the corrupted judiciary system. The wrong doings of the oligarchy are ignored, while a slight anti-oligarchy activity is punished. The media report what the prosecutor’s office dictates; they seldom investigate the story; they write or they say what the Prosecutor dictates; they are simply the Prosecutor’s parrot.
The Chaebols: In the dynamics of the conservative oligarchy, the role of the Chaebols is of paramount importance. Over the years, the Chaebols have played the central role in the oligarchy; the Chaebols have provided unlimited amount of bribe money for the key member of the oligarchy in exchange of political and judicial favours. The head of the Chaebols seldom go to prison for their crimes; even if they are imprisoned, they are quickly pardoned by the president of the country.
1.2. The Progressive Political Force
The progressive political force has been formed through enormous sacrifice of Korean people. Right from the beginning of the post-war era, Korean people were alienated and treated by the conservatives as enemy and, as a result, they were victims of massive murders, illegal incarceration and torture; they were excluded from decent jobs. Nobody knows how many Koreans were murdered by the conservative oligarchy, but no doubt, several hundred thousand souls were sacrificed.
In particular, those patriots who fought against Japan were identified and completely blocked from making decent living. One of the poorest groups in Korea up to now is the group of the patriots’ descendants. They have been denied the right to have descent job; they were made so poor that their children could not have descent education; they were constantly harassed by the police; they had to deny their family identity.
The government of Moon Jae-in has been doing a lot in honouring and helping the patriots and their descendants. But, nothing can compensate for their suffering imposed by the conservative oligarchy.
Despite the fearful police and military dictatorship, Korean people have fought back with bare hand against the conservative oligarchy through the following massive popular uprisings; the 4.19 Revolution (April 19, 1960), the 10.16 Bu-Ma Democratic Protests (October 16, 1979), the 5.18 Kwang-ju Uprising (May 18, 1980), the 6.10 Struggle (June 10, 1987) and the Candlelight Revolution (October 26, 2016-April 29, 2017). Perhaps 30 million people went down the street to fight against the corrupted conservative oligarchy.
The progressive force was able to form a government twice in the past and the third is that of Moon Jae-in. The first progressive government of Kim Dae-jung (1997-2003) made a series of social reform but could not resist successfully the wrong doings of the powerful conservative oligarchy. The second progressive government of Rho Moo-hyun (2003-2008) was successful in making the government less bureaucratic. Moreover, it created a mechanism through which the ordinary people could come to the Blue House (Korean White House) meet the president and talk to him. He wanted to return the country to the people, the country which had been stolen by the pro-Japan conservatives for their own interests.
President Rho Moo-hyun was the target of a bribery scandal fabricated by the government of Lee Myung-bak, the Prosecutor and the media. He killed himself to free his family from suffering. President Rho has left the most powerful political and ideological legacy, the legacy of just society where the government exists only for the people and where every person is important and deserves respect, dignity and love.
2. Impact of the Inter-force fight on the COVID-19
The power and the glory of the conservative oligarchy is now threatened after the impeachment of Park Geun-hye in 2017; Park was taken out of her office for her corruption and her abuse of power. She is now in prison for 15 years.
On the other hand, the reputation of President Moon Jae-in is rising in Korea for his love of people, a government devoid of corruption, the promotion of more equitable income distribution, the development of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which had been exploited with no pity by the Chaebols, the victory over the corona-virus without lockdown, the peaceful off-line general election in the midst of the virus crisis. Furthermore, he is highly respected throughout the world for his leadership in the North-South peace dialogue and the productive mediation role for the Pyongyang-Washington peace dialogue.
The brilliant success of the Moon jae-in government threatens the very survival of the conservative party and the conservative oligarchy. As expected, the UFP has been doing, for last three years, everything possible thing to discredit the Democratic party of Korea (DPK) and President, Moon.
Here is what the conservative party, UFP, has been doing to discredit the government of Moon Jae-in:
The FUP has blocked since three years through the Judiciary Committee of the National Assembly most of laws related to the welfare of the people and the North-South peace Dialogue in order to tell the people that the progressive party (DPK) and the Moon’s government are incompetent to govern and look after the people.
The second political tactic of the conservatives consists in discrediting and dishonouring important leaders of the progressive force. The popular tricks often used consist in accusing the leaders for fabricated sexual abuse or involvement if bribery scandal. The Prosecutor intervenes to make the impression that the scandal deserves investigation. By the time the truth is revealed, it is too late to recover the damaged reputation and the integrity of the falsely accused. In this process, the role of the media is crucial; they publish or broadcast what the Prosecutor says; they never verify if the accusation is justified.
The most known case is that of Professor Cho Guk who is the most respected expert in judicial matters and served as one of the advisor to President Moon. A year ago, he was appointed as Justice Minister with the mission of reforming Korea’s judiciary system, in particular the reform of the Prosecutor which had been abusing its unlimited power, criminally protecting the interests of the conservative oligarchy and even challenging the authority of the president.
The conservative oligarchy funds a great number of individual you-tube facilities and manufactures fake news and events in order to give the impression that the policy of Moon’s government is failure. For instance, they say that Korea’s economic behaviour is the worst among the OECD countries; the truth is the other way around; for the second quarter of 2020, Korea’s GDP fell by 3.2% as against a decrease of more than 20% in many other OECD countries. Among other things, the conservative oligarchy fabricates false news about North Korea’s threat in order to give the impression that Moon’s government is incapable of assuring the national security. For instance, they fabricate a story that a North Korean military unit invaded a certain place in South Korea.
All these efforts and plots to discredit the government of Moon Jae-in have failed. Then, there appeared unexpected ally for the conservatives, namely, the corona virus. The plan of the conservative oligarchy was to spread the virus intentionally to prove the present government’s failure in handling the virus. The conservatives even mobilized the cult Shincheonji in March to spread the virus. But, the cult Shincheonji was soon under control and the virus crisis was almost terminated.
The conservative oligarchy lost the general election in April allowing the DPK to win almost two-third of seats in the National Assembly. What was left for the oligarchy was the huge rally at the Kwang-hwa-moon Square on August 15 mobilizing twenty thousand people from all over the country. The objective of the rally was to use the virus as terror weapon to kill the progressive force.
The August 15 rally was the well planned virus war declared by the conservative oligarchy against the progressive force led by Moon Jae-in. The principal leader was Jun Kwang-hoon who represents a radical ultra-right faction of the Protestant Church in Korea. He is one of those who seem to believe that the communism is the biblical red dragon and his church is the angel Michael. Jun argues that Moon Jae-in is trying to convert South Korea into a communist country and, therefore, his government should be destroyed.
The oligarchy has adopted the following tactics in relation to the 8.15 rally.
It mobilized the brain-washed elderly from all over the country. The strategy was planned for long time. They came by chartered buses; they were amply paid by the oligarchy. They were instructed to do the following
Thy should believe that the virus would not infect the selected Christians
If they die because of the virus, they are martyrs.
They should not go to the government-run KCDC for test, because the government is the enemy of Christians.
They should close all mobile phones so that the KCDC cannot track the rally participants.
They should not tell even the family about their rally participation
Even if they are inflicted they should travel freely
Many of the participants had already been infected before coming to the rally so that the virus can be transmitted to as many people as possible.
Some of the participants spat at the KCDC team members so that the virus can be transmitted from the local offices of he KCDC.
The organizers, especially, the Sarang-jeil church led by Jun Kwang-hoon, refuse ot provide the list of the participants. Even worse, the list made available was intentionally fabricated including the names of persons who do not exist.
One thing is clear. The ultimate objective of the 8.15 rally and many other events and manoeuvres organized by the conservative oligarchy is the destruction of the progressive regime and retake the power at the next presidential election in 2022.
The interesting question is why the conservatives are so desperately determined to destroy the progressives. The answer is simple and strait; it is the matter of preserving their vested interests which include wealth, privileges, prestige, envy, protection from judicial punishment for their crimes, sharing of government positions and many other advantages given to them. These vested interests are so precious that they are ready to do anything to topple the progressive government which is threatening heir interests.
The damaging impact of the inter-force conflict on the corona-virus crisis is very serious. Since the 8.15 rally, as we saw above, every day, hundreds of infections are reported and there is a great danger of community propagation.
President Moon has spent all his life for the promotion of human right; he hates to use force to fight the virus. But, he announced, on August 25th, his intension of using police forces to solve the virus war declared by the conservative oligarchy.
3. Impact of Inter-Force Fight on the Regional Security
No doubt, the fight between the conservatives and the progressives has become an open war and there is no guarantee that the progressives will win the war. There are three reasons. First, this time a good part of brainwashed radical Protestant Church members are leading the virus war. There are several millions of Protestant Christians in Korea. Second, the Chaebols are at the center of the oligarchy with unlimited funds. Third, the medical doctors have declared work stoppage and their motivation is suspected to have a link with the virus war; they are suspected to support the conservative oligarchy.
The government has to win the new virus war at all cost. President, Moon Jae-in may have to declare even the emergency of level 3 which means a total lockdown never used so far.
In this conjuncture, the interesting question is about the impact of the possible outcome of the 2022 election on the peace in the Korean peninsula and the regional security.
If the conservative oligarchy wins, we may have to face the following consequences.
North-South peace dialogue will become difficult leading to renewed danger of armed conflict on the Korean peninsula.
The tension Pyongyang-Washington will increase and the presence of American military force including the additional deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) will be enforced.
Seoul-Beijing relations will become more tense and the whole regional security will become uncertain.
In Japan, the possibility of the far-right political force represented by Abe Shinzo to go through the amendment of the pace constitution will increase. And, Japan will try to colonize again South Korea through political and economic and financial influences, if not military invasion, in close complicity with Korean conservative oligarchy. If this happens, the whole regional security will be adversely affected, given the Japan’s ambition to restore its former power and glory.
On the other hand, if the progressive force wins the 2022 election after having successfully dealt with the second virus crisis, the following results are expected.
The North-South peace dialogue will continue and even the inter-Korea economic cooperation will become possible, which will lead to the common prosperity to the North and the South.
The peace on the Korean peninsula and North-South economic integration may allow Korea to play key role in the formation of the East-Asian regional globalism.
The peace on the Korean peninsula may weaken the justification of the large presence of American military strength in the region. This will attenuate the danger of Sino-U.S. armed conflict.
The peace on the Korean peninsula will weaken the justification of the amendment of the peace constitution and decrease the danger of armed conflict Sino-Japan and Korea-Japan.
To sum up, what is happening in Korea can happen in many other democratic countries. That is, the virus can be deliberately propagated in order to protect the vested interests of corrupt politicians. If there is any way to prevent it, it is the strong will of the united citizens supported by the people around the world.
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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the Observatoire de l’Asie de l’Est (OAE) of the Centre d’Études sur l’Intégration et la Mondialisation (CEIM), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
When President Donald Trump accepted his party’s nomination for another term last night at the Republican National Convention, he pledged that the push by his administration’s Operation Warp Speed to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine would succeed “before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner.”
That promise concerns many vaccine veterans. They worry that political forces—the U.S. presidential election on 3 November, nationalistic pride to “win” a race, the need to resuscitate economies—could lead to premature and dangerous approvals under mechanisms such as the emergency use authorization (EUA), a pathway used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow rapid access to diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. Long a bastion of regulatory rigor that many other countries look to for guidance, FDA has been criticized for issuing EUAs for two COVID-19 treatments, convalescent plasma and hydroxychloroquine, based on scant data and apparent political pressure. (The hydroxychloroquine EUA has since been revoked.) Paul Offit, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who is a member of a group that advises FDA about its vaccine decisions, suspects the Trump administration might seek a COVID-19 vaccine EUA before the elections and say: “We Warp Speeded our way to a vaccine.”
China and Russia already have approved limited use of COVID-19 vaccines outside of clinical trials, offering baffling—and sharply criticized—rationales. In the United States, Operation Warp Speed, as its name implies, hopes to move vaccine candidates forward more quickly than ever before. It has invested more than $10 billion in developing eight different COVID-19 vaccines, with much of that money pre-purchasing hundreds of millions of doses so they will be at the ready if an FDA approval comes through. Three of the Warp Speed-backed vaccines have entered efficacy trials, and one manufacturer has pledged to start delivering the first of 300 million doses as early as October—though one person close to Operation Warp Speed says, “There won’t be enough vaccine in October to create anything other than a news story.”
FDA officials have insisted they have “unwavering regulatory safeguards” and will not cut any corners. “The acceleration is really around taking financial risk [with regard to] the development process,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said at a U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing about the country’s COVID-19 response in June. “We will rely upon data and science when it comes to that decision about an EUA.”
Peter Marks, who runs the FDA division that oversees vaccine approval, has vowed that he would resign if the Trump administration pushed through a vaccine that was not clearly safe and effective. And he insists that FDA will consult with the Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), which Offit sits on, to publicly discuss data related to any approval request. “Approval should be something that we can make transparent, and to do anything less than that is really a disservice to people,” Marks says. VRBPAC’s next meeting is scheduled for 22 October, 12 days before the presidential and congressional elections.
Science spoke with a range of researchers and regulators about how a COVID-19 vaccine approval might be accelerated and the potential consequences.
What’s the traditional vaccine approval pathway?
After initial laboratory and animal tests, vaccines enter phase I human trials that typically have about 20 to 100 people and primarily analyze safety and immune responses. Phase II studies are larger versions of phase I trials. Phase III studies attempt to determine whether a vaccine works by comparing people who receive it with those who are given a placebo shot and, over several months or years, seeing how many in each group get infected. For COVID-19 vaccines these trials involve anywhere from 10,000 to 60,000 people and will need a total of about 150 cases of disease to determine whether a candidate works. Once the trial endpoints are met, a vaccine developer seeking FDA approval would file a biologics license application; VRBPAC would review the data at a public meeting, then vote on whether the vaccine should receive approval—a recommendation FDA normally follows. The approval process, which involves inspecting the vaccine’s manufacturing plants, can often take 1 year.
How does an EUA work?
An EUA in the United States, and similar regulatory pathways in many countries, allows use of an unlicensed vaccine outside of a clinical trial. The EUA could stipulate the use of the vaccine in a limited population, for example, health care workers or the elderly. Or it could be for the general population. An EUA offers liability protections to vaccinemakers, and it remains in effect as long as there is a public health, military, or national security emergency. When the emergency ends, so does the approval.
What safety and efficacy evidence would FDA require before issuing an EUA?
FDA issued a “guidance for industry” in June that says any emergency decision on a COVID-19 vaccine would be based on factors such as “the target population, the characteristics of the product, [and] the preclinical and human clinical study data.” The guidance specifies that FDA will only approve an EUA for a vaccine that has at least 50% efficacy. But estimates of efficacy have error bars of sorts; for a COVID-19 vaccine, FDA wants 95% confidence that efficacy is no lower than 30%. The decision to consider an EUA request would likely be based on data reviewed by the independent boards, set up by the vaccine’s sponsors or clinical trial investigators, that monitor safety and efficacy during the study.
What harm could an EUA do?
Public Citizen, a public advocacy group, has argued that regardless of whether a COVID-19 vaccine is effective, an EUA could fuel existing vaccine hesitancy. “The ‘logic’ of saving several months by a faster but riskier EUA pathway will surely be outweighed by the loss in public confidence in the vaccine, accompanied by decreased willingness to be vaccinated,” Public Citizen warned in a 6 August letter to Marks and his superiors. An EUA for a vaccine might also make it more difficult to recruit people for clinical trials of that vaccine and others, because participants might not want to take the risk of receiving a placebo when they can get a shot of a product that’s authorized for use.
What if the vaccine doesn’t work well or causes harm?
Vaccines go into healthy people, so putting them into use before fully assessing their risks and benefits is a bigger gamble than issuing an EUA for an experimental treatment for someone already ill. If a hastily approved COVID-19 vaccine candidate proves ineffective or has serious side effects, confidence in what many see as the best hope to ending the pandemic could plummet. The Solidarity Vaccines Trials Expert Group of the World Health Organization (WHO) argued in an editorial published in TheLancet yesterday that a weakly effective vaccine could actually worsen the pandemic if it induced authorities to relax control measures, such as mask wearing, or if vaccinated people believed they were immune and increased their risk-taking behavior.
Has an EUA ever been used for a vaccine?
Yes. In 2005 FDA granted an EUA for an anthrax vaccine for people who the military determined were at high risk of attack from anthrax used as a biological weapon. The episode provoked lawsuits claiming there was no evidence that the vaccine, which the military required soldiers to get, worked against the type of inhalational anthrax used in bioweapons. A judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, but by then the vaccine had become voluntary.
What’s the difference between FDA’s expanded access program and an EUA?
Typically expanded access, also called compassionate use, covers treatments, not vaccines, in the United States. It’s for individuals who have a life-threatening condition and no alternatives or for small groups of sick people when a treatment has promising evidence but efficacy has not been proven yet. Anyone who receives the experimental medicine signs an informed consent form, and institutions that provide it have to seek permission from FDA, submit a protocol, report adverse events, and do continued safety monitoring. An EUA eliminates these requirements. FDA allowed nearly 100,000 people to receive convalescent plasma through expanded access—an unusually large instance of compassionate use—but last week granted an EUA that proponents said would cut paperwork. The Democratic Republic of the Congo used its own expanded access regulation to allow more than 300,000 people to use an unlicensed Ebola vaccine.
Does Europe have a similar emergency approval process?
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) can issue “conditional approval” for a vaccine during a pandemic. Under a rolling-review process, companies continue submitting data as they becomes available. The United Kingdom, which will be leaving the EMA’s authority because of Brexit, today issued a consultation for public comment on how its regulatory agency might issue its own temporary authorization of an unlicensed COVID-19 vaccine.
How did China and Russia speed approval of their COVID-19 vaccines?
China on 25 June gave CanSino a 1-year approval to use its COVID-19 vaccine in the Chinese military, although there is no evidence beyond statements by company officials that anyone has received it. On 22 July, China also allowed Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group Company to give its COVID-19 vaccine to health care workers, customs workers, and others in “high-risk” professions. Both vaccines are still in phase III efficacy trials. CanSino also reportedly is in discussion with regulators in Pakistan and unnamed Latin American countries about early approval of its vaccine.
Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow on 11 August received a “registration certificate” to give a COVID-19 vaccine to what a Ministry of Health spokesperson described as “a small number of citizens from vulnerable groups,” including medical staff and the elderly. Dubbed Sputnik V, a clear reference to the U.S.-Soviet space race, the product is billed as “the first registered COVID-19 vaccine.” The registration says it cannot be used widely until after 1 January 2021, but President Vladimir Putin said, “I hope we can start a massive release of this vaccine soon.”
Many countries do not have strong regulatory agencies. How do they decide whether to use a COVID-19 vaccine that is not licensed?
WHO has what it calls an Emergency Use Listing, which many low- and middle-income countries have relied on in the past. “We can give a benefit/risk decision on a product and specify the conditions under which it should be used,” says Emer Cooke, director of WHO’s Regulation of Medicines and other Health Technologies. “We act like a regulatory body, but we’re not a regulatory body.” Cooke, who recently was elected to head EMA later this year, says their job is especially complex now because of the flood of COVID-19 vaccine candidates and the intense pressure to find one that is safe and effective. “I think we are seeing more political influences now than we would normally see,” she says.
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Years of US support to Al-Qaeda and ISIS and efforts to effect regime change in the country have culminated in the theft of Syria’s oil, but is that really America’s coup de grâce in Syria?
Near the end of July, one of the most important recent developments in U.S. foreign policy was quietly disclosed during a U.S. Senate hearing. Not surprisingly, hardly anybody talked about it and most are still completely unaware that it happened.
Answering questions from Senator Lindsey Graham, Secretary of State Pompeo confirmed that the State Department had awarded an American company, Delta Crescent Energy, with a contract to begin extracting oil in northeast Syria. The area is nominally controlled by the Kurds, yet their military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was formed under U.S. auspices and relies on an American military presence to secure its territory. That military presence will now be charged with protecting an American firm from the government of the country that it is operating within.
Pompeo confirmed that the plans for implanting the firm into the U.S.-held territory are “now in implementation” and that they could potentially be “very powerful.” This is quite a momentous event given its nature as a blatant example of neocolonial extraction, or, as Stephen Kinzer puts it writing for the Boston Globe, “This is a vivid throwback to earlier imperial eras, when conquerors felt free to loot the resources of any territory they could capture and subdue.”
Indeed, the history of how the U.S. came to be in a position to “capture and subdue” these resources is a sordid, yet informative tale that by itself arguably even rivals other such colonial adventures.
To capture and subdue
When a legitimate protest movement developed organically in Syria in early 2011, the U.S. saw an opportunity to destabilize, and potentially overthrow, the government of a country that had long pushed back against its efforts for greater control in the region.
Syria had maintained itself outside of the orbit of U.S. influence and had frustratingly prevented American corporations from penetrating its economy to access its markets and resources.
As the foremost academic expert on Middle East affairs, Christopher Davidson, wrote in his seminal work,
“Shadow Wars, The Secret Struggle for the Middle East,” discussing both Syria and Libya’s strategic importance, “the fact remained that these two regimes, sitting astride vast natural resources and in command of key ports, rivers, and borders, were still significant obstacles that had long frustrated the ambitions of Western governments and their constituent corporations to gain greater access.”
“With Syria,” Davidson wrote, “having long proven antagonistic to Western interests… a golden opportunity had presented itself in 2011 to oust [this] administration once and for all under the pretext of humanitarian and even democratic causes.”
The U.S., therefore, began organizing and overseeing a militarization of the uprising early on, and soon co-opted the movement along with allied states Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Writing at the end of 2011, Columbia University’s Joseph Massad explained how there was no longer any doubt that “the Syrian popular struggle for democracy [has] already been hijacked,” given that “the Arab League and imperial powers have taken over and assumed the leadership of their struggle.”
Soon, through the sponsoring of extremist elements, the insurgency was dominated by Salafists of the al-Qaeda variety.
According to the DIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by 2013 “there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad” and “the U.S. was arming extremists.” Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that “although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists,” still “the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming.”
When ISIS split off from al-Qaeda and formed its own Caliphate, the U.S. continued pumping money and weapons into the insurgency, even though it was known that this aid was going into the hands of ISIS and other jihadists. U.S. allies directly supported ISIS.
U.S. officials admitted that they saw the rise of ISIS as a beneficial development that could help pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give in to America’s demands.
Leaked audio of then-Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that “we were watching… and we know that this [ISIS] was growing… We saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought, however, we could probably manage — that Assad would then negotiate.” As ISIS was bearing down on the capital city of Damascus, the U.S. was pressing Assad to step down to a U.S.-approved government.
Then, however, Russia intervened with its air force to prevent an ISIS takeover of the country and shifted the balance of forces against the jihadist group. ISIS’ viability as a tool to pressure the government was spent.
The arsonist and the firefighter
So, a new strategy was implemented: instead of allowing Russia and Syria to take back the territories that ISIS captured throughout the war, the U.S. would use the ISIS threat as an excuse to take those territories before they were able to. Like an arsonist who comes to put out the fire, the U.S. would now charge itself with the task of stamping out the Islamist scourge and thereby legitimize its own seizure of Syrian land. The U.S. partnered with the Kurdish militias who acted as their “boots on the ground” in this endeavor and supported them with airstrikes.
The strategy of how these areas were taken was very specific. It was designed primarily to allow ISIS to escape and redirect itself back into the fight against Syria and Russia. This was done through leaving “an escape route for militants” or through deals that were made where ISIS voluntarily agreed to cede its territory. The militants were then able to escape and go wreak havoc against America’s enemies in Syria.
Interestingly, in terms of the oil fields now being handed off to an American corporation, the U.S. barely even fought ISIS to gain control over them; ISIS simply handed them over.
Syria and Russia were quickly closing in on the then-ISIS controlled oilfields, so the U.S. oversaw a deal between the Kurds and ISIS to give up control of the city. According to veteran Middle East war correspondent Elijah Magnier, “U.S.-backed forces advanced in north-eastern areas under ISIS control, with little or no military engagement: ISIS pulled out from more than 28 villages and oil and gas fields east of the Euphrates River, surrendering these to the Kurdish-U.S. forces following an understanding these reached with the terrorist group.”
Sources quoted by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that ISIS preferred seeing the fields in the hands of the U.S. and the Kurds rather than the Syrian government.
The rationale behind this occupation was best described by Syria expert Joshua Landis, who wrote that the areas of northern Syria under control of the Kurds are the U.S.’ “main instrument in gaining leverage” over the government. By “denying Damascus access to North Syria” and “controlling half of Syria’s energy resources” “the U.S. will be able to keep Syria poor and under-resources.” So, by “promoting Kurdish nationalism in Syria” the U.S. “hopes to deny Iran and Russia the fruits of their victory,” while “keeping Damascus weak and divided,” this serving “no purpose other than to stop trade” and to “beggar Assad and keep Syria divided, weak and poor.”
Or, in the words of Jim Jeffrey, the Trump administrations special representative for Syria who is charged with overseeing U.S. policy, the intent is to “make life as miserable as possible for that flopping cadaver of a regime and let the Russians and Iranians, who made this mess, get out of it.”
Anchoring American troops in Syria
This is the history by which an American firm was able to secure a contract to extract oil in Syria. And while the actual resources gained will not be of much value (Syria has only 0.1% of the world’s oil reserves), the presence of an American company will likely serve as a justification to maintain a U.S. military presence in the region.
“It is a fiendishly clever maneuver aimed at anchoring American troops in Syria for a long time,” Stephen Kinzer explains, one that will aid the policymakers who hold “the view that the United States must remain militarily dominant in the Middle East.”
This analysis corroborates the extensive scholarship of people like Mason Gaffney, professor of economics emeritus at the University of California, who, writing in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, sums up his thesis that throughout its history “U.S. military spending has been largely devoted to protecting the overseas assets of multinational corporations that are based in the United States… The U.S. military provides its services by supporting compliant political leaders in developing countries and by punishing or deposing regimes that threaten the interests of U.S.-based corporations.”
In essence, by protecting this “global ‘sprawl’ of extractive companies” the U.S. Department of Defense “provides a giant subsidy to companies operating overseas,” one that is paid for by the taxpayer, not the corporate beneficiaries. It is hard to estimate the exact amount of money the U.S. has invested into the Syria effort, though it likely is near the trillion dollar figure. The U.S. taxpayer doesn’t get anything out of that, but companies that are awarded oil contracts do.
What is perhaps most important about this lesson however is that this is just a singular example of a common occurrence that happens all over the world. A primary function of U.S. foreign policy is to “make the world safe for American businesses,” and the upwards of a thousand military bases the U.S. has stationed across the globe are set up to help protect those corporate investments. While this history is unique to Syria, similar kinds of histories are responsible for U.S. corporation’s extractive activities in other global arenas.
So, next time you see headlines about Exxon being in some kind of legal dispute with, say, Venezuela, ask yourself how was it that those companies became involved with the resources of that part of the world? More often than not, the answer will be similar to how this U.S. company got involved in Syria.
Given all of this, it perhaps might seem to be too mild of a critique to simply say that this Syria enterprise harkens back to older imperial eras where conquerors simply took what they wished: the sophistication of colonialism has indeed improved by leaps and bounds since then.
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Steven Chovanec is an independent journalist based in Chicago, IL. His writings have appeared in outlets such as The Hill, teleSUR, Truthout, MintPress News, Insurge-Intelligence, and others. Follow him on Twitter @stevechovanec
A coalition of 27 U.S. states, commonwealths, territories, counties, and cities filed a federal lawsuit on Friday challenging the Trump administration’s “unlawful, unjustified, and sweeping revisions” to a 50-year-old law that the president claimed would “streamline” infrastructure projects by limiting environmental reviews.
After revealing plans to alter the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in January, President Donald Trumpannounced what critics called “reckless and unprecedented” changes during a July campaign stop. The revisions, detailed in a final rule released by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), swiftly provoked legal threats from advocacy organizations.
The lawsuit (pdf) filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, follows a similar challenge to the NEPA changes from national environmental groups, filed in the same court last month.
“NEPA is an unsung hero of environmental protection that protects our shared environment,” Ferguson said in a statement. “NEPA allows our voices to inform public decisions, provides a tool for holding the government accountable, and builds transparency into the federal decision-making process to build trust.”
“This administration’s insidious attack on one of our most important environmental laws is an attack on the democratic process itself,” the Washington attorney general declared. “I will fight to make sure the people are heard.”
Becerra put the rollback and subsequent suit in the context of Trump’s broader deregulatory agenda targeting environmental protections and how states and local governments—often led by Democratic elected officials—have fought against it.
“The Trump administration has spent the better part of four years trying to roll back critical protections and undo hard-fought progress, particularly when it comes to our environment, public lands, and natural resources,” Becerra said. “But we haven’t let this unlawful conduct go unchecked. We’ve fought back—and won.”
“Today, we’re filing our 100th lawsuit against the Trump administration,” he noted. “With today’s challenge, our goal is simple: preserve the public’s voice in government decision-making as federal projects threaten to harm the health of our families in our own backyards.”
The Trump Admin spent the last four years rolling back critical protections and undoing hard-fought progress, particularly for our environment.
Now @RealDonaldTrump is gutting the National Environmental Policy Act—one of our bedrock environmental laws.
David J. Hayes, executive director of the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at New York University School of Law, said in response to the suit that “state attorneys general again are stepping up, this time to stop the Trump administration from going back on the basic ‘good government’ promise that before federal officials approve major projects, they must review potential adverse impacts, make them public, and hear the views of affected citizens.”
“We should not need to rely on our last line of defense—state attorneys general—to enforce the rule of law,” added Hayes, former Interior Department deputy secretary in the Obama and Clinton administrations. “But here we are again, needing to turn to state legal officers and the federal courts to right the latest national environmental wrongs that the Trump administration is imposing on the American people.”
In March, Becerra co-led a coalition of 20 attorneys general who argued in a letter that the administration’s proposed rule violated both NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA); relied on a deficient rulemaking process; restricted the scope of impacts considered in environmental reviews; and unlawfully and without justification limited the requirement that an agency evaluate reasonable alternatives.
As the California attorney general’s office explained Friday, the lawsuit argues that the final rule violates NEPA and APA because it:
is contrary to NEPA’s language and purpose and exceeds the Council on Environmental Quality’s statutory authority;
is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise not in accordance with law; and
was promulgated without preparing an Environmental Assessment or an Environmental Impact Statement evaluating the rule’s environmental and public health impacts.
As Hayes put it:
“The administration’s final NEPA rule shatters that long-standing legal promise embedded in one of our nation’s earliest and most important environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act.”
“In particular, the final rule abandons any environmental review for broad categories of project approvals that will leave our most vulnerable citizens—including many already impacted by historic, unjust environmental harms—voiceless and at the mercy of an administration that favors industry profits over Americans’ health and well-being,” he said. “And when reviews are begrudgingly undertaken, the new rule enables officials to downplay or skip altogether serious analyses of climate impacts and health dangers associated with proposed projects and connected activities.”
Ferguson and Becerra were joined in the filing by the legal representatives for Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, the territory of Guam, the city of New York, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and Harris County, Texas.
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Featured image: Activists gather outside of the Alliance Center in Denver across the street from a public hearing by the Council on Environmental Quality’s proposed update to NEPA Regulations on February 11, 2020. (Photo: Aaron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
On August 1, a rare in-depth investigative piece appeared on the BBC News website based on credible and serious allegations that UK Special Forces had executed unarmed civilians in Afghanistan. The BBC article was produced in tandem with a report, ‘”Rogue SAS Afghanistan execution squad” exposed by email trail’, published by the Sunday Times.
Special Forces are the UK’s elite specialist troops, encompassing both the SAS (Special Air Service) and the SBS (Special Boat Service). The allegation, by two senior officers, is that there was a ‘deliberate policy’ of British Special Forces illegally killing unarmed men in Afghanistan under the pretext of assassinating Taliban leaders.
The new revelations were based on documents recently released to solicitors Leigh Day as part of an ongoing case at the High Court brought by an Afghan man, Saifullah Ghareb Yar. He says that four members of his family were shot dead in rural Helmand in a ‘night raid’ in the early hours of 16 February 2011.
The UK government claims that the family members were ‘killed in self defence.’ But the newly-released documents contradict this assertion. As the BBC article noted:
‘Just hours after the elite troops had returned to base, other British soldiers were exchanging emails describing the events of that night as the “latest massacre”.’
In other words, this was not the first such case where killings of unarmed civilians by Special Forces had taken place.
Saifullah’s family were asleep at 1am when they woke suddenly to the sound of helicopter rotors, followed by shouting through megaphones. Saifullah was a teenager, caught in the middle of a Special Forces ‘kill or capture’ mission. He told the BBC what happened:
‘My whole body was shaking because of the fear. Everyone was frightened. All the women and children were crying and screaming’.
His hands were tied and he was put in a holding area with the women and children.
The BBC report continued:
‘He had not been there for long when he heard gunfire.
‘After the troops had left, the bodies of his two brothers were discovered in the fields surrounding their home. His cousin had been shot dead in a neighbouring building.
‘Going back into his house, Saifullah found his father, lying face down on the ground.
‘“His head, the forehead area, was shot with many bullets, and his leg was completely broken by the bullets’.”
The official UK Special Forces report on the killings claimed that the British soldiers had been threatened by the Afghan men brandishing weapons. In particular, the official report claimed that after initially securing the compound they went back in to search the rooms with one of the men they had detained. This man, said Special Forces, suddenly reached for a grenade behind a curtain. Their report stated:
‘He poses an immediate threat to life and is engaged with aimed shots. The assault team members take cover. The grenade malfunctions and does not detonate’.
Another of the four Afghan men was killed when told to go into another building to open the curtains, said Special Forces. He supposedly emerged with a rifle and was then shot dead.
The official account of the killings, noted the BBC, was ‘met with suspicion by some in the British military.’ The more detailed article in the Sunday Times includes the disbelieving response of a senior officer reading the Special Forces’ version of events:
‘Basically, for what must be the 10th time in the last two weeks, when they sent [an Afghan man] back into the [building], to open the curtains(??) he re-appeared [sic] with an AK [AK-47 assault rifle].’
An internal army message included a summary of the official Special Forces report and concluded by saying: “You couldn’t MAKE IT UP!”
However, it appeared as though Special Forces had made it up.
The serious allegations in the BBC and Sunday Times articles followed a Panorama programme, ‘War Crimes Scandal Exposed’, last November in the wake of the government’s announcement that investigations into alleged war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan would be closed, before a single soldier had even been prosecuted. Panorama worked with the Sunday Times Insight team, revealing ‘evidence of a pattern of illegal killings by UK Special Forces.’
In the programme, BBC reporter Richard Bilton met UK detectives, formerly of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), who spoke for the first time about how they were prevented from prosecuting soldiers suspected of serious crimes. These detectives believe that the Ministry of Defence and senior military officers were involved in the cover-up of torture and illegal killings. This happened in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
IHAT was set up by the Labour government in 2010. But, as Bilton noted for Panorama:
‘Despite years of work, not a single one of the almost 3,400 allegations against British troops [in Iraq] was prosecuted.’
He continued:
‘Then, in 2017, the Conservative government shut IHAT down. The government claimed it was down to the actions of one solicitor. Phil Shiner ran Public Interest Lawyers, a legal firm that brought over a thousand cases to IHAT. He was struck off following allegations he had paid fixers to find clients in Iraq.’
In her speech to the Conservative party conference that autumn, Prime Minister Theresa May, proclaimed to great applause that:
‘we will never again in any future conflict let those activist left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave, the men and women of our Armed Forces’.
But, as one former IHAT detective told Panorama:
‘It was helpful to close IHAT down, wasn’t it? [ironic tone]. You don’t need an excuse. All you’re going to say is, “Right, everything’s now tainted. We can bin all that. Yippee.” It was a whitewash. Public Interest Lawyers and Phil Shiner – that was used as an excuse to get rid of a lot of jobs and say: “IHAT, you’re finished”.’
As Bilton observed:
‘Phil Shiner broke the rules. But that doesn’t mean all the allegations made by Iraqi civilians were untrue. The detectives we’ve spoken to say IHAT was shut down for political reasons. It was a cover-up.’
He added:
‘IHAT detectives say the government never wanted any soldiers prosecuted, no matter how strong the evidence.’
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, at the same time that the government announced IHAT would be shut down, it also decided to end an investigation, Operation Northmoor, into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
Bilton:
‘Northmoor’s team of detectives had been investigating allegations of executions by British Special Forces. They had linked dozens of suspicious killings on night raids. But Northmoor was closed before they even interviewed key Afghan witnesses.’
He added:
‘Some of those killed were undoubtedly members of the Taliban. But the UN has concluded that Coalition forces killed more than 300 innocent civilians.’
This is a shocking statistic. Perhaps the most appalling case Panorama investigated was the brutal killing of four boys in the Helmand village of Loy Bagh in October 2012, shot dead while they were sitting drinking tea. Bilton reported:
‘Detectives discovered Special Forces didn’t tell the truth about the raid. The first military reports failed to disclose British involvement.’
Instead, they attempted to pin the blame on Afghan forces; a common evasive tactic.
‘Detective say UK forces were falsely attributing suspicious deaths to Afghan forces, so British troops wouldn’t be investigated.’
The British soldier who shot the four boys later claimed to UK detectives working for IHAT that he shot two of the boys because they were standing and pointing weapons at him, and he shot at the other two ‘when they appeared out of the shadows’.
But the evidence of bullet holes low down in the room was inconsistent with his account. The boys had been sitting, just as claimed by Afghan witnesses, not standing.
Such clashes with evidence and testimony from the scene of killings fit a pattern of official accounts of raids written up afterwards by UK Special Forces alleging ‘self defence’. Former intelligence officer Frank Ledwidge told Panorama that the night raids were a ‘perpetual motion machine of killing and capturing’. Former Operation Northmoor detectives believe the case brought by Saifullah Ghareb Yar (see above) is part of a pattern of cover-ups they were investigating. They allege that the British military and the government have covered up numerous murders by closing down IHAT (in Iraq) and Operation Northmoor (in Afghanistan).
Mark Urban, Defender Of The Faith
The new BBC online investigative piece, published on August 1, together with the Panorama progamme last November, are rare examples of serious public-interest BBC journalism attempting to hold the UK military and government to account. Will other BBC journalists, with responsibility for ‘defence’ and foreign affairs, pursue the latest revelations regarding the case of four members of Saifullah Ghareb Yar’s family being executed in Helmand province?
Consider, in particular, Mark Urban, diplomatic and defence editor for BBC Newsnight, who has spent years reporting on Iraq and Afghanistan, very much from within a propaganda framework aligned with UK government policies and interests. For example, in a 2015 comment piece in the Evening Standard, Urban was happy to amplify the Cold War narrative spun by former top-ranking UK military officials:
‘Speaking to Britain’s former top military leadership, you find General Shirreff, or former Chief of the General Staff Gen Sir Peter Wall, arguing that Russia is the principal worry. Lt Gen Sir Graeme Lamb, former Director of Special Forces, or General Lord David Richards (former Chief of the Defence Staff) believe the Islamic State is the real game changer. Talk to some of the US military leaders or intelligence people and they are more worried about China.
‘Either way, the ability of countries such as the UK to do something about these emerging threats is limited by the dramatic cuts enacted after the Cold War.’
For Urban, there was no need to insert ‘emerging threats’ in inverted commas; it was simply a given that China and Russia threaten the UK. The possibility that it could be the West that is threatening China and Russia is presumably unthinkable.
As John Pilger writes in a new piece commemorating the victims of the US atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, intended as a show of strength to show the Soviet Union who was the world’s boss:
‘Today, more than 400 American military bases almost encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to South-East Asia, Japan and Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, as one U.S. strategist told me, “the perfect noose”.’
But, as ever for compliant Western propagandists like Urban, the Orwellian framework that ‘we’ are only ‘defending’ ourselves is deeply embedded in establishment-friendly ‘journalism’.
As we have previously noted, Urban is a former defence correspondent at the Independent. He served in the British Army, both as a regular officer for nine months as well as serving four years in the Territorials. He has hosted a series of virtual reality war games on the BBC, Time Commanders, re-enacting key battles. He is also the author of several books:
Soviet Land Power (1985)
War in Afghanistan (1987)
Big Boys’ Rules: The SAS and the secret struggle against the IRA (1992)
UK Eyes Alpha: Inside British Intelligence (1996)
The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes: The Story of George Scovell (2001)
Rifles: Six Years with Wellington’s Legendary Sharpshooters (2003)
Generals: Ten British Commanders Who Shaped the World (2005)
Fusiliers: Eight Years with the Redcoats in America (2007)
Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the Secret Special Forces War in Iraq (2010)
The Tank War: The British Band of Brothers – One Tank Regiment’s World War II (2014)
The Edge: Is The Military Dominance Of The West Coming To An End? (2015)
The Skripal Files: The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy (2018)
On August 3, we checked Urban’s Twitter account and noted that he had made only the most cursory reference to the allegations regarding Special Forces in Afghanistan in a replyto someone called Henry Hyde who had flagged them up to him.
‘Yes Henry. It gives a fuller version of allegations previously reported by the paper in relation to a particular squadron of 22 SAS during its tour in Afghan.’
Why are you not drawing attention to these important allegations of UK Special Forces executing unarmed civilians?’
Urban did not reply. This contrasts with the early years of Media Lens when Urban – as well as other high-profile ‘mainstream’ journalists – would engage in substantive email exchanges with us. In 2007, for example, we critiqued his assertion in a BBC report that US troops were ‘here to help’ in Iraq. This, of course, was the propaganda line that the US and its allies were desperate to sell to the public following the bloodbath of the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation.
To his credit back then, Urban replied to us, although he disparaged our analysis as being:
‘put together by you sitting at home, sifting current events through a dense filter of ideology.’
The implication was, of course, that Urban – as an ‘impartial’ BBC News correspondent – was subject to no ‘filter of ideology’ at all. Long-term readers may recall Andrew Marr’s similar assertion in the Daily Telegraph back in 2001 that when he joined the BBC as political editor, his ‘Organs of Opinion were formally removed’.
Ironically for Urban, our analysis that had been ‘put together by [us] sitting at home’, was supported in 2007 by a serving British Army officer who had read the exchanges with Urban in our media alerts, and had then written to him. The anonymous officer said that the view that the war had been ‘illegal, immoral and unwinnable’ was ‘the overwhelming feeling of many of my peers’.
As a result of these exchanges involving Media Lens, the British army officer’s views were reported on Newsnight; one of the vanishingly rare occasions in which the ‘mainstream’ media have so much as mentioned us. At that time, the Newsnight editor was Peter Barron, with whom Media Lens had had several polite and respectful email exchanges.
We had a further lengthy exchange with Urban in 2009 following this extraordinary claim about anti-war protesters in his BBC ‘War and Peace’ blog that:
‘it was their hand wringing and magnification of every set back or mis-step that played a key role in undermining the political will to achieve more in southern Iraq.’
‘You have misunderstood the whole basis of the anti-war protest. The argument is that the invasion was illegal, in fact a classic example of the supreme war crime – the waging of a war of aggression. The Nuremberg trials were clear that it makes not a jot of difference whether such criminality has positive outcomes – the waging of aggressive war is illegal.’
This entirely rational and well-established point, rooted in international justice, was apparently incomprehensible to Urban who replied:
‘Are you comparing British soldiers to Nazis? I cannot see the comparison; either in legal or moral terms.’
This standard ‘mainstream’ resort to ‘moral equivalence’, when the crimes of the West are raised, has been demolished by Noam Chomsky who once told BBC interviewer Tim Sebastian:
‘Moral equivalence is a term of propaganda that was invented to try to prevent us from looking at the acts for which we are responsible… Minimal moral integrity requires that if we think something is wrong when they do it, it’s wrong when we do it.’
In late 2009 and early 2010, the Sunday Times published articles by its reporter Jerome Starkey detailing the killing of eight Afghan schoolboys in a night raid by US-led troops. We wrote two media alerts at the time (here and here), highlighting how a Nato spokesperson had initially denied that schoolchildren had been shot in the head – several of them after first being handcuffed – and then retracting their cover story. Western authorities later offered relatives ‘compensation’ of US$2,000 for each life taken. We noted the dearth of follow-up ‘mainstream’ interest to Starkey’s courageous reporting, including the BBC’s failure to report the allegations fully and responsibly.
Without access to all of Newsnight’s broadcasts during this period, it is not possible to categorically say whether the programme reported much of this, if anything. As the usual correspondent for reporting from Afghanistan, it would most likely have fallen to Mark Urban to cover it.
Following the latest revelations on August 1 on the killing of four of Saifullah Ghareb Yar’s relatives in Helmand (see above), an anodyne piece by Urban appeared on the BBC News website on August 3, blandly titled, ‘Defence Secretary to review SAS Afghanistan emails’. This was later on the same day that we had tweeted him. Arguably, this means he had been too busy to respond; though surely a short reply would have taken him just a few seconds. However, the focus of Urban’s piece was not the shocking execution of unarmed civilians, but on how the revelation of secret emails about Special Forces operations in Afghanistan was:
‘causing recriminations within the Ministry of Defence, with a process starting this week to re-examine how ministers were kept in ignorance of their content.’
The emphasis of his report was the ‘fresh worries’ in the Ministry of Defence about the revelations and the stressful impact on army veterans:
‘The allegations about D Squadron’s tour – each of 22 SAS’s sub-units rotated through Afghanistan in turn for 3-4 months – are not new.
‘They have already been investigated by the Royal Military Police under Operation Northmoor, a prolonged inquiry that ended without any soldiers being charged.
‘Veterans of the regiment have complained about the stress of such prolonged enquiries.’
The piece mentions allegations of ‘a deliberate policy… to engage and kill fighting aged men on target even when they did not pose a threat’, but was shorn of details of the killing of unarmed civilians. This fits a pattern of Urban’s reporting. We have been unable to find anything substantive about the impact of Special Forces’ operations on Afghan and Iraqi civilians in his Twitter timeline, his BBC blog, or anything he has published online or in any newspaper. It is almost impossible to give a definitive set of search results with 100 per cent confidence. But, as an example, if one searches the BBC News website using the search terms “Mark Urban” + “Special Forces” + “civilians” only a handful of results are returned; and nothing of substance in which the emphasis is on civilian victims.
For instance, in a 2011 BBC News website piece by Urban, titled ‘Impact on special forces of Navy Seals helicopter loss’, there was a token mention in the final paragraph of the occasions when ‘Afghans report civilians being killed’. This encapsulates Urban’s propaganda journalism as a whole: overwhelming weight is given to the priorities of the UK establishment and the military, with only passing mention of the destructive impact of UK policy and actions on the victims.
Admittedly, we have not read Urban’s books in the lengthy list above. But would it be at all likely that his reporting in book form would suddenly shift by one hundred and eighty degrees to focus, not on British armed forces, but on their victims? In a review of Urban’s book, ‘Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the Secret Special Forces War in Iraq’, Observer foreign correspondent Jason Burke noted:
‘Few reporters succeed in cultivating any sources within the closed world of the British special forces; Urban has found dozens who have spoken with unprecedented candour.’
Given Mark Urban’s history of ‘cultivating’ sources within British special forces, and his privileged extensive access to UK military and intelligence agencies, how likely is it that he would not have known about the serious allegations of the execution of innocent civilians going back many years? His unwillingness to seriously explore allegations of this kind is hugely significant.
Burke notes that Urban ‘had to battle with the Ministry of Defence’ to have the book published, but then adds:
‘one wonders what reception a work more critical of British special forces’ operations might have received in Whitehall. The author’s personal admiration for the men who constitute his subject is clear. Language veers from the breathless – “Britain’s hand-picked troops”, the “SAS had got its man”– to the soldierly – firefights are “epic”, problems are “aggro”.’
Would the author’s ‘personal admiration’ for these men be so high if he had investigated and reported the many credible accounts of unarmed civilians being killed by Special Forces, followed by cynical attempts at cover-ups aided, if not directed, by senior figures within the Ministry of Defence?
Remarkably, in November 2010, almost one year after the killing of eight schoolchildren by Nato-led forces had been reported by the Sunday Times, Urban had told Newsnight viewers:
‘The biggest mistake of the coalition’s early years here was under-investment in the Afghan forces.’
It takes a particularly ‘dense filter of ideology’, to use Urban’s own words, to devote scant attention to Western crimes in the killing of schoolchildren, and other unarmed civilians, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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The US presidential elections coming this November will determine whether the current President Donald Trump or the Democratic nominee Joe Biden (if his mental capabilities are still intact) will run the White house.
But whether Trump or Biden becomes president, Israel is the real winner in all of this. Trump is no doubt already controlled by the neocons and his relationship with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is close, but Joe Biden who declared he was a Zionist back in 2008 is trying to win Israel’s support once again. Here is his interview with Shalom TV:
Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo is a neocon and Israel’s lead spokesperson who addressed the Republican National Convention from Jerusalem said that “I’m speaking to you from beautiful Jerusalem, looking out over the old city.” Pompeo praised Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA agreement also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. Pompeo claimed that Trump “squeezed the Ayatollah, Hezbollah and Hamas.”
Pompeo also mentioned Trump’s decision when he authorized a missile strike murdering one of Iran’s top generals, Qasem Soleimani when he said that “in the Middle East, when Iran threatened, the president approved a strike that killed the Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani.” Soleimani was the same man who fought against the US-backed Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and against Al-Qaeda during the September 11th attacks, but that is obviously forgotten in the mainstream media. Trump has imposed Israel’s agenda by relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump has also recognized the Golan Heights as Israeli territory even though it is Syrian territory and he imposed a one-sided so-called “peace plan” with the Palestinians with his Zionist son-in-law Jared Kushner with no Palestinian input into the plan. Trump’s peace deal between the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a Western puppet state and Israel did not change Netanyahu’s commitment to annexation plans in the West Bank which according to him was “still on the table.”
Under Trump’s first term, Israel has gained an edge politically over the Palestinians and has created more tensions between Israel and Iran. But the Democrats with Joe Biden and his vice-president nominee Kamala Harris are leading the charge and are fighting hard to win Israel’s support. Harris recently said that “Joe has made it clear he will not tie security assistance to any political decisions that Israel makes, and I couldn’t agree more,” during a virtual fundraiser with potential Jewish-American voters.
Harris repeated what almost every American politician had said since Israel’s creation in 1948
“I pledge to you the Biden-Harris administration will sustain our unbreakable commitment to Israel’s security, including the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation pioneered during the Obama-Biden administration and the guarantee that Israel will always maintain its qualitative military edge.”
Before Barack Obama left office in 2016, he signed a $38 billion memorandum of assistance to Israel over a 10-year period.
No matter who wins the elections come this November, Israel wins and the Palestinians and the rest of the Middle East lose. The Israel lobby known as the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), is one of the most powerful lobbyists’ in Washington D.C. (besides Big Pharma and Big Oil) is an influential group of Zionists who have an agenda to erase the Palestinians and their history from their lands and expand its territory in the Middle East like they did with the Golan Heights under Trump.
Democrat or Republican, both sides have blood on their hands when it comes to the Palestinians and all of the wars in the Middle East. Unfortunately, another major loser in all of this pandering to the Israelis is of course the American taxpayer, something both sides of the political spectrum ignore. With a Biden-Harris presidency or the current status quo with Trump-Pence, the Middle East will once again be in turmoil after the November elections and that’s a fact the world cannot ignore.
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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The critical assessment of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) last month by the influential Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far Eastern Studies coupled with India’s eagerness all summer to court the Eurasian Great Power into joining its so-called “Indo-Pacific” projects have combined to create the impression that Russia might be backtracking on President Putin’s previously expressed intention last year to integrate his country’s Greater Eurasian Partnership with the New Silk Road.
Debunking The Dogma
Many independent and alternative reports believe that Russia and China are working closely with one another on all levels in order to advance their shared grand strategic interest of accelerating the emergence of the Multipolar World Order.
This naturally presupposes that they’re continuing to make progress on President Putin’s previously expressed intention last year to integrate his country’s Greater Eurasian Partnership with the New Silk Road, but recent developments are creating the impression that Russia might actually be backtracking on China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI).
These are the critical assessment of BRI last month by the influential Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far Eastern Studies and India’s eagerness all summer to court the Eurasian Great Power into joining its so-called “Indo-Pacific” projects.
Russia’s Critical Assessment Of BRI
About the first of these two developments, Alexey Maslov‘s Russian-language interview to Interfax should be Google Translated and read in full by anyone interested in learning more about Russia’s evolving views towards BRI. He was surprisingly candid for a Russian expert of his caliber in discussing the challenges inherent to this global series of megaprojects, as well as China’s grand strategic motivation in pursuing them in the first place. Maslov also implied some criticisms of it when sharing his assessment that China basically wants to take control of the global economy through these means, which also includes the use of so-called “debt traps”.
Even more interestingly, he claimed that Russia isn’t a part of BRI contrary to conventional belief, but nevertheless seeks to pragmatically cooperate with it. Maslov then elaborated on why this is so, focusing on the problems related to their bilateral trade and investment relations. Altogether, his interview is extremely insightful and should be taken seriously due to the influence that he wields over Russian policy by view of his esteemed position.
The “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor”
The second development is less surprising since it’s been tracked for a while now, and that’s India’s eagerness to court Russia into joining its so-called “Indo-Pacific” projects. What was unexpected, however, was the spree of proposals that were made all summer.
The first move came during the joint online conference between the Russian International Affairs Council and the Indian Council of World Affairs in mid-July. The Indian Ambassador to Russia encouraged his host country to work more closely with his homeland in this trans-oceanic sphere, provocatively drawing particular attention to safeguarding “international rules and law” in the South China Sea where both have invested in Vietnamese offshore energy deposits contested by China. A suggestion was also made to undertake joint projects in Asia and Africa, which hints at Russia joining the Indo-Japanese “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” (AAGC) like the author previously proposed. ThePrint.In reported in late July that the Indian Ambassador reiterated such cooperation proposals to Russian officials during that time.
India’s Military & Diplomatic Outreaches To Russia
India’s envisioned “Indo-Pacific” partnership with Russia isn’t just economic, but also carries with it very important military and diplomatic dimensions. The Economic Times reported in late July that the two countries might sign a LEMOA-like military logistics pact by the end of the year, the possible implications of which the author analyzed in December 2018 in his piece about how “A Russian-Indian LEMOA Could Lead To Logistics Pacts With Other Littoral States”. The other related development was Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla officially discussing “the proposal for a Russia-India-Japan trilateral mechanism with the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Igor Morgulov, on August 4.” While the official purpose of such a structure would likely be presented as advancing Russia’s possible participation in the AAGC, there’s no doubt that it would be perceived in practice as a “passively aggressive” move by China considering the context of its ongoing rivalry with those two Asian Great Powers.
World War C & The “New Detente”
The reason why all of this is happening so fast is likely due to WorldWarC, the author’s neologism for the full-spectrum paradigm-changing processes unleashed across the world as a result of the international community’s uncoordinated efforts to contain COVID-19. One of the most immediate consequences was that Russia and China began to look askance at one another, which the author elaborated upon in his analysis earlier this year titled “Rare Wrinkle Or Growing Rift?: Russia & China Exchange Criticisms Over World War C”. In connection with this, Russia also sought to make progress on its “New Detente” with the US (the author’s neologism for ultimately reaching a series of “compromises” on a wide range of international issues) through its counter-COVID aid to America and their joint efforts to revive OPEC+. Taken together, these two pressing influences might have contributed to Russia’s changed attitude towards BRI, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing or anything to be seriously concerned about so long as Moscow manages to keep up its 21st-century “balancing” act.
Russia’s “Balancing” Act Between China & India
The author has written extensively about Russia’s “balancing” act between China and India, but warned back in November in response to Russia’s perceived “tilt” at the time towards the latter that “Improved Russian-Indian Ties Must Be Balanced With Improved Russian-Chinese Ones”. Failure to do so would risk sparking a “strategic dilemma” with China, one which would be to both it and Russia’s detriment while definitely being to the decisive advantage of India and its new American patron. One unique proposal that the author made in a jointly authored academic article in May for the official journal of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) concerns “The Prospects Of Russia And India Leading A New Non-Aligned Movement”, though the subsequent Galwan Incident makes it unlikely that Moscow will make any tangible progress on this front for the foreseeable future out of fear of triggering the aforesaid “strategic dilemma”. In fact, it can be argued that agreeing to any of India’s recent proposals without committing to symmetrical Chinese ones would lead to the same outcome.
Breaking The “Balancing” Act?
Therein lies the challenge at the core of Russia’s grand strategy since it’s a lot easier to talk about “balancing” than actually doing it, let alone well enough to the point where neither party suspects the “balancing” state of ulterior motives. In the current context, if Russia joined the AAGC, agreed to a LEMOA-like pact with India, and/or participated in a trilateral mechanism alongside Japan, it might give rise to Chinese suspicions about Moscow’s true long-term intentions towards the People’s Republic. Under such circumstances, China would have no reason pay much attention to its prior plans of building the Eurasian Land Bridge through Russia en route to the EU since it already has several complementary corridors that it can rely on instead such as the “Polar Silk Road”, the “Middle Corridor”, and BRI’s flagship project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and its related branch routes that the author describes as CPEC+. That in turn could undermine Russia’s ongoing systemic economic transition away from energy exports and towards becoming an East-West bridge for trade.
The Strategic Importance Of Clear Communication
It’s difficult at this moment to predict whether Russia will agree to all of India’s proposals, and if it does, whether it would also commit to any symmetrical Chinese ones to “balance” them out. The latter could prospectively see it loudly reaffirming its involvement in BRI by also making progress on the “Meridian Highway” segment of the Eurasian Land Bridge, reaching a LEMOA-like agreement with China, and pioneering a G2 mechanism for coordinating their policies all across Eurasia. Regardless of what Russia ends up doing, it mustn’t forget the strategic importance of clear communication in expressing its intentions towards China and India. Some of the constructive criticisms that the author recently made about Russian strategy is that the country never articulated its “balancing” act and oftentimes takes its partners for granted, which is why it must proudly embrace “balancing” by explicitly making it the basis for its dealings with China and India as well as being open to “compromising” with each of them as regards their concerns about its ties with the other.
The Pakistani Solution
In his debut analysis for the Valdai Club about “How Russia Can Lead Eurasia’s Consolidated Response To The Economic Crisis”, the author proposed that the creation of a Russian-Pakistani trade corridor (“RuPak”) could help Moscow better manage its tricky “balancing” act with China and India. RuPak’s importance in this respect was explained at length in the author’s joint academic article about “Pakistan’s Role In Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership” that was published at the Russian International Affairs Council in June, which built upon his work the month prior about how “Improved Russian-Pakistani Relations Will Help Moscow Balance The New Bipolarity” between the US and China on the global level but also between China and India as regards their overlapping “spheres of influence” in Asia. As Russia begins to visibly backtrack on BRI due to World War C and the “New Detente” in parallel with seriously considering India’s economic, military, and diplomatic outreaches, it’s absolutely imperative that it retains its hard-earned goodwill with China, which it can do through RuPak.
Concluding Thoughts
After closely analyzing the drivers behind Russia’s newfound critical stance towards BRI as expressed by the influential director of the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Far Eastern Studies and its interest in possibly agreeing to India’s comprehensive outreaches over the summer, it begins to seem like Moscow isn’t backtracking on BRI as much as it’s clarifying the true relationship that it’s had all this time to this global series of megaprojects. President Putin’s “wishful thinking” for the future notwithstanding, it appears as though Russia’s involvement in China’s worldwide initiative wasn’t ever as extensive as the Alt-Media Community portrayed it as, which might understandably disappoint those countries’ supporters. Nevertheless, it’s important that everything is becoming much clearer nowadays since this recently revealed insight can assist analysts in better forecasting the course of their relations, as well as the next thrust of Russian foreign policy, which might potentially be towards Pakistan via RuPak in order to maintain Moscow’s tricky “balancing” act.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
War goddess Hillary never left the political stage gently into that good night.
Eager to avenge her loss to Trump in 2016, she keeps resurfacing instead of fading away like old soldiers.
With Biden holding a commanding lead in most polls through late August, she went public again last week, saying the following:
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually, I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” adding:
“I think that (Republicans) have a couple of scenarios that they are looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting.”
“They believe that helps them so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the Electoral College on Election Day.”
“So we’ve got to have a massive legal operation, and I know the Biden campaign is working on that.”
“We have to have our own teams of people to counter the force of intimidation that the Republicans and Trump are going to put outside polling places.”
Political dirty tricks in the US cut both ways, a process profoundly not open, free and fair under one-party rule with two right wings.
Independent candidates are virtually shut out of contention, given no chance to compete on a level playing field.
According to investigative journalist Gregg Palast, “22% of all mail-in ballots don’t get counted,” citing a 2016 MIT study, adding:
The “safest way to vote” by absentee ballot is requesting one “2 months in advance.”
If doesn’t arrive by mid-October, pick one up “at your county board of elections, fill it out, and return it right there…and demand validation of your signature.”
“Don’t go postal.”
“In 2016, more than 141,000 ballots were rejected because someone challenged the signature.”
Voter suppression is longstanding practice in the US, today done with electronic ease on corporate-controlled voting machines.
In his book titled “How Trump Stole 2020,” Palest said “Trump & Co are stealing the election right now (by) ballot bandit(ry),” claiming he “stole 2016 and they’re at it again.”
US 2020 elections will be unlike any others in modern times with many, maybe most, voters exercising their franchise by mail – even though it’s as safe to show up at polling stations as go grocery shopping most people do regularly.
Weeks earlier, Trump falsely claimed mail-in ballots are “rigged,” refusing to say that he’ll accept November 3 election results if Biden wins, adding:
“I’m not a good loser, I don’t like to lose.” Depending on how things turn out, he’ll decide post-election whether to accept the result, saying:
“I have to see…I’m not just going to say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.”
His campaign manager Tim Murtaugh said
“(w)e won’t know what kind of shenanigans (Dems) will try leading up to November” — claiming if things are “free and fair…Trump will win.”
In July, Biden accused Trump of trying to “indirectly steal the election by arguing that mail-in ballots don’t work,” adding:
He’ll claim “they’re not real…not fair.” He might try to delay the election if polls show him way behind close to November 3, said Biden.
Last week Trump claimed the only way he’d lose is if things are rigged.
A statement by his campaign denied that he’ll try to hijack the election.
His campaign lawyer Matthew Morgan slammed Hillary’s remarks quoted above, saying she’s “trying to lay the groundwork for Joe Biden to deny the election results when…Trump wins.”
Separately, Speaker Pelosi urged Biden not to debate Trump, saying he hasn’t “comported himself in a way that has any association with truth, evidence, data, and facts.”
Farcical US political debates are scripted theater without substance.
They feature well-rehearsed posturing, slogans, and one-liners over solutions to cutting-edge domestic and geopolitical solutions — along with promises made to be broken if elected.
On issues relating to war and peace, corporate empowerment, neoliberal harshness, and police state crackdowns on nonbelievers, both right wings of the US one-party state are on the same page.
Their rhetoric, style and party labels alone differ. In office they’re much the same on issues mattering most.
Whenever US elections are held, dirty business as usual continuity always wins. It happens every time the same way.
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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.”
US hostility toward China’s growing political, economic, technological, and military prominence risks possible direct confrontation between both nations.
China seeks peace and cooperative relations with other countries in stark contrast to Washington’s aim for unchallenged dominance by whatever it takes to achieve its aims.
Last week, Trump regime envoy for arms control Marshall Billingslea said (nuclear-capable) intermediate-range missiles may be deployed in the Indo-Pacific close to China’s territory.
Its Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian denounced what’s likely coming, saying the following:
“China decisively condemns the US’s plans to deploy intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific Region, and expresses its sharp displeasure with constant pressure on China and the neighboring countries, as well as with constant provocations at China’s borders.”
Noting that deployment of these missiles will affect Russia’s security, its Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed concern, saying:
“We must also take into account that such armaments will also create additional risks for our territory as well, including objects of strategic importance, which would naturally require taking necessary response measures – which I would call compensatory.”
On August 2, 2019, Trump formally abandoned the landmark 1987 INF Treaty — based on phony accusations of Russian violations, invented ones because no real ones exist.
Responding to the unacceptable Trump regime action, Sergey Lavrov said the US began violating the INF Treaty “in 1999 when it began trials of combat unmanned flying vehicles with specifications similar to those of ground-launched cruise missiles banned by the treaty,” adding:
“Later it started using target missiles, ballistic target missiles, for testing its missile defense system, whereas starting in 2014 it began deploying in Europe launching pads for its positioning areas of missile defense – Mk 41 launching pads, which may absolutely be used without any changes and to launch Tomahawk medium-range cruise missiles.”
“That is a direct violation of the treaty. Such systems have already been deployed in Romania, are being prepared for deployment in Poland, as well as in Japan.”
The US under Republicans and Dems is a serial violator of treaties, conventions, bilateral and multilateral agreements, as well as the rule of law overall domestically and geopolitically.
Its provocative actions threaten world peace and stability.
In response to the likely deployment of US intermediate-range missiles close to the borders of China and Russia in the Indo-Pacific, Vladimir Putin said this action will result in a symmetrical response and create new threats.
On Friday in response to repeated US anti-China provocations, PLA spokesman Senior Col. Li Huamin said the following:
“Ignoring the rules of international law, the US side has repeatedly provoked troubles in the South China Sea, exercising navigational hegemony under the pretext of ‘freedom of navigation,” adding:
“We urge the US to stop such provocative behavior and restrict its maritime actions to avoid possible military accidents.”
What the Pentagon calls “routine freedom of navigation” is highly provocative in the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf, and other international waters close to the territory of nations it wants transformed into US vassal states.
On August 26, the PLA launched two missiles into the South China Sea, including an “aircraft carrier killer,” in response to unacceptable Pentagon aerial spying in no-fly-zone airspace during live-fire Chinese military exercises.
China’s Foreign Ministry called the US action a “naked provocation” that risked a possible “accident,” adding:
The PLA “will not dance to the US’ tune,” stressing that it should “pull itself out of the swamp of anxiety and paranoia.”
Time and again, provocative US intrusions occur in parts of the world not its own that heighten tensions and risk direct confrontation with nations it doesn’t control.
On Friday, the PLA said it expelled the USS Mustin guided missile destroyer from Chinese territorial waters near its Xisha Islands.
The PLA accused the Pentagon of breaching international law by its South China Sea provocations on the phony pretext of freedom of navigation — adding that its actions threaten China’s sovereignty and security.
According to China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet on Friday, the Pentagon unacceptably “sent military aircraft to the region more than 2,000 times in the first half of this year alone,” adding:
“The US tries to drive wedges between China and related Southeast Asian nations, push those countries to the front, and enlist them as pawns in its anti-China agenda.”
“Washington’s malign scheme to make the South China Sea another anti-China battleground will certainly fail.”
The US is a warmaker, not a peacekeeper in the Indo-Pacific or anywhere else.
The South China Sea and Persian Gulf are the world’s top hot spots.
If global war occurs by accident or design, it’ll likely be launched by the US in one or both of these areas.
What’s unthinkable is possible because of US rage for global dominance — pursued by endless wars by hot and other means that risk destruction of planet earth and all its life forms if things are pushed too far.
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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.”
Russia won the race to develop the first vaccine against the novel coronavirus. The United States has responded by slapping sanctions on a Russian research facility involved in creating it.
The US government has blacklisted several Russian scientific institutes, including the Russian Defense Ministry’s 48th Central Research Institute, which has worked with other non-military medical centers to develop and test the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine.
In April, a Russian company sent ventilators to the United States as a form of humanitarian aid, to help overwhelmed hospitals treat coronavirus patients. It was later revealed that this Russian firm had been under US sanctions since 2014.
State-led Covid-19 vaccine research in Russia, China, Cuba beat US ‘public-private partnership’
The Russian government announced this August that it had registered the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine, called Sputnik V.
Sputnik V was developed by the Russian Health Ministry’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology. This scientific facility created the vaccine in a joint research project with the Russian Defense Ministry’s 48th Central Research Institute.
On August 27, the US Commerce Department imposed sanctions on Russia’s 48th Central Research Institute, blacklisting the scientific body.
While Russia took a state-led approach to create a coronavirus vaccine, the Trump administration announced a “public-private partnership” in May. The program, called “Operation Warp Speed,” saw the US government dole out billions of tax dollars to Big Pharma companies.
The Trump administration awarded massive contracts to private corporations like Novavax, Pfizer, and Moderna, while Trump reportedly offered “large sums of money” for exclusive rights to a vaccine being developed by a German firm so it could be sold for profit.
But the US public-private partnership was unable to develop a vaccine before foreign countries with government-led research efforts did. Besides Russia, a state-owned Chinese company says its vaccine will be ready by the end of 2020, while Cuba is doing clinical trials for a vaccine of its own.
US blacklists Russian research institutes
The US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced a series of new sanctions measures on Russian research centers in the US government’s federal register on August 27.
Washington accused the blacklisted institutes of being associated with Russian chemical and biological weapons programs. The Kremlin denied this, calling the accusation “absolute nonsense.”
Russia won the race to develop the first vaccine against the novel coronavirus. The United States has responded by slapping sanctions on a Russian research facility involved in creating it.
The US government has blacklisted several Russian scientific institutes, including the Russian Defense Ministry’s 48th Central Research Institute, which has worked with other non-military medical centers to develop and test the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine.
In April, a Russian company sent ventilators to the United States as a form of humanitarian aid, to help overwhelmed hospitals treat coronavirus patients. It was later revealed that this Russian firm had been under US sanctions since 2014.
State-led Covid-19 vaccine research in Russia, China, Cuba beat US ‘public-private partnership’
The Russian government announced this August that it had registered the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine, called Sputnik V.
Sputnik V was developed by the Russian Health Ministry’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology. This scientific facility created the vaccine in a joint research project with the Russian Defense Ministry’s 48th Central Research Institute.
On August 27, the US Commerce Department imposed sanctions on Russia’s 48th Central Research Institute, blacklisting the scientific body.
While Russia took a state-led approach to create a coronavirus vaccine, the Trump administration announced a “public-private partnership” in May. The program, called “Operation Warp Speed,” saw the US government dole out billions of tax dollars to Big Pharma companies.
The Trump administration awarded massive contracts to private corporations like Novavax, Pfizer, and Moderna, while Trump reportedly offered “large sums of money” for exclusive rights to a vaccine being developed by a German firm so it could be sold for profit.
But the US public-private partnership was unable to develop a vaccine before foreign countries with government-led research efforts did. Besides Russia, a state-owned Chinese company says its vaccine will be ready by the end of 2020, while Cuba is doing clinical trials for a vaccine of its own.
US blacklists Russian research institutes
The US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced a series of new sanctions measures on Russian research centers in the US government’s federal register on August 27.
Washington accused the blacklisted institutes of being associated with Russian chemical and biological weapons programs. The Kremlin denied this, calling the accusation “absolute nonsense.”
The Russian research institutions sanctioned by the US government on August 27, 2020
A spokesperson for the Russian government called the decision “the sanctions theater of the absurd.” A Kremlin press release blasted Washington for being unable to “live without sanctions and without declaring restrictions for anyone every day.”
“Given the scientific research of one of the institutes [which is engaged in developing Russia’s coronavirus vaccine] we cannot rule out that this is another example of uncovered and rampant non-competitive struggle,” said the Russian government spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov.
The US government’s media arm, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), accused these Russian research facilities of developing chemical and biological weapons.
RFE/RL explained, “Formally, the move imposes new licensing restrictions on U.S. companies that seek to do business with the blacklisted companies in Russia or elsewhere.”
U.S. authorities have blacklisted three Russian military and civilian scientific facilities, citing their alleged involvement in chemical and biological weapons research. https://t.co/OdWrefBfas
Russian state media noted that, in addition to being used to conduct clinical trials for the Covid-19 vaccine, the Defense Ministry’s newly blacklisted 48th Central Research Institute is “where vaccines against Ebola and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), as well as a universal flu vaccine, had been studied and successfully tested.”
The US sanctions were imposed on the following Russian research institutions:
33rd Scientific Research and Testing Institute
48th Central Scientific Research Institute, Kirov
48th Central Scientific Research Institute, Sergiev Posad
48th Central Scientific Research Institute, Yekaterinburg
State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology
As the US Commerce Department blacklisted these Russian research facilities, it imposed additional sanctions on two dozen Chinese institutions – mostly construction, technology, and communications companies – accusing them of “engaging in activities contrary to U.S. national security interests.”
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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
Featured image is from The US Department of Commerce (Photo credit: Flickr / Ken Lund)
Insecticidal Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton is the first and only GM (genetically modified) crop that has been approved in India. It has been cultivated in the country for more than 20 years. In a formal statement to the Supreme Court of India, the Indian government has asserted that hybrid Bt cotton is an outstanding success. It therefore argues that Bt cotton is a template for the introduction of GM food crops.
However, over the last week, two important webinars took place that challenged the government’s stance. The first was on Bt cotton and involved a panel of internationally renowned scientists who conclusively debunked the myth of Bt cotton success in India. The webinar, organised by the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and Jatan, focused on an evidence-based evaluation of 18 years of approved Bt cotton cultivation in India.
The second webinar discussed the case of Bt brinjal, which the country’s apex regulatory body, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), has brought to the brink of commercialisation. The webinar highlighted deep-seated problems with regulatory processes in India and outlined how the GEAC is dogged by secrecy, conflicts of interest and (scientific) fraud: participants outlined how the GEAC has been colluding with crop developers and seed companies to drive GM crops into agriculture.
Bt cotton failure
The panel for the Bt cotton webinar (YouTube: Bt Cotton in India: Myths & Realities – An Evidence-Based Evaluation) on 24 August included Dr Andrew Paul Gutierrez, senior emeritus professor in the College of Natural Resources at the University of California at Berkeley; Dr Keshav Kranthi, former director of Central Institute for Cotton Research in India; Dr Peter Kenmore, former FAO representative in India, and Dr Hans Herren, World Food Prize Laureate.
Dr Herren said that “the failure of Bt cotton” is a classic representation of what an unsound science of plant protection and faulty direction of agricultural development can lead to.
He explained:
“Bt hybrid technology in India represents an error-driven policy that has led to the denial and non-implementation of the real solutions for the revival of cotton in India, which lie in HDSS (high density short season) planting of non-Bt/GMO cotton in pure line varieties of native desi species and American cotton species.”
He argued that a transformation of agriculture and the food system is required; one that entails a shift to agroecology, which includes regenerative, organic, biodynamic, permaculture and natural farming practices.
Dr Kenmore said that Bt cotton is an aging pest control technology:
“It follows the same path worn down by generations of insecticide molecules from arsenic to DDT to BHC to endosulfan to monocrotophos to carbaryl to imidacloprid. In-house research aims for each molecule to be packaged biochemically, legally and commercially before it is released and promoted. Corporate and public policy actors then claim yield increases but deliver no more than temporary pest suppression, secondary pest release and pest resistance.”
Recurrent cycles of crises have sparked public action and ecological field research which creates locally adapted agroecological strategies.
He added that this agroecology:
“… now gathers global support from citizens’ groups, governments and UN-FAO. Their robust local solutions in Indian cotton do not require any new molecules, including endo-toxins like in Bt cotton”.
Prof Gutierrez presented the ecological reasons as to why hybrid Bt cotton failed in India: long season Bt cotton introduced in India was incorporated into hybrids that trapped farmers into biotech and insecticide treadmills that benefited GMO seed manufacturers.
He noted:
“The cultivation of long-season hybrid Bt cotton in rainfed areas is unique to India. It is a value capture mechanism that does not contribute to yield, is a major contributor to low yield stagnation and contributes to increasing production costs”.
Prof Gutierrez asserted that increases in cotton farmer suicides are related to the resulting economic distress.
He argued:
“A viable solution to the current GM hybrid system is adoption of improved non-GM high-density short-season fertile cotton varieties.”
Presenting data on yields, insecticide usage, irrigation, fertiliser usage and pest incidence and resistance, Dr Keshav Kranthi said that a critical analysis of official statistics (eands.dacnet.nic.in and cotcorp.gov.in) shows that Bt hybrid technology has not been providing any tangible benefits in India either in yield or insecticide usage.
He said that cotton yields are the lowest in the world in Maharashtra, despite being saturated with Bt hybrids and the highest use of fertilisers. Yields in Maharashtra are less than in rainfed Africa where there is hardly any usage of technologies such as Bt, hybrids, fertilisers, pesticides or irrigation.
It is revealing that Indian cotton yields rank 36th in the world and have been stagnant in the past 15 years and insecticide usage has been constantly increasing after 2005, despite an increase in area under Bt cotton.
Dr Kranthi argued that research also shows that the Bt hybrid technology has failed the test of sustainability with resistance in pink bollworm to Bt cotton, increasing sucking pest infestation, increasing trends in insecticide and fertiliser usage, increasing costs and negative net returns in 2014 and 2015.
Dr Herren said that GMOs exemplify the case of a technology searching for an application:
“It is essentially about treating symptoms, rather than taking a systems approach to create resilient, productive and bio-diverse food systems in the widest sense and to provide sustainable and affordable solutions in it’s social, environmental and economic dimensions”.
He went on to argue that the failure of Bt cotton is a classic representation of what an unsound science of plant protection and a faulty direction of agricultural development can lead to:
“We need to push aside the vested interests blocking the transformation with the baseless arguments of ‘the world needs more food’ and design and implement policies that are forward looking… We have all the needed scientific and practical evidence that the agroecological approaches to food and nutrition security work successfully”.
Bt brinjal – the danger is back
The government’s attempt to use a failed technology as a template for driving GMOs into agriculture has been exposed. Nevertheless, the GEAC has been moving forward with late-stage trials of Bt brinjal, while ignoring the issues and arguments against its commercialisation that were forwarded a decade ago.
In February 2010, the Indian government placed an indefinite moratorium on the release of Bt brinjal after numerous independent scientific experts from India and abroad had pointed out safety concerns based on data and reports in the biosafety dossier that Mahyco, the crop developer, had submitted to the regulators.
The then Minister of the Ministry of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh had instituted a unique four-month scientific enquiry and public hearings. His decision to reject the commercialisation of Bt brinjal was supported by advice from the renowned scientists. Their collective appraisals demonstrated serious environmental and biosafety concerns.
Jairam Ramesh pronounced a moratorium on Bt brinjal in February 2010 by stating:
“it is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary principle-based approach and impose a moratorium on the release of Bt brinjal, till such time independent scientific studies establish, to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals, the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment, including the rich genetic wealth existing in brinjal in our country.”
The moratorium has not been lifted and the conditions he set out have still not been met. Moreover, five high-level reports have advised against the adoption of GM crops in India. Appointed by the Supreme Court, the ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report’ (2013) was scathing about the prevailing regulatory system and highlighted its inadequacies. The TEC went a step further by recommending a 10-year moratorium on the commercial release of all GM crops.
The regulatory process was shown to lack competency, possessed endemic conflicts of interest and demonstrated a lack of expertise in GMO risk assessment protocols, including food safety assessment and the assessment of environmental impacts.
Ten years on and regulators have done nothing to address this woeful state of affairs. As we have seen with the relentless push to get GM mustard commercialised, the problems persist. Through numerous submissions to the Supreme Court, Aruna Rodrigues has described how GM mustard is being forced through with flawed tests (or no tests) and a lack of public scrutiny. Regulators are seriously conflicted: they promote GMOs openly, fund them and then regulate them.
And this is precisely what the webinar ‘Bt brinjal – the danger is back’ (watch on YouTube) discussed on 27 August. Organised by the Coalition for a GM-Free India, the webinar was arranged because the regulators have again brought to the brink of commercialisation a new Bt brinjal ‘event’ – a different Bt brinjal than the 2010 version. Also included in the webinar were the experiences of Bt brinjal introduction in Bangladesh.
Dr Ramanjaneyulu (Centre for Sustainable Agriculture) highlighted how need has never been established for Bt brinjal of which India is a recognised centre of diversity. The argument for Bt brinjal in the run-up to Jairam Ramesh’s moratorium was that pesticide use is a problem in containing the brinjal fruit and shoot borer. He noted that Bt brinjal was promoted by Monsanto, USAID and Cornell University, but serious protocol violations, environmental contamination concerns and potential adverse health impacts were discovered.
He outlined simple non-pesticidal, agroecological management practises that can and are being used to deal with the brinjal fruit and shoot borer.
Farida Akhter of UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternative) outlined how the introduction of Bt brinjal in Bangladesh was not needed but imposed on the country, which has 248 varieties of brinjal. Where pesticide use is problematic, she argued that it concerns hybrid varieties rather than traditional cultivars of which 24 varieties are resistant to fruit and shoot borer.
Akhter said that poor quality brinjal and financial losses for farmers have been major issues. Many have abandoned Bt brinjal, but farmers have received incentives to cultivate and where they have done so, fertiliser use has increased and there have been many pest attacks, with 35 different types of pesticides applied.
The Bill Gates-funded Cornell Alliance for Science, a public relations entity that promotes GM agriculture, and USAID, which serves the interests of the GMO biotech sector, tried to sell Bt brinjal on the basis it would ‘save’ people from the overuse of pesticides and related illnesses. But Akhter argued that Bangladesh was targeted because the Philippines and India had rejected Bt brinjal. Again, protocol violations occurred leading to its introduction and Akhter concluded that there was no scientific basis for Bt brinjal: its introduction was political.
As for India, event EE1, the initial Bt brinjal, has now been replaced by event 142, a different Bt brinjal. Kavitha Kuruganti (Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture) explained this in the webinar and notes that the GEAC, immediately after the 2010 moratorium was announced, went straight ahead and sanctioned new trials for this Bt brinjal. The GEAC basically stated that the moratorium did not apply to this version, while ignoring all the criticisms about lack of competence, conflicts of interest, non-transparency and protocol violations. It was effectively business as usual!
With event EE1, Kuruganti implied that the GEAC acted more like a servant for Mayco and its Monsanto master. Nothing has changed. She noted the ongoing revolving door between crop developers (even patent holders) and regulators. As before, developers-cum-lobbyists were actually sitting on regulatory bodies as event 142 was proceeding.
Under public-private-partnership arrangements, event 142 has been licensed to private companies for biosafety testing/commercialisation. Despite major concerns, the GEAC has pressed ahead with various trials. In May 2020, under lockdown, Kuruganti notes that the GEAC held a virtual meeting and sanctioned what were effectively final trials prior to commercialisation. She explains that important information and vital data is not in the public domain.
According to Kuruganti, the regulator sits with the crop developer and the companies and grant biosafety clearance, claiming all tests (soil, pollen flow, toxicity, etc) are complete. What is also disturbing is that these licensed companies have closed and opened under new names (with the same people in charge), thereby making accountability and liability fixing very difficult if something were to go wrong further down the line.
She concludes that the story of event 142 is even worse than event EE1:
“Once again, they are certainly hiding things that they don’t want conscientious scientists and aware citizens to see and know.”
Taken together, the two webinars highlighted how hybrid Bt cotton is being deceptively used as a template for rolling out GM food crops: a fraud being used to promote another fraud in order to force unnecessary GMOs into Indian agriculture.
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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.
Tortilla con Sal: We’re here with Brian Willson, Viet Nam veteran and onetime criminal lawyer. Brian has written extensively about US imperialism and its effects around the world and what people in Nicaragua are especially interested in right now Brian is what’s happening in the United States as a result of the murder on May 25th of George Floyd. What’s your take on that?
Brian Willson: Well I think that 8 minute 46 second video focused on that policeman with his knee on George Floyd’s neck and his hand in his pocket as he’s looking at the camera, I think that picture finally disclosed viscerally 400 years of white exceptionalism in a way that people could feel, viscerally, that this is what people had been going through through our entire history in the United States and before it even became the United States. It exposed the fake identity of white supremacy in a way that nothing else has been able to do like that video.
And it changed the whole culture in a way. It affected everybody, not just in the United States but in the world. These demonstrations against police violence are happening all over the world, not just in the United States. Now I’m a white male, who because of that has been privileged and I discovered in Viet Nam that that privilege had become a disability because it had made me in a way, stupid. It had made me so comfortable in a sense that I didn’t need to ask serious, penetrating, critical questions about the war, or about my history. But there came a time in Viet Nam where I realized that I am living with a fake identity which was interfering with my capacity to see clearly, think clearly and to operate in a way that represented me as a human being, the way I would think that I wanted to be as a human being.
So what happened on May 25th I think was like a lightning bolt that struck the hearts and minds of virtually everybody in the United States and around the world and including the white supremacists who now know that their fake identity has been exposed and that makes them more violent. Because I know from my experience when I lost my fake identity in Viet Nam, I was suicidal. I took my own pistol and put it to my head because I’d been living a lie and how is that…how is that possible? That everything I had been taught in school, in church, at home, in the community, was not true…
That’s an astounding revelation to deal with and it has huge emotional repercussions… of being worthless, of shame, shame is something that I realized that my society had never experienced after genocides against the indigenous and the blacks. And if you can’t experience shame, you can’t grow. Your development is stopped because you don’t find your empathy. Empathy is critical to being a human being, to being in a collective society. So from that experience I felt that what happened in May and is still happening in Portland for example where I lived for 12 years and still have a home. I think they’re in their 86th day of protesting police violence every day. And many other cities the same, it’s just not as intense as in Portland.
I think there are several cops in Seattle who have just quit saying we just can’t do this every night, we can’t be putting up with these protests against police brutality. These young people, the young people who are leading these protests in Portland and elsewhere know that they have no future in the United States, they know that protests and the First Amendment means nothing if your going to say something that’s really poignant about society it’s not protected. If you’re going to talk about police brutality, it’s not protected because police brutality has been the norm for the whole society in our whole history because policemen have been designed to protect private property.
TcS: Could you talk a bit about the historical development of policing in the United States and how that lead to what happened on May 25th?
Brian: Well the concept of police, even before the the word policing, when they had guards or Pinkertons, they were hired to preserve the property of the property owners and of course originally the property owners owned human beings called slaves. So the original systemic version of police was to police human beings meaning that if you ran away, we’re going to come and get you, we will kill you if we need to but we will certainly bring you back to your slave master.
After the civil war, basically wage slavery replaced chattel slavery and so we had the rapid development of factories and the robber barons. They all had private, originally, police to maintain order in the factories and if there was any labor union activity of course that was immediately repressed and the history of the United States is that over 800 labor union organizers have been murdered, more than in any other country really. So all through from the 1860s into the 1930s the police were primarily protecting the coal mines, the gold mines, the factories.
Then we had people in cities that said “well maybe we need to protect our neighborhoods” and so they actually hired policemen with uniforms on the public payroll. Then the policemen formed unions and the union heads of all the police departments in the United States are paid from the public police budget. So in a sense police accountability is pretty much neutralized by virtue of police unions which are funded by the public because the union head is paid out of the police budget. So starting in the late ’60s the development of SWAT teams appeared.
These were super groups of cops, heavily armed, masked, body shields and they were dealing with the black uprisings in the cities, especially the Black Panthers.
TcS: Would you say the ’60s was the moment when the US police began to be seriously militarized?
Brian: Yes. And then subsequent to that the United States Congress has passed several Bills that authorize the military, the Defense Department, the Offense Department to give to police departments all over the United States, free, armored personnel carriers, jeeps, even tanks. So now we have a totally militarized police, even in small cities like Chattanooga, Tennessee. All police departments are militarized. In fact, increasingly now when the police show up when there’s a demonstration, the police themselves are the provocateurs of the uprisings because they are like Martians.
They’re so decked out in black and you can’t see their faces, you can’t see their shields, their IDs. And in Portland now, for 85 or 90 straight days, the police no longer wear their name tags. They use various kinds of projectiles, every day, every night… concussion grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets which really are metal with a rubber covering the metal. There’s been several dozen people seriously injured by the police.
TcS: Have any police been killed in Portland?
Brian: No police have been killed so far. The federal thugs have been there. You know Trump’s federal thugs came to Portland in early July. And they lasted abut three weeks and then they realized that well, this could go on forever and people were saying that those thugs were so brutal that they were creating the violence. Well, they left and the Portland police are worse. They literally are worse.
TcS: You’re a member of Veterans for Peace and one of your colleagues in the Veterans for Peace movement, Mike Hastie, was badly attacked by the Portland police, was he not?
Brian: Yes. He’s been attacked twice. He was a medic in Viet Nam. He’s been in the peace movement for at least 20 years. And he’s a photo journalist so he always has two cameras with him with two different lenses and he’s quick to go from one camera to the next depending what kind of a shot he wants. He has taken incredible shots every night of what’s happening. He was talking… this was with the federal thugs, before they left, he was talking to them up close, about 8 of them. You can’t see their faces. You can’t see their name tags because they don’t have a name tag on them, or it’s covered.
He was telling them that this was like Viet Nam and he said that in Viet Nam we committed atrocities every day, every day we were committing atrocities in Viet Nam and you are doing the same with the people of Portland. And then out of the blue, out of the left side of his body one of these thugs, about 12 inches from his face hit him head-on with tear gas, knocked his glasses off. And he kept talking, he kept saying “atrocities this is what we’re all about, atrocities, atrocities, atrocities, do you understand? You don’t know, this is what it’s all about…” and then they left and then the medics of the peace movement then helped him wash out his eyes. he couldn’t see for about a day and-a-half.
And then about a week or two after that, he was getting close-ups of the Portland police. They love to use their batons. After they’ve used the tear gas, after they’ve used the concussion grenades when people are coughing and choking and bending over they come and club you over and over and over again. And he was filming them doing that and the police just en masse rushed against him and several other people who were also taking pictures and they knocked them on the ground and several cops smashed his face with their feet just as he was on the ground holding his cameras, trying to protect his cameras. He didn’t get a a fractured skull, but he got a very severe right eye injury.
Other people, by the way, have had fractured skulls from the rubber bullets, going into the skull. A rubber bullet is still a metal bullet with rubber on the outside and they can penetrate the brain and paralyze you and the wound is not operable. I saw this in the West Bank when I was there and I saw the rubber bullets in people’s brains. I went to the hospital to look at the x-rays.
So these demonstrations are happening all over the United States. Portland just happens to be the flashpoint and the young people… well there’s moms that are out there together in yellow shirts. There’s vets that are out there in a different color shirt and then there’s people, the leaf blowers, they push the tear gas back to the police so they have a lot of leaf blowers now. And the young people that are on the front lines, they look like gladiators. They have chest protectors. They have shin guards. They have kidney protectors around their mid-section. They have helmets. They have gas masks. They are there to take the blows. Every night.
And these people know that there’s 50 million people unemployed in the United States right now. There’s 40 million people about to be evicted. There’s no future for these young people. Half of the small businesses will never come back to business. The United States government is doing nothing to help them and meanwhile the ten richest people in the world, the billionaires, the ten most rich billionaires together now own US$1.1 trillion while more and more people are homeless, more and more people are out of work.
And these young people know, this is our last stand. There’s nothing more for us. The government is rigged. The politics are fixed. They’re not broken. They’re fixed. Fixed in favor of the rich. And we know. We now know it. And that May25th video of the cop’s knee on George Floyd’s neck really unleashed a kind of visceral energy that can’t be stopped. It’s not possible to stop it because it’s so clear, emotionally as well as intellectually that this society has always been this way for anybody but the white middle class. And the white middle class has only been prevalent since World War 2 for about 25 years. So they know it’s done. The United States is done basically. there’s no more normality.
TcS: Brian, you were here during failed coup attempt in 2018 so you were very aware of what was going on here during that time. Is it possible, or fair to ask you to offer some kind of comparison between or contrast perhaps between what was happening here in Nicaragua during April to July 2018 and what you have been witnessing and learning about from your friends in Portland?
Brian: Well I was getting ready to go to the hospital on April 18th. I was still at home waiting for my operation date. When the news came out on the 18th that the police had massacred the students, that news came on the 18th. It wasn’t true but it was announced on the news on Channel 63 and Channel 10, Channel 12 and I said to Ulda my partner “there’s no way the Nicaraguan police massacred students unless the police were being shot at”. It just wouldn’t happen. There would be no motive for the Nicaraguan police to shoot students.
And then by the 20th and the 22nd, the 23rd, there were multiple shooting in 8 different cities in Nicaragua. And I said this has been concocted with lies and yes people have died but the description and the narrative around what’s happening is not what’s really happening and the brutality of the opposition in Nicaragua was grotesque. They were filming themselves and putting it on Facebook. I don’t use those others like Twitter or Instagram and so forth. I only use Facebook which is bad enough.
And they were showing, I guess to scare the Nicaraguan people that this is what’s going to happen to you if you don’t join us. I thought and I told Ulda, this kind of thinking that these opposition people have, they’re brain washed by the people in the United States. Because this is the kind of stuff that the National Endowment for Democracy and the CIA and USAID, they would think of things like this. Because they only know how to destroy and be deceitful. In Portland the police keep saying that what the people are saying about the police behavior, police brutality isn’t true, and it’s all on camera and the police are grotesque.
So anyone in Nicaragua who still listens to their orders from the US, then you know it has an agenda of destroying, not of building. So I’m afraid that money does speak and you bribe people and by the way I failed to mention there are provocateurs in Portland, paid by the police to cause… to commit crimes actually that justify the police coming down even harder. Some of the police have been caught looting and arsoning and smashing windows.
TcS: Sounds very similar to Chile.
Brian: So something has happened in the United States that can’t be reversed. It’s not just the virus for which the United States is the worst case for responding to the virus in the world , partly because white exceptionalism makes people in the United States think they’re invincible. This is a disease, a dis- ease, that permeates the culture. They weren’t prepared for the virus and as the President said, it’s just going to go away, it’s not going to be a big problem. So, you add the virus, the police brutality and Trump in a way gifting the nation with a real truth about American culture, US American culture, without any cosmetic cover.
The disguise is gone. The virus is ruining the economy. The police brutality is so obvious and young people know that there’s no future. And now you have Republican and Democrat conventions going though the theater of the absurd, trying to distract people from the fact that we still spend US$1.25 trillion a year on the military all over the world and not at home. It’s so insane.
TcS: One of the thing about the grass roots movement in Portland, Brian is that they’re very conscious of the broader reality of United States politics and culture and they want to change it and one of the things that they’ve been talking a lot about is how to develop more community based policing and how to replace the current police culture like this movement to defund the police I think they call it. Do you think Nicaragua has anything to offer people in Portland by way of examples they might try to set up and follow?
Brian: Well I think community policing requires a trust in the population of the government, a basic trust. In the United States there’s absolutely no trust in the government. There’s no trust in the media. There’s no trust in the health care system because there isn’t really a health system. It’s a private system that has some public components but never a guarantee of health care. So defund the police and defund the military are both very appropriate slogans but they are not going to be achieved in my opinion through voting or legislation.
It’s going to be because people stay in the streets indefinitely for months and months and months and months until there is some space for a discussion about the destruction of capitalism for profit, of an economic system designed for profit rather than for the needs of the people. I don’t see any future in legislation, in other words through the political system or through voting in the political system, which itself is a rigged system, voting.
But it means people have to be in the streets and the question is whether people have the ideology of solidarity with other people around the world and enough tenacity and enough strategy and discipline to remain in the streets indefinitely throughout the country. And there’s people in the streets even in Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee. It’s not just Portland. Portland happens to have a lot of activists that live in Portland. It’s a white city. It’s predominantly a white city. But their motto now is Black Lives Matter.
So the young people know that all of our lives now are impacted by the collapse of capitalism, which the virus has shown, which police brutality has shown, as President Trump has shown. President Trump really has revealed the true nature of our culture, of United States culture.
TcS: And do you think there’s a chance that at a state level or perhaps at a community level that it may be possible to build a movement for community policing? Because here in Nicaragua community policing focuses on youth and they treat youth, they don’t see young criminals as delinquents. They see them as “youth at risk”. Do you think there’s any chance that that culture might take root and develop albeit in a limited way in one place or another in the US?
Brian: It’s possible but really what’s happening means there has to be a whole change in the consciousness of the culture. Nothing’s going to work now without a change. That’s why the explosion of empathy from the knee on the neck, that knee is on all our necks now. That’s metaphorically I think how people experience it. “Holy shit! We’ve all got that knee on us! It’s been on us all along but we pretended that we were supreme as white people…”
And that’s gone. So I think that it’s very likely that new models will emerge of bio-regionalism where sections of the country that have good fertile soil and enough rain will create local economies without supply chains, without long supply chains. That would be what I would call an indigenous model or an early neolithic model. But it would be a local model. It would be de-dollarizing and de-globalizing into a more local community where familiarity is the primary accountability mechanism, not law, but familiarity.
I think that is logically something that would evolve out of the calamity of capitalism which is as far as I’m concerned now is never going to recover. Fortunately. It’s a terribly destructive system. And you know that the Iroquois who were destroyed pretty much by George Washington during the 1770s and 1780s during the revolutionary war. I happen to have been born in Iroquois country. The Iroquois chiefs in 1790 called George Washington who was the first elected President, as we call him. They called him the Town Destroyer because he destroyed every Iroquois village to ashes, one of which was my village.
I was born in Geneva, New York, at that time it was called Kanadesaga. And I think the United States has always been the Town Destroyer. That’s how we formed as a nation. We stole the land from the Indians. We stole the labor from the Africans. And we called ourselves exceptional. And we have played this game with ourselves for 400 years and it’s now crashed. And that’s why I think that May 25th video is so important because in one 8-minute video you see a picture of 400 years of persecution of whites, indians, poor whites, women, blacks by the whites that feel that they’re superior. And you see how sick that is. It’s really sick.
So I’m not particularly hopeful or not hopeful. Or optimistic or pessimistic. I think the reality is that the system is no longer going to be functioning and the question is, is there going to be enough of a revolutionary movement to create the space to recreate something different such as a social democracy committed to producing for the needs of the people. And that might be of a bio-regional nature, especially as climate catastrophe becomes more intense.
In other words, the areas that are going to be more habitable will be the areas where there’s a temperature that’s bearable and that has enough moisture. And that’s going to be more limited as the next five, ten years go by. But there will be places that are habitable and those are the areas that might create or recreate the model that we originally destroyed when the Eurocentrics came to the New World and destroyed the indigenous lifestyle. But it’s clear now to most people in the United States that something has happened that can’t be reversed.
TcS: Brian, in a few days time it’s going to be the 33rd anniversary of the terrible attempt against your life that took place when you were protesting against armaments being sent to the war in Nicaragua. You suffered very very severe injuries and people were amazed that you survived…
Brian: I am too…
TcS: But in all that time you’ve continued to show solidarity with victims of anti-imperialism around the world, but especially Nicaragua. You’ve always maintained your strong attachment and affection and admiration for Nicaragua and its Sandinista Revolution, could you talk to people about why you feel that?
Brian: My own personal revolution started in April 1969 in Viet Nam. That’s when I had this epiphany that really affected my whole being. It’s when I discovered that I really had empathy and I didn’t know much about it. I was getting prepared to go to law school. I got drafted out of law school. Had to do my time. I was just going to resume being a lawyer. So something happened in Viet Nam that made me realize that all people are connected and that I fell in love with the Vietnamese Revolution. I didn’t even realize it was a revolution until I had my epiphany. “Oh I am dealing with a revolution and I am on the wrong side. I am an invader.”
So that kind of awakened me in general to conditions in the world. And in 1986 I had my first opportunity to come to the quote unquote Third World outside of Vietnam when I got a scholarship to study Spanish at the Nica School in Estelí. So I came to Nicaragua in 1986 and I spent two months in Estelí studying Spanish even though I didn’t learn it very well. And I was taken by the revolution that I had been reading about. I was living with two families in those two months, watching them in their literacy campaign, studying every night reading and writing on a chalk board, both families with children diligently studying every extra moment.
And knowing that the United States was trying to destroy the revolution, I just became more committed to not only supporting a popular revolution that helps people’s lives but to work against my own country’s policies that destroy aspirations of people because they’re not willing to kiss Uncle Sam’s ass in the way Uncle Sam wants them to live and to economically survive according to US rules. And I had learned that from the Vietnamese and I’d also been in El Salvador with the guerrillas, the same kind of a struggle against centuries of oppression.
And I knew how much money the United States was giving to El Salvador every day and I knew how much money the US was giving to the Contras every day because I was following the news, I was following it. I had many file folders of notes and articles. And I was following what was happening in Guatemala. Then in 1994 I went to Chiapas after the uprising in Chiapas after NAFTA. And I had already gone to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. I had been to Iraq after the bombings.
I had been in Haiti before Aristide was overthrown the first time. In fact I arrived in Baghdad after I had been in Haiti to read the headline in the one English language newspaper in Baghdad, called the Baghdad Observer : “Aristide Overthrown in Coup”, and I thoughT you know I can’t go any place without being reminded that the United States is just messing with everybody. And so in some way my motivation is that I can’t stand the suffering. It’s my suffering.
I still hear in the villages in Viet Nam after we left the villages after bombing them I still hear the moaning of the people that weren’t yet dead. Some nights I wake up crying, hearing that moaning. And we just left them to die without any medical care at all. What kind of a human being is involved in this kind of behavior? So you know it really required me to look at myself and realize that my white identity was a disability. Because I had internalized it like most of us have. It was our life. We were lucky. We were white. White males. We didn’t even have to work hard to get anything.
And it meant that I couldn’t critically think or see what was really happening. And that’s what happened to me. That’s why I put the pistol to my head in Viet Nam. I thought “Oh my God. I’m a fake. I’m like an ideological robot”. And so Nicaragua was a real live revolution when I came here and my country was trying to destroy it. And am I going to support the destruction of a revolution? or am I going to support the revolution? It’s kind of a no brainer, once you have had that awakening. I didn’t expect to live this long. But here I am talking about it.
TcS: Your support has been very important, especially over the last two, three years over what has been a very difficult time for Nicaragua with so many falsehoods spread about what’s been happening in Nicaragua. Do you think that that epiphany that you had those many years ago…
Brian: April 1969
TcS: has made it possible for you to see through all the falsehoods that have been put about…
Brian: Oh yeah… all I see is falsehoods. Then I studied history and the United States is built on falsehoods. It’s a whole fake history that we learn. So everything that we learn in the West and certainly in the United States is not true. So we have to keep telling lies to keep concealing the original lie, in order to feel ok. So now I knew it was all bull and I haven’t taken LSD and I haven’t taken a lot of drugs. It was a raw, raw experience that I was right in the midst of and like my brother said as I put in his obituary, after my parents died, who were very right wing, one of our good friends said to my brother and I “how did you two boys come out of those two parents?” And my brother right away, I didn’t have anything to say particularly, my brother right away said “we discovered we had a brain!”
Oh ok… maybe that’s true… But we also discovered that we had a heart and my brother later told me the reason he was so anti-racist is that in third grade there was one black girl in his class. This was in Geneva, New York. And the teacher who was our next door neighbor called the black girl up to the class to do something on the blackboard and she didn’t get it right and the teacher hit her with a yardstick. And my brother never forgot that. He would talk about it, he said, “from that moment on, I knew something was really wrong with how we’re trained, how we’re educated”.
He was nine and a half years older than me so he kind of led the way for me to have a break from our parents who were very strict, Republican reactionaries, really racist. So my brother who died this last Sunday, his time was due. But knowing he’s not around has been really hard for me, realizing that he’s no longer somebody I can touch. This happens to everybody in the world, I know, all the time, but I’ve had a lot of death in my life and I’ve never felt it like I have with my brother, my sibling. 79 years I’ve been his younger brother.
TcS: Brian, do you think it’s fair to say that your understanding and what you’ve come to know and learn about the way Nicaragua’s revolution has really and truly focused on – while they may not have got everything right – but their focus has been on improving the lives of their impoverished majority. Would you say that knowing that and experiencing it in its different phases over the last 30 or forty years has been a source of moral strength to you in terms of confirming your feelings about your epiphany and your feelings about your brother and what your brother thought was right. Is there any correspondence between what you know about Nicaragua and all this stuff that you’ve been talking about?
Brian: Well all through the ’80s, at least after I was coming to Nicaragua after 1986, ’87, ’88, ’90, every time I had a chance to speak here and in the United States I’d say “the Nicaraguan Revolution is as important to the people of the United States as it is to the Nicaraguans” because we need a revolution. We, the United States. We may… You see we’ve never had a real revolution. We haven’t had the first one yet. We may have it now. Or we may just go extinct.
But yes, experiencing a real revolution with all of its mistakes but an effort, an earnest effort to bring health care and education and literacy to campesinos, I mean, what’s more revolutionary than that? Just bringing some very tangible kinds of help and support to people who otherwise would just be forgotten. Like the indigenous in the United States who are totally forgotten. They’re worse off than the blacks in terms of their conditions. 80% unemployment. 70% alcoholism. And it was their land…
It’s like we are so contaminated with our violence and our lies that it really does require a revolution to break through just like the Sandinista Revolution broke through the Somoza mentality and the Somoza policies. There has to be a break in the way of people’s thought process and for me that did happen in Viet Nam. It happened to a lot of vets, not the majority of them but some and I think the May 25th video was the beginning, along with the virus, along with Trump is… it’s over. The honeymoon is over. The white exceptionalism, phony identity is done.
It may lead to a civil war, because the white males are armed to the teeth and they want to defend their fake identity. Because I know in Viet Nam when I realized I had a fake identity I was thinking about committing suicide… I mean, losing your identity? As a 27 year old or a 30 year old or a 16 or 15year old…that’s a tough thing to go through. I mean…everything I’ve been taught is bull? What! You mean my priest is telling lies? My teacher’s telling me lies? My parents are telling me lies? My school books are telling me lies? How can that be?
And yet, the whole history that we learn about the United States is fake. That’s the book I’m writing now. The fake history of the United States. And it’s screwed us up completely. We can’t see clearly. We can’t relate to people in any just way because it’s our way or no way. And it’s blinded us and so I’m glad I’m 79. I’ve no idea what’s going to happen except I know there’s not going to be any return to normality and that is good. Because normality in the United States was horrible.
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The massive explosion which devastated Beirut earlier this month was nothing short of a catastrophe. Some 220 people lost their lives and, according to the BBC, as many as 300,000 people are now homeless as a result. This is a devastating blow from which it will take Lebanon’s capital city a long time, probably years, to recover.
Among the most nauseating of responses to the blast was seeing representatives of the state of Israel sending “condolences” and fake offers of humanitarian assistance. As my colleague at The Electronic Intifada,Tamara Nasser, put it: “Israel, the destroyer of Lebanon was attempting to pose as its saviour.”
This ghastly vision was utterly contemptible for anyone who knows the history of Israeli involvement in Lebanon. The Zionist state has left a long, bloody trail of dead bodies, displaced people and shattered lives, having invaded its northern neighbour many times since the settler-colonial entity established itself — upon the mass graves of Palestinians — in 1948.
In the 1950s, Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, secretly articulated plans to occupy Lebanon by force and transform it into a puppet sectarian state ruled as a Christian supremacist entity in alliance with Israel, the Jewish supremacist entity.
In order to meddle in and stoke the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), Israel armed, trained and supplied puppet Christian Maronite militias in Lebanon, including the brutal sectarian Lebanese Forces led by Bashir Gemayel. In 1978, Israel invaded directly in order to attack the Palestine Liberation Organisation, occupying much of South Lebanon. Israeli forces were soon forced out after stiff resistance by Palestinian fighters, but they soon headed back across their northern border.
In 1982, Israel carried out a full scale invasion of Lebanon in an attempt to crush the PLO’s military, political and cultural presence once and for all. More than 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian people were killed during this brutally aggressive war, including as many as 3,000 Palestinian refugees who were butchered by Israel’s Maronite allies in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps under the watchful eye of Israeli troops, who fired flares into the night sky to light the militia’s way. Minister of Defence, later Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was found by an Israeli Commission of Inquiry to have “personal responsibility” for allowing this massacre to take place.
The Israelis reached and laid siege to Beirut, before being pushed back by stiff resistance and diplomatic pressure. However, South Lebanon remained illegally occupied by Israel until 2000, when the Lebanese resistance led by Hezbollah drove its forces out once and for all. Nevertheless, in 2006, Israel attacked Lebanon yet again, and another 2,000 people were killed in the massive offensive. Hezbollah succeeded in driving the Israeli troops out of Lebanon once more, but the country was again devastated.
Since then, Israel has carried out almost daily border violations, including fly-overs with drones and warplanes. Israeli politicians frequently threaten to bomb Lebanon “back to the Stone Age”, kill civilians and systematically eradicate the country’s civilian infrastructure, all of which are classed as war crimes.
On top of all of this, Israel’s spy agencies have now been planting stories in the international media pushing the dubious and unproven conspiracy theory that the explosion in Beirut this month was caused by Hezbollah. As investigative journalist Gareth Porter explains in his most recent article: “Israeli officials have exploited the massive explosion at the Port of Beirut this August to revive a dormant propaganda campaign that had accused the Lebanese militia and political party Hezbollah of storing ammonium nitrate in several countries to wage terror attacks on Israelis.”
Israeli spy agencies, wrote Porter, have “planted a series of stories from 2012 to 2019 claiming Hezbollah sought out ammonium nitrate as the explosive of choice for terrorist operations. According to the narrative, Hezbollah planned to covertly store the explosive substance in locations from Southeast Asia to Europe and the US — only to be foiled repeatedly by Mossad.”
There is a slight problem with this Israeli narrative: none of it seems to be true. “In each one of those cases, however, the factual record either contradicted the Israeli claims or revealed a complete dearth of evidence,” insisted Porter, whose entire article is well worth reading.
In the wake of the Beirut explosion, global and regional powers – the US and Israel first among them – are exploiting the febrile atmosphere in the country, and the understandable anger of the Lebanese people at their politicians, in order to push for Hezbollah to disarm. This is a longstanding goal in any case.
However, as veteran Palestinian journalist and commentator Abdel Bari Atwan wrote recently, “Like the Syrian regime, Hezbollah will prove impervious to pressure to disarm or exit the political scene.”
Hezbollah has arms and fighters because there is a pressing and urgent need to defend Lebanon against Israel’s military invasions and incursions. This is something that the Lebanese army simply cannot do.
Only a couple of weeks before the Beirut explosion, Israel’s highly undiplomatic Ambassador to the United Nations made a thinly veiled threat to destroy the very same port that was devastated by the blast during his country’s next war with Lebanon. Moreover, Moshe Feiglin, the appalling former deputy speaker of Israel’s parliament, reacted with obvious joy to the deadly blast, calling it a “spectacular pyrotechnics show” and a “wonderful celebration”.
So who were the Israeli President and army trying to fool when they claimed with characteristic hypocrisy that they wanted to “reach out” and “transcend conflict” by helping Lebanon to recover from the Beirut explosion? Whoever the intended audience was, very few people in Lebanon believed them, that’s for sure.
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Featured image: A damaged car and building are seen after a fire at a warehouse with explosives at the Port of Beirut led to massive blasts in Lebanon, 14 August 2020 [Enes Canli/Anadolu Agency]
Carlos Mendoza Potella is an economics professor at Venezuela’s Central University and advisor to Venezuela’s Central Bank. He recently spoke to Venezuelanalysis about the origins of the crisis in the country’s oil industry and what that means for its future.
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You have been working on the idea of long-standing “promotion of ignorance” in Venezuelan society in relation to the oil industry. This was done to favor private interests in the disposition of a resource that is state property. Chavez tried to turn this around by educating people. However, the Venezeulan population still has few tools to understand the oil industry and the policies that pertain to it. Can you explain your idea and its implications?
Hiding reality from a country’s citizens is a general problem in any state. Governments point to issues of national security or reasons of state to justify opacity and privilege particular interests. Occasionally there may be legitimate reasons for doing so, but in the case of the oil industry, more often than not, there is an illegitimate “promotion of ignorance” to cover up projects that are not viable, projects that are not favorable to the society as a whole although they may be very juicy for those who promote them.
The “promotion of ignorance” [also occurs in] an educational system with its back turned to the Venezuelan economy, which has been almost fully dependent on the oil industry until recently. This makes people unable to react when projects, though justified with technical or esoteric arguments, go against the interests of the society.
Now, this is nothing new, and we can find its roots in longstanding geopolitical relations of force. I have long argued that the development of the Orinoco Oil Belt [FPO], with its extra-heavy crude oil, didn’t coincide with the interests of the nation and, particularly, those of the Venezuelan people.
Developing the FPO, with truly pharaonic investments over time, dates back to 1972. The Middle East wars and conflicts in the Cold War were causes of concern to the Western powers, since they relied heavily on Middle East countries for oil supply. With this in mind, the US Congress and the energy agencies developed an energy security plan based on expanding production in both Canada and Venezuela’s FPO.
James Akins, US Energy Secretary under Richard Nixon, came to Venezuela and convinced President Rafael Caldera [1969-1974] to develop the FPO. Between 1983 and 2000, some hundred billion USD were invested!
Did that policy shift after President Chavez came to power?
Around 2000 Chavez got OPEC to work more on defending oil prices. However, that policy was weakened around 2005, with the reactivation of the FPO. With this initiative, a contradictory discourse got going: on the one hand support for OPEC and its practices to defend oil prices, on the other FPOplanning and investments that would increase production to 5 to 6 million barrels per day (bpd) or more.
There were huge investments in extra-heavy oil processing infrastructure, which led in turn to the abandonment of our conventional oil refineries and fields. This is an important cause of the catastrophic drop in production that we are facing today, which has also been negatively impacted by the US sanctions.
Left: Average BPD produced between 1917 and 2019 (OPEP and PDVSA data) / Right: Average BPD produced month by month between January and June 2020 (PDVSA and AFP data)
Oil production in June was 393,000 bpd, the lowest in Venezuelan history since February 1943. There are a multiplicity of factors, from the overemphasis on the FPO (only profitable during an oil boom) to the criminal blockade, from management problems to loss of qualified personnel. Could you help understand this complex situation?
As you point out, there are a multiplicity of internal and external factors. In the ‘80s, the strategic objectives that oriented the Venezuelan oil industry went against our national interest. That was followed by the “Apertura Petrolera” [literally “Oil Opening,” a 1992-1999 policy that opened the door to creeping privatization of the oil industry], leading to an important loss in sovereignty. In the early 2000s, there was a recovery of oil sovereignty, but this project lost ground when the Orinoco Belt became central again.
A lack of humility and a poor understanding of the global situation led to this decision, but of course, the Orinoco Belt path also involved huge economic transactions, procurements, and investments with juicy deals on the side. In fact, around that time, large sums of money were allocated not only for extra-heavy oil exploitation and processing infrastructure, but also for purchasing international assets. Of course, when oil prices plummeted [2014], we were in trouble.
The situation deteriorated further with the US sanctions [financial since August 2017 and oil embargo since January 2019], although the US’ aggressive policy against the Chavista administration actually began in 2000. With the Trump presidency, however, things reached another level. On his first day in office, Donald Trump characterized Venezuela, Russia, and Iran as “failed states,” stating that the US would fight against those nations. In the Venezuelan case, which the White House considers its back patio, the sanctions have accelerated the crisis that was brewing.
We failed to maintain our refineries engineered for lighter crude oil for years because we were dreaming of infrastructure to process the extra-heavy FPO oil. With conventional crude oil production stalled due to poor maintenance and with access to additives and other inputs needed to improve extra-heavy oil blocked, production is close to coming to a halt. In other words, we are not able to consume Venezuelan gasoline not only because the refineries are not working, but also because we cannot purchase the additives needed to create regular gasoline for commercial use.
These enormous investments, based on dreams, yielded practically nothing except juicy deals for some. Now there are some PDVSA managers behind bars, paying for the sins of others. However, the responsibility is really with the upper echelons, where the decisions for the strategic orientation of Venezuela’s oil industry were taken.
Left: Three images of the Orinoco Oil Belt (PDVSA) / Right: Orinoco Oil Belt map, blue section (Wikipedia)
I suppose that the personnel situation – the industry is understaffed due to workforce drain and workers are underpaid – must also impact the industry.
The conditions of PDVSA workers are dismal and, of course, that has affected production. Their salaries are a minuscule fraction of those in the industry elsewhere, and that has led many qualified workers to leave the country. Those who have stayed in Venezuela are heroes, but they are grossly underpaid and without support. Their plight is part of the overall deterioration of the industry.
Are there any options to come out of the crisis for Venezuela’s oil industry?
There are many circumstances that have taken us where we are, but there is only one thing that can keep the industry from coming to a total halt: end the blockade. We need the embargo to be lifted, and this has to happen soon!
Additionally, we have to reorient our strategic goals. First, we have to come to terms with the fact that we have to start from practically zero. That being so, we have to evaluate our real potential in the global context, which means placing the focus on conventional oil production and refining. There are conventional fields and infrastructure that have not been maintained. Recovering those should be our first objective.
We have to come to terms with the fact that investment in non-conventional fields no longer makes sense. We can project some twenty years until there is an energy consumption pattern shift, and we have to understand that the global crisis is leading oil exploration projects around the world to close down. We cannot be dreaming about producing five or six million barrels per day.
We do have, however, the potential to produce oil in modest quantities to supply our internal needs and generate moderate exports. That would allow us to put hard currency into the nation’s budget, thus helping our economy, which is in dire straits.
For some time, the government has promoted “strategic alliances” that are controversial because they stand on questionable legal ground. More recently, there have even been closed-door discussions about changing the country’s legal framework based on an alleged need to “reactivate and modernize” the oil industry. While admitting that some modifications and concessions may be necessary, you argue that the changes being considered – which resemble the 1990s “Apertura Petrolera” – threaten Venezuela’s sovereignty. Can you tell us about what is at stake?
The threats to national sovereignty are immediate. There are projects for legal and constitutional changes that are absolutely damaging to the national interest. And when I talk about the nation, I’m talking about the “eternal nation,” about the future generations.
We should understand that oil is not a panacea: the rent machine can’t fuel the rest of the economy. But we shouldn’t go to the other extreme and disregard valuable resources which can serve many generations because of their strategic magnitude. This generation doesn’t have the right to squander resources or sovereignty.
We can make temporary agreements for oil exploitation and processing. We could do it to guarantee internal consumption and to ensure a moderate level of exports. We have to administer what there is, both resources and sovereignty. We don’t have the right to use up what there is. That is precisely why the constitutional declares our resources to be a “national good,” and here I stress the idea of national good. A national good doesn’t belong to the Venezuelans that are alive today to say nothing of individual citizens. A national good belongs to the eternal nation and citizens cannot simply divvy up the patrimony among those who are alive today to the detriment of future generations.
For two weeks oil has been spilling from El Palito refinery onto the coasts of Carabobo and Falcon states, including Morrocoy National Park. (El Carabobeño)
In recent months there have been some accidents in PDVSA, such as the oil spill in El Palito refinery. There have also been complaints about high-risk situations, because of failure to maintain infrastructure. For example, a group of PDVSA Oriente workers warned that a tanker ship storing more than 1.2 million barrels in the Gulf of Paria is leaking and tilting.
The overall decay of the infrastructure could have catastrophic consequences. As you explained previously, there are multiple factors that lead to the deterioration of the infrastructure. However, this grave situation needs to be discussed.
There is no way to exaggerate the gravity of the situation. It is due, as I said before, to an erroneous geostrategic project. Nonetheless, this generation has an urgent task: it has to turn the situation around, and it must do so with its feet on the ground.
In any fortress under siege, the first obligation is to survive. With this in mind, we have to try to resolve the political circumstances that maintain us isolated and under siege, and unlock as many doors as possible. This means exercising political intelligence to ensure that the other side won’t finish us off. We also have to develop a realistic recovery plan that must be modest but sovereign.
To do things with modesty, first we have to understand where we are. We have to understand our resources in a global context tending towards a “green” pattern of consumption. Finally, we have to understand that we will have to negotiate with international capital, but this must be done maintaining our integrity and sovereignty.
Additionally, we must understand that the oil rent as the key element of our economy is history. In fact, the oil rent factor began to disappear a few years ago because growing production costs and the dwindling prices meant that the profit margin could no longer be considered a rent [i.e. a profit that is captured on the market and not generated through production], and it could no longer buoy the rest of the economy.
That, from my point of view, is the way out of the current crisis. However, we also have to begin to build an alternative now. We have to begin to build the long-hailed post-petroleum Venezuela. We must develop the economy on the base of our resources, our productive forces, our capacities, our will.
Agriculture, livestock farming, and fishing – those are areas with enormous potential, but we also have steel mills and the capacity to process iron. In fact, an agronomy professor told me that according to the data, Venezuela has the capacity to feed four countries its size.
First, of course, we have to feed our people, and we cannot count on the oil rent to do this. To do so, we will have to begin from the trenches. We have to climb out of the ditch and reach the ground, and from there we will have to learn to stand again. And yes, as we do this we will have to negotiate, but we have to do so under conditions of sovereignty.
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The Wall Street Journal scoop on the details of the Trump administration’s troop withdrawal from Iraq is welcome news. Reportedly, President Donald Trump is cutting U.S. troop levels by one- third, to about 3,500 troops from 5,200. This move would bring force levels back to where they were in 2015, at the height of the war against ISIL, which in and of itself demonstrates how unnecessary the troop level increases have been mindful of the decimation of the Islamic State.
Yet, the Journal — and the media narrative around this in general — frames this solely as a decision born out of political pressures in Iraq and the United States. The Iraqi public wants the United States to leave — as demonstrated by the Iraqi parliament voting to expel U.S. troops earlier this year – and Trump seeking to deliver on his campaign promise to end the endless wars.
“But both governments have faced political pressures at home from critics who have complained that the U.S. may be engaged in an open-ended mission,” the Journal reports.
While political pressures for bringing American service members home certainly exist — a poll conducted by the Charles Koch Institute last month revealed that three-quarters of the public support bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan —the media is mistaken in presenting this decision solely as a populist move devoid of a compelling strategic rationale. Indeed, America’s global military domination and endless wars are the baselines; it’s the decision to end wars and bring troops home that faces scrutiny, not deciding to wage war in perpetuity.
In reality, the strategic rationale for a withdrawal from Iraq is arguably the stronger card. After all, the withdrawal should take place even if public support for it was absent.
First, rather than fighting ISIL — which was the original rationale for the troop deployment in 2014 — Washington’s unhealthy obsession with Iran keeps the American military stuck in Iraq and Syria. (Incidentally, there is no congressional authorization for Trump’s flirtation with war with Iran). The Iran obsession, in turn, has taken resources and attention away from the fight against ISIL.
“The threat against our forces from Shiite militant groups has caused us to put resources that we would otherwise use against ISIS to provide for our own defense and that has lowered our ability to work effectively against them,” U.S. Central Command head Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said at an U.S. Institute for Peace event this month. “Over the last seven or eight months, we have had to devote resources to self-protection that we would otherwise devote for the counter-ISIS fight.”
Moreover, the Iraqis insist that they don’t even need the U.S. active military’s help against ISIL in the first place.
“We definitely don’t need combat troops in Iraq, but we do need training and capacity enhancement and security cooperation,” Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimitold reporters in Washington last week following a White House meeting with President Trump.
Nor are U.S. troops needed to check Iran’s influence in Iraq. That is, first of all, an Iraqi problem and American service members should not be put in harm’s way to resolve regional quarrels that have little bearing on U.S. national security. Secondly, as my QI colleagues and I wrote in a report released this past summer:
“Rather than expanding Iranian influence in Iraq, the withdrawal of American troops will likely provide more room for Iraqi nationalism to unite Iraqi political factions against an outsized Iranian influence in the country. Currently, America’s military presence tempers this natural desire for greater independence from Iran, as many political factions view Iran as a necessary partner to balance and contain America’s military influence in Iraq.”
Indeed, keeping U.S. troops in Iraq appears to prolong and expand Iran’s influence in Iraq while our obsession with Iran is turning Iraq into the battlefield between Washington and Tehran in a confrontation that neither serves U.S. interests nor Iraqi or regional stability.
U.S. troops in Iraq are practically sitting ducks. Contrary to Trump’s claims, the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani has not deterred Iran, as evidenced by rocket attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq by Iran-aligned paramilitary groups on January 15, March 11, June 13, July 27 and August 15. Instead, the American troop presence has only put the U.S. one rocket attack away from a full-scale war with Iran.
Trump may very well be solely motivated by showcasing his base that he is ending the endless wars. But it still lies in America’s national interest to bring the troops home.
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The Trump International Hotel in Vancouver has closed permanently just three years after opening, and the management company that owns it has filed for bankruptcy, The Hill reported.
Hotel operator TA Hotel Management Partnership Ltd. filed for bankruptcy on Thursday, according to documents obtained by CBC News.
The front entrance to the hotel has since been boarded up. Workers at the front concierge desk told the Canadian outlet that the hotel is empty and staff is gone.
A union representative for hotel staff told CBC the news came as a shock and staff learned of the closure from media reports.
The land and building is owned by TA Global Berhad, a multinational Malaysian property company headed by Tiah Joo Kim, who pays Trump’s company to operate the hotel and license the Trump name.
The bankrupt filing showed TA Hotel Management had assets of $1.1 million and debts of $4.8 million. Grant Thornton Ltd. was named bankruptcy trustee.
TA Global has cited the pandemic for the shuttering of the hotel. More than 200 employees were laid off in April at the onset of the health crisis.
The $360-million complex featuring the 147-room hotel opened just weeks after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The February 2017 ribbon cutting featured three of the president’s children — Donald Jr. Trump, Eric Trump and Tiffany Trump.
The Hill has reached out to TA Global and the Trump Organization, owned by the US president but run day-to-day by his eldest sons, for comment.
The hotel was deeply unpopular among locals, and protesters often gathered outside, including on its opening day.
Gregor Robertson, who was Vancouver mayor at the time, asked for the name of the US president to be removed, saying at the time that there was “no more place on Vancouver’s skyline than his ignorant ideas have in the modern world.”
This is the third Trump-branded hotel to have cut ties with the US president’s brand since he entered office. The owners of the Trump hotels in Panama, Toronto and Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood have all since re-opened under new names.
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Twenty Saudi soldiers arrived this week at a U.S. military base close to an oilfield in northeastern Syria, according to Iranian media, which cite a report from a Lebanon-based Arabic-language TV channel.
At the end of last year, Saudi troops were also reportedly stationed near Syria’s largest oilfield, Al-Omar in the oil-rich Deir Ezzor region, in what was thought to be Saudi protection for experts of Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco. According to the report of the Arabic service of Turkish news agency Anadolu at the time, the arrival of the Saudi soldiers at Syria’s biggest oilfield coincided with the arrival of around 30 trucks carrying drilling and digging machinery.
Incidents and altercations between the superpowers backing different sides in the Syrian conflict continue. Just this week, U.S. soldiers were injured in a skirmish with Russian troops, two U.S. officials told The New York Times, noting that the injuries were the result of a collision between vehicles, not gunfire.
After a surprise announcement of pulling the U.S. troops out of Syria in October last year, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the United States would protect Syrian oil fields from ISIS.
President Trump claimed that the U.S. had taken control of the oil in the Middle East, tweeting that
“The U.S. has secured the Oil, & the ISIS Fighters are double secured by Kurds & Turkey.”
The President did not elaborate on what he meant by “securing the oil,” but speculations about the President’s statement assume he was referring to the U.S. special forces that have been—and will continue to be—in control of oil and gas fields in Deir Ezzor, Syria’s oil region.
President Trump has vowed to protect Syrian oil fields from ISIS, and the United States may leave 500 troops in northeastern Syria and send in battle tanks and other equipment with the purpose to help the Kurds in the area to protect oil fields that used to be controlled by Islamic State during its so-called caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria.
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Josh Owens is the Content Director at Oilprice.com. An International Relations and Politics graduate from the University of Edinburgh, Josh specialized in Middle East and U.S. relations. He has written and curated oil, gas and renewable energy content for oilprice.com for the last four years.
China’s military has warned of an unintentional military confrontation with the US if it does not halt its naval operations in the South China Sea, insisting that recent US activities in the region are instigating such hostilities.
The warning came after the spokesman for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) announced that a US warship had intruded into China’s territorial waters without authorization.
“We urge the US to stop such provocative behavior and restrict its maritime actions to avoid possible military accidents,” said Senior Colonel Li Huamin.
Li’s remarks came a day after PLA forces warned off a trespassing American guided missile destroyer USS Mustin in territorial waters of China’s Xisha Islands, close to an area where the Chinese military was holding military drills that reportedly included live fire anti-ship ballistic missile launches.
The PLA spokesman said the American forces has ignored international law by repeatedly stirring up troubles in the South China Sea and claimed navigational hegemony in the name of “freedom of navigation,” seriously undermined Beijing’s sovereignty and security interests in the region.
Li reiterated China’s “undisputable sovereignty” over the islands in the South China Sea and their adjacent waters in the region, insisting that Chinese troops are always on high alert to resolutely protect national sovereignty and safeguard peace and stability in the area.
The US Navy claimed that the USS Martin had conducted a “routine” operation in the region, again invoking its self-proclaimed “freedom of navigation” principle to justify the move.
The development came after China’s Defense Ministry declared on Thursday that Beijing would not “dance to the tune” of the US or allow it to “cause trouble,” as Washington continues its operations in the South China Sea.
Washington and Beijing are currently at loggerheads over a host of issues, including trade, technology, Hong Kong, Taiwan, navigation in the East and South China Seas, and most recently, the coronavirus pandemic.
The South China Sea has recently become a flashpoint.
The United States has been trying to push back against what it views as China’s rising influence in the resource-rich South China Sea. Washington has sided with China’s rivals in maritime disputes in the sea and been routinely sending warships and warplanes to the region.
China said on Tuesday that the US had flown a spy aircraft into a Chinese no-fly zone during live-fire military drills, slamming the move as “naked provocation.”
The Chinese military launched two ballistic missiles into the South China Sea on Wednesday, in a clear warning to the United States.
The move came right after the US blacklisted 24 Chinese companies and individuals over their alleged involvement in construction efforts in disputed islands in the South China Sea.
On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry censured Washington’s sanctions against the Chinese companies.
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Featured image: This file photo shows US guided missile destroyer USS Mustin, which intruded into Chinese territorial waters in South China Sea.
Nearly always, EU countries are subservient to Washington’s geopolitical agenda — no matter how unlawful.
Support by Britain, France, Germany (the E3), and Brussels for Iran’s right to buy and sell conventional arms once the UN embargo on the practice expires in October and their support for preserving the JCPOA in defiance of Trump regime opposition on these issues are aberrations in US/European relations.
Despite expressing rhetorical and Security Council support on both issues, it’s unclear whether the E3 and Brussels will hold firm against heavy US pressure and threats — demanding the bloc shift policy and bend to its will against Iran.
The jury is very much out on this issue and may be for some time.
The prospect of Biden perhaps defeating Trump in November, taking office in January, and going along with the E3 and Brussels on Iran may give the bloc reason to hold firm against Trump regime pressure and threats.
As explained in a previous article, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was overwhelmingly reelected on August 9 by a near-62% majority — not the officially reported/inflated 80% figure.
Political nobody/US designated puppet Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was soundly defeated, getting only 25% support, more than the officially reported 10%.
Claims or insinuations by Trump regime hardliners and EU officials that Lukashenko stole the election have no merit.
On Friday, Trump regime Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun falsely called Belarusian election results “fraudulent,” adding:
“(T)here were convincing reports of serious irregularities with ballot counting and reporting of election results (sic).”
By whom, he failed to explain, another example of Washington’s practice of making accusations without evidence backing them — phony Russian US election meddling the most prominent example.
When foreign elections don’t turn out as the US wishes, claims of fraud sans evidence follow time and again.
There’s no ambiguity about Lukashenko’s reelection — other than the unnecessarily inflated margin of victory.
Under UN Charter and other international law, no nation may legally interfere in the internal affairs of others.
It’s what the US does repeatedly, what it’s doing in Belarus, wanting the country transformed into a client state — the EU going along in defiance of international law.
Belarusian ruling authorities and Russia support the country’s sovereignty — free from US-led Western meddling in its internal affairs.
So far, the Trump regime’s color revolution plot in Belarus isn’t going as planned.
Its authorities supported by Russia have the upper hand.
On Friday, EU foreign ministers announced sanctions on around 20 so far unnamed Belarusian officials over phony claims of election-rigging the bloc consistently ignores when occurs for real in nations where pro-Western candidates win.
The double standard is breathtaking, notably given how EU countries are allied with Washington’s imperial project, including its wars of aggression on nonbelligerent states.
Their alliance with the US against Belarus is further proof that all Western and Eastern European countries are fantasy democracies, none the real thing — on most issues operating as virtual US colonies, clearly the case on Belarus.
On Friday following a bloc meeting in Berlin, Czech Republic Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek said “(w)e have general agreement on how the (sanctions) list will be structured and who will be, more or less, on” it — Lukashenko most likely included initially or at a later time.
Asked about his inclusion, Petricek said he “should be on the list,” adding:
“The question is whether in the first stage, or a later stage if there is no progress.”
US puppet president in Kiev Vladimir Zelensky froze relations with Minsk — likely on orders from Trump regime hardliners, his foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba saying:
“We put all contacts on pause until the situation in Belarus stabilizes.”
Ignoring Russia’s obligation to Belarus as a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member, Germany’s Angela Merkel unjustifiably criticized Putin for saying the following on Russian television:
On Lukashenko’s request based on Belarusian CSTO membership, he formed and offered to send “reserve police” to the country if needed, adding:
He’ll refrain from taking this step unless “the situation gets out of control, and (if) extremist elements, hiding behind political slogans, cross certain boundaries such as looting, setting fire to cars, seizing administrative buildings and so on.”
No need exists to act at this time. Putin hopes Belarusians will resolve things on their own with no need for Russian help.
On Friday, BelTA (the Belarusian Telegraph Agency) news website reported Lukashenko saying the following:
“We are going to show them what sanctions are. They (Poles and Lithuanians) transited our territory to trade with China and Russia.”
“Now they will fly either through the Baltic Sea or the Black Sea to trade with Russia and so on.”
“In terms of the embargoed products (food products embargoed by Russia) I suggest they forget about them. We will show them what sanctions are.”
“They have an exaggerated sense of self-worth and have forgotten what Belarus is.”
“They think they can threaten us with tanks, missiles.”
“We will see who will be left scared. We will show them what sanctions are.”
“I have instructed the government to work out measures to redirect all trade flows from Lithuanian ports to others.”
“We will see how they will be doing after that. The transit of our cargo flows generates 30% of the Lithuanian budget.”
“What else do they need? They think too much of themselves. We will show them their place.”
“We survived” earlier imposed Western sanctions. “We will survive this time as well. The world is no good without good people. It is useless to scare us.”
Saturday on Rossiya 1 television, Putin said “Belarusian authorities invited the OSCE ODIHR (Office for Democratic Instructions and Human Rights) to monitor” the August 9 presidential election, adding:
“Why did it not come? This immediately makes us think that, in fact, a position on the results of these elections had already been formulated” between the US and EU.
“Therefore, someone may doubt the results, but I have every reason to doubt that those who doubt (them) were completely honest.”
“Therefore, we proceed from the fact that the election took place.”
“We…I did it right away. We recognized its legitimacy.”
“And as you know, I congratulated Alexander Grigorievich Lukashenko on his victory in this election. That is all.”
In a previous article, I explained that protests since the election were made in the USA.
They’re similar to what erupted in other countries pre-and-post elections in support of pro-Western candidates — especially if or when a US favorite doesn’t defeat an incumbent Washington wants toppled.
On August 9, Lukashenko won decisively as expected.
Tsikhanouskaya lost, claims otherwise likely scripted by her US handlers.
A figure with no political experience, she’s easily manipulated by US and EU dark forces opposed to Belarus’ independence from Western control.
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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.”
August 31st, 2020 by Energie Service Zentrale Mitte
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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spoke to hundreds of thousands in the streets of Berlin, Germany, August 29, 2020.
With Großer Stern Square and the Siegesäule Monument as a backdrop, Mr. Kennedy talked about government control by fear and spoke out against totalitarianism. He said the government and those with the greatest wealth and control have done a terrible job on public health and will shift us all to 5G and a cashless society.
He said that 5G is being pushed on us as a good thing but it will be used for surveillance and data harvesting.
Mr. Kennedy added that the COVID 19 pandemic is a crisis of convenience that is destroying the middle class, impoverishing us all, and it is making the powerful elite even more powerful.
He closed with the message that we must protect our fellow-human beings, our vulnerable children and our freedoms and democracy!
By the Children’s Health Defense Team
Senta Depuydt, Officer of the New CHD-Europe Chapter, Berlin Rally Speech
Dear friends who came from all over Europe. Today we are here to give the world a powerful message.
Humanity can not and will not longer be ruled by a model based on threat and control.
Right here, right now, we can all refuse this.
Right here, right now, we can change the ‘narrative’. We can create ‘OUR new normal’.
We keep hearing the words ‘Solidarity’, compassion and equal rights in the mouths of politicians who try to separate and divide us. People who order fines, isolation, experiment on our health and restrict all our freedoms. Those people are not philanthropists. They ask us to believe in a new religion called ‘the scientific consensus’, a fabricated dogma used by a corrupt cast called ‘experts’ who serve no other than their own interest..
Tracking and tracing are the tools of this inquisition. We know where this ultimately lead us to : Isolation, punishment and slavery.
We can choose to see things as they are, with the dangers and the opportunities they bear.
I believe history has given the German people this capacity and this responsibility.
So, I have some very good news to share, because today I am surrounded by brave people.
I am standing next to a man who is literally catching snakes with his bare hands. (Yes, watch it on instagram). Rattlesnakes hiding in the bushes of the californian valleys, and also more poisonous species who produce toxic drugs and pesticides and experiment them on humans and on nature.
This man acts with courage, passion, service and faith. That is true leadership, the capacity to inspire others by one’s actions. That is what the Kennedy’s have done, that is their legacy.
And today, today this man meets other men and women with the same values. All of you here who have come to show your true courage, your true solidarity, your true humanity. All of you who individually and collectively are peacefully manifesting your sovereignty.
I will call you all Berliners.
And as a European, as a mother, as an individual asking for the respect of my human rights I say that I am proud to ‘a Berliner’.
Children’s Health Defense Europe wants to become a Berliner alliance.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Grazie a tutti per la vostra presenza.
Hartelijk dank voor jullie aanwezigheid
Merci a tous de votre présence.
Gracias por su presencia.
Vielen Danke fur Ihren Anwesenheit
Pictures from Berlin
AUGUST 29, 2020
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Holds a Press Conference in Berlin After Launching CHD’s Europe Chapter
By Children’s Health Defense Team
On Friday August 28, 2020, Mr. Kennedy, chair of Children’s Health Defense, held a press conference and met with the leaders of the newly-formed Children’s Health Defense Europe Chapter.
In attendance were Senta Depuydt and Tina Choy (board members of CHD Europe), RA Markus Haintz (Querdenken-731 Ulm), and Heiko Schöning (MD, Ärzte für Aufkärung).
While in Berlin he will also meet with colleagues from all over Europe to discuss global challenges to health and human rights.
Saturday, August 29th, he will speak to what is anticipated to be the largest crowd in German history. (CHD will be streaming LIVE from our Facebook page.)
Over one million people from every nation in Europe will rally for freedom, peace, free expression and respect.
In photo below, RFK, Jr. is with organizers Dr Heiko Schoening, M.D. and Attorneys Markus Haintz & Rolf Karpenstein in front of Brandenburg Gate where his uncle, President John F Kennedy, gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in 1963.
According to a Daily Mail report (August 14) the British authorities have been involved in the practice of “double-counting” the official RT-PCR test results. It is presented as an unfortunate error or mistake:
“Ministers have quietly wiped 1.3million Covid-19 swabs off the official testing count, it emerged today.
Number 10 has repeatedly boasted about the number of tests it is capable of doing – with capacity now reportedly at around 340,000 per day.
But the government has now admitted a staggering one in 10 coronavirus tests were counted twice.
“And today it emerged 1.3 million counted (RT-PCR) tests have been removed from the official government total because they were counted twice.
In a statement on the website … the Department said: ‘An adjustment of -1,308,071 has been made to the historic data for the “tests made available” metric.”
‘The adjustments have been made as a result of more accurate data collection and reporting processes recently being adopted within pillar 2.’
…
The Department for Health said there had been ‘a double-counting of test kits that had been dispatched and which had not been removed from the labs processed data’.Justin Madders, the shadow health minister, told the newspaper that the data on testing had been ‘shambolic’ for months.
He said: ‘To now retrospectively adjust the testing figures by 1.3m overnight – without explanation – is the latest in a long line of chaotic failings by the government on testing. (Daily Mail, August 14, 2020)
And now Deloitte Touche, a Giant Accounting firm has been put in charge of coordinating the tests in the UK, with a view to inflating the numbers.
Meanwhile a second wave has been announced. The fear campaign has gone into high gear.
The double-counted tests were added between May 14 and August 12, but the total number of tests ‘made available’ before and after the adjustment is unclear.
The error reportedly came to light in July but was not corrected until this week, The Guardian reported.
The Government describes tests as ‘made available’ because it includes tests sent to people’s homes that are counted whether someone takes the test or not. (Daily Mail, August 14, 2020, emphasis added)
“Came to light in July” is a boldface lie. The “Double counting” procedure was known. It was reported on May 21. The manipulation of Covid data applying double counting is well in excess of three months as claimed by the British government.
According to a Daily Telegraph May 21 report: “samples taken from the same patient are being recorded as two separate tests in the Government’s official figures”.
“Tens of thousands of Covid-19 tests have been double-counted in the Government’s official tally, public health officials have admitted.”
“Diagnostic tests which involve taking saliva and nasal samples from the same patient are being counted as two tests, not one”.
The Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England acknowledged (May 21) that they were involved in double-counting.
“This inflates the daily reported diagnostic test numbers by over 20 per cent, with that proportion being much higher earlier on in the crisis before home test kits were added to the daily totals.”
They acknowledged the fraud back in May. But nothing was done to rectify the double counting UNTIL August 14.
This is not a “mistake” or “incompetence”. It is a deliberate intent to falsify the data and inflate the number of positive cases with a view to sustaining the corona fear campaign.
Bear in mind that the “double counting” numbers were used by the Boris Johnson government to maintain the lockdown and delay the reopening of the British economy. Not surprisingly, the UK had the largest number of so-called “confirmed cases” in Europe. (See Michel Chossudovsky,Global Research, May 22, 2020)
According to the Daily Telegraph (21 May, 2020) “Almost 350,000 more tests have been reported in Government data than people tested since the start of the pandemic [on March 11].”
“Discrepancy” or Outright Fraud?
“The discrepancy is in large part explained by the practice of counting saliva and nasal samples for the same individual twice.”(Telegraph, May 21)
When did this start? And why did public health staff not speak out? Or were they instructed to shut up?
And who was in charge of instructing health staff “to double count”. Will there be an inquiry?
Test Kits
From the outset, England health officials have been promoting “home test kits” which are said to be “reliable” and “accurate”. (And these are also included in the “confirmed cases”).(See Michel Chossudovsky,Global Research, May 22, 2020)
“Doubling the figures” is but the tip of the iceberg. It is one among several procedures used to inflate the so-called “confirmed cases” of the standard RT-PCR test. The use of test kits which are sent out to patients is also an obvious form of bias.
To understand the broader process of data manipulation regarding so-called “confirmed cases”, we must address the nature of the RT-PCR test and the Covid so-called Positive estimates.
“COVID-19 is similar to SARS-1. Moreover, immunologists have confirmed that COVID-19 has similar features to a seasonal influenza coupled with pneumonia.
Bear in mind: The RT-PCR test is identical to the test used in the case of seasonal influenza. So if you test positive, Positive to What??
The standard RT-PCR used to identify Covid-19 does not “confirm” the presence of Covid-19. A positive test does not mean that you have the virus and/or that you could transmit the virus. A negative test does not mean that you do not have it.
What the governments want is to inflate the positive cases.
“Confirmed Case” are not confirmed
The RT-PCR Test Does not isolate the virus
The RT- PCR tests do not prove anything. According to Dr. Pascal Sacré, “these tests detect viral particles, genetic sequences, not the whole virus. Positive RT-PCR is not synonymous with COVID-19 disease!”
The media frighten everyone with new positive PCR tests, without any nuance or context, wrongly assimilating this information with a second wave of COVID-19.
According to renowned Swiss immunologist Dr B. Stadler
So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome.The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Even if the infectious viri are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected].
These issues are never mentioned by the media. The results of the tests are misinterpreted with a view to increasing the so-called “confirmed cases”.
Amply documented the figures are manipulated. The death certificates are also falsified, particularly in the United States.
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Thameco Pharmaceutical has begun domestic manufacturing of azithromycin as part of Syria’s fight against the COVID pandemic. Dr. Fida Ali, the company’s General Manager, made this exciting announcement in an interview with SANA.
Dr. Ali noted that Thameco has also been authorized by the government to increase production cetamol (acetaminophen), vitamin C, and other essential medications, supplements, and hand sanitizer in quantities required to meet the needs of the population.
Long time readers of Syria News may recognize the name, Thameco Pharmaceutical. It is the largest in Syria and in 2013, the NATO supported FSA terrorists bombed its warehouses in Eastern Ghouta, “to increase the suffering level on the Syrian people.”
Azithromycin is a macrolide that has been successfully used in the treatment of COVID. While it is well known by the layperson that antibiotics cannot cure viruses, the layperson has not been taught that viral and bacterial pathogens engage in cooperation to produce respiratory disease. Obliteration of the pathogenic bacterium helps to weaken the virus.
Thameco is working closely with an advisory team from Syria’s Ministry of Health in ensuring quantity and quality in production of protocol medications in the treatment of COVID in their country.SANA also interviewed Samaya al Nin and Hussam El Din Hatahet, Head of Production, and Assistant Head of the Physical Laboratory, respectively. The two detailed how the COVID medications are made to the specifications of international standards, and how Thameco maintains quality control in all aspects of production.
As the numbers of COVID cases in Syria and the death tolls from this virus creep upward, and as the NATO hyenas at the United Nations continue to wail their crocodile tears over COVID in Syria, one might think that the Thameco Pharmaceutical being able to manufacture an important antibiotic and increase the production of other essential medications would be cause for rejoicing.
For Google’s YouTube — the US-based, social media giant with the $15.15 billion revenue in 2019, the one that has recently taken to banning US-based licensed physicians for their discussions of coronavirus — found it cause for censorship, vaporizing SANA Arabic’s short video shortly after it was published.
Syrian SAMA TV private channel aired a similar report in Arabic, we captured it before YouTube censored it:
Malicious censorship and the UN’s unwillingness to stand by its noble charter notwithstanding, Syria should be viewed by the world as a much-needed source of inspiration, particularly in the medical and engineering fields.
In April, less than one month after the first COVID case in Syria, Syrian engineers and physicians worked together and built the country’s first ventilator, in sixteen days.
Medical, engineering, & technical teams were joined by local cadres to create the first Syrian made ventilator, in 16 days.
Throughout the millennia, foreign colonizers have attempted to crush the creativity and resilience of the Syrian people, lest they spread good will throughout the world.
Syrians will overcome this COVID crisis as they have overcome other crises throughout their very long history.
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The United States has erected the legal and institutional architecture of a totalitarian police state.
Institutionally, the national security autocracy has merged with the military, law enforcement and a vast private intelligence network to create a massive physical apparatus of repression that possesses panoptic powers.
Legally, an extensive framework of legislation threatens individual freedoms in the name of providing security for the American people.
Slowly, methodically and deliberately an apparatus of legal repression has been erected that abolishes significant constitutional protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, rendering genuine civil liberties into a set of arbitrary privileges to be withdrawn at the will of the state.
A network of Orwellian surveillance has been put in place to monitor political and social dissent. The legal apparatus of repression has evolved to such an extent that only a presidential decree of martial law in a time of crisis is needed to begin implementation of absolutist rule in America.
Although it has taken over a century to construct, the legal architecture of repression is always expanded during times of war for the purpose of neutralizing opposition and suppressing protest. World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War have all been attenuated by attacks on civil liberties.
To understand the magnitude of these attacks, the history of political repression in the United States should be studied with care. It is a history that mirrors foreign intervention as the repressive apparatus protects a global empire. The U.S. government has not only intervened to prevent successful challenges to the economic and social relations of capitalism abroad, it has done so repeatedly at home for the same purpose.
At the core of American’s institutional apparatus of repression is the national security autocracy led by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Throughout its history, the national security autocracy has conducted innumerable covert operations to repress popular movements and governments internationally. Several of the most notorious were CIA operations Ajax in Iran (1953), Success in Guatemala (1954), Mongoose in Cuba (1961), Phoenix in Vietnam (1967) and Condor in Chile (1975).
The autocracy has unleashed a torrent of murderous repression that involves dimensions of mass tyranny too terrible to contemplate. But the contemplation of these crimes is imperative if an understanding of the autocracy’s capacity for mass violence is to be attained.
A devastating conclusion can be drawn by probing this history. In that the U.S. power elite directed the autocracy to impose fascist dictatorship in far-away countries like Chile, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, South Vietnam and Indonesia by training, arming and unleashing military and police forces to torture and murder hundreds of thousands of struggling peoples, it is apparent that it would not hesitate to inflict a similar dictatorship within the United States if the interests of capital were threatened in the “homeland,” to use a fascist term.
It is a rich and well documented critique that is kept hidden in plain sight from a majority of the American people who are diverted from political realism by a political and media establishment addicted to political theatre. Yet, reality has a way of contradicting the most deeply entrenched fabrications.
The foundation for a legal architecture of political repression in the United States was laid during the first half of the 20th century. The Espionage Act of 1917, Sedition Act of 1918, Smith Act of 1940 and the McCarren Act of 1950 are monuments to state subversion of democratic rights. The laws made it a crime to speak out in opposition to war, express disloyal opinions or advocate the desirability of overthrowing the U.S. government during World War I and II.
These statutes are not legal artifacts gathering dust on books safely stored in the country’s law libraries. Although it is over 100 years old, the Espionage Act was used by Barack Obama to indict more whistleblowers than all prior presidents combined.
Among those indicted were Edward Snowden who revealed NSA illegal mass surveillance, former intelligence officer John Kiriakou who exposed CIA torture during Bush’s ‘war on terror’ and Chelsea Manning who unmasked U.S. war crimes in Iraq via Wikileaks. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange sits in Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom awaiting extradition to the United States. He faces multiple charges of violating the Espionage Act.
The legal edifice of political repression in contemporary America was dramatically extended during the ‘war on terrorism’, a policy that should properly be termed a ‘war of terrorism’ as it is yet another pretext used to justify U.S. military intervention.
The ‘war on terrorism’ has replaced the ‘war on communism’ as the major paradigm used to justify foreign intervention and domestic repression. The terrorism paradigm functions both as a direct and ideological method of social control. The ideological dimensions of terrorism are used to frighten the population into willingly surrendering civil liberties for illusory security. For those who engage in dissent, more direct means of coercive social control are used.
This legislation coupled with National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive Number 51 (2009) effectively strips the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th amendments to the U.S. Constitution of their procedural and substantive validity, rendering them dead letters and sets the stage for martial law in America.
The Patriot Act broadened the definition of domestic terrorism by providing the government with the ability to criminalize any act of political protest or civil disobedience, crippling First amendment freedoms of speech, assembly and by extension, association.
Fourth amendment privacy rights are eroded by legislation that permits the FBI to investigate the political activity of American citizens and monitor the organizations they belong to, people they associate with, books they read, websites they visit and phone calls they make by alleging the inquiry is related to national security.
Fourth amendment privacy rights are also violated daily at the nation’s airports by the Transportation Security Administration under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security as the use of millimeter-wave body scanners and pat-downs constitute unreasonable searches, not to mention affronts to human dignity.
Fifth amendment due process rights of citizens and non-citizens and Sixth amendment rights to a public jury trial and an attorney have been restricted by anti-terror legislation that makes it a crime to provide “material support” for a terrorist organization including advice, advocacy or assistance for “non-violent purposes.” The legislation criminalizes political speech.
The U.S. government now has authority to label an accused terrorist an “enemy combatant” allowing for that person to be held indefinitely in a military prison without access to counsel. George W. Bush’s Attorney General John Ashcroft performed this act in 2002. An American citizen, Jose Padilla, was arrested after being detained at Chicago’s O’hare airport when returning from the Middle East. Padilla was accused of being associated with Al Qaeda and held in a military prison for four years before eventually being transferred to a civilian court where he was convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorism. President Obama codified indefinite detention by signing the National Defense Authorization Act Section 1021 into law in 2012.
It is now a crime to support any organization labeled ‘terrorist’ by the State Department, preventing international solidarity. It should be recalled that the Irish Republican Army (IRA), African National Congress (ANC) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were once considered terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.
Immigrants can be deported based upon undisclosed evidence if the government alleges they are engaged in “terrorist activity” or provide “material support” for terrorism. The definition of material support is so broad that it can include humanitarian aid.
Muslim charities that provided medical support for Palestine such as the Holy Land Foundation were shut down and their leaders imprisoned under the pretext of providing “material support” for Hamas, a resistance organization that defends the Palestinian people against Zionist aggression.
The prohibition against providing “material support” for “terrorist activity” also impacts the Sixth amendment right to legal counsel.
The late civil rights attorney Lynn Stewart was sent to federal prison for advocating on behalf of her client, the blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian nationalist who fought the Mubarak dictatorship. Stewart’s ‘crime’ was to announce in a public news conference that the Sheikh did not support a cease fire between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian government. For openly articulating her client’s political views, she was sentenced to federal prison for 10 years.
Eighth amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment are routinely violated by officially sanctioned torture, drone assassination, death penalty execution and police murder.
Presidential directives have given the president authority to declare martial law in the United States. Autocratic rule can be imposed during a “national emergency” or a “catastrophic event” and U.S. troops from the Northern Command (Northcom) can be deployed domestically. The president has authority to take command of the National Guard by superseding the control of state governors.
Not to be outdone by any of its predecessors, the Trump administration has worked assiduously to attack civil and human rights in a concerted effort to enhance executive power.
What we are witnessing in the United States is a bi-partisan attempt by the U.S. power elite to expand law enforcement and converge criminal with foreign intelligence law at home while waging perpetual war abroad. The reason is clear. The American plutocracy must impose systemic political repression to neutralize domestic and international opposition to its predatory global empire.
Escalation of political repression under the guise of fighting terrorism and crime is the genuine aim of the state, particularly as anti-war sentiment and social unrest increase within the population of the United States and struggles for national sovereignty and self-determination accelerate outside of its borders.
The evisceration of democratic protections and human rights by state power includes the abolition of habeas corpus and due process of law, extensive use of warrantless electronic surveillance, monitoring of political activism, imposing indefinite detention without trial, conducting secret deportations, creating secret detention facilities, practicing extraordinary rendition, torture and drone assassination, establishing military commissions, effecting preparations for mass internment, imposing mass incarceration and perpetrating systemic police violence.
Draconian measures are being taken in the service of corporate capitalism, a system that relies on perpetual exploitation and war for perpetual profit. Critical analysis of political repression illustrates its true purpose and dramatizes the need to repeal repressive legislation, restrict executive power and abolish the national security autocracy to restore the rule of law.
It should be noted that the United States has not yet adopted domestic totalitarian rule. It is, however, moving rapidly in that direction. This trajectory can be halted and reversed if a popular struggle is waged to restore, defend and extend civil and constitutional liberties and human rights.
When confronting the ideological matrix of political repression, the wise counsel of Benjamin Franklin should be remembered. “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.”
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Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War. He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective. His recent book is titled, The Politics of Terrorism, and is available at amazon.com
Wednesday’s collision between the US military occupying the northeast of Syria, and the Russian military legally present there, showcases the drama unfolding, as the occupiers are being handed a cue: “Yankee Go Home”.
Sheiks and elders of the Arab Al-Uqaydat tribe met at Deir Ez Zor, Syria on August 11 and gave the US occupation force, and the SDF, one month to “leave the Arab region to the Arabs”.
US and Russian military vehicle crash
The incident occurred around 10 am. Syrian time, on August 26 on a road near Dayrick in northeast Syria. Numerous videos appeared on social media which capture the encounter between two military vehicles.
In the video, a Russian Typhoon-K MRAPs collides with the front of a US M-ATV, after which the American driver honked his horn. Afterward, the Russian vehicles chased the American vehicles, who turned and left the area in a de-escalation maneuver. Four US troops were diagnosed with mild concussion-like symptoms, which resulted from the impact.
The Russian military explained that their convoy was on a routine patrol of the area and that they had warned the US vehicles of their position and had asked them to back-off. However, the Americans did not heed the warning, and the situation escalated.
National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot confirmed the details of the incident. “Unsafe and unprofessional actions like this represent a breach of de-confliction protocols, committed to by the United States and Russia in December 2019,” Ullyot said. “The Coalition and the United States do not seek escalation with any national military forces, but US forces always retain the inherent right and obligation to defend themselves from hostile acts.”
Joint Chiefs ChairmanGen. Mark Milley spoke with Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov, by telephone on Wednesday, according to a Pentagon statement.
Previous encounters
This flare-up is the latest in a series of events beginning in February, next in June, then in July, and now in August.
“The encounters happen a few times each month and, thus far, have been resolved without escalation,” said OIR spokesman Army Col. Myles Caggins.
“With Russia, Coalition forces work to de-conflict our movements through pre-existing communication channels, in order to prevent unnecessary and unplanned military interactions, and to de-escalate between forces when necessary,” he added.
The US in Syria
The US military illegally entered and occupied Syria under the guise of fighting ISIS. While the threat of ISIS was real, the Syrian Arab Army (SAR) and the Russian military were already fighting ISIS and were capable. However, the US foreign policy on Syria prevented the US military from partnering with the existing forces on the ground, even though they consisted of hundreds of thousands of ground troops, aircraft, tanks, helicopters, and weapons of all types. Instead, the Pentagon chose to develop an alliance with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is a militia and is aligned with the YPG, who are part of the PKK, an internationally recognized terrorist group, has killed thousands in Turkey over four decades.
The US currently has about 600 troops illegally in northeast Syria and another 150 at the Al Tanf Garrison.
US President Trump ran on a 2016 campaign promise to bring home the troops from Syria, which he tried to fulfill in 2018, but his order met with criticism, and the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis.
After a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in October 2019, Trump ordered the withdrawal of US troops from the Turkish border.
The SDF
Democrat and Republican lawmakers condemned Trump for abandoning the SDF, a Kurdish militia that had been the US ally in the fight against ISIS in Syria. The group received weapons, air, and ground support in the fight to defeat the ISIS. The US pulled back from the Turkish border in October 2019 which allowed the Turkish invasion, utilizing mainly Radical Islamic mercenaries who were a mixed-bag between Al Qaeda and former ISIS terrorists.
James Jeffrey, US special envoy said in 2018 that the Syrian Kurds’ future would be with Damascus. The State Department described the relationship with the SDF as “tactical, transactional and temporary.”
The Turkish occupation of Syria
The US State Department has criticized Turkey for hosting Hamas members, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the US of alliance with terrorists in Syria, such as the SDF.
Some in the Trump administration is very close to Ankara, and the US State Department under Pompeo has always preferred Syrian terrorist groups in Syria, who are fighting to topple the Syrian government alongside extreme Islamist groups, such as Jibhat al Nusra and ISIS, which Turkey favors. To the US and Turkey, these blood-thirsty savages are just tools to be used for political gains.
Turkey seeks to take over Kurdish areas in northeast Syria and implant non-Kurds and militias following Radical Islam. The militias Turkey employs routinely kidnap women and assassinate women activists.
Turkey regularly turns off water to northeastern Syria, causing hundreds of thousands to be without water, even though Covid-19 precautions require hand-washing.
On August 18, near Deir Ez Zor, Syria, a Russian Major General, and three Russian soldiers were killed when their convoy drove over an IED, on its way back from a humanitarian mission. Many have theorized it was the SDF who planted the IED.
If you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen
On August 20, Pres. Trump met with Iraq’s PM, and said the US is leaving Iraq “fairly rapidly” and making decisions on Syria “fairly soon.” The Iraqi Parliament called for the total withdrawal of US troops.
A meeting of 5,000 Syrian tribal members in northeast Syria on August 11 demanded the US forces, and their SDF militia partners withdraw from occupation of the area after the SDF assassinated Sheikh Mutashar al-Hafil and his relative Dar Mihlef al-Khalaf, which provoked a wave of protests, and the call of “Yankee Go Home”.
“We are calling on the international coalition to transfer control over the province directly to its Arab population, respecting Syria’s territorial integrity, as well as the rights of Syrian citizens“, the tribal elder’s statement said.
The Syrian tribe demanded that the SDF release all prisoners and hostages, and especially women and children.
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The Greek Private Asset Utilization Fund (HRADF) will sell a 67% stake of Alexandroupolis Port in northern Greece near the border with Turkey and Bulgaria. Two American companies are believed to be interested in the deal. Selling a port of strategic importance to U.S. companies, coupled with the availability of the facility for U.S. and NATO troops, is raising many questions in Greece. The Mediterranean country remains only one in two countries surveyed in NATO where the civilian population is not in favor of the alliance and only 36% of Greeks view the U.S. favourably. An announcement issued by HRADF emphasized that the bid consisted of two phases – “in the first phase, interested parties are invited to express their intention to participate before 5:00 pm on October 2, 2020.”
It is worth noting that the signing of a new defense agreement between Athens and Washington in October 2019 gave the Americans freedom to use the country’s seaport infrastructure. In fact, the U.S. announced its interests in the Alexandroupolis Port as far back as September 2019.
Selling ports is extremely risky for reasons related to national security and sovereignty. Privatizing ports means the deregulation of state-owned property and the transfer of all functions and transactions for the private sector instead of state security. What will happen if a foreign investor, such as the U.S., was involved in the management of ports located in the Aegean Sea, which plays an irreplaceable role in the border and national defense of Greece, especially at a time when Turkey is increasing its war rhetoric against Greece?
The establishment of a U.S.-NATO base at Alexandroupolis Port aims to secure an energy hub and serve as a point to pressurize Russia. In addition to the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria pipeline and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline being in the region of the port, a third pipeline is also being prepared. This would turn Thrace, the region of Alexandroupolis Port, into a true energy hub.
Of course, we must not forget the fact that in addition to the privatization of Alexandroupolis Port, there is a bigger problem with the military bases. The port can serve as a vehicle for imposing U.S.-NATO interests in the region. The creation of such a base, along with the sale of the port to an American company, creates a head-to-head situation with other competitors, such as Russia. The port is strategically located close to the Turkish-controlled Dardanelles that connects the Aegean/Mediterranean Seas with the Black Sea, and therefore Russia.
With the acquisition of this port, U.S.-NATO forces may be in many areas of the Balkans in only a few hours and can significantly hinder Russian trade with the world via the Black Sea by blockading the Dardanelles. Currently, Greece and Turkey are the closest they have been to war since 1974 when the latter invaded northern Cyprus. The Greek government is likely to use the hostilities as a justification for opening a U.S. naval base in Alexandroupolis to supposedly ensure Greece’s security despite opposition from the majority of Greeks.
As security against Turkey’s continued aggression is the biggest priority for Greece at the moment, Washington is trying to capitalize on Turkish aggression against Greece by attempting to pivot Athens towards them. Although the Greek establishment is desperate for a U.S. naval base in Alexandroupolis, there is strong public resentment towards this, especially as U.S. President Donald Trump serves his own private business interests in Turkey rather than those of his country and America’s allies. For close observers of Turkish-American relations, Trump’s appeasement for Turkish aggression is glaringly obvious.
Trump said last Monday that Erdoğan listens to him, which led many to question why the American president has not told Turkey to deescalate its hostilities with Greece and Cyprus. John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor for Trump, described in his book ‘The Room Where It Happened’ that the relationship between the American president and Erdoğan was a “bromance,” especially as Trump agreed to help hide the charge that Turkey breached U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran. In addition, Erdoğan was again praised by Trump to Pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested in October 2016 in Turkey and held for two years on charges of complicity with the Fethullah Gülen movement and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Brunson was told by Trump three days ago that “I have to say, to me, President Erdoğan was very good.”
Although the Greek leadership knows that Washington has traditionally appeased Turkey at the expense of Greek security and interests, they are still willing to sacrifice one of their most strategic assets with the hope that it will stem Turkish aggression on Greece. Earlier this week, Turkish Member of Paliament Metin Külünk, who belongs to the ruling Justice and Development Party and went to the same youth movement as Erdoğan, went to Twitter to announce Turkey’s future conquest of Greece’s eastern Aegean islands and the mainland region where Alexandroupolis Port is located, accompanied with a map of “Greater Turkey.” Under such sustained pressure and hostility from Turkey, Greece believes the U.S. can secure its sovereignty. However, Greeks remember that Washington has for decades appeased Turkey, and even greenlighted the invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974. Greeks believe an American naval base will not protect Greece’s sovereignty from Turkish aggression, and rather it will be used as an American forward base to pressurize Moscow as they will have the option to blockade Russia in the Black Sea if Turkey goes rogue in its NATO responsibilities in any potential war against Russia.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Israel and the United Arab Emirates are going to create a military intelligence-gathering infrastructure on Yemen’s Socotra Island, according to Arab and French sources.
The 3,650km2 island, located south of the Yemeni mainland in the Indian Ocean, overlooks the Bab al-Mandab Strait. The straight is a sea route chokepoint between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea. Most exports of oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal or the SUMED Pipeline pass through both the Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz.
Since the start of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, the UAE, formally a Saudi ally, and the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council, a Yemeni separatist movement that is formally allied with the Saudi-backed government in Aden, have established control over most of Socotra Island. For years, the UAE has been seeking to annex the island due to its strategic location. The collapse of the Yemeni statehood due to the years-long instability and the foreign intervention paved a way for more direct actions. The creation of a military infrastructure there is a logical step in this strategy.
According to reports, a delegation of Israeli and UAE officers recently visited the island and examined several locations for establishing the planned intelligence facilities. Earlier in August, the UAE and Israel with assistance from the United States reached a historical peace agreement relaunching diplomatic, economic and even military cooperation between the states on the highest level. The security and military cooperation in the Bab al-Mandab Strait was among the expected goals.
Arab and Iranian media allege that in 2016 Israel started building an intelligence-gathering base at the top of Mount Ambassaira, south of the Eritrean capital of Asmara. The base, according to reports, is designed to monitor the conflict in Yemen, as well as the naval situation in the region, including movements of Iranian naval forces.
The UAE, thanks to its support to the Southern Transitional Council, has already changed the balance of power in southern Yemen to its favor. If, additionally to this, Abu Dhabi succeeds in turning the Socotra Island into its outpost, the UAE will have all chances to shift the balance of power to its own favor even further.
The Emirati leadership has been slowly but steadily taking an upper hand in the diplomatic, military and economic competition with the Saudi Kingdom, which has so far suffered most of negative consequences, including direct strikes on its territory, from the conflict with Yemen’s Houthis. The peace agreement and security, military cooperation with Israel will also contribute to this scenario.
The tactical UAE-Israeli-US alliance has all chances to compete with the expanding Iranian influence in the region. Saudi Arabia, which for years was the key US ally against Iran, has been left outside of this plan. And this is very bad news for the Kingdom, which is passing through a deep economic and political crisis complicated by the barely successful invasion of Yemen.
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The hybrid war against Venezuela is intensifying as the U.S. presidential campaign is heating up. The Trump administration and its Venezuelan and international allies have set the stage for an October surprise, a possible attack by the United States or one of its proxies designed to boost President Trump’s reelection. The attacks on Venezuela are coming from multiple dimensions, including overt military pressure, economic pressure, covert operations, and disinformation campaigns. All of these are elements of a hybrid war that has sought to overthrow the government of President Nicolás Maduro over the past years, and each element has seen new developments over the past few weeks, just as Venezuela is battling a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Overt military pressure
The US naval deployment to Venezuela’s maritime border is about to begin its fifth month of operations in the area. Even the few Democrats in Congress willing to criticize Trump’s Venezuela policy have said nothing about this deployment, perhaps because it is entirely normal for the United States to threaten war on a country and then dock its Navy right outside. The silence from Democrats is unfortunate, as this could easily have been used as an example of the Pentagon’s wastefulness. Deploying a massive “counter-narcotics” operation to the Caribbean, when 84% of the cocaine in the US transits through the Pacific, could be low-hanging fruit in the debate to cut military spending.
In Colombia, President Iván Duque met with National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien and Head of U.S. Southern Command Craig Faller on August 18, where they announced the Colombia Growth Initiative, a multi-billion dollar plan that O’Brien says is “focused on rural development, infrastructure expansion, security, and the rule of law,” though the announcement was short on details. Two days after the visit with US officials, Duque baselessly accused Venezuela of trying to acquire medium and long-range missiles from Iran. Both Iran and Venezuela denied the allegations.
On August 27, a Colombian court authorized a US military unit to restart its “advising mission” after previously suspending such cooperation in light of a constitutional challenge with regards to the deployment of foreign troops on Colombian soil. This unit, a Special Forces Assistance Brigade, is designed to “build a professional military force.” It’s worth noting that in his tell-all book, former National Security Advisor John Bolton claims to have learned in February 2019 that Colombia’s “troops simply weren’t ready for conventional conflict with Maduro’s armed forces.”
Venezuela’s southern neighbor, Brazil, is also involved in the escalation. The Brazilian Air Force is holding military exercises between August 17 and September 4. The exercises, which were reported as training for non-conventional combat against insurgent or paramilitary forces, include Black Hawk helicopters and fighter jets.
Brazil and Colombia cooperate closely on military matters with the United States. In a July event in Miami, President Trump was introduced to Brigadier General Juan Carlos Correa of Colombia and Major General David of Brazil by Admiral Faller, who said the men “work for [him].” Former Brazilian President Lula da Silva expressed alarm that his country’s military “may be used for actions incompatible with constitutional principles of non-intervention and self-determination of peoples.”
Economic pressure
On the economic front, the United States seized two tankers of fuel purchased by Venezuela on August 14. This brazen act of piracy didn’t get much attention in the mainstream media, but is part of the strategy to suffocate Venezuela’s economy, which is facing gasoline shortages due to the difficulty in importing necessary chemical additives and spare parts for refineries. Now, the Trump administration is considering ending a sanctions exemption of diesel-for-crude swaps that oil companies Reliance, Repsoil and Eni have been carrying out with Venezuela. Sanctions on diesel would have widespread impacts on Venezuela agriculture, transportation, health and energy industries. Trucks used for shipping food and buses that transport people both depend on diesel fuel. Hospitals throughout the country rely on backup diesel generators to weather erratic electricity supplies. In western Venezuela, diesel is commonly used in power plants for local electricity generation.
The diesel exemption is set to end in early November, and the Trump administration has told the companies to wind down such swaps, prompting criticism from prominent members of Venezuela’s opposition, including economist Francisco Rodríguez, who characterized it as a “clearly electoral measure” that “will cost lives.” Sanctions are becoming one of the main drivers of division within the opposition, as more and more opposition figures have begun to criticize them for not leading to regime change and for punishing ordinary Venezuelans.
Covert operations and criminal disorder
Although we may never know the extent of U.S. involvement in the August 2018 assassination attempt on President Maduro, the March 2019 cyberattack on Venezuela’s power grid, or the May 2020 attempted incursion by two ex-Green Berets and other mercenaries, it would be disingenuous to think that U.S. intelligence agencies and special forces are sitting idle. In Venezuela, there’s growing concern that several crimes over the past weeks are part of a plot to sow chaos.
There is no way to confirm that theory, but it is not far-fetched. Military analyst Frank G. Hoffman states that hybrid war can “incorporate a range of different modes of warfare, including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder [emphasis added].” An example of this occurred during the weekend of the May incursion, when there was an outbreak of gang violence in Petare, Venezuela’s largest slum. One of the captured mercenaries later alleged that the Drug Enforcement Agency had “paid for gunfire” to act as a smokescreen for the incursion.
The current concern is a series of crimes that began on August 8th with the disappearance of an iconic revolutionary leader. This was followed by the August 20th death of well-known leftist artist under mysterious circumstances and the August 21st murder by police of two leftist communciations workers. Authorities continue to investigate all three cases; in the latter, eight police officers and a district attorney have been charged for the murder and attempted coverup. Attorney General Tarek Saab called the nine people charged “infiltrators” who had entered the police force to engage in crime. Regardless of whether these events are connected to a plot to generate criminal disorder, they are certainly causing psychological harm to the Venezuelan people.
Pictures of gang members holding bazookas released on social media after police confrontations.
In addition to these crimes, there have been recurrent violent confrontations between the police and well-armed criminal groups. On August 25, a gang equipped with AR-15s, AK-103s and FN-MAG machine guns ambushed a police arms depot. Above, the picture on the left is allegedly of one of the gang’s founders holding a bazooka during the confrontation. Attacks on barracks or arms depots linked to coup plots have occurred several times since 2017, resulting in the theft of assault rifles, heavy weapons, grenades and other explosives that end up in the hands of criminals.
Social media shutdowns
Tech giants appear to be joining in on the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign. In March, just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning in Venezuela, Twitter suspended 40 accounts belonging to officials, state institutions, journalists and influencers, including those of the Health Ministry and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who was in charge of the Covid-19 response. Most, but not all, of those accounts were recovered, but Twitter gave no explanation for its actions.
On August 19, Twitter restricted the account of Venezuela Analysis, one of the most important websites for English-language news about the country. As The Grayzone’s Ben Norton notes, these are accounts that “conflict with Washington’s pro-war narrative.” Their suspensions represent an escalation in the media dimension of the hybrid war. On August 21, Google blocked or erased three YouTube and Gmail accounts belonging to Venezuelan state television outlet VTV, preventing Venezuelans from accessing live news and 68,000 videos VTV had uploaded since 2011.
Disinformation campaigns and Covid-19
The timing of these shutdowns is curious, occurring just as a major disinformation campaign about Venezuela’s Covid-19 response is underway. The New York Times and other media outlets have published stories about the plight of returning Venezuelan migrants and the allegedly extreme measures taken by the Venezuelan government to fight the pandemic.
Missing from these articles is the fact that Venezuela has received 130,000 returning migrants since the pandemic began. Venezuela may be the only country in the world that is receiving such vast numbers of people during the pandemic, as most countries have closed their borders and returning home has been difficult for people all over the world. Of those returning Venezuelans, 90,000 have entered through official channels, where they are immediately tested for Covid-19. Most are then sent to a Comprehensive Social Care Point (PASI) to comply with quarantine protocols. At the PASIs, migrants receive food, medical care and personal hygiene products as they wait 2-3 weeks to ensure they are not infected with the coronavirus (positive tests can extend their stays).
The other 40,000 migrants returned to the country through unofficial routes, skipping health and immigration controls. In late May, Venezuela began experiencing rapid growth in Covid-19 cases after controlling the pandemic for two months. Much of this growth was attributed to migrants who did not heed the health warnings; at one point, 80% of Venezuela’s new cases were imported from abroad. In mid-June, the numbers flipped and community transmissions surged rapidly.
There are good reasons for migrants to avoid official entry points, including dismal conditions on the Colombian side of the border and long waits to enter given the limit on the number of people who can cross the border daily. However, many of the migrants have been victims of fake news. Telesur’s Madelein García interviewed a returning Venezuelan who was told in Colombia that Venezuelans were injecting migrants with Covid-19 because doctors were being paid by case numbers, as well as lies about migrants not being fed and being locked in cages in PASIs.
Although there are reports in social media of poor conditions in certain PASIs, they appear to be the exception, rather than the rule. A United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report noted the differences between the over 200 PASIs, with those in universities and hotels having better infrastructure than those in grade schools and gymnasiums, some of which require “greater support to strengthen their capacity to offer services.” The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have visited PASIs and are contributing aid to the migrants temporarily quarantined in them. Government and local officials routinely inspect PASIs, and Venezuelan media have reported from them. The PASIs have been much maligned in the media without any context of the vastness of the program or the challenge of fighting off a pandemic for a country economically suffocated by sanctions.
The mainstream media narrative around Covid-19 and Venezuela’s migrants is being used to present the country as being in need of humanitarian intervention. Indeed, the Trump administration and think tanks like the Center for Strategic & International Studies, which put out a report titled “Venezuela: Pandemic and Foreign Intervention in a Collapsing Narcostate,” have been attempting to turn Venezuela’s Covid-19 response into an issue of regional security. The Atlantic Council, considered to be NATO’s think tank in Washington, held an event on August 13 with Admiral Faller in which he declared that the Maduro government is an urgent threat to democracy, economic stability and the Covid-19 response.
Yet as seen in the graph above, it’s ludicrous to claim that Venezuela is a Covid-19 threat. The country is doing significantly better than its neighbors in controlling both the spread of the disease and the number of casualties. Venezuela has experienced 358 total Covid-19 deaths, a rate of 13 deaths per million population (Argentina is the next lowest in South America, with 180 deaths per million). After a surge in cases from July through mid-August, the curve of new cases looks like it is flattening, although it is still too soon to tell. Venezuela has been able to weather the storm thanks to its policy choices and timely aid from Cuba, China, Russia, the European Union, the ICRC and UN agencies.
Conclusion
Of course, military action against Venezuela would impede, if not destroy, its capacity to deal with the pandemic, which would lead to increased infections in Brazil, Colombia and other nations if there’s a wave of war refugees. Yet these concerns seem secondary to Venezuela hawks, who view a second Trump administration or a Biden administration as less likely to deliver regime change than a pre-electoral attack.
According to sources that spoke to La Política Online, Senator Marco Rubio has been advising the Trump administration that military action against Venezuela would “ensure Florida’s Electoral College votes in November.” It should be noted that these allegations have not been independently verified and Senator Rubio has not commented on them. However, President Trump’s hawkish Venezuela policy is based around winning Florida and many of the events detailed above have been put into motion to give the president the military option he’s been threatening since August 2017. The stage is set for a disastrous October surprise, especially if Trump’s chances for re-election look dim.
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Leonardo Flores is a Latin American policy analyst and campaigner with CODEPINK.
All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated; featured image: President Trump at a July briefing at Southern Command Headquarters in Miami.
Next week, at the height of the Covid crisis, we will be commemorating 9/11. It was 19 years ago. It was a criminal undertaking and a Big Lie. It was a pretext and justification to initiate the “Global War on Terrorism”.
This article was initially posted 2 years ago, largely based on my earlier writings including texts published in the immediate wake of the tragic events of 9/11. These texts were later published in my book entitled “America’s War on Terrorism, In the Wake of 9/11” (Global Research, Montreal, 2003)
“Parroting official statements, the Western media mantra on September 12, 2001 had already approved the launching of “punitive actions” directed against civilian targets in Afghanistan. In the words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times: “When we reasonably determine our attackers’ bases and camps, we must pulverize them — minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage” — and act overtly or covertly to destabilize terror’s national hosts”.
This decision was taken by the Bush-Cheney war cabinet in the evening of September 11, 2001. It was based on the presumption, “confirmed” by the head of the CIA that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks.
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 mention the repeal of civil liberties and constitutional government in America.”
This text provides an overview as well as historical overview focussing on the geopolitical implications.
Michel Chossudovsky, August 30, 2001.
***
1. September 11, 2001:
Onset of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)
The tragic events of September 11, 2001 constitute a fundamental landmark in American history. a decisive watershed, a breaking point. Millions of people have been misled regarding the causes and consequences of 9/11. .
September 11 2001 opens up an era of crisis, upheaval and militarization of American society.
A far-reaching overhaul of US military doctrine was launched in the wake of 9/11.
Endless wars of aggression under the humanitarian cloak of “counter-terrorism” were set in motion.
9/11 was also a stepping stone towards the relentless repeal of civil liberties, the militarization of law enforcement and the inauguration of “Police State USA”.
September 11, 2001 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.
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.
CIA Director George Tenet stated that same morning that Osama bin Laden had the capacity to plan “multiple attacks with little or no warning.”
Secretary of State Colin Powell called the attacks “an act of war” and President Bush confirmed in an evening televised address to the Nation that he would “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them”.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey, without mentioning Afghanistan, pointed his finger at “state sponsorship,” implying the complicity of one or more foreign governments. In the words of former National Security Adviser, Lawrence Eagleburger, “I think we will show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution.”
That same evening at 9:30 pm, a “War Cabinet” was formed integrated 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.
The tragic events of 9/11 provided the required justification to wage war on Afghanistan on “humanitarian grounds”, with the full support of World public opinion and the endorsement of the “international community”. Several prominent “progressive” intellectuals made a case for “retaliation against terrorism”, on moral and ethical grounds. The “just cause” military doctrine (jus ad bellum) was accepted and upheld at face value as a legitimate response to 9/11.
In the wake of 9/11, the antiwar movement was completely isolated. The trade unions and civil society organizations had swallowed the media lies and government propaganda. They had accepted a war of retribution against Afghanistan, an impoverished country in Central Asia of 30 million people.
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 mention the repeal of civil liberties and constitutional government in America.
Amply documented but rarely mentioned by the mainstream media, Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA going back to the Soviet- Afghan war. This was a known fact, corroborated by numerous sources including official documents of the US Congress, which the mainstream media chose to either dismiss or ignore. The intelligence community had time and again acknowledged that they had indeed supported Osama bin Laden, but that in the wake of the Cold War: “he turned against us”.
The 9/11 Commission Report has largely upheld the “outside enemy” mythology, heralding Al Qaeda as the “mastermind” organization behind the 9/11 attacks.
The official 9/11 narrative has not only distorted the causes underling the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, it has also erased the historical record of US covert support to international terrorism, while creating the illusion that America and “Western Civilization” are threatened.
Without an “outside enemy”, there could be no “war on terrorism”. The entire national security agenda would collapse “like a house of cards”. The war criminals in high office would have no leg to stand on.
After 9/11, the campaign of media disinformation served not only to drown the truth but also to kill much of the historical evidence on how this illusive Al Qaeda “outside enemy” had been fabricated and transformed into “Enemy Number One”.
Video: Michel Chossudovsky with James Corbett
Where was Osama bin Laden on September 11, 2001?
Is there any proof to the effect that Osama bin Laden, the bogeyman, coordinated the 9/11 attacks as claimed in the official 9/11 narrative?
According to CBS news (Dan Rather, January 28, 2002), “Enemy Number One” was admitted to the urology ward of a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi on September 10, 2001, courtesy of America’s indefectible ally Pakistan. He could have been arrested at short notice which would have “saved us a lot of trouble”, but then we would not have had an Osama Legend, which has fed the news chain as well as presidential speeches in the course of the last 18 years.
DAN RATHER. As the United states and its allies in the war on terrorism press the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS News has exclusive information tonight about where bin Laden was and what he was doing in the last hours before his followers struck the United States September 11.
This is the result of hard-nosed investigative reporting by a team of CBS news journalists, and by one of the best foreign correspondents in the business, CBS`s Barry Petersen. Here is his report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARRY PETERSEN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
The foregoing CBS report which is of utmost relevance indicates two obvious facts:
1. Osama bin Laden could not reasonably have coordinated the 9/11 attacks from his hospital bed;
2. The hospital was under the jurisdiction of the Pakistani Armed Forces, which has close links to the Pentagon. Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts were known to both the Pakistani and US military.
U.S. military and intelligence advisers based in Rawalpindi. were working closely with their Pakistani counterparts. Again, no attempt was made to arrest America’s best known fugitive. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed, at the time, that the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden were unknown. According to Rumsfeld: “Its like looking for a needle in a stack of hay”.
October 7, 2001: Waging America’s 9/11 War of Retribution against Afghanistan
The immediate response of the US and its allies to the 9/11 attacks was to the declare a war of retribution against Afghanistan on the grounds that the Taliban government was protecting “terror mastermind” Osama bin Laden. By allegedly harboring bin Laden, the Taliban were complicit, according to both the US administration and NATO, for having waged an act of war against the United States.
Parroting official statements, the Western media mantra on September 12, 2001 had already approved the launching of “punitive actions” directed against civilian targets in Afghanistan. In the words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times: “When we reasonably determine our attackers’ bases and camps, we must pulverize them — minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage” — and act overtly or covertly to destabilize terror’s national hosts”.
This decision was taken by the Bush-Cheney war cabinet in the evening of September 11, 2001. It was based on the presumption, “confirmed” by the head of the CIA that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks.
Image: Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz
On the following morning, September 12, 2001, NATO’s Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels, endorsed the Bush administration’s declaration of war on Afghanistan, invoking Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.
An act of war by a foreign nation (Afghanistan) against a member of the Atlantic Alliance (the USA) is an act of war against all members under NATO’s doctrine of collective security. Under any stretch of the imagination, the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon cannot be categorized as an act of war by a foreign country. But nobody seemed to have raised this issue.
Meanwhile, on two occasions in the course of September-early October 2001, the Afghan government –through diplomatic channels– offered to hand over Osama Bin Laden to US Justice. These overtures were turned down by president Bush, on the grounds that America “does not negotiate with terrorists”.
The war on Afghanistan was launched 26 days later on the morning of October 7, 2001. The timing of this war begs the question: how long does it take to plan and implement a major theater war several thousand miles away. Military analysts will confirm that a major theater war takes months and months, up to a year or more of advanced preparations. The war on Afghanistan was already in the advanced planning stages prior to September 11, 2001, which begs the question of foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
The repeal of civil liberties in America was launched in parallel with the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan, almost immediately following 9/11 with the adoption of the PATRIOT legislation and the setting up of a Homeland Security apparatus, under the pretext of protecting Americans. This post-911 legal and institutional framework had been carefully crafted prior to the 9/11 attacks.
Controlled Demolition. The Collapse of the World Trade Center Buildings
Based on the findings of Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings was not caused by fire resulting from the crash of the planes:
In more than 100 steel-framed, high-rise fires (most of them very hot, very large and very long-lasting), not one has collapsed, ever. So it behooves all of us, as your own former chief of NIST’s Fire Science Division, Dr. James Quintiere, said, “to look at real alternatives that might have been the cause of these collapses.”
Fire cannot produce these effects. Fire produces large, gradual deformations and asymmetrical collapses. Thermate can produce all of these effects used in conjunction with linear shaped charges. If the thermate is formed into ultra-fine particles, as has been accomplished at Los Alamos National Laboratory, it is called super-thermate, and is very explosive.(Richard Gage, January 2008)
The following AE911Truth Video provides evidence that the WTC center towers were brought down through controlled demolition.
According to David Ray Griffin:
“The official theory of the collapse, therefore, is essentially a fire theory, so it cannot be emphasized too much that fire has never caused large steel-frame buildings to collapse—never, whether before 9/11, or after 9/11, or anywhere in the world on 9/11 except allegedly New York City—never.” See David Ray Griffin).
According to Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, based on solid scientific analysis and evidence, the collapse of the WTC towers was engineered through controlled demolition. While AE11Truth does not speculate on who might be behind the conspiracy to bring down the WTC buildings, they nonetheless suggest that the carrying out such an operation would require a carefully planned course of action with prior access to the buildings as well as an advanced level of expertise in the use of explosives, etc.
The Collapse of WTC Building Seven
The most grotesque lie pertains to the BBC and CNN announcement in the afternoon of September 11, that WTC Building Seven (The Solomon Building) had collapsed. The BBC report went live at 5.00pm, 21 minutes before the actual occurrence of the collapse, indelibly pointing to foreknowledge of the collapse of WTC 7. CNN anchor Aaron Brown announced that the building “has either collapsed or is collapsing” about an hour before the event.
CNN anchor Aaron Brown seems to struggle to make sense of what he is seeing one minute after announcing that WTC Building 7, whose erect facade is clearly visible in his view towards the Trade Center, has or is collapsing.
BBC journalist, september 11, 2001
Coverup and Complicity: War Propaganda
Fiction prevails over reality. For propaganda to be effective, public opinion must firmly endorse the official 9/11 narrative to the effect that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks. A well organized structure of media disinformation is required to reach this objective. Perpetuating the 9/11 Legend also requires defying as well as smearing the 9/11 Truth Movement.
Throughout the post 9/11 era, a panoply of Al Qaeda related events and circumstances is presented to public opinion on a daily basis. These include terrorist threats, warnings and attacks, police investigations, insurgencies and counter-insurgencies, country-level regime change, social conflict, sectarian violence, racism, religious divisions, Islamic thought, Western values, etc.
In turn, 9/11, Al Qaeda – War on Terrorism rhetoric permeates political discourse at all levels of government, including bipartisan debate on Capitol Hill, in committees of the House and the Senate, at the British House of Commons, and, lest we forget, at the United Nations Security Council.
September 11 and Al Qaeda concepts, repeated ad nauseam have potentially traumatic impacts on the human mind and the ability of normal human beings to analyze and comprehend the “real outside World” of war, politics and the economic crisis.
What is at stake is human consciousness and comprehension based on concepts and facts.
With September 11 there are no verifiable “facts” and “concepts”, because 9/11 as well as Al Qaeda have evolved into a media mythology, a legend, an invented ideological construct, used as an unsubtle tool of media disinformation and war propaganda.
Al Qaeda constitutes a stylized, fake and almost folkloric abstraction of terrorism, which permeates the inner consciousness of millions of people around the World.
Reference to Al Qaeda has become a dogma, a belief, which most people espouse unconditionally.
Is this political indoctrination? Is it brain-washing? If so what is the underlying objective?
People’s capacity to independently analyse World events, as well as address causal relationships pertaining to politics and society, is significantly impaired. That is the objective!
The routine use of 9/11 and Al Qaeda to generate blanket explanations of complex political events is meant to create confusion. It prevents people from thinking.
All of these complex Al Qaeda related occurrences are explained –by politicians, the corporate media, Hollywood and the Washington think tanks under a single blanket “bad guys” heading, in which Al Qaeda is casually and repeatedly pinpointed as “the cause” of numerous terror events around the World.
2. Flashback to the Soviet Afghan War
The 9/11 events constitute the culmination of a long history going back to the Soviet Afghan war (1979-1989) and NATO wars on Yugoslavia (1991-2001)
“The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings….The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..”, (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)
“Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the [Islamic] Jihad.” (Pervez Hoodbhoy, Peace Research, 1 May 2005)
“Bin Laden recruited 4,000 volunteers from his own country and developed close relations with the most radical mujahideen leaders. He also worked closely with the CIA, … Since September 11, [2001] CIA officials have been claiming they had no direct link to bin Laden.” (Phil Gasper, International Socialist Review, November-December 2001)
History of Al Qaeda
-Osama bin Laden, America’s bogyman, was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihad. He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.
-The architects of the covert operation in support of “Islamic fundamentalism” launched during the Reagan presidency played a key role in launching the “Global War on Terrorism” in the wake of 9/11.
– President Ronald Reagan met the leaders of the Islamic Jihad at the White House in 1985
-Under the Reagan adminstration, US foreign policy evolved towards the unconditional support and endorsement of the Islamic “freedom fighters”. In today’s World, the “freedom fighters” are labelled “Islamic terrorists”.
-In the Pashtun language, the word “Taliban” means “Students”, or graduates of the madrasahs (places of learning or coranic schools) set up by the Wahhabi missions from Saudi Arabia, with the support of the CIA.
-Education in Afghanistan in the years preceding the Soviet-Afghan war was largely secular. The US covert education destroyed secular education. The number of CIA sponsored religious schools (madrasahs) increased from 2,500 in 1980 to over 39,000.
The Soviet-Afghan war was part of a CIA covert agenda initiated during the Carter administration, which consisted in actively supporting and financing the Islamic brigades, later known as Al Qaeda.
The Pakistani military regime played from the outset in the late 1970s, a key role in the US sponsored military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan. In the post-Cold war era, this central role of Pakistan in US intelligence operations was extended to the broader Central Asia- Middle East region. From the outset of the Soviet Afghan war in 1979, Pakistan under military rule actively supported the Islamic brigades. In close liaison with the CIA, Pakistan’s military intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), became a powerful organization, a parallel government, wielding tremendous power and influence.
America’s covert war in Afghanistan, using Pakistan as a launch pad, was initiated during the Carter administration prior to the Soviet “invasion”:
“According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.” (Former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 January 1998)
In the published memoirs of Defense Secretary Robert Gates , who held the position of deputy CIA Director at the height of the Soviet Afghan war, US intelligence was directly involved from the outset, prior to the Soviet invasion, in channeling aid to the Islamic brigades.
With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of U.S. military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a “parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government”. (Dipankar Banerjee, “Possible Connection of ISI With Drug Industry”, India Abroad, 2 December 1994). The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated at 150,000. (Ibid)
Meanwhile, CIA operations had also reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia Ul Haq:
“Relations between the CIA and the ISI had grown increasingly warm following [General] Zia’s ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the military regime. … During most of the Afghan war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Zia [ul Haq] sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in October 1984.” (Ibid)
The ISI operating virtually as an affiliate of the CIA, played a central role in channeling support to Islamic paramilitary groups in Afghanistan and subsequently in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union.
Acting on behalf of the CIA, the ISI was also involved in the recruitment and training of the Mujahideen. In the ten year period from 1982 to 1992, some 35,000 Muslims from 43 Islamic countries were recruited to fight in the Afghan jihad. The madrassas in Pakistan, financed by Saudi charities, were also set up with US support with a view to “inculcating Islamic values”. “The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism,” (Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban). Guerilla training under CIA-ISI auspices included targeted assassinations and car bomb attacks.
“Weapons’ shipments “were sent by the Pakistani army and the ISI to rebel camps in the North West Frontier Province near the Afghanistan border. The governor of the province is Lieutenant General Fazle Haq, who [according to Alfred McCoy] . allowed “hundreds of heroin refineries to set up in his province.” Beginning around 1982, Pakistani army trucks carrying CIA weapons from Karachi often pick up heroin in Haq’s province and return loaded with heroin. They are protected from police search by ISI papers.”(1982-1989: US Turns Blind Eye to BCCI and Pakistani Government Involvement in Heroin Trade See also McCoy, 2003, p. 477) .
Front row, from left: Major Gen. Hamid Gul, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Willian Webster; Deputy Director for Operations Clair George; an ISI colonel; and senior CIA official, Milt Bearden at a mujahedeen training camp in North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1987. (source RAWA)
Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden, America’s bogyman, was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihad. He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.
During the Reagan administration, Osama, who belonged to the wealthy Saudi Bin Laden family was put in charge of raising money for the Islamic brigades. Numerous charities and foundations were created. The operation was coordinated by Saudi intelligence, headed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, in close liaison with the CIA. The money derived from the various charities were used to finance the recruitment of Mujahieen volunteers. Al Qaeda, the base in Arabic was a data bank of volunteers who had enlisted to fight in the Afghan jihad. That data base was initially held by Osama bin Laden.
The Reagan Administration supports “Islamic Fundamentalism”
Pakistan’s ISI was used as a “go-between”. CIA covert support to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan operated indirectly through the Pakistani ISI, –i.e. the CIA did not channel its support directly to the Mujahideen. In other words, for these covert operations to be “successful”, Washington was careful not to reveal the ultimate objective of the “jihad”, which consisted in destroying the Soviet Union.
In December 1984, the Sharia Law (Islamic jurisprudence) was established in Pakistan following a rigged referendum launched by President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Barely a few months later, in March 1985, President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 166 (NSDD 166), which authorized “stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen” as well a support to religious indoctrination.
The imposition of The Sharia in Pakistan and the promotion of “radical Islam” was a deliberate US policy serving American geopolitical interests in South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Many present-day “Islamic fundamentalist organizations” in the Middle East and Central Asia, were directly or indirectly the product of US covert support and financing, often channeled through foundations from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Missions from the Wahhabi sect of conservative Islam in Saudi Arabia were put in charge of running the CIA sponsored madrassas in Northern Pakistan.
Under NSDD 166, a series of covert CIA-ISI operations was launched.
The US supplied weapons to the Islamic brigades through the ISI. CIA and ISI officials would meet at ISI headquarters in Rawalpindi to coordinate US support to the Mujahideen. Under NSDD 166, the procurement of US weapons to the Islamic insurgents increased from 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983 to 65,000 tons annually by 1987. “In addition to arms, training, extensive military equipment including military satellite maps and state-of-the-art communications equipment” (University Wire, 7 May 2002).
Ronald Reagan meets Afghan Mujahideen Commanders at the White House in 1985 (Reagan Archives)
VIDEO (30 Sec.)
With William Casey as director of the CIA, NSDD 166 was described as the largest covert operation in US history:
The U.S. supplied support package had three essential components-organization and logistics, military technology, and ideological support for sustaining and encouraging the Afghan resistance….
U.S. counterinsurgency experts worked closely with the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in organizing Mujahideen groups and in planning operations inside Afghanistan.
… But the most important contribution of the U.S. was to … bring in men and material from around the Arab world and beyond. The most hardened and ideologically dedicated men were sought on the logic that they would be the best fighters. Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the Jihad. (Pervez Hoodbhoy, Afghanistan and the Genesis of the Global Jihad, Peace Research, 1 May 2005)
Religious Indoctrination
Under NSDD 166, US assistance to the Islamic brigades channeled through Pakistan was not limited to bona fide military aid. Washington also supported and financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the process of religious indoctrination, largely to secure the demise of secular institutions:
… the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..
The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books “are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy.” Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.
… AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.
“It’s not AID’s policy to support religious instruction,” Stratos said. “But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity.”
… Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtun, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska -Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $ 51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.” (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)
In the 1970s and 1980s, Afghanistan was an advanced secular society
Kabul University 1980s
In the 1980s, Kabul was:
“a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture, engineering and business at the city’s university. Afghan women held government jobs.”
There were female members of parliament, and women drove cars, and travelled and went on dates, without needing to ask a male guardian for permission.
Visibly, the US led War’s objective was to Destroy and entire country.
The Role of the NeoCons
There is continuity. The architects of the covert operation in support of “Islamic fundamentalism” launched during the Reagan presidency played a key role in launching the “Global War on Terrorism” in the wake of 9/11.
Several of the NeoCons of the Bush Junior Administration were high ranking officials during the Reagan presidency.
Richard Armitage, was Deputy Secretary of State during George W. Bush’s first term (2001-2004). He played a central key role in post 9/11 negotiations with Pakistan leading up to the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. During the Reagan era, he held the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. In this capacity, he played a key role in the implementation of NSDD 163 while also ensuring liaison with the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus.
Richard Armitage
Meanwhile, Paul Wolfowitz was at the State Department in charge of a foreign policy team composed, among others, of Lewis Libby, Francis Fukuyama and Zalmay Khalilzad.
Wolfowitz’s group was also involved in laying the conceptual groundwork of US covert support to Islamic parties and organizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Paul Wolfowitz
Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, who now serves the Obama administration, was also involved in setting the groundwork for CIA covert operations. He was appointed Deputy Director for Intelligence by Ronald Reagan in 1982, and Deputy Director of the CIA in 1986, a position which he held until 1989. Gates played a key role in the formulation of NSDD 163, which established a consistent framework for promoting Islamic fundamentalism and channeling covert support to the Islamic brigades. He was also involved in the Iran Contra scandal. .
The Iran Contra Operation
Richard Gates, Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, among others, were also involved in the Iran-Contra operation.
Armitage was in close liaison with Colonel Oliver North. His deputy and chief anti-terrorist official Noel Koch was part of the team set up by Oliver North.
Of significance, the Iran-Contra operation was also tied into the process of channeling covert support to the Islamic brigades in Afghanistan. The Iran Contra scheme served several related foreign policy:
1) Procurement of weapons to Iran thereby feeding the Iraq-Iran war,
2) Support to the Nicaraguan Contras,
3) Support to the Islamic brigades in Afghanistan, channeled via Pakistan’s ISI.
Following the delivery of the TOW anti-tank missiles to Iran, the proceeds of these sales were deposited in numbered bank accounts and the money was used to finance the Nicaraguan Contras. and the Mujahideen:
“The Washington Post reported that profits from the Iran arms sales were deposited in one CIA-managed account into which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had placed $250 million apiece. That money was disbursed not only to the contras in Central America but to the rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan.” (US News & World Report, 15 December 1986).
Although Lieutenant General Colin Powell, was not directly involved in the arms’ transfer negotiations, which had been entrusted to Oliver North, he was among “at least five men within the Pentagon who knew arms were being transferred to the CIA.” (The Record, 29 December 1986). In this regard, Powell was directly instrumental in giving the “green light” to lower-level officials in blatant violation of Congressional procedures. According to the New York Times, Colin Powell took the decision (at the level of military procurement), to allow the delivery of weapons to Iran:
“Hurriedly, one of the men closest to Secretary of Defense Weinberger, Maj. Gen. Colin Powell, bypassed the written ”focal point system” procedures and ordered the Defense Logistics Agency [responsible for procurement] to turn over the first of 2,008 TOW missiles to the CIA., which acted as cutout for delivery to Iran” (New York Times, 16 February 1987)
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was also implicated in the Iran-Contra Affair.
The Golden Crescent Drug Trade
The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA’s covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. (Alfred McCoy, Drug Fallout: the CIA’s Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive, 1 August 1997).
Alfred McCoy’s study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, “the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world’s top heroin producer.” (Ibid) Various Islamic paramilitary groups and organizations were created. The proceeds of the Afghan drug trade, which was protected by the CIA, were used to finance the various insurgencies:
“Under CIA and Pakistani protection, Pakistan military and Afghan resistance opened heroin labs on the Afghan and Pakistani border. According to The Washington Post of May 1990, among the leading heroin manufacturers were Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan leader who received about half of the covert arms that the U.S. shipped to Pakistan. Although there were complaints about Hekmatyar’s brutality and drug trafficking within the ranks of the Afghan resistance of the day, the CIA maintained an uncritical alliance and supported him without reservation or restraint.
Once the heroin left these labs in Pakistan’s northwest frontier, the Sicilian Mafia imported the drugs into the U.S., where they soon captured sixty percent of the U.S. heroin market. That is to say, sixty percent of the U.S. heroin supply came indirectly from a CIA operation. During the decade of this operation, the 1980s, the substantial DEA contingent in Islamabad made no arrests and participated in no seizures, allowing the syndicates a de facto free hand to export heroin. By contrast, a lone Norwegian detective, following a heroin deal from Oslo to Karachi, mounted an investigation that put a powerful Pakistani banker known as President Zia’s surrogate son behind bars. The DEA in Islamabad got nobody, did nothing, stayed away.
Lucrative Narcotics Trade in the Post Cold War Era
The drug trade has continued unabated during the post Cold war years. Afghanistan became the major supplier of heroin to Western markets, in fact almost the sole supplier: more than 90 percent of the heroin sold Worldwide originates in Afghanistan. This lucrative contraband is tied into Pakistani politics and the militarization of the Pakistani State. It also has a direct bearing on the structure of the Pakistani economy and its banking and financial institutions, which from the outset of the Golden Crescent drug trade have been involved in extensive money laundering operations, which are protected by the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus:
According to the US State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (2006) (quoted in Daily Times, 2 March 2006),
“Pakistani criminal networks play a central role in the transshipment of narcotics and smuggled goods from Afghanistan to international markets. Pakistan is a major drug-transit country. The proceeds of narcotics trafficking and funding for terrorist activities are often laundered by means of the alternative system called hawala. … .
“Repeatedly, a network of private unregulated charities has also emerged as a significant source of illicit funds for international terrorist networks,” the report pointed out. … “
The hawala system and the charities are but the tip of the iceberg. According to the State Department report, “the State Bank of Pakistan has frozen more twenty years] a meager $10.5 million “belonging to 12 entities and individuals linked to Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda or the Taliban”. What the report fails to mention is that the bulk of the proceeds of the Afghan drug trade are laundered in bona fide Western banking institutions.
The Taliban Repress the Drug Trade
A major and unexpected turnaround in the CIA sponsored drug trade occurred in 2000.
The Taliban government which came to power in 1996 with Washington’s support, implemented in 2000-2001 a far-reaching opium eradication program with the support of the United Nations which served to undermine a multibillion dollar trade. (For further details see, Michel Chossudovsky, America’s War on Terrorism, Global Research, 2005).
In 2001 prior to the US-led invasion, opium production under the Taliban eradication program declined by more than 90 percent. (see graph above)
In the immediate wake of the US led invasion, the Bush administration ordered that the opium harvest not be destroyed on the fabricated pretext that this would undermine the military government of Pervez Musharraf.
“Several sources inside Capitol Hill noted that the CIA opposes the destruction of the Afghan opium supply because to do so might destabilize the Pakistani government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. According to these sources, Pakistani intelligence had threatened to overthrow President Musharraf if the crops were destroyed. …
‘If they [the CIA] are in fact opposing the destruction of the Afghan opium trade, it’ll only serve to perpetuate the belief that the CIA is an agency devoid of morals; off on their own program rather than that of our constitutionally elected government’” .(NewsMax.com, 28 March 2002)
Since the US led invasion, opium production has increased from 185 tons in 2001 under the Taliban to 9000 tons in 2017. Cultivated areas have increased more than 20 fold since the 2001 US-led invasion. (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 6 January 2006)
In 2007, Afghanistan supplied approximately 93% of the global supply of heroin. The proceeds (in terms of retail value) of the Afghanistan drug trade are estimated (2017) to be in excess of 700 billion dollars a year, representing a significant fraction of the global trade in narcotics.
The proceeds of this lucrative multibillion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of the revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan.
The laundering of drug money constitutes a multibillion dollar activity, which continues to be protected by the CIA and the ISI. In the wake of the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan.
In retrospect, one of the major objectives of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was to restore the drug trade.
The militarization of Pakistan serves powerful political, financial and criminal interests underlying the drug trade. US foreign policy tends to support these powerful interests. The CIA continues to protect the Golden Crescent narcotics trade. Despite his commitment to eradicating the drug trade, opium production under the regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has skyrocketed.
3. Bosnia-Gate
The Destruction of Yugoslavia
Known and documented, since the Soviet-Afghan war, recruiting Mujahideen (“holy warriors”) to fight covert wars on Washington’s behest has become an integral part of US foreign policy.
A 1997 Congressional document by the Republican Party Committee (RPC), while intent upon smearing President Bill Clinton, nonetheless sheds light on the Clinton administration’s insidious role in recruiting and training jihadist mercenaries with a view to transforming Bosnia into a “Militant Islamic Base”.
In many regards, Bosnia and Kosovo (1998-1999) were “dress rehearsals” for the destabilization of the Middle East (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen).
With regard to Syria, the recruitment of jihadists (according to Israeli intelligence sources) was launched prior to 2011 under the auspices of NATO and the Turkish High command in liaison with the Pentagon.
The RCP report reveals how the US administration – under advice from Clinton’s National Security Council headed by Anthony Lake – “helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base” leading to the recruitment through the so-called “Militant Islamic Network,” of thousands of Mujahideen from the Muslim world:
Perhaps most threatening to the SFOR mission – and more importantly, to the safety of the American personnel serving in Bosnia – is the unwillingness of the Clinton Administration to come clean with the Congress and with the American people about its complicity in the delivery of weapons from Iran to the Muslim government in Sarajevo. That policy, personally approved by Bill Clinton in April 1994 at the urging of CIA Director-designate (and then-NSC chief) Anthony Lake and the U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, has, according to the Los Angeles Times (citing classified intelligence community sources), “played a central role in the dramatic increase in Iranian influence in Bosnia.
(…)
Along with the weapons, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and VEVAK intelligence operatives entered Bosnia in large numbers, along with thousands of mujahedin (“holy warriors”) from across the Muslim world. Also engaged in the effort were several other Muslim countries (including Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Turkey) and a number of radical Muslim organizations.
For example, the role of one Sudan-based “humanitarian organization,” called the Third World Relief Agency, has been well documented. The Clinton Administration’s “hands-on” involvement with the Islamic network’s arms pipeline included inspections of missiles from Iran by U.S. government officials… the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), a Sudan-based, phoney humanitarian organization … has been a major link in the arms pipeline to Bosnia. … TWRA is believed to be connected with such fixtures of the Islamic terror network as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and Osama Bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi émigré believed to bankroll numerous militant groups. [Washington Post, 9/22/96] emphasis added
The Republican Party Committee report quoting official documents as well as US media sources confirmed unequivocally the complicity of the Clinton Administration with several Islamic fundamentalist organisations including Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda.
What was the ultimate purpose of this report?
The Republicans wanted at the time to undermine the Clinton Administration. However, at a time when the entire country had its eyes riveted on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Republicans no doubt chose not to trigger an untimely “Iran-Bosniagate” affair, which might have unduly diverted public attention away from the Lewinsky scandal.
The Republicans wanted to impeach Bill Clinton “for having lied to the American People” regarding his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the more substantive “foreign policy lies” regarding covert operations involving the recruitment of “Jihadists” in the Balkans, Democrats and Republicans agreed in unison, no doubt pressured by the Pentagon and the CIA not to “spill the beans”. Clinton’s support of “jihadist” terrorist organizations in Bosnia and Kosovo was a continuation of the CIA sponsored recruitment of Mujahideen implemented throughout the 1980s in Afghanistan, under the helm of the CIA.
From Bosnia to Kosovo 1999
The “Bosnian pattern” described in the 1997 Congressional RPC report was then replicated in Kosovo. Among the foreign mercenaries fighting in Kosovo (and Macedonia in 2001) were Mujahideen from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union as well as “soldiers of fortune” from several NATO countries including Britain, Holland and Germany.
Confirmed by British military sources, the task of arming and training of the KLA had been entrusted in 1998 to the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Services MI6, together with “former and serving members of 22 SAS [Britain’s 22nd Special Air Services Regiment], as well as three British and American private security companies”. (The Scotsman, Glasgow, 29 August 1999)
The US DIA approached MI6 to arrange a training programme for the KLA, said a senior British military source. `MI6 then sub-contracted the operation to two British security companies, who in turn approached a number of former members of the (22 SAS) regiment. Lists were then drawn up of weapons and equipment needed by the KLA.’ While these covert operations were continuing, serving members of 22 SAS Regiment, mostly from the unit’s D Squadron, were first deployed in Kosovo before the beginning of the bombing campaign in March. (ibid)
While British SAS Special Forces in bases in Northern Albania were training the KLA, military instructors from Turkey and Afghanistan financed by the “Islamic jihad” were collaborating in training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics. (Truth in Media, April 2, 1999)
Bin Laden had visited Albania himself. He was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo, … Bin Laden is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994 … Albanian sources say Sali Berisha, who was then president, had links with some groups that later proved to be extreme fundamentalists. (Sunday Times, London, 29 November 1998, emphasis added).
Congressional Testimonies on KLA-Osama links
According to Frank Ciluffo of the Globalized Organised Crime Program, in a testimony presented to the House of Representatives Judicial Committee:
What was largely hidden from public view was the fact that the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the “Balkan Route” that links the “Golden Crescent” of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated $400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined for Europe. 11
According to Ralf Mutschke of Interpol’s Criminal Intelligence division also in a testimony to the House Judicial Committee:
The U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden” . Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Jihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict. 12
Madeleine Albright Covets the KLA
These KLA links to international terrorism and organised crime documented by the US Congress were totally ignored by the Clinton Administration. In fact, in the months preceding the bombing of Yugoslavia, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was busy building a “political legitimacy” for the KLA. The paramilitary army had –from one day to the next– been elevated to the status of a bona fide “democratic” force in Kosovo. In turn, Madeleine Albright has forced the pace of international diplomacy: the KLA had been spearheaded into playing a central role in the failed “peace negotiations” at Rambouiillet in early 1999.
Albright and KLA leader Hashim Thaci
The Senate and the House tacitly endorse State Terrorism
While the various Congressional reports confirmed that the US government had been working hand in glove with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, this did not prevent the Clinton and later the Bush Administration from arming and equipping the KLA. The Congressional documents also confirm that members of the Senate and the House knew the relationship of the Administration to international terrorism. To quote the statement of Rep. John Kasich of the House Armed Services Committee: “We connected ourselves [in 1998-99] with the KLA, which was the staging point for bin Laden…”
In the wake of the tragic events of September 11, Republicans and Democrats in unison have given their full support to the President to “wage war on Osama”.
In 1999, Senator Jo Lieberman had stated authoritatively that “Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.” In the hours following the October 7 missile attacks on Afghanistan, the same Jo Lieberman called for punitive air strikes against Iraq: “We’re in a war against terrorism… We can’t stop with bin Laden and the Taliban.” Yet Senator Jo Lieberman, as member of the Armed Services Committee of the Senate had access to all the Congressional documents pertaining to “KLA-Osama” links. In making this statement, he was fully aware that that agencies of the US government as well as NATO were supporting international terrorism.
The War in Macedonia
In the wake of the 1999 war in Yugoslavia, the terrorist activities of the KLA were extended into Southern Serbia and Macedonia. Meanwhile, the KLA –renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC)– was elevated to United Nations status, implying the granting of “legitimate” sources of funding through United Nations as well as through bilateral channels, including direct US military aid.
And barely two months after the official inauguration of the KPC under UN auspices (September 1999), KPC-KLA commanders – using UN resources and equipment – were already preparing the assaults into Macedonia, as a logical follow-up to their terrorist activities in Kosovo. According to the Skopje daily Dnevnik, the KPC had established a “sixth operation zone” in Southern Serbia and Macedonia:
Sources, who insist on anonymity, claim that the headquarters of the Kosovo protection brigades [i.e. linked to the UN sponsored KPC] have [March 2000] already been formed in Tetovo, Gostivar and Skopje. They are being prepared in Debar and Struga [on the border with Albania] as well, and their members have defined codes. 14
According to the BBC, “Western special forces were still training the guerrillas” meaning that they were assisting the KLA in opening up “a sixth operation zone” in Southern Serbia and Macedonia. 15
“The Islamic Militant Network” and NATO join hands in Macedonia
Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting in Macedonia (October 2001) in the ranks of self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), are Mujahideen from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also within the KLA’s proxy force in Macedonia are senior US military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon as well as “soldiers of fortune” from Britain, Holland and Germany. Some of these Western mercenaries had previously fought with the KLA and the Bosnian Muslim Army.
Extensively documented by the Macedonian press and statements of the Macedonian authorities, the US government and the “Islamic Militant Network” are working hand in glove in supporting and financing the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia. The NLA is a proxy of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In turn the KLA and the UN sponsored Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) are identical institutions with the same commanders and military personnel. KPC Commanders on UN salaries are fighting in the NLA together with the Mujahideen.
In a bitter twist, while supported and financed by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, the KLA-NLA is also supported by NATO and the United Nations mission to Kosovo (UNMIK). In fact, the “Islamic Militant Network” –also using Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) as the CIA’s go-between– still constitutes an integral part of Washington’s covert military-intelligence operations in Macedonia and Southern Serbia.
The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded from US military aid, the United Nations peace-keeping budget as well as by several Islamic organisations including Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. Drug money is also being used to finance the terrorists with the complicity of the US government. The recruitment of Mujahideen to fight in the ranks of the NLA in Macedonia is implemented through various Islamic groups.
US military advisers mingle with Mujahideen within the same paramilitary force, Western mercenaries from NATO countries fight alongside Mujahideen recruited in the Middle East and Central Asia. And the US media calls this a “blowback” where so-called “intelligence assets” have gone against their sponsors!
But this did not happen during the Cold war! It is happening right now in Macedonia. And it is confirmed by numerous press reports, eyewitness accounts, photographic evidence as well as official statements by the Macedonian Prime Minister, who has accused the Western military alliance of supporting the terrorists. Moreover, the official Macedonian New Agency (MIA) has pointed to the complicity between Washington’s envoy Ambassador James Pardew and the NLA terrorists. 17 In other words, the so-called “intelligence assets” are still serving the interests of their US sponsors.
Pardew’s background is revealing in this regard. He started his Balkans career in 1993 as a senior intelligence officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for channeling US aid to the Bosnian Muslim Army. Coronel Pardew had been put in charge of arranging the “air-drops” of supplies to Bosnian forces. At the time, these “air drops” were tagged as “civilian aid”. It later transpired –confirmed by the RPC Congressional report– that the US had violated the arms embargo. And James Pardew played an important role as part of the team of intelligence officials working closely with the Chairman of the National Security Council Anthony Lake.
Pardew was later involved in the Dayton negotiations (1995) on behalf of the US Defence Department. In 1999, prior to the bombing of Yugoslavia, he was appointed “Special Representative for Military Stabilisation and Kosovo Implementation” by President Clinton. One of his tasks was to channel support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which at the time was also being supported by Osama bin Laden. Pardew was in this regard instrumental in replicating the “Bosnian pattern” in Kosovo and subsequently in Macedonia…
4. ISIS-Daesh:
America’s Fake Counter-terrorism Operation
against Syria and Iraq (2011-
Washington is behind the Islamic State (ISIS-ISIL-Daesh) and at the same time it is behind the moderate Al Qaeda terrorists, which the Trump administration is supporting as part of America’s alleged campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS). And they expect us to believe that they are committed to waging a campaign against terrorists.
The US has been protecting both Al Qaeda and ISIS-ISIL-Daesh.
The US Airforce has consistently acted on behalf of the terrorists, bombing Syrian government forces
The Islamic State (ISIS) was until 2014 called Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
Al Nusra is an al Qaeda affiliate which has committed countless atrocities in Syria. It is considered by the US administration as the “Moderate Opposition”, fighting against Syrian government forces.
America’s “anti-terrorist campaign’ consisted in supporting a so-called “moderate” Al Qaeda entity (Al Nusra, now renamed) with a view to going after another al Qaeda entity entitled , formerly designated as Al Qaeda in Iraq.
“Al Qaeda is going after Al Qaeda”, and both wings of al Qaeda are supported covertly by US intelligence.
The terrorists are described as the victims of Syrian government aggression. From the very outset, the atrocities committed by the terrorists are casually blamed on Syrian government forces.
Moreover, the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels responsible for countless atrocities are trained and financed by US-NATO and its allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel.
Those who recruited, trained and financed the terrorists are upheld by the “international community” as the guardians of World Peace. The latter include the heads of state and heads of government of the US, Britain, France and Turkey among others. It’s called “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).
Turkey provided a corridor for the terrorists into Northern Syria, they recruited and trained them in liaison with NATO.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar provided money, training and weapons to Al Qaeda.
The Obama administration ordered an air campaign directed against the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh).
What the US-led coalition was doing was PROTECTING ISIS-DAESH, while bombing the civilian infrastructure of Syria and Iraq as part of a so-called “counterterrorism operation”.
The Terrorists R Us….
The mainstream media applauds, The Lie becomes the Truth.
It’s official: Obama’s counterterrorism campaign requires upholding Al Qaeda as a “moderate opposition.”
It was all for a good cause: install a puppet Islamic State in Damascus (modelled on Afghanistan), spread “Democracy Made in America” throughout the Middle East, confiscate the regions extensive oil and gas reserves, transform countries into open territories…
The diabolical plan of sending terrorists into Syria as the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance has failed.
And now Trump has decided to repatriate all remaining US troops.
“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there,” said Trump in his tweet.
The US-led counter-terrorism campaign against ISIS is “fake”, i.e. it provided a pretext to bomb and invade Syria. The U.S. did not defeat ISIS-Daesh. It was the Syrian Arab Army, aided by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah which waged the campaign against ISIS-Daesh
.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a creation of US intelligence. Washington’s “Counter-terrorism Agenda” in Iraq and Syria consists in Supporting the Terrorists.
The incursion of the Islamic State (IS) brigades into Iraq starting in June 2014 was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation supported covertly by the US, NATO and Israel.
The counter-terrorism mandate is a fiction. America is the Number One “State Sponsor of Terrorism”
The Islamic State is protected by the US and its allies.
If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June.
\
The Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map below). With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, CF-18) it would have been -from a military standpoint- a rapid and expedient surgical operation
It could not have been undertaken without the unbending support of the Western media which has upheld Obama’s initiative as a counter-terrorism operation.
The Islamic State (ISIL) was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-’Āmah ( رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة). The ISIL brigades were involved in the US-NATO supported insurgency in Syria directed against the government of Bashar al Assad.
NATO and the Turkish High Command were responsible for the recruitment of ISIL and Al Nusrah mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011. According to Israeli intelligence sources, this initiative consisted in:
“a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011.)
There are Western Special Forces and Western intelligence operatives within the ranks of the ISIL. British Special Forces and MI6 have been involved in training jihadist rebels in Syria.
Western military specialists on contract to the Pentagon have trained the terrorists in the use of chemical weapons.
“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)
The ISIL’s practice of beheadings is part of the US sponsored terrorist training programs implemented in Saudi Arabia.
Jihadist fighters have met Israeli IDF officers as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu. The IDF top brass tacitly acknowledges that “global jihad elements inside Syria” [ISIL and Al Nusrah] are supported by Israel. See image below:
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon next to a wounded mercenary, Israeli military field hospital at the occupied Golan Heights’ border with Syria, 18 February 2014″
The ISIL are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance.
Their unspoken mandate is to wreck havoc and destruction in Syria and Iraq, acting on behalf of their US sponsors.
The late US Senator John McCain met up with jihadist terrorist leaders in Syria. (see picture right)
The Islamic State (IS) militia, which was the alleged target of a US-NATO bombing campaign under a “counter-terrorism” mandate, continues to be supported covertly by the US. Washington and its allies continue to provide military aid to the Islamic State.
US and allied bombings are not targeting the ISIL, they are bombing the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria including factories and oil refineries.
The IS caliphate project is part of a longstanding US foreign policy agenda to carve up Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan.
5. Escalation: The Globalization of the “War on Terrorism”
U.S. sponsored Al Qaeda terror brigades (covertly supported by Western intelligence) have been deployed in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen, extending into South East Asia and China.
These various affiliated Al Qaeda entities in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are CIA sponsored “intelligence assets”. They are used by Washington to wreck havoc, create internal conflicts and destabilize sovereign countries.
The US is also supporting Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region of China. The underlying objective is to trigger political instability in Western China.
The homegrown terrorist threat is a fabrication. It is promoted by Western governments and the media with a view to repealing civil liberties and installing a police state.
The terror attacks by alleged jihadists and terror warnings are invariably staged events. They are used to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.
In turn, the arrests, trials and sentences of “Islamic terrorists” sustain the legitimacy of America’s Homeland Security State and law enforcement apparatus, which has become increasingly militarized.
The ultimate objective is to instill in the minds of millions of Americans that the enemy is real and the U.S. Administration will protect the lives of its citizens.
The “counter-terrorism” campaign against the Islamic State has contributed to the demonization of Muslims, who in the eyes of Western public opinion are increasingly associated with the “jihadists”.
Anybody who dares to question the validity of the “Global War on Terrorism” is branded a terrorist and subjected to the anti-terrorist laws.
The ultimate objective of the “Global War on Terrorism” is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the inquisitorial social order which rules America.
The US Administration has imposed a diabolical consensus with the support of its allies, not to mention the complicit role of the United Nations Security Council. The Western media has embraced the consensus; it has described the Islamic State as an independent entity, an outside enemy which threatens the Western World.
The Big Lie has become the Truth. Say no to the “Big Lie”. Spread the message. The truth is ultimately a powerful weapon.
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.
In the first video, Pastor Henry Hildebrandt of the Church of God, in Aylmer, ON., decries the government’s infringement of Canadians’ Constitutionally-enshrined freedoms to assemble and to worship.
He sees the government-imposed COVID measures as a form of social conditioning.
In the second video, Christy from Bobcaygeon reminds us that Canada’s preeminent Sick Kids Hospital advises against masking and social distancing. She says that her kids will have to wear a mask all day at school, and that it will negatively impact their health. The COVID measures will traumatize her kids, she says, and it will be like they are “in prison”.
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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.
Featured image is from the author
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
On 30 August 1945, Major General Lauris Norstad dispatched a document to his superior, General Leslie Groves, outlining a total of 15 “key Soviet cities” to be struck with US atomic weapons, headed by the capital Moscow. This was followed by another 25 “leading Soviet cities” listed for annihilation, topping this latter group was Leningrad, almost destroyed during the Nazi siege finally lifted in late January 1944.
The above nuclear plans were being composed three days before the Second World War had even officially concluded (on 2 September 1945), and a mere two weeks following Japan’s surrender.
These initiatives, targeting the USSR for destruction, were actually developing at least as early as March 1944, at a time when Moscow was a vital wartime ally. Due to ongoing Soviet intelligence reports, Stalin was privy to America’s nuclear project most certainly by April 1942, but quite likely earlier.
Meanwhile, Japan’s political leaders were compelled to surrender on 15 August 1945, after the US military threatened to drop more atomic weapons over the country. This would have just been feasible, with the Pentagon holding a further two atomic bombs in its stockpile during the latter part of 1945.
In the days stretching beyond late August 1945, Groves’ and Norstad’s schemes of ruin were enlarging. On 15 September 1945, a highly classified document relating to their plan expounded in stark tones that,
“The immediate destruction of the enemy’s will [USSR] and capacity to resist is the primary objective of the United States Army Strategic Air Forces”, to be focused upon “the enemy centers of industry, transportation and population”.
That same day, 15 September 1945, Groves and Norstad estimated that over five dozen Soviet metropolises, 66 altogether, should be obliterated with 204 atomic bombs – a “revolutionary” weapon which was “spectacularly successful” in desolating Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was calculated that these 66 cities held 100% of the Soviet Union’s aluminium production, 97% of its tanks, 95% of its aircraft, 95% of its oil refining capacity, etc.
This declassified material – virtually ignored by commercial media and largely avoided by alternative news – is of particularly high importance, as it blows apart the long-purported myths that the so-called Cold War began in 1947. It further debunks claims that resumption of hostilities was due to Soviet antagonism.
A top secret Pentagon document, once more dated 15 September 1945, outlined explicitly that,
“the destruction of the Russian capability to wage war has therefore been used as a basis upon which to predicate the United States’ atomic bomb requirements”.
Ever eastwards, more than 20 cities in Soviet-occupied Manchuria were also “investigated” for atomic attacks, but it was eventually decided this resource-rich region “is not an integral part of the USSR”.
America’s atomic arsenal unleashed over the Soviet Union would, preferably, be delivered by the upcoming B-36 “Peacemaker” six-engine bomber, with its remarkable 230 foot wingspan – and not, as thought, with the smaller B-29 “Superfortress” aircraft, fresh from discharging two bombs over Japan.
The B-29’s roaming capacity was that of more than 5,000 miles without refuelling, but even this impressive distance had its limitations for what was now envisaged. By comparison, the B-36 boasted a flying range of 10,000 miles.
The B-36 could in fact fly from Washington to Moscow, drop its terrible load, and subsequently return to the American capital without having stopped once there or back (combined distance 9,700 miles). This feat would also have been achievable for the B-36 regarding other Soviet cities such as Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov, and so on. Yet the B-36 would not be available for such operations until finally entering service during mid-1948, and even after that the aircraft necessitated further adjustment.
Failing the proposed deployment of 204 atomic bombs, a “minimum requirement” of 123 atomic weapons was contemplated, while at the opposite end of the spectrum an “optimum requirement” constituted an eye-watering 466 bombs.
In September 1945 the “minimum requirement” of 123 bombs was not realistic, let alone the 466 figure, and indeed the latter number was then not seriously considered. By June 1948, America’s nuclear cache still consisted of a modest 50 atomic weapons. Moscow was now to be struck with eight bombs, Leningrad with seven.
From mid-1948, America’s atomic numbers ballooned as the age of “nuclear plenty” was born. By the summer of 1949, Washington had the required 200-plus atomic bombs so as to deliver their Soviet apocalypse.
Yet Russia, recognizing the threat facing their state, had feverishly been constructing their own nuclear weapons. Just as the US arsenal was approaching requisite size, in August 1949 the Soviets detonated an atomic device over Semipalatinsk, in north-eastern Kazakhstan.
The USSR’s nuclear explosion, near identical to that of America’s Nagasaki bomb, was detected within days by the US Air Force. After they crosschecked the Soviets’ atomic debris, president Harry Truman, informed of the news, was appalled.
American intelligence had deduced that the Soviets would likely be unable to acquire atomic bombs until 1953, at the earliest. A CIA memorandum from 15 December 1947 insisted,
“it is doubtful that the Russians can produce a bomb before 1953, and almost certain they cannot produce one before 1951”.
In October 1948 General Curtis LeMay, a ruthless war leader, assumed control of Strategic Air Command, with Groves cast into obscurity early that year. LeMay promptly hammered out an Emergency War Plan, which called upon the USSR’s evisceration with “the entire stockpile of atomic bombs, if made available, in a single massive attack”.
The following year, October 1949, LeMay expanded strategies so as to include the destruction of over 100 Soviet urban regions with 292 atomic bombs. This significant total would not be available until 30 June 1950, by which time the success of Russia’s nuclear project had been confirmed.
Yet by 1950, the Pentagon was churning out Nagasaki-type bombs on a production line. The Nagasaki weapon, “Fat Man”, had a yield of 21 kilotons, making it considerably more powerful than the Hiroshima device, “Little Boy”, which held 15 kilotons of explosive force.
America’s military would not hold possession of the “optimum” 466 weapons until June 1951. This was scaled down to 400 bombs required for “killing a nation”, and the Pentagon’s nuclear stash was brimming with precisely 400 such devices on New Year’s Day 1951.
From 1950, the program would undergo major enlargement in order to encompass the new communist China in its cross hairs, a country then home to over half a billion people. China, it may be noted, did not develop nuclear weapons until 1964.
At maps in US military headquarters throughout the great Pacific region, the USSR and Chinese land areas were laid out as a combined whole: One giant red mass with no defining borders to distinguish between either state. Both were to be decimated together, while suggestions in a bid to change the stratagem were met with firm opposition and “sent shudders down planners’ spines”.
These maps, obscured by a curtain or screen from unassuming visitors, were marked with pins and arrows highlighting which areas to be flattened with nuclear bombs; but it was indeed not possible, in certain regions, to safely discern Chinese territory from that of the southern Soviet Union, or parts of Russia itself.
By 1960, it was decided upon that every city in the USSR and China would be attacked with nuclear weapons; a total consisting of hundreds of urban centres. For example, each populated space in the Soviet Union – containing 25,000 people or more – was earmarked to be struck with a nuclear bomb. These programs would largely be implemented with the new long range, jet-powered bombers, the B-52 and B-58, with the obsolete B-36 sent into retirement in 1959.
In the early 1960s, this greatly increased level of destruction was possible, as the Pentagon’s nuclear cargo reached about 18,000 bombs. The majority now consisted of the infinitely more powerful hydrogen weapons. Moscow was to be hit with a yield of 40 megatons, about 4,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
Moreover, the USSR’s Warsaw Pact allies in central and southern Europe were also designated for annihilation: such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. These nations are today all members of the US-led NATO organization, with Czechoslovakia since dissolving into two separate countries belonging to NATO.
The US Joint Chiefs of Staff, a prestigious military body advising the president, calculated in 1961 that nuclear attacks against the USSR, China and Warsaw Pact states would kill around 600 million people. Even this mind-numbing figure was a conservative estimate, which did not fully take into account the aftermath of such intended actions.
The Soviet Union – with its nuclear cache pointed at America’s NATO allies – would, in response to a US first strike, fire its warheads at NATO states in western Europe, wiping them from the face of the earth.
If there was lingering doubt, the resulting radioactive fallout from US nuclear assaults on European Russia and Warsaw Pact members, was expected to be blown on the wind towards the Atlantic. This would doubly eradicate much of western Europe, such as France, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc. To the north, Finland was thought to be one of the first to face immediate destruction, following close-range fallout from planned nuclear explosions over Leningrad’s submarine pens.
Nor would the devastation from fallout be restricted to Europe, far from it. Further nuclear attacks on southern and eastern USSR, along with large-scale assaults across China, would thereafter affect many other states in Asia.
Radioactive poisoning was anticipated to spread southwards over India, whose population in 1960 comprised 450 million people.
Afghanistan, bordering both the USSR and China, faced extensive ruin from fallout – as too did Japan, whose southern reaches are located just a few hundred miles from eastern China. Mongolia, a large Asian country squeezed between Russia and China, could expect its fair share of radiation; though the Mongol state, centuries before one of the biggest empires in history, has been sparsely populated in modern times.
The combined death toll from all of the above would surely have been closer to one billion. However, unbeknownst to everyone concerned in the early 1960s, due to the extinction phenomenon of nuclear winter America would also have faced its end – even without retaliatory strikes reaching US soil. This doomsday scenario remains entirely relevant today, in an age of nuclear proliferation and environmental decline.
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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.
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102 Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling) PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
“To put it simply, our fate as a species is sealed. We’re headed for extinction in the very near term despite warnings dating more than 150 years. It’s a tragic tale. And, as foretold by evolutionary biologist George C. Williams, our species hardly made a squeak as the hammer dropped.” – Guy McPherson [1]
For nearly forty years there have been warnings raised by prominent experts that the rising temperatures due to greenhouse gas warming threatens our future. [2]
Despite the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988, the assembly of nations at the earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro in 1992, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, all the way up to the Paris Accord in 2015, the world continues to pollute and the temperature continues to rise.[3]
Recently in the fall of 2018, ‘The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C’ got tons of exposure in the mainstream news and prognosticated that allowing a rise of more than 1.5°C would result in an elevated risk of “long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems.” It said , “Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050.” [4][5]
But the worst of these “alarming” statistics see the human species condemned to life on a degraded planet by the year 2100, or even 2050. What you rarely hear is the warning that the changes of abrupt climate change could deny organisms of a habitat in as soon as five years, which could mean the end of the human species, and shortly thereafter, possibly every other organism on this great blue globe. What’s more, it is now simply too late for the human species to reverse the two and a half century course industry fueled by carbon energy. [6][7]
In other words, ‘Time’s up!’
One of the few scientists who came to this conclusion discovered it almost twenty years ago. He has been quoting the refereed journal literature and consequently seems to have been shut out by his peers. Yet, he is learning to see in the daunting time-frame that life, while it lasts, is glorious and free, with heroes stepping to the challenge of life as this play comes to a close.
Guy McPherson speaks with us for the entire program of the Global Research News Hour. Our topics this week include the threat to the poles of a ‘blue ice’ moment, the aerosol masking effect, the collapse of modern economy contributing to a swift rise in temperature, the refusal of contemporary society to address the threat and much, much more!
Guy McPherson was 49 when he became professor emeritus of natural resources and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. Guy taught and conducted research for more than twenty award-winning years at Texas A&M University, University of Arizona, University of California (Berkeley), Southern Utah University, and Grinnell College. He has produced a dozen books and hundreds of articles. He currently produces and hosts the radio program ‘Nature Bats Last’ and currently resides in Maitland, a suburb of Orlando, Florida.
There exists a huge disconnect between publicly available real scientific evidence and government policy surrounding the Covid crisis. Consider the following scientific “admissions” and how they contradict government “lockdown” policies:
In the first video, the UK’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Chris Whitty, states unequivocally that on an individual level the chances of dying of coronavirus are low. Even without a vaccine, he says, a high proportion of people will not get it.
Significantly, he refers to the virus as an “epidemic” and not a “pandemic”. Further, he says a significant number of people will have no symptoms, and of those WITH symptoms, for the great majority (around 80%), the symptoms will be mild to moderate. A minority will go to the hospital, he says, of which a great majority will survive.
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In the next video, Sir Patrick Ballantz, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government, explains that the Office of National Statistics (ONS) rates “are people who got Covid on their Death Certificate … it doesn’t necessarily mean they were infected because many of them have not been tested … “
So, again, top authorities are admitting that the statistics are unreliable. Government policies such as the global lockdowns, are being wrapped around unreliable evidence.
The Covid operation is what Prof. Ioannidis feared it might become: an “Evidence Fiasco”. (1)
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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.
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
Four US service members were slightly injured during a standoff with the Russian Military Police near the border-town of Al-Malikiyah in the Syrian province of al-Hasakah. According to reports, the US troops received “mild injures” after their MaxxPro MRAP vehicle collided with a Russian vehicle. US officials quoted by media said there was no exchange of fire during the standoff, which took place earlier this week. According to their version of the events, a Russian vehicle intentionally rammed a US one.
Videos from the scene appeared online on August 26. They show Russian and U.S. armored vehicles chasing each other in the al-Hasakah countryside. A Russian helicopter was also filmed harassing U.S. troops that were trying to block a Russian patrol. Syrian sources say that Russian forces were reacting to attempts of the US military to block a Russian patrol in the area.
A few hours later, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley made a phone call to Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, the Pentagon said. The US military did not provide details regarding the agenda of the phone call, but it is likely that the sides discussed the current situation.
Forces of the United States and Russia regularly find themselves engaged in various small-scale incidents in the area as both sides seek to block movements of each other in the region. After the first deployment of the Russian Military Police in Syria’s northeast, forces of the US-led coalition immediately started trying to block the movement of Russian patrols near al-Hasakah. Later, the Russian Military Police and the Syrian Army, with support of pro-government locals, joined this standoff by regularly blocking US military convoys and forcing them to return to their bases. The recent developments demonstrate that these actions may easily lead to a further escalation at any moment.
A group of pro-government fighters went missing near the town of al-Mayadin in the province of Deir Ezzor during the recent security operation there, according to reports by pro-militant sources. The missing fighters are reportedly members of the local National Defense Forces (NDF) and the Palestinian militia Liwa al-Quds. The NDF and Liwa al-Quds dispatched a large force with dozens of vehicles to the western Deir Ezzor countryside to search for the missing group, whose fate is yet to be revealed. Most likely, it was ambushed and eliminated by ISIS terrorists. A wide network of ISIS cells still operates in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert. Russia says that these cells use the US-controlled areas in al-Tanf and on the eastern bank of the Euphrates to resupply its forces. The US rejects these claims as false.
The situation in southern Idlib remains relatively calm after the recent attack on the Russian-Turkish patrol. Nonetheless, the sides are apparently preparing for a new confrontation. On August 26, two service members of Syria’s 45th Special Forces Regiment were spotted with 9K32 Strela-2M and 9K310 Igla-1 MANPADs near the al-Zawiya Mount, close to positions of Turkish-backed militants. Apparently, these MANPADs will be employed against Turkish forces if Anakra once again opts to go offensive against the Syrian Army to protect al-Qaeda terrorists hiding in Greater Idlib.
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The name ‘Edward Snowden’ represents different things to different people. For those interested in government transparency and the rule of law, he is a hero, a man who initially tried to go through the ‘proper’ channels to publicize the blatant injustices he saw. To others, he is a traitor, a government employee who had the temerity to question the basic U.S. government doctrine that whatever the U.S. does is good, the citizens are too ignorant to form a reasonable opinion of it, and U.S. allies should be kept in the dark.
Now, one might wonder why Trump has suddenly had this epiphany. Is it because he abruptly has had a change of heart, and now sees that justice for everyone should be the goal of government? Does he recognize that, as the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”? One would be naïve indeed to think that the raging narcissist called Donald Trump would ever consider any of this. But there may be a reason for his dangling of a pardon in front of Snowden.
Shortly after sort of winning the election in 2016 (we must remember that the odious Hillary Clinton garnered nearly 3,000,000 more votes than Trump), the outgoing president, Barack Obama, refused to pardon Snowden. At that time, Obama said this about a possible pardon for Snowden: “I can’t pardon somebody who hasn’t gone before a court and presented themselves.” This, of course, was disingenuous, since several presidents, including Obama, have issued pardons for people who never went to trial. Perhaps one of the most notable cases was the pardon issued by then President Gerald Ford of his predecessor, Richard Nixon. And Obama himself pardoned three people who had been charged with some violations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but had not gone to trial.
It has been no secret that one of Trump’s overarching goals for his presidency is to reverse anything Obama accomplished (The Affordable Health Care Act; the JCPOA, etc.). Since Obama refused to pardon Snowden, that in and of itself might be sufficient reason for Trump to do so.
But even Trump’s most ardent sycophants are given pause by the suggestion that their hero would pardon a man that conservatives love to hate. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and Representative Liz Cheney from Wyoming strongly oppose any pardon for Snowden. Even Attorney General William Barr, who operates more as a Trump campaign operative than the nation’s highest law enforcement officer has gone on record as opposing the pardon.
There are many lessons to be learned by Snowden’s revelations that go beyond the information that he exposed. Perhaps the key fact is that U.S. government officials are united in their quest to punish those who expose criminal activity, rather than those who are perpetrating that activity. Former president Obama and former secretary of state Clinton both said that Snowden didn’t follow the correct process. Based on information offered by Snowden himself, this is simply not true. And for Obama and Clinton to rail against someone for not following the rule of law is laughable, when one considers how they said nothing about the major violations of international law perpetrated on a daily basis against Palestine. They made no objections to Saudi Arabia’s violations of the human rights of that country’s own citizens. They decimated Libya, leaving the nation once “considered to be the Switzerland of the African continent”, in chaos, with death and destruction continuing to this day.
Trump’s possible pardon of Snowden, a man who should be considered a national hero, does not represent any change in Trump’s attitudes; rather, it is more of the same: reverse any and all Obama policies. Democrats and Republicans have been mainly united (there has been some dissent within the Democratic Party) in their condemnation of his actions and their opposition to a pardon. What Trump decides to do is anyone’s guess. He governs by Tweet and executive order, often not advising his closest advisors, or the people his pronouncements most impact, of his decisions before they learn of them from news programs.
It is to be hoped the Trump will pardon Snowden; despite the fact that he may do it for all the wrong reasons. Edward Snowden is a global hero and deserves to live out his life free from the U.S.-caused oppression he has suffered from these last several years.
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This article was originally published on Peacedata.
Robert Fantina is an activist and journalist, working for peace and social justice. A U.S. citizen, he moved to Canada shortly after the 2004 presidential election, and now holds dual citizenship. He serves on the boards of Canadians for Palestinian Rights, and Canadians for Justice in Kashmir, and is the former Canadian Coordinator of World Beyond War. He has written the books Propaganda, Lies, and False Flags: How the U.S. Justifies its Wars.; Empire, Racism and Genocide: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy and Occupied Palestine: Israel, the U.S. and International Law. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
If you are interested in finding out the truth about the Covid19 scare, you can look for information in many areas. Understanding the corporate (profit-driven) and petrochemical-based history of the medical establishment helps. Being aware of the lack of scientific empirical and laboratory evidence for microbes, and microscopic particles such as viruses, causing disease helps. Being aware of other proven or highly probable causes of respiratory disease helps. It also helps to understand the emotionally discomforting truth that terrified people who claim to be both authorities and sane will knowingly or unknowingly lie to you in order to try to get you (and their own terror) under control.
In my case, whenever I am confused or unsure about the details of information I receive from the variety of sources I investigate, I am ‘lucky’ to have a fallback position that is unequivocally clear and trustworthy. This knowledge is based on my own experience of suffering acute and chronic respiratory disease, and the outcomes I experienced while spending the first 25 years of my life following the advice of the medical establishment, and the second 25 years of my life totally rejecting ‘assistance’ from the medical establishment and following a variety of natural healing/health maintenance modalities instead. Without having to understand or argue the merits of any particular detail of the science of corporate medicine or natural biological health and healing, I have seen their results.
In brief: I suffered for the first 25 years of my life from chronic respiratory disease, including being hospitalised twice with pneumonia. My chronic bronchitis was first diagnosed as caused by bacterial infection, and later diagnosed as caused by a virus. When I stopped taking the advice of the medical establishment and my parents, who told me that I would die if I did not take antibiotics and that I could never be genuinely well, and switched to a variety of natural healing modalities, my life transformed radically. These modalities included listening to my physical feelings and emotions, changing my diet, understanding my breathing process, and bodywork to release muscle tension.
26 years later, at the age of 51, I use no pharmaceutical drugs or vaccines and experience the health and fitness that was denied me as a child and young person. I have not had bronchitis for 5 years, and have had only two mild colds in the past 3 years (despite the reported increase in the numbers of people suffering ‘seasonal influenza’ and the increasing severity of their symptoms). Other health problems I had when I was younger, including heart dysfunction related to bronchitis, have also been resolved. My experience has taught me that fear of my illness was the most important element keeping me sick, and that the medical establishment had no capacity to accurately diagnose the causes of my illness, nor treat it effectively.
I cannot say what precise factors have led to the development of acute respiratory disease in each individual who is currently suffering or dying from it. However, my experience leads me to believe that it is likely to be a combination of factors, including fear and emotional suppression from living in unsafe social circumstances, toxicity from airborne pollutants and poisonous substances that have been ingested or injected into the body, and lack of complex nutritional elements that allow the body to function optimally and recover from emotional stress and toxic damage.
I therefore make the following suggestions for you to consider if you are experiencing symptoms of respiratory disease in the current social climate of crisis, panic and control.
If you have a choice:
1) Do not get tested for Covid19 – being categorised as having Covid19 will increase both your fear and the fear of others and may limit your options for taking safe and sensible action to support your healing.
2) Do not allow yourself to be hospitalised – you will be isolated from anyone who personally cares about you, in the presence of scared (if well-meaning) hospital staff, and removed from the possibility of any treatment other than toxic drugs and invasive procedures, which will add to your level of stress and fear, and decrease the likelihood of your survival.
3) Understand that your state of health is not dependant on whether or not you are ‘infected with a virus’. Even if pathogenic viruses existed (and there are a number of critiques showing the logical faults and lack of proper scientific process in virology theory and experiments respectively: see, for example, What Really Makes You Ill? Why everything you thought you knew about disease is wrong. But you can read more in ‘Dismantling the Virus Theory – The “measles virus” as an example’ and watch the video interview ‘The Real Science of Germs: Do Viruses Cause Disease?’ ), my experience shows that it is other elements that determine health. You are therefore not responsible for the health of anyone else – you are not a dangerous plague carrier who should feel guilty for harming others if you do not accept the label ‘infected with Covid19’.
4) Consider the four basic principles of health and healing at the end of this article.
A case history of my acute and chronic respiratory disease and healing
I was born in 1969 in New South Wales, Australia, and grew up in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory. I was injected with a number of vaccines containing toxic substances as a baby, which may have been a contributing factor in my developing pneumonia at the age of 18 months. I was hospitalised at this time, and again at the age of three years. I was treated with antibiotics in hospital and put in an oxygen tent to help me breathe. I was told by my mother that when I was in the oxygen tent when I was a baby, she climbed in with me against the wishes of the nurses. Far from reassuring me, this would have increased my level of fear, as my mother is an extremely anxious and explosively violent person, and she was only holding me to try to relieve herself of her anxiety, not because she was in a state to calmly relieve mine. My fear of being killed by my mother when she violently exploded and the fear generated by her general state of anxiety (caused by her own extremely violent and emotionally deprived upbringing) was a major factor in the disturbances to my breathing and lung function throughout my younger years.
My memory of the hospital when I was three is traumatic – I remember feeling extremely isolated. Visiting hours were limited and strictly upheld, which meant that my father, who I did find reassuring, could not spend significant time with me. Also (bizarre but true) my teddy bear was stolen by another family with a sick child and as any parent knows, familiar soft toys do provide significant reassurance to children, even if artificially so. I survived both hospitalisations, and was told that I would have died without the antibiotics. The doctors and my parents believed that there was no other way of helping me through these crises – it was ‘hospital and drugs’ or ‘nothing’.
As a result of the pneumonia, one small area in my left lung was permanently damaged (at least, it has not healed up to this point) although I did not discover the damage until I was 26 when a naturopath/homeopath asked me if there was any difference in how my left and right lungs felt. This was the first time anyone had asked me to focus on my lungs in detail in order to learn something about them, and I discovered that my left lung was permanently painful, particularly when I coughed for any reason, while my right lung was not.
As a result of the natural healing I have undertaken since, this pain has reduced to one patch about 2 centimetres in diameter. I have heard the medical establishment’s opinion in recent years that lungs don’t have nerves and therefore it is not possible to feel pain in them. This directly contradicts my actual experience of being able to feel a variety of feelings (e.g. tickling caused by breathing something in accidentally, pressure in my right lung when I cough, pain in my left lung when I cough, and the tightening of my airways when asthmatic). When ‘medical science’ contradicts my experience of reality, obviously I question the validity of the theory, not my experience.
I suffered an extreme asthma attack when I was four, when I couldn’t breathe at all for a short amount of time, but after this I had frequent non-acute asthmatic reactions only, mainly when I tried to exercise or when I had bronchitis, which I suffered 3 or 4 times per year up until I was 19. At that time, I left home and the incidence dropped to twice a year. My bouts of bronchitis would last for about 14 days each time and I would not go to school/university for about 10 days because I felt too sick in my body to do so. Among other symptoms, my throat and lungs would become ‘cold’, tense and aggravated, causing me to swallow repeatedly for about 24 hours (with virtually no sleep), before developing an extremely painful, hacking cough and coughing up heaps of green phlegm. The bronchitis was less extreme than my original pneumonia, but ongoingly debilitating, as if my body had worked out a way of managing my symptoms that didn’t risk killing me but instead put me into a ‘holding pattern’ that was endlessly repeated.
I breathed in a powdered drug when I was ill with bronchitis as a child, and then switched at some point to using Ventolin, until the age of 14 when I accidentally overdosed myself, suffering extreme fear and visual distortion brought on by the drug’s artificial stimulation of adrenalin. I was very angry that I had never been warned of the danger and I refused to use Ventolin after this time.
I also took Brondicon, a cough syrup full of alcohol and sugar. I was given antibiotics every time I was sick and I have a lot of memories of waiting in doctors’ surgeries reading children’s books while waiting for my 10 minute appointment (which generally ran along the lines of ‘I’ve got bronchitis again’… ‘Right, here’s a prescription for antibiotics’.) When I was sick I also went to a physiotherapist who would thump my back and encourage me to cough, even when the phlegm was not in a sufficiently fluid state to be coughed up. The theory behind this treatment was that I was clearing my lungs of ‘harmful bacteria’. I later discovered that this deliberate coughing increased the damage and irritability in my left lung and made it more susceptible to aggravation and illness.
Influenced by my parents’ and the doctors’ fears and their incapacity to listen to how I felt and what I needed, I never expected to be well and being sick became a key part of my identity. I lived in dread of my next bout of illness. Since I had never experienced being well, my general state of ill health was utterly normal to me, and I had no idea just how sick I was. I later discovered that my entire oxygenation system, including my heart, was not functioning properly. I therefore found any aerobic exercise both painful and extremely uncomfortable in my body due to the effort of exerting myself without adequate oxygen reaching my cells. Climbing a steep hill, for example, was very difficult for me.
My posture was off kilter because of constant muscle tension caused by the pain in my lung, and this tension and imbalance eventually led to me suffering cartilage, tendon and ligament injuries. Additional illnesses I suffered that were undetected by doctors were low blood sugar (diet related), chronic constipation (caused by diet and by stress) and extreme cramping and blood loss during menstruation (caused by lack of magnesium).
One factor that I believe was important in remaining sick with respiratory disease was the toxic nature of the cleaning fluids used in my childhood home, particularly furniture polish that was sprayed every week as part of the housecleaning routine.
Most important though, was the constant emotional and physical tension I experienced as a result of living with my anxious and violent mother. Her emotional state and behaviour continually triggered me into fear and anger, but I was not allowed to consciously feel or express these things. These feelings became wrapped up, in complex and contradictory ways, with my experience of being physically ill.
The most obvious connection between my emotional state and the state of my lungs is that when I feel afraid that I am going to be attacked, unreasonably controlled or prevented from telling the truth about how I feel and what I need, I have an immediate, strong asthmatic reaction.
The last time I took antibiotics for bronchitis was when I was about 22 and living in Melbourne. The next time I had bronchitis I visited a different doctor than usual and I was told that my symptoms were caused by a virus (‘influenza’) not a bacterial infection, so antibiotics were not appropriate. I imagine this doctor was moving with the tendency to claim that all sorts of previously ‘non-viral’ diseases were now caused by viruses, as the medical establishment began its push towards inventing and selling greater and greater numbers of vaccines. (Vaccines are, obviously, more profitable for corporations than antibiotics because they are recommended for or forced upon everyone as a preventative measure, rather than being used by only those who are showing symptoms of disease.)
I was annoyed that I couldn’t have my ‘reassuring’ antibiotics, and that I was being told that the same symptoms I had been experiencing my whole life were some other disease (‘flu’, not ‘bronchitis’). I don’t know if I was told I should have a flu vaccine, or whether they were available in the early 1990s, but I certainly had no faith in the ‘new’ diagnosis. I had never been treated as if my bronchitis was infectious, as influenza is supposed to be, and I have no memory of my mother, father, sister or (later) boyfriend being ill with respiratory symptoms at the same time as I was when I lived with them.
Ironically, however, this shift in medical establishment diagnostic fashion led to a good outcome for me: the fear that I had had all my life that I would ‘die’ without antibiotics was proven untrue. Without antibiotics, my bronchitis followed exactly the same pattern that it always had – no better, no worse. Although I didn’t think about it then, this proved that however many bacteria may have been in my lungs, breaking down the dead substances, they were not attacking my lungs and ‘causing’ my disease.
Having had my fill of doctor’s surgeries, I never again bothered to visit one when I was sick with respiratory disease.
So, I had stopped poisoning my system unnecessarily with antibiotics, and I was living at a physical distance from my mother, but at this stage I was not actively healing emotionally or physically from all the damage that had been done and I was still very unfit, got bronchitis twice a year and suffered occasionally from candida, as I had done since my late teens.
That changed when I got together with my husband, Robert, when I was 25. As part of his research, he was aware of critiques of the medical establishment, had changed his diet to improve some of his own health problems, and was using a number of natural health approaches. He also, most importantly, listened to me without fear when I expressed how I felt emotionally and physically, and supported me to follow my own feelings. In other words, he allowed me to exist, without interference and without trying to control me, because fundamentally he trusted me to be guided by my own internal communications towards a more whole state of being. He told me, in effect, that I existed, that I mattered and that he trusted me to be sensible, intelligent and capable of learning from my own experiences, including failures and successes.
I was quite stunned to find that Robert was not afraid of my illness. It seemed illogical to me at first simply because a fearful reaction to illness was the only thing I had ever known. The first time I was sick after we were together, he held me for four hours while I could barely breathe because my lungs were so badly clogged and asthmatic. This was a more extreme event than usual, similar to my original pneumonia, but it was a ‘healing crisis’ that marked the beginning of the change in my symptom patterns which has led to my current healthy state. Being held with love and reassured that I wasn’t going to die, I could allow my body to do what it wanted to rebalance itself. Robert’s trust in me allowed me to trust myself, and that trust made all the difference.
Over the next 26 years, my emotional and physical health improved dramatically as I allowed myself to become consciously aware of and physically feel all of my emotions (mostly fear, sadness and anger) related to my mother and other conflicts in my life, as well as feeling the physical pain and asthmatic reactions associated with the damage in my left lung. I stopped trying to make these emotional and physical reactions ‘go away’ and instead experienced them without fear until they went away of their own accord.
I also changed my diet to one of organic, vegetarian wholefood, with no salt, sugar, white flour, caffeine or alcohol. I stopped cooking food in oil or microwaving it. I had never been a recreational drug user, since smoking was impossible with my damaged lung, and my Ventolin experience put me off trying to artificially stimulate my mind and emotions with chemicals. The diet I chose was based on principles explained by Paavo Airola in his book Hypoglycemia: A Better Approach. I also take care not to use or inhale toxic substances wherever possible, including deodorants and perfumes, as well as cleaning fluids, paint fumes, incense, ‘passive’ cigarette smoke and wood smoke. (For those wishing to avoid lung cancer, I have noticed that my damaged lung reacts far more painfully and asthmatically to fragrances – perfume, deodorant, aftershave and incense – than to cigarette smoke.)
I have investigated and found useful many natural healing modalities, which have assisted with my emotional healing, my nutrition and my muscle tension.
Gerson Therapy, which involves drinking fresh vegetable juices (for vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and enzymes) and doing coffee enemas (to assist with liver detoxification), among other elements. I have undertaken a scaled-down version of the intensive therapy on a number of occasions and I still drink two juices per day whenever possible and do regular coffee enemas, which are also good for body awareness and ‘meditative’ time. See Healing the Gerson Way: Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases.
Buteyko breathing method, which explained to me the importance of nose breathing to protect the damaged part of my lung and to maintain the correct balance of CO2 and oxygen in my blood stream to allow effective oxygenation of my cells. It also explained the natural functions of asthmatic reaction in counteracting fear-based hyperventilation and in limiting exposure to toxic substances.
Naturopathy, for a variety of nutritional elements that I have not been able to account for sufficiently in my consumption of fresh food/juices (owing to my living circumstances and the generally decreasing mineral content of even organically grown food). Supplements I take include iron, magnesium and CoQ10 and I am careful to take varieties that my body easily absorbs. Taking CoQ10 fixed my heart dysfunction, iron helps with my energy levels, and magnesium fixed my menstruation cramps and over-bleeding.
Osteopathy, for regular muscle release and manipulations to adjust my spine and limbs.
Rolfing (also known as Structural Integration) to work on the loosening of muscle fascia to allow my muscles to relax and return to balanced positions in my body’s overall structure.
Feldenkrais method (also known as Functional Integration or Awareness Through Movement) to reintegrate the nervous elements of physical movements that have become uncoordinated as a result of injury and fear.
Myotherapy, including dry needling, to release extreme tension in certain muscles and tendons that had not responded to other forms of bodywork.
Deep Recovery massage balls, with the ‘track’ necessary to hold balls in place so that I can regularly do my own muscle/fascia release on any area of my body without having to continually pay for Myotherapy or Rolfing sessions.
Yoga for assistance in stretching, strengthening and coordinating muscles and realigning my spine.
Non-manipulative Chiropractic method for an understanding of subtle whole body communication.
Gym work, to strengthen and reintegrate muscle action around knee and shoulder injuries arising from distorted posture.
I have found all the natural health modalities I have tried to be genuinely complementary (in a way that the medical establishment’s regime is definitely not). That is, there is always something to be learned and integrated from every natural modality into a more complete understanding of the way I function and dysfunction. Obviously, not all practitioners are equally capable, and it is important to find practitioners whose work you trust.
While I recognise that people who are seriously impoverished will have limits on their access to good natural health care, I have done all of the above on an extremely limited budget, having lived below the Australian taxable limit since 1997. I have had no assistance from government Medicare (which does not cover natural healing modalities) or private health insurance.
You may notice that none of the modalities I have mentioned lend themselves to corporate profit. In particular, eating fresh organically grown food works against three corporate industries that are linked by their dependence on the parent industry of artificial chemistry, which developed out of the petrochemical industry. Industrial agriculture relies on artificial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides; the processed food industry employs chemists to come up with endless varieties of false smells and tastes to cover the fact that processed food that has a long shelf life is tasteless and nutritionless; and the pharmaceutical industry uses artificial chemistry to create toxic drugs, following the age old superstition that by poisoning the body we can control and ‘fix’ it. Many of the products from these industries are easy for corporations to patent, monopolise and sell as long as they can convince people they ‘need’ them. So when the medical establishment screams that natural solutions are not proven to work, are a waste of money, and may be dangerous, one might consider that the threat the establishment is feeling is to its bank balance, rather than to anyone’s actual biological health.
The result of 26 years of taking responsibility for my own health (with the crucial support of people who love me) is that, at the age of 51, I am fit and healthy in a way I never was as a child and teenager or in my early twenties. My oxygenation and posture have dramatically improved and, although I still have some weaknesses in my joints, I am able to work vigorously for some hours at a time in a garden on a steep hillside. I am able to continue working when hungry, showing that my blood sugar levels are significantly improved. I have not had candida since my late 20’s. And, despite the one patch of lung damage which has not yet been resolved (which I protect in the ways mentioned above), I have not had bronchitis in the last 5 years, and indeed have only suffered two colds with mild respiratory and bodily symptoms that lasted 3 days each in the last three years.
Hence, even if I believed that a pathogenic virus labelled Covid19 was genuinely attacking people, I would not be concerned for my own health or theirs on its account. If the four principles of health and healing below are abided by, a physical individual is naturally strong and functional at any age, and does not need the artificial intervention of toxic medicines and vaccines to ‘survive’. The medical establishment’s approach is to ignore and deny all the things that a person needs, biologically and emotionally, and then try to suppress the symptoms of disease that result from this denial. At best, a toxic medicine will shock the body into behaving differently in the short term, while adding to the overall burden of toxicity and ill health of all the body’s systems over time. At worst, your body will not survive the toxic attack and you will be severely incapacitated or killed (as hundreds of thousands of people are by ‘proper’ use of pharmaceuticals each year: see, for example, ‘100,000 deaths per year in the U.S. caused by prescription drugs’ or ‘Table Of Iatrogenic Deaths In The United States’. For an extremely relevant and well researched exposé of the corrupt and toxic nature of the corporate medical industry, read AIDS Inc. by investigative reporter Jon Rappoport.)
If you are currently dependent on pharmaceuticals (for physical or psychological illnesses) you can consult an experienced natural health practitioner to work out how to safely come off the drugs and replace them with the nutrition and other naturally supportive healthcare you really need.
Of course, if at any time the natural healthcare that I need is denied me by forces beyond my control, it is likely that I will suffer further respiratory disease, because of the damage still existing in my lung. However, I will not blame any virus for my illness – the fault will lie with the fear of those humans who cannot see what is needed for genuine health and safety, and whose behaviour is therefore biologically self-destructive.
Four Principles of Health and Healing
Principle 1: Listen to yourself (how you feel emotionally and physically). Remember that you are a complex biological individual in a process of healing and existing, not a simple predictable robot, the same as all the other robots, whose behaviour can (or should) be controlled by a drug.
Principle 2: Give yourself what you need nutritionally to function properly. Keep working on it until you have found a range of things that work for you. Whatever you experiment with and choose (vegan, vegetarian, meat inclusive, supplement inclusive) trust organic/biodynamic, fresh, unrefined foods as the basis for your nutritional health.
Principle 3: Don’t poison yourself (with processed and adulterated ‘food products’ made in factories; with recreational or pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines; with cleaning and personal care products containing toxins; also, limit your exposure to electromagnetic radiation where possible, particularly if you are highly sensitive).
Principle 4: Investigate other healing modalities that encourage you to be aware of how you function physically, and as a whole, integrated organism. (Try anything that sounds reasonable to you, but be honest about whether or not you are experiencing the gains you hoped, and keep experimenting if necessary.)
Finally, although I am aware that as a physical entity I can never be invulnerable, I take responsibility for my own ultimate existence by trusting in myself, despite all attempts to make me afraid that I am undeserving or incapable of full, unified existence, or that existence is not my genuine, true state of being.
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Anita McKone researches truth and delusion, fearlessness and fear, sanity and insanity, self-awareness and self-destruction, and nonviolence and violence as these exist at the human and universal levels. Her articles can be read on her website.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyanu is, once again, battling for his political life and personal freedom. Thousands of protesters calling for him to resign have continued to mount protests outside his official residence in Jerusalem. They demand he step down while he is on trial for corruption, fraud and influence peddling. As his ongoing trial is expected to carry on until mid-2022, he is absolutely determined to remain in office, as this provides immunity from arrest although not complete immunity.
During Saturday’s demonstration he was dubbed, “Crime Minister”, and balloons adorned with the portraits of politicians smeared with dirt were flown over the gathering. The protesters represent multiple causes. Environmentalists condemn Israel’s failure to address global warming and climate change. Women demand improvements in education and the judiciary system.
The Black Flag Movement proclaimed,
“The economy is in free fall with about 1 million unemployed and a raging pandemic, and [Netanyahu] is busy dragging the country to another round of elections because his trial is more important that the state of Israel.”
The movement, founded in April, opposes the coalition deal between Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, which Black Flag contends undermines Israeli democracy. Black Flag accuses the judiciary of illegally postponing Netanyahu’s trial calls on him to resign.
On Sunday, Israelis staged a strike at noon to protest widespread violence against women and the courts’ leniency towards abusers.
While a majority of Israelis breathed a sigh of relief when Netanyahu suspended his controversial plan to annex Israeli West Bank colonies and the rich agricultural region of the Jordan Valley, he has been slammed by settlers who belong to his political “base”. They accuse him of reneging on pledges made during the three recent, indecisive election campaigns. Their alienation weakens Netanyahu at a time he is already weak. His main problem is that he has been too long in the job of prime minister. Many Israelis are weary of him, his bluster and reliance on the right at the expense of everyone else.
Netanyahu and Gantz have sidestepped a fourth election for the time being by agreeing to extend until November 23 the deadline for adopting the 2020 budget. If they fail to reach a deal by then, the fragile government will have to dissolve and new elections will follow. This would be the worst possible scenario for Netanyahu since he would no longer have immunity and could be arrested.
Therefore, Israel continues to face domestic political uncertainty as well as the global uncertainties created by COVID-19. It has tightened its grip on Israel, which has surpassed 100,000 cases with 800 fatalities and is currently suffering 1,400 cases every 24 hours. To lower the number of cases to 400 a day, the country’s corona czar Roni Gamzu said would take at least 90 days.
He warned that a trip by thousands of ultra-orthodox Hasidim to Ukraine to visit the tomb of a revered 19th century rabbi would force a fresh lockdown once they returned home. This would be extremely unpopular with Israelis who are desperate to return to “normal” life although their high covid infection rate is a result of the reopening of schools, restaurants, bars and other amenities. Fortunately for the government, which depends on the good will of the Hasidic community, Ukraine has banned the trip for Hasidic Jews from Israel and elsewhere.
Netanyahu remains plagued by besieged and blockaded Gaza, where militants continue to fly into southern Israel balloons bearing incendiary devices, which start blazes in summer dry locations. Bombing and shelling Gaza has not forced the balloonists to stop. Israel is threatening to slay leaders of Hamas, which rules Gaza, in retaliation.
Although many Israelis argue Netanyahu should negotiate peace, the Palestinian Authority has refused talks with him as he rejects the land-for-peace formula which could lead to the emergence of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This is the last thing Netanyahu wants. He is fully committed to Greater Israel in all Palestine.
Netanyahu and the allied Trump administration have failed to curb Iran’s activities in Syria and Lebanon despite Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign to use sanctions to counter Tehran’s regional reach. While Israel has urged the Trump administration to wage war on Iran, it has, so far, resisted this call. Frustrated Netanyahu seems to have ordered Israeli intelligence to sabotage Iran’s Nantaz nuclear plant and other sensitive sites.
Some commentators have predicted that under pressure from Netanyahu, Donald Trump could mount October surprise strikes on Iran in the expectation that, as a wartime leader, he would automatically be reelected. Like Netanyahu, Trump is desperate for a second term because the office of president provides immunity from prosecution for various crimes he may have committed before reaching the White House — and, perhaps, during his first term. However, in response, Iran could target US allies in the Gulf and cause a conflagration which would not boost Trump’s election prospects.
Netanyahu’s grip is weakening. A poll released last week showed his Likud would still have the largest number of seats in the Knesset if elections are held soon but the party would poll 29 seats instead of the 36 it holds now. Blue and White, headed by Gantz, would win only nine seats compared with the 33 it took during the last election in March. The Blue and White bloc, comprised of centrist and leftist parties which had formed as an alternative to the Likud, fractured as soon as Gantz decided to form a government with Netanyahu. Both men face a precarious few months while Israelis take to the streets in a summer of simmering discontent.
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[The government’s anti-COVID19 measures] are grotesque, absurd and very dangerous […] The consequences on medical care are profound. Already services to patients in need are reduced, operations cancelled, practices empty, hospital personnel dwindling. All this will impact profoundly on our whole society.
Not only will this vaccine not protect you at all or not enough, but it can make things worse by facilitating your infection with COVID-19! The phenomenon of facilitating viral infection by antibodies (ADE or antibody dependent enhancement) has been known for a long time and exists for many viruses.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has recently “bought” all of Gilead Science’s Remdesivir for $1.6 billion. “500,000 doses at $3,200 per patient – to be available to American hospitals but not for other countries”
That’s $1.6 billion tax dollars for a virtually untested drug showing only marginal efficacy in the hospital setting.
MIT Tech Review’s hyped coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is led by the tag-line, “Navigating a world reshaped by Covid-19.”
Their articles reflect an eager embracement of the public hysteria prompted by Covid-19’s spread, the socioeconomic paralysis it has created, and the many profitable solutions – particularly those involving technology – proposed to “shape” the world post-Covid-19.
The WHO Director-General, who had been in Davos just a few days earlier, determined that the so-called outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and, as I mentioned, that decision was taken on the basis of 150 confirmed cases outside China. Now, anybody who takes cognizance of that should not trust anything else that they say because at the beginning is a big lie, and it’s a big lie which is instrumented by very powerful people. It’s the combination of what I call Big Money and Big Pharma.
Driven by WHO, the Geneva UN Medical Directors (UNMD) group has just issued a CONSENSUS STATEMENT for UN staff in Geneva that is essentially warning UN staff of stricter measures to be taken, such as mask wearing in the office when 2-meter distances could not be respected, as well as increased working from home again, when as recently as in June these conditions were relaxed. Working from home means separating colleagues from each other, connecting them by Zoom, but NO HUMAN CONTACT. That’s the name of the game.
A diabolical process is underway which consists in “identifying” all those who are opposed to the governments’ management of the coronavirus pandemic. According to ongoing psychological studies, these opponents are categorized as anti-social psychopaths.
The unspoken objective is to shunt the emergence of an organized protest movement pertaining to social engineering and the decision taken Worldwide at a political level to close down the national economies of more than 150 members states of the United Nations.
Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.
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This article was originally published on Asia Times.
We have seen how China is meticulously planning all its crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic moves all the way to 2030 and beyond.
What you are about to read next comes from a series of private, multilateral discussions among intel analysts, and may helpfully design the contours of the Big Picture.
In China, it’s clear the path ahead points to boosting internal demand, and shifting monetary policy towards the creation of credit to consolidate the building of world-class domestic industries.
In parallel, there’s a serious debate in Moscow that Russia should proceed along the same path. As an analyst puts it, “Russia should not import anything but technologies it needs until it can create them themselves and export only the oil and gas that is required to pay for imports that should be severely restricted. China still needs natural resources, which makes Russia and China unique allies. A nation should be as self-sufficient as possible.”
That happens to mirror the exact CCP strategy, as delineated by President Xi in his July 31 Central Committee meeting.
And that also goes right against a hefty neoliberal wing in the CCP – collaborationists? – who would dream of a party conversion into Western-style social democracy, on top of it subservient to the interests of Western capital.
Comparing China’s economic velocity now with the US is like comparing a Maserati Gran Turismo Sport (with a V8 Ferrari engine) with a Toyota Camry. China, proportionately, holds a larger reservoir of very well educated young generations; an accelerated rural-urban migration; increased poverty eradication; more savings; a cultural sense of deferred gratification; more – Confucianist – social discipline; and infinitely more respect for the rationally educated mind. The process of China increasingly trading with itself will be more than enough to keep the necessary sustainable development momentum going.
The hypersonic factor
Meanwhile, on the geopolitical front, the consensus in Moscow – from the Kremlin to the Foreign Ministry – is that the Trump administration is not “agreement-capable”, a diplomatic euphemism that refers to a de facto bunch of liars; and it’s also not “legal-capable”, an euphemism applied, for instance, to lobbying for snapback sanctions when Trump has already ditched the JCPOA.
President Putin has already said in the recent past that negotiating with Team Trump is like playing chess with a pigeon: the demented bird walks all over the chessboard, shits indiscriminately, knocks over pieces, declares victory, then runs away.
In contrast, serious lobbying at the highest levels of the Russian government is invested in consolidating the definitive Eurasian alliance, uniting Germany, Russia and China.
But that would only apply to Germany after Merkel. According to a US analyst, “the only thing holding back Germany is that they can expect to lose their car exports to the US and more, but I tell them that can happen right away because of the dollar-euro exchange rate, with the euro becoming more expensive.”
On the nuclear front, and reaching way beyond the current Belarus drama – as in there will be no Maidan in Minsk – Moscow has made it very clear, in no uncertain terms, that any missile attack from NATO will be interpreted as a nuclear attack.
The Russian defensive missile system – including the already tested S-500s, and soon the already designed S-600s – arguably may be 99% effective. That means Russia would still have to absorb some punishment. And this is why Russia has built an extensive network of nuclear bomb shelters in big cities to protect at least 40 million people.
Russian analysts interpret China’s defensive approach along the same lines. Beijing will want to develop – if they have not already done so – a defensive shield, and still retain the ability to strike back against a US attack with nuclear missiles.
The best Russian analysts, such as Andrei Martyanov, know that the three top weapons of a putative next war will be offensive and defensive missiles and submarines combined with cyber warfare capabilities.
The key weapon today – and the Chinese understand it very clearly – is nuclear submarines. Russians are observing how China is building their submarine fleet – carrying hypersonic missiles – faster than the US. Surface fleets are obsolete. A wolf pack of Chinese submarines can easily knock out a carrier task force. Those 11 US carrier task forces are in fact worthless.
So in the – horrifying – event of the seas becoming un-sailable in a war, with the US, Russia and China blocking all commercial traffic, that’s the key strategic reason pushing China to obtain as much of its natural resources overland from Russia.
Even if pipelines are bombed they can be fixed in no time. Thus the supreme importance for China of Power of Siberia – as well as the dizzying array of Gazprom projects.
The Hormuz factor
A closely guarded secret in Moscow is that right after German sanctions imposed in relation to Ukraine, a major global energy operator approached Russia with an offer to divert to China no less than 7 million barrels a day of oil plus natural gas. Whatever happens, the stunning proposal is still sitting on the table of Shmal Gannadiy, a top oil/gas advisor to President Putin.
In the event that would ever happen, it would secure for China all the natural resources they need from Russia. Under this hypothesis, the Russian rationale would be to bypass German sanctions by switching its oil exports to China, which from a Russian point of view is more advanced in consumer technology than Germany.
Of course this all changed with the imminent conclusion of Nord Stream 2 – despite Team Trump taking no prisoners to sanction everyone in sight.
Backdoor intel discussions made it very clear to German industrialists that if Germany would ever lose its Russian source of oil and natural gas, coupled with the Strait of Hormuz shut down by Iran in the event of an American attack, the German economy might simply collapse.
There have been serious cross-country intel discussions about the possibility of a US-sponsored October Surprise involving a false flag to be blamed on Iran. Team Trump’s “maximum pressure” on Iran has absolutely nothing to do with the JCPOA. What matters is that even indirectly, the Russia-China strategic partnership has made it very clear that Tehran will be protected as a strategic asset – and as a key node of Eurasia integration.
Cross-intel considerations center on a scenario assuming a – quite unlikely – collapse of the government in Tehran. The first thing Washington would do in this case is to pull the switch of the SWIFT clearing system. The target would be to crush the Russian economy. That’s why Russia and China are actively increasing the merger of the Russian Mir and the Chinese CHIPS payment systems, as well as bypassing the US dollar in bilateral trade.
It has already been gamed in Beijing that were that scenario ever to take place, China might lose its two key allies in one move, and then have to face Washington alone, still on a stage of not being able to assure for itself all the necessary natural resources. That would be a real existential threat. And that explains the rationale behind the increasing interconnection of the Russia-China strategic partnership plus the $400 billion, 25-year-long China-Iran deal.
Bismarck is back
Another possible secret deal already discussed at the highest intel levels is the possibility of a Bismarckian Reinsurance Treaty to be established between Germany and Russia. The inevitable consequence would be a de facto Berlin-Moscow-Beijing alliance spanning the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), alongside the creation of a new – digital? – Eurasian currency for the whole Eurasian alliance, including important yet peripheral actors such as France and Italy.
Well, Beijing-Moscow is already on. Berlin-Beijing is a work in progress. The missing link is Berlin-Moscow.
That would represent not only the ultimate nightmare for Mackinder-drenched Anglo-American elites, but in fact the definitive passing of the geopolitical torch from maritime empires back to the Eurasian heartland.
It’s not a fiction anymore. It’s on the table.
Adding to it, let’s do some little time traveling and go back to the year 1348.
The Mongols of the Golden Horde are in Crimea, laying siege to Kaffa – a trading port in the Black Sea controlled by the Genoese.
Suddenly, the Mongol army is consumed by bubonic plague.
They start catapulting contaminated corpses over the walls of the Crimean city.
So imagine what happened when ships started sailing again from Kaffa to Genoa.
They transported the plague to Italy.
By 1360, the Black Death was literally all over the place – from Lisbon to Novgorod, from Sicily to Norway. As much as 60% of Europe’s population may have been killed – over 100 million people.
A case can be made that the Renaissance, because of the plague, was delayed by a whole century.
Covid-19 is of course far from a medieval plague. But it’s fair to ask.
What Renaissance could it be possibly delaying?
Well, it might well be actually advancing the Renaissance of Eurasia. It’s happening just as the Hegemon, the former “end of history”, is internally imploding, “distracted from distraction by distraction”, to quote T.S. Eliot. Behind the fog, in prime shadowplay pastures, the vital moves to reorganize the Eurasian land mass are already on.
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This report was first released on April 17. It provides a detailed understanding of the lies and fabrications pertaining to COVID-19
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The numbers are in on the great Covid-19 pandemic . . . but unfortunately those numbers are unreliable.
From mendacious models and puffed-up projections to dodgy death data and tainted tests, today on The Corbett Report, James highlights what the accredited scientists and award-winning researchers are saying about the pandemic pandemonium of 2020.
For those with limited bandwidth, CLICK HERE to download a smaller, lower file size version of this episode.
For those interested in audio quality, CLICK HERE for the highest-quality version of this episode (WARNING: very large download).
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If ordered by federal, state, or local authorities, businesses or other entities in the US or elsewhere, mandating mass-vaxxing against COVID-19 will violate the Nuremberg Code.
All vaccines contain hazardous to human health toxins and are unsafe to use — notably when development is rushed like now so Pharma can cash in big on a bonanza of profits by mass-vaxxing against this virus.
The Nuremberg Code requires voluntary consent on matters relating to human health.
Whatever potentially risks physical and mental suffering, death, or disability is prohibited.
Mandated mass-vaxxing by authorities anywhere will constitute a flagrant Nuremberg Code breach.
Last week, Virginia health commissioner Norman Oliver said he intends to mandate mass-immunizations of state residents for COVID-19 once one or more vaccines are available.
He falsely claimed
“(w)e would not launch a campaign around mass vaccination with anything that hasn’t proven to be safe (sic),” adding:
Public health takes precedence over choice, while pushing the myth of herd immunity from COVID-19 that doesn’t exist.
He also falsely claimed that no treatment for the virus exists.
Big Pharma in cahoots with Big Media and Big Government want a known COVID-19 cure suppressed because its use if widespread with undermine Pharma’s aim to benefit from a multi-billion dollar market potential — no matter the harm to human health from rushed to market vaccines.
Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) combined with either azithromycin or doxycycline and zinc is safe and highly effective in curing COVID-19 when administered during the early stage of the disease.
Claims otherwise are fake science. Establishment media are heavily involved in debunking HCQ, while indefensibly promoting mass-vaxxing.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health mandated hazardous to human health mass-vaxxing of students at all levels and ages against influenza/flu by Dec. 31, claiming:
“The new vaccine requirement is an important step to reduce flu-related illness and the overall impact of respiratory illness during the COVID-19 pandemic (sic).”
According to a study published in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal, children vaccinated against influenza/flu were over four times more likely to contract other respiratory infections — including COVID-19.
Last week, National Geographic reported that “vaccines (for COVID-19) could become mandatory,” adding:
The dystopian possibility envisioned by some experts would be a USA and “world in which you’ll need to show you’ve been inoculated against the novel coronavirus to attend a sports game, get a manicure, go to work, or hop on a train.”
NYU bioethicist Arthur Caplan believes mandated mass-vaxxing may become public policy in the US and elsewhere — enforced by local governments, employers, and other sources.
Health and Vaccine Law Professor Dorit Rubenstein Reiss noted that managements of retail stores, restaurants, salons, and arenas may legally deny entry to people for many reasons “as long as they’re not running afoul of any anti-discrimination laws.”
Other experts believe when one or more COVID-19 vaccines become available, US state authorities and employers may require mass-vaxxing of workers, especially ones considered “essential.”
Requiring certificates to prove individuals were vaxxed against the virus would be similar to wearing a visible yellow Star of David that was mandated for Jews by Nazi Germany.
Is that where things are headed in the US and elsewhere?
Will that be the brave new world to emerge in the months ahead — hazardous to human health and safety innoculations wherever this totalitarian mandate is imposed?
A Final Comment
Philosopher, medical ethicist, human rights activist Evelyne Shuster earlier wrote about the “significance of the Nuremberg Code,” saying the following:
“The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”
“This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.”
“This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him (or her) the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.”
“The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment.”
“It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.”
If mandated, mass-vaxxing against COVID-19 will be an unparalleled in scale hazardous to human health experiment to which targeted individuals will have no choice but to comply or risk ostracization from society.
This policy if ordered by governments, businesses, or other entities will violate core principles of what the Nuremberg Code is all about.
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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.”
The topic of cryptocurrencies has gained prominence among specialists in international trade in recent months. With the global economic crisis generated by the new coronavirus pandemic, this need has become even more evident. The world powers enter a new race, seeking to be pioneers in a cryptocurrency system.
Since 2014, China has been developing its national cryptocurrency system that is expected to replace the current currency in cash. Tests for the implementation of the digital yuan are advancing. The Ministry of Commerce recently reported that currency experiments will soon be carried out in China’s largest metropolitan regions. The goal is to progressively expand the regions covered by the digital currency by the end of 2020. The cities that will participate in the experiment this year are Beijing, Tianjin, the Yangtze River Delta, as well as the Greater Bay region, which includes Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau. The system is planned to work on blockchain. The issuance will be first from the Central Bank to commercial banks, and then from such banks to the population. It is assumed that the digital yuan will soon completely replace cash.
It is still unknown when the digital currency will be fully put into circulation. Now, the digital yuan is being tested in very limited geographic locations, more specifically in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Hunan and Chengdu, and with considerably reduced application, being limited to sectors. According to experts, the slow implementation of the project is mainly because there is a great need for public investment for its implementation. In short, a cryptocurrency system will have to undergo constant processes of modernization and adaptation, which can increase public spending considerably.
In 2019, Facebook announced the development of the Libra cryptocurrency, which was widely celebrated in the West. Interestingly, Chinese authorities began to speak more publicly about the digital yuan precisely after the Libra project was unveiled, revealing more details about a program that started in 2014. This shows how, even before the pandemic, there was already a strategic plan for the creation of cryptocurrencies and that such projects were treated in confidence, like real weapons.
In a recent statement by the World Economic Forum, the choice of cryptocurrency technology and blockchain system as an economic alternative for the post-COVID-19 world remains clear: “If there was any doubt about the value of blockchain platforms to improve business transparency that depends on integration perfect of disparate networks, COVID-19 has practically eliminated them. We must look at this health crisis as a vital learning curve that can show us how to build transparent, interoperable and connected networks”. The option for full virtualization of the payment system was not a Chinese invention, but a worldwide forecast. It just seems that the Western powers have neglected to invest in such projects and have lost space to China.
The development of its own digital currency has already been announced by central banks in many countries, including the Federal Reserve (US central bank), which until recently claimed to be against any cryptocurrency creation project, including Libra, noting that these innovations threaten the stability of the global financial system. It is likely and possible that, after some time, the whole world will convert all its national currencies into digital versions and, after all, this will become a necessary measure for the survival of any country in the post-pandemic world order, but, for now, China is the most advanced country in the development and implementation of a digital currency. If the experiment succeeds, the digital yuan is likely to become commonplace for the Chinese and the citizens of their largest allied countries in Asia and elsewhere.
The pandemic has revealed several weaknesses in the international system. Now, during the crisis, nations are seeking to overcome these challenges and are entering real races to achieve results. The race for a vaccine and the production of medicines was the first to be evidenced. Now, a new race is emerging, with another purpose: to create mechanisms before other countries to overcome the economic crisis.
Indeed, the digital yuan could be an interesting alternative. The current system of international payments, which was formed in the 19th century, hardly meets the requirements of the contemporary global market due to the cost and time it takes. The country that most quickly develops an adequate digital currency system will have an economic advantage over others. Most nations are yet to start developing such currencies, lagging far behind China. This impact may not be so strong in some developed countries, but it will certainly affect the United States particularly, against whom China is at a trade war.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
On September 7, Julian Assange will be facing another round of gruelling extradition proceedings, in the Old Bailey, part of a process that has become a form of gradual state-sanctioned torture. The US Department of Justice hungers for their man. The UK prison authorities are doing little to protect his health. The end result, should it result in his death, will be justifiably described as state-sanctioned murder. This picture was not improved upon by a prison visit from his partner, Stella Morris, accompanied by their two children. Almost six months had passed since the last meeting.
Physical distancing was practised during the twenty minute meeting in Belmarsh Prison. Morris and Assange wore face masks and visors, a state of affairs curious given the conspicuous lack of protective wear that has been given to Assange during the pandemic. A prohibition on touching was observed. “We had to keep social distancing and Julian was told he would have to self-isolate for two weeks if he touched the children.” Were officials being careful and considerate? Not according to Assange, who claimed it was the first time he had received a mask “because things are very different behind the doors.” Morris noted a prevailing thinness, a yellow armband to indicate prisoner status, and the fact that he was “in a lot of pain.”
What awaits Assange next month promises to be resoundingly ugly. He will have to ready himself for more pain, applied by Judge Vanessa Baraitser. Throughout her steering of proceedings, Baraitser has remained chillingly indifferent to Assange’s needs, a model of considered cruelty. Keen followers of justicia will be crestfallen: limiting access to legal counsel by keeping him caged behind a glass screen; ignoring his health considerations in refusing emergency bail during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her behaviour has been in keeping with that of Chief Magistrate Lady Emma Arbuthnot, who has done her precious bit to soil the citadel of British justice in previous rulings on Assange. With a family well and truly embedded in the British intelligence and military establishment, it was alarming to even see her name allocated to the Assange case. In February 2018, she dismissed an application by the publisher to cancel his arrest warrant for refusing to surrender for his extradition to Sweden. It did not matter that Swedish proceedings against the Australian had been discontinued, or that prosecution proceedings for breaching bail had not been commenced.
To this ruling came her cool judgment on February 13, 2018 on claims by Assange’s legal team that proceedings for failing to surrender to British authorities were disproportionate and not in the public interest. The judgment is horrendous for a few reasons, and in keeping with the intentionally harsh, and unimaginative way British courts have dealt with his case. Arbuthnot, for one, was unmoved by the findings of the UN Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. His “house arrest” and “harsh restrictions” had been proposed by Assange himself. His time in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London could have been ended by leaving “the embassy whenever he wishes”. He could use the computer facilities, eat what he wanted and see guests.
This caricature of freedom and choice was topped by her assessment that read grotesquely then, and even more appallingly now. While accepting that Assange “had expressed fears of being returned to the United States from a very early stage in the Swedish extradition proceedings”, she found little merit to them. Sweden would not have rendered him to the United States. To have done so would have precipitated a diplomatic crisis between the UK, US and Sweden. (And how, pray, would she know?) As for whether Assange would face an extradition request to Britain, he could always “be able to argue extraneous considerations, fair trial and conditions of detention in the United States prison system.”
Which brings us to Baraitser, who has served as an appropriately bad replacement after Arbuthnot stood aside from the case, despite refusing to admit to any perception of bias. Very little is known about Baraitser in the public domain, though the investigative outfit Declassified UK has been busy with some dedicated digging. On February 28, 2020 it filed a Freedom of Information request with the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) seeking a list of all the cases which Baraitser had ruled upon since her appointment in 2011. Of particular interest was her record on extradition rulings. Two months elapsed before a reply from the information officer at the HM Courts and Tribunal Service confirming that it held “some information that you have requested”. But the request was flatly turned down for not being consistent with the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. “The judiciary is not a public body for the purposes of FOIA… and requests asking to disclose all the cases a named judge ruled on are therefore outside the scope of the FOIA.” This limitation maintained “the independence of the judiciary which also means that the government does not provide guidance or policy on how judges should operate in court.”
The information officer’s reasoning was specious, not least because the FOIA request was premised on identifying what should, in any case, be on the public record: the cases upon which a judge has seen fit to rule upon, with outcomes. This also ignored the fact that some cases involving Baraitser are actually accessible through the legal database Westlaw.
As a barrister wishing to remain anonymous explained to Declassified, “A court is a public authority for the purposes of the Human Rights Act and a judge is an officer of the court.” A court also acted in public. “There is no default anonymity of the names of cases, unless children are involved or other certain limited circumstances, nor the judges who rule on them.”
Undeterred, Declassified persevered and found 24 extradition cases over which Baraitser presided between November 2015 and May 2019 mining Factiva and Westlaw. The results show an overly keen enthusiasm for extradition. “Of these 24 cases, Baraitser ordered the extradition of 23 of the defendants, a 96% extradition record from publicly available evidence.” One of Baraitser’s rulings was overturned on appeal, with the appellate court attaching “considerable weight to the likely impact of extradition upon the health and wellbeing of the defendant’s wife”, who would be “left with very little support.” A scintilla of hope, perhaps, is in the offing.
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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]
Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t go to Kenosha to shoot protestors; he went to protect the property and lives of the people who were threatened by a rampaging mob that had already destroyed large parts of the city. That’s why he was there. He went to fill the security vacuum the Democrat governor and mayor created when they failed to perform their sworn obligation to protect the people in their charge. They didn’t do that, they left the city and its merchants exposed to the erratic and violent behavior of looters, vandals and arsonists. Which is why Rittenhouse showed up. He was there to stop the criminal gangs from doing more damage than they’d already done.
“People are getting injured and our job is to protect this business… If someone is hurt, I’m running into harms way. That’s why I need my rifle to protect myself,” Rittenhouse told a reporter from the Daily Caller.
Unfortunately, Rittenhouse was attacked by a crowd on the property he was protecting, and a man was shot in the head. The man who was killed appears to be Joseph Rosenbaum, “a registered sex offender for a crime involving a minor.” Videos of the victim have popped up on Twitter but we have no way of verifying them at this time. What we know for certain is that Rittenhouse is responsible for the shooting deaths of two men and another who was wounded.
There is also evidence that one of the men who attacked Rittenhouse was carrying a gun. See here:
In a video that has been widely circulated on the internet, Rittenhouse is seen running away from an angry group of protestors who trip him from behind and send him sprawling to the ground. While lying on the street, Rittenhouse quickly grabbed his assault rifle and shot an assailant who had hit him on the head with his skateboard. He then slowly rose to one knee and shot another attacker who was preparing to deliver a blow. The bloody clash scattered the other 15 or 20 potential assailants who quickly did a U-Turn and fled in the opposite direction.
Here’s the shooting from #Kenosha (slowed down at certain points).
Rittenhouse was later taken into custody by police and charged with first-degree murder. The Antioch Police Department released the following statement on Wednesday:
“This morning Kenosha County authorities issued an arrest warrant for the individual responsible for the incident, charging him with First Degree Intentional Homicide. The suspect in this incident, a 17-year-old Antioch resident, is currently in custody of the Lake County Judicial System pending an extradition hearing to transfer custody from Illinois to Wisconsin.”
Rittenhouse has been assigned a public defender and faces charges of “first degree intentional homicide”. He is expected to appear in court on Friday.
Reasonable people should be able to agree that the situation should never have been allowed to deteriorate to the point where a young man felt the need to take up arms to defend an American city from the type of senseless violence we’ve seen in the last 10 weeks. But that’s what happened. And the blame should not be placed on Rittenhouse, but on the Democrat leaders– mayor and governor– and their criminal allies in the media who have applauded the activities of the rioters while failing to mention the horrific damage they have done. It’s shameful.
Also, there is world of difference between “freedom of assembly” and looting, arson and vandalism. The media knows the difference but continues to perpetuate the myth that these are mostly “peaceful protests” conducted by principled demonstrators who only seek social justice. Nothing could be further from the truth. How does one achieve social justice by burning down a mattress warehouse or looting a pancake restaurant or demolishing an entire fleet of new vehicles or spray-painting and firebombing a federal courthouse?? How do these activities square with the teachings of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi or leaders in the Antiwar movement?
They don’t. BLM is not a protest movement, it’s not even a civil rights movement. It’s a Trojan Horse funded by sinister globalist troublemakers who believe that violence is an acceptable means for advancing their own narrow political agenda. And let’s not kid ourselves, the real objective is likely the exact opposite of what they claim to seek, that is, the inevitable deployment of Federal troops followed by the establishment of a centrally-controlled Federal Police force no different than the Stasi or Gestapo. That’s the real objective, absolute martial power in the hands of– you guessed it– the Democrat puppet-masters and their deep-state friends.
There was also another violent eruption in Seattle last night that’s been conveniently ignored by the crooked media. Here’s the story from KIRO News 7:
“Seattle police officers were forced to kick their way out of an East Precinct exit door Monday night, after rioters jammed it with boards and rebar, and attempted to seal the door closed with quick-dry cement. As the door was being jammed, surveillance video shows several other people building a fire outside the building near the exit door, in an attempt to set the building on fire.
“I think what this shows you is that these people are intent on killing police officers,” said Mike Solan, president of the Seattle Police Guild, who called the act ‘”clear domestic terrorism.’”
“We’re being held hostage by a group of 100 to 150 people that are bent on destroying this city and hurting police officers,” Solan said.
Solan said a short time later, the Guild headquarters also became the target of three firebombs. “Our surveillance video captured two individuals scouting our location for several hours,” Solan said.
Surveillance video from that location shows one of the firebombs bursting, igniting the building’s rear stairway in flames, before officers were able to extinguish the fire. Solan said officers are dispirited when no- one in city leadership denounces these attacks.
“That’s why it’s incumbent upon our elected officials to put a stop to this immediately,” he said. “How can city leaders be so feckless? It can’t just be on the officers. This is an absolute overthrow attempt of some of our government institutions, and police are in the way. They or the officers will get hurt or killed so they can put forth that agenda.” (“SPD: Rioters tried to trap officers inside burning precinct using rebar and concrete”, KIRO News7)
Got that? Our esteemed social justice warriors tried to burn cops to death in their own precinct last night and our flunkey media failed to even report the incident.
Nice, eh? They must have been covering something more important like Trump’s latest post on Twitter.
As you may know, Seattle is run by Utopian blockheads who want to defund the police just as violent crime, drug-use and homelessness have skyrocketed to new highs and just as street violence has become a nightly event. Now the fanatical City Council is trying to shrug off the news that hooded thugs torched the police Headquarters putting everyone inside the building at risk of a fiery and agonizing death. What sort of mad world do we live in??
By the way, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has offered his sympathy to the family of Jacob Blake, the black man who was shot while resisting arrest by Wisconsin police over the weekend. Referring to Blake, Biden said:
“What I saw on that video makes me sick. Once again, a Black man, Jacob Blake, has been shot by the police in broad daylight, with the whole world watching.”
New video from the scene shows that Blake was resisting arrest and putting officers at risk by attempting to enter the front seat of his SUV. Neither Biden nor anyone else knows whether there was weapon in the front seat, so Biden’s comments are clearly an attempt to prejudice the case against the cops. Why would he do that unless he thought there was some political advantage in doing so?
Biden added: “Put yourself in the shoes of every Black father and Black mother in this country and ask: Is this what we want America to be? Is this the country we should be?”
Again, why is he saying this? Is Biden really so desperate for black votes that he’d try to influence the course of a murder investigation?
Yes, that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s blaming the cops before he’s even heard the details because he thinks it might help him win the election. That’s Joe Biden in a nutshell. (Note– We now know that Blake DID have a knife in the front seat, but will that be enough to wrangle an apology out of Biden? Don’t hold your breath.)
So where do we go from here? Is the Rittenhouse incident a one-off or is it the beginning of something much bigger? Will we see a sharp uptick in the rioting and looting or will we begin to see more pushback from the people who’ve had enough and who don’t think social justice can be achieved by breaking windows, toppling statues, and burning down cities? Will the police and National Guard finally restore peace and order or will we slip deeper into fratricidal warfare and chaos?
The only thing that’s certain is that there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. The Democrats and the media have encouraged this madness from the very beginning by praising the protests while downplaying the magnitude of the damage. It was all part of a political calculation that has backfired spectacularly. Now the mob is emboldened and no amount of destruction will satisfy its lust for more violence. You can see it in the rioters faces. It’s all a game and they’re enjoying themselves. They feel powerful now and they like it. That’s going to be hard to change.
But it will change and change won’t be pretty. The state will deploy all its assets to reclaim its monopoly on violence. You can bet on that. Security will be reestablished with brute force and an iron fist. A Crackdown is coming and the innocent are going to be crushed along with the guilty.
It didn’t have to be this way. This all could have been avoided if our scheming Democrat leaders had chosen to protect the people instead of kowtowing to the mob. The blood is on their hands.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
All images in this article are from TUR unless otherwise stated
Humanitarian crises have recently been declared in Sudan, Yemen, Niger, Mali, and Somalia—affecting at least 450,000 people—due to flash floods and landslides. Areas with low tree coverage and poor soil quality are more likely to experience flood and drought, as the soil is less able to retain excess rainwater.
Countries like Morocco, which are highly susceptible to long periods of drought, are welcoming reforestation efforts to improve agriculture. In partnership with civil society, the Moroccan government will plant 800,000 trees across the country by 2024.
Like Morocco, many are turning to agroforestry, or tree-farming, as an eco-friendly solution to climate issues. Globally, at least 650 million hectares of land (13.3% of total farming land) are used for agroforestry systems.
Planting trees also diversifies farming. Estimates claim forest-farms can be eight times more profitable than staple crops like grain, which can increase farmers’ incomes and reduce rural poverty.
Deforestation and poverty are linked
Almost 30 percent of the world’s 821 million malnourished people live in Africa, the highest prevalence by region. Despite socioeconomic improvements in Morocco (1.7 million Moroccans have moved out of poverty in the last decade), droughts continue to threaten agricultural production, which accounts for 20 percent of GDP and 30 percent of the Moroccan workforce. Low crop yield can exacerbate poverty, especially in rural regions, as two thirds of people who are in extreme poverty work as agricultural laborers.
However, African farmers are beginning to diversify their incomes, a method Morocco has been successful with in improving rural economies and reducing poverty throughout the region. For Moroccan farmers, this has meant investing in cash crops, such as fruit and argan trees, as opposed to producing principal crops, such as wheat and barley.
An oasis in the desert
Forest-gardens, or “food forests,” have been around since ancient times. These cultivated forests contain several layers. The top layer, usually fruit or nut trees, provides shade and traps moisture for smaller edible plants, such as shrubs and root crops.
One of the most well-known forest-gardens in Morocco, located in Agadir, is the Inraren forest, a strip of tropical fruit trees that covers approximately 65 acres. While the exact origins of the forest are untraceable, many believe that it has existed for at least 2,000 years.
The area began as a small gathering of plants, an alternative to transporting and cultivating food sources far away from home. Locals tended the area over thousands of years, creating a support system—beneficial insects, cultivation techniques, and traditional horticultural knowledge. The end-result was the creation of a “self-sustaining” ecosystem, a so-called oasis in the desert, where local produce—goats, chickens, pheasants—could live within and contribute to the survival of the trees and crops.
In addition to food staples and non-native produce, these forests provide shady spaces where cool, moist air can gather, keeping the surrounding land firm and water-retentive. The goal of food-forest developers is to create these forests in areas where the soil is prone to becoming loose and dry.
Resilience by planting trees
In order to combat the effects of global warming, governments are embracing reforestation initiatives. A simple initiative may involve tree planting as an activity. The Chinese government, for example, enacted a program in 1982 to combat the effects of climate change within the country, establishing that all able-bodied citizens between the ages of 11 and 60 have the obligation to plant three to five trees every year. Local governments are required to organize voluntary tree-planting activities that engage all citizens. This ensures that trees are not planted in unwanted areas that could harm the land or the people. Since the program began, a total of 42 billion trees have been planted across the country.
The High Atlas Foundation (HAF), a development nonprofit based in Marrakech, offers a method of reducing rural poverty by providing farmers with natural-grown fruit and nut trees to diversify and boost local incomes.
The approach connects three levels of stakeholders—individuals within the community, government, and local organizations—and provides a solution to barriers local farmers may face in trying to grow their own trees. Local farmers may not have available land or proper equipment to grow saplings from seeds, and nearby nurseries may be too expensive to purchase from.
HAF nurseries use land donated in-kind from donors such as the local Departments of Water and Forests, Ministry of Youth and Sports, and the Moroccan Jewish community. Locals grow seeds within these nurseries, keeping the process within the community. Then tree saplings are sold at reduced prices to local farmers, planted, and monitored for proper growth. In this way, the organization has planted 1.38 million tree seeds this year, partnering as well with Ecosia.
Similar support within the country has helped build women’s argan oil cooperatives, by providing argan trees, thereby reducing inequalities and bringing money back into local economies.
As climate change continues to affect communities around the world, reforestation and tree farming methods provide a solution. However, economic and political aspects of land ownership can challenge these initiatives. It will be important for those who choose to plant trees to do so in the right places.
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Jacqueline Skalski-Fouts is an undergraduate global studies student at the University of Virginia.
In 1991-1992, just prior to, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US gloated over its global supremacy which, of course guaranteed its unfettered dominance of United Nations agencies, the most powerful of which is the UN Security Council. In 1990-1991 the US bullied all members of the Security Council into passing Resolution 678, which authorized UN-Nato bombing Iraq (using “all necessary means”). At one point in 1991, according to the New York Times, the UK dropped one bomb per minute on Baghdad, and the result of UN Security Council Resolution 678 was the “destruction of the infrastructure necessary to support human life in Iraq” according to former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and former President of Finland Marti Ahtisaari, Nobel Laureate and United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management. The only Security Council members with the courage and decency to vote against Resolution 678 were Cuba and Yemen, with US Ambassador Thomas Pickering threatening Yemen’s Ambassador Al-Ashtal:
“That will be the most expensive vote you ever cast.”
Intelligence agencies have “long memories.” Is it possible – or probable that the slaughter-bombing of Yemen today is payback for Yemen’s courage in opposing US sponsored Resolution 678, defying US hegemony? UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has described the carnage in Yemen today as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” On August 12, 2020 the New York Times cited:
“Report Links Weapons Sold to Saudis by the U.S. to Yemeni Civilian Deaths….The State Department inspector general issued a report on Tuesday criticizing the agency as failing to take proper measures to reduce civilian deaths from American-made bombs used by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the catastrophic Yemen war…..The American-made bombs are central to the Saudi-led air war against Yemeni rebels that has resulted in what the United Nations calls the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis. Thousands of civilians have been killed since 2015, many of them women and children…Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed the $8.1 billion sale of these munitions, mostly made by Raytheon, despite a two-year bi-partisan congressional hold on the proposed transfer of the arms, comprising 22 packages…The move infuriated Democratic lawmakers, who asked the inspector general at the time, Steve A. Linick, to open an investigation….In congressional testimony in June, Mr. Linick identified Mr. String as one of the two officials who attempted to pressure him into dropping the arms sale investigation. The other was Brian Bulatao, the Under Secretary of State for Management, and a longtime friend of Mr. Pompeo’s. ‘He tried to bully me,’ Mr. Linick said.”
United States dominance of the UN Security Council continued almost unabated through 2011, when, during the Medvedev Presidency of Russia, a phone call from US Secretary of State Clinton to Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov assured Russia’s abstention on UN Security Council Resolution 1973, while China was still too weakened to veto the abhorrent resolution, which led to Resolution 1973 approving “all necessary measures” under Chapter VII, authorizing the NATO members’ destruction of Libya, transforming the once progressive Middle East nation into a failed state, and the extrajudicial murder of President Gaddafi, during whose torture-death he was sodomized with a bayonet.
Having succeeded in bending the UN Security Council to its predatory will, disguised as sanctimonious “concern for the human rights and democratic freedoms of the Libyan people,” the Libyan state was destroyed, as was Iraq, and both are now incubators of terrorism. The US was evidently confident in its ability to bully the Security Council into authorizing a repeat performance, this time destroying the government of President Assad in Syria, beginning in 2011, but the Presidency of Vladimir Putin in Russia, and the ascendancy of China to great power status had not been factored into their grandiose blueprint, and by 2013 the multiple plans to gain UN Security Council authorization for attacks on Syria, overt or covert, were frustrated by the three double-vetoes cast by Ambassador Vitali Churkin for Russia and Ambassador Li Baodong for China. Seven years later, the US during July 2020 is still trying to manipulate the Security Council into authorizing surreptitious invasion of Syria and destruction of the government of President Assad.
In July, 2020 there were three Security Council meetings on Syria, the West attempting to double “humanitarian aid” access routes to Syria from Turkey, thereby increasing Syria’s vulnerability to a NATO member. Russia and China opposed this “new initiative,” leading to a virulent “right of reply” between the US Representative and China’s Ambassador Zhang. The US Representative deplored China’s “lack of concern for the humanitarian needs of Syrian Civilians” to which China’s Ambassador Zhang brilliantly retorted:
“US unilateral coercive sanctions against Syria are causing the greatest humanitarian crisis for the Syrian people, and the U S’ hypocritical ‘concern for the needs of the Syrian people’ is a masquerade for their surreptitious effort to undermine and threaten the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian government, which is effectively providing humanitarian aid for its own people; external interference is suspect.”
On the following Saturday morning emergency meeting a resolution was adopted permitting one border crossing at Dab Al-Hawa, the border crossing from Turkey into Northwest Syria. On August 5 the NY Times quoted John E. Smith, former director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Assets Control:
“It is generally the people of the jurisdiction that pay the ultimate penalty from the poverty that is inflicted on that government.”….”the vast nature of the United Nations sanctions efforts is scaring companies away from the region, even though they may be legally allowed to operate. ‘It’s a double-edged sword,’ said Basma Alloush, policy and advocacy adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a humanitarian organization that operates in Syria. ‘If the US is using such sweeping, vast sanctions to yield some kind of political goal, they’re not paying enough attention to the unintended consequences.’ She added: ‘With the US adding this additional pressure on ordinary people that have gone through hell and back, they really need to do a lot more to demonstrate how exactly they’re going to be protecting these civilians.’”
Consistent with its savage trajectory, the US effort to coerce the UN Security Council into restoring international sanctions against Iran has reached the point of absurdity. However that has not stopped Mr. Pompeo. On August 21, The New York Times quoted Wendy Sherman, former American negotiator during the Obama Administration stating:
“The United States does not have the standing’ to restore the sanctions and is unlikely to convince European diplomats that it did,”
The United States infuriated even its allies on the Security Council when it withdrew from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Nevertheless, the Security Council and the JCPOA contain a technical loophole enabling the US to again force its will upon the currently entirely alienated Security Council, and with breathtaking arrogance,
“In a six-page notification submitted on August 20 to Dian Triansyah Djani of Indonesia, the Security Council president, the Trump administration said the sanctions would be reimposed against Iran after 30 days. Officials said the sanctions could be blocked only by a Security Council resolution, which the United States has the power to veto.”
The unilateral coercive sanctions that the United States has imposed on Iran has devastated the Iranian economy and people. The US assassination of Iranian General Sulimani was a criminal act in violation of international law. The fact that assassination has been a method of eliminating leaders that do not bend to the will of US corporate interests is seldom raised in the Security Council, and the only powers that allude to these crimes are Russia and China, permanent members of the Security Council, and arguably the only ballast safeguarding a modicum of legitimacy for the Security Council at present..
The entire Middle East has been subjected to cataclysmic violence, and the trajectory is alarming. It is now clear that the perilous schism between the United States and China may have deadly consequences, and there are multiple possibilities that could culminate in war, possibly the final war.
The classic culmination of monopoly capitalism is fascism, and the dynamic of capitalism is suicidal. The question is: can this economic system based on greed and profit maximization be controlled, or replaced by a more humanitarian economic order? As Xi Jinping referenced “The Thucydides Principle,” the question must be asked: is it possible to avert armageddon? And is the United Nations now a solution, or will it be swallowed up into an engine of the problem?
In his famous book “The Grand Chessboard”, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the psychopathic national security advisor of former President Carter stated that the greatest obstacle to US global dominance would be an alliance between Russia and China. Brzezinski was, some say, demonically brilliant, and he probably recognized that the only force that the West could not defeat was precisely such an alliance.
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Carla Stea is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research’s Correspondent at UN headquarters, New York.
If you’re gathering evidence of the victimization of Muslim women, this is not your film. Yes, Made in Bangladesh highlights exploitation in a country, most of whose citizens are Muslim. But this film’s focus is women workers: people working to support their families, as most women do, and fighting for parity, as most of us do.
Some film reviews underscore the 2013 collapse of a garment factory in Dhaka where many women perished. Made in Bangladesh is not an account of that catastrophe.
While the venue of this film is a clothing factory and the main characters are women laborers, its inspiration is union organizer Daliya Akter who, fleeing her village home, found work in a Dhaka garment factory, one probably not unlike the setting of this film. She eventually realized that the only way out of untenable working conditions she experienced was to build worker solidarity and gain legal protection, and so began organizing a union of fellow garment workers. Made in Bangladesh is based on her struggle and ultimate success, a story so compelling that film director Rabaiyat Hossain, herself Bangladeshi, reached out to Akter to collaborate in the writing and production of her tough but heartwarming career.
This is director Rubaiyat Hossain’s third feature film, and since its 2019 release through Indie film festivals, she has won recognition as an outstanding young filmmaker. She is committed to women’s empowerment both in the themes of her films and also by employing professional women in her production teams, assembling a crew of talented Bangladeshi women to handle the cameras, the sound, editing, casting, and other production work that go into serious filmmaking. In a 2019 interview at the Toronto International Film Festival Hossain explains her determination to bring women into all levels of production.
Hossain is forthright about the political motive behind her themes too. She emphasizes that the women she portrays are not victims. Her aim is to direct attention to women’s search for political solutions to injustices they experience. She joins others in rejecting boycotts by sympathetic foreign consumers of garment sweatshops after the 2013 tragedy, explaining: “These (factory) jobs have the potential to redefine life for young women in Bangladesh; the struggle of garment workers to be able to collectively work towards realizing their rights must be supported by everyone who wears the clothes they make. Only a tiny percentage of Bangladeshi factories are unionized; the answer (to exploitative factory management) is that these women are respected and that bad (working) conditions are not tolerated.”
The film has deservedly won Hossain’s and her team international acclaim. Made in Bangladesh is laboriously and skillfully filmed in situ (in contrast with those lavishly staged Bollywood productions and made-for-America Indian features). Hossain’s film swamps us with the deafening noise of a factory floor where rows of undistinguishable workers bend over machines.
She maneuvers us along dusty, clamorous Dhaka streets. She leads us through unlit corridors of the labor ministry where our heroine repeatedly returns, petition in hand. She holds our gaze behind mosquito netting to overhear a forlorn couple review their bleak options. She draws us into a cluster of coworkers gathering to strategize their campaign. Anyone who has walked through urban neighborhoods in Nepal, Pakistan, India or Bangladesh will appreciate the authenticity that Hossain and her crew achieve in Made in Bangladesh. (Her aim is not to exhibit Dhaka’s poverty. It is what it is—the daily routine of laborers, many of them rural migrants to the city.)
And the actors: Made in Bangladesh’s main character is Shimu, beautifully rendered by Rikita Nandini Shimu. Our heroine emerges from silent humility to step onto a risky path, facing one obstacle after another, yet refusing to retreat. Two other noteworthy figures are an NGO worker who recruits Shimu to gather signatures for her campaign but offers no effective support, and another unsympathetic character, a secretary to the ministry of labor official who reviews union applications. While both could facilitate Shimu’s agenda, their portrayal as passive characters emphasizes the courage and determination needed by our heroine.
This Bangladeshi production also propels the country’s film talent onto the global stage, adding to the growing body of work that is countering established stereotypes and white-hero-focused films that have hitherto shaped and dominated our perceptions of the world’s people.
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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.
Despite the lamentations and orders from Geneva or the local capitals of Capital, I refuse to believe that COVID-19 or the putative pathogens are a principal challenge to humanity– except for those using these viruses for policing and/ or culling the population.
Instead I find we are in a situation not unlike that which led to the notorious Non-Aggression Pact concluded between the German Empire under NSDAP rule and the USSR. It is completely understandable that China and Russia want to avoid open war with the Anglo-American Empire. However we in the West must be honest about the criminals that rule us. Just as they did a century ago—and in fact throughout the 20th century– they are preparing a war that will “neutralise” millions on the planet. I leave it to the imagination as to the substance of this euphemism.
So much noise is being made about a vaccine. This is noise but not meaningless noise.
There was a Covid “vaccine” on the shelf before the pathogen was released. By that I do not mean that there was a “cure” or a prophylactic. That would be to mistake the true nature of the “vaccine”. As I wrote in an earlier article what we have is the introduction of a new religious regime.[1] Instead of the “sin” and “heresy”, terms long abandoned by all except the most primitive Christian sects, we have “infection” and “denial of the disease/ resistance to the so-called health measures”.
It is entirely unimportant whether a vaccine does anything at all. The only important quality is that it be distinctive enough so that standard issue chemists/ physicians recognize it as a product they are willing to distribute. This has been assured by the years of indoctrination of the medical profession to obey its masters in the pharma/ chemicals cartel.
The important– and lethal, in social terms– power of the vaccine is that it takes the place of auricular confession and indulgences, for centuries the stock and trade of Christianity. Here it is irrelevant whether one is Catholic and uses a confessional or Protestant and testifies to the congregation. Beginning with the AIDS campaign, the forces — led in the field by Fauci, the CDC and NIH– for viral warfare discovered that they could create and manipulate social stigmatism by associating it with alleged health hazards (somehow this was never used against DuPont or Monsanto…) They were able to create a microcosm of moral terror against homosexuals based on “health risk”, rather than old time religion.
This same strategy was modified and has been rolled out worldwide. Hence the greatest policing forces for vaccination (what James Corbett et al. call “medical martial law”[2]) are not the uniformed services but the private sector and most of all, your neighbour. This is ultimately a religious restructuring of the society based on ancient methods– not so ironically promoted by a man who spent his entire education under the control of Jesuits.[3]
Just as no one can see if god actually granted absolution (or even cared about the alleged sins committed) no one can see– except the clergy– if you are really a sinner and whether you have been saved by absolution through the needle (or patch). But failure to prove that you have been in the confessional or have obtained either absolution or an indulgence will be sufficient to risk being outlawed or in historical Catholic terms, excommunicated. In the Middle Ages, excommunication meant one was denied the right to property, life or anything. Food, shelter, and protection could be denied. One could be robbed or killed with impunity.
Most recently decrees have been promulgated that children must wear masks in school. While it is impossible to deny that COVID has virtually no effect on children, they have been defined as health risks to the adult population. These little creatures although not ill are all potential transmitters of the dreaded pathogens. Yet the real reason for designating children from ages 6 to 11, as “carriers” is nothing more than an alibi for a practice the Church understood centuries ago. Successful indoctrination has to begin before the age of seven. Even the alternative pedagogy of Rudolf Steiner, popular in Germany, is based on “seven-year” cycles. The ideological foundations have to be laid by age seven and boosted by age 14.
Most of the West believes that the paramountcy of “science” meant an abandonment of religion and superstition. The adoption of science as an ideology had little to do with replacing either.[4] Although the entire campaign against the pseudo-pandemic was initiated and is managed from the US—with the WHO as cut-out[5]—very little attention is paid to the way fundamental power transformations have been made in the most religious country in the world– the USA. Even sober analysts are distracted by such circuses as the POTUS election cycle. These circuses are symptoms mistaken for causes.
Because there is a widespread and mistaken belief that “science” prevails over religion as a basis of knowledge, the religious use of science and the exercise of clerical power are not recognized, let alone discussed.[6] Children were taught by the Church to denounce their parents to the Inquisition. The culture of denunciation was always a central part of Church power and we see it reintroduced today in broad daylight with barely a bark.
Along with the “vaccine race” there is also the so-called coviPass scenario.[7] Each vassal regime is to issue a certificate of vaccination/ immunisation. It sounds like the WHO vaccination book travellers take when they leave Europe or North America for the “jungle”. According to this scenario normal life, e.g. leaving one’s residential cell, travel, employment in conventional workplaces, and use of public facilities (although most of these have meanwhile been privatised) will be granted to those who submit to the vaccine(s) and surveillance.
However there is no more normal life for the permanently unemployed, the bankrupt, and the homeless, in short all those whom this action has ruined or will ruin economically.
Hence only people who have a “normal life” will be able to return. The rest will have lost it. Hence whatever life they may be permitted to have, if any, will be subject to prescription by the viral inquisition, dependent on favour or chance.
At the end of July it was announced that 180,000 enterprises collapsed in Portugal alone. That does not count the chain reaction those collapses will cause: not only in unemployment but the ruin of other firms in the supply chain.
180,000 bankrupt firms means conservatively 540,000 unemployed, in addition to those unemployed already under-counted. This is a potential unemployment of 1-2 million in a country with a workforce of about 5 million. Exact government statistics are only available for COVID infections, so estimates here will have to suffice.
Tax receipts have already dropped drastically which also means that the banks will squeeze more out of the State, i.e. budget cuts, leaving next to nothing but promises for those without jobs and uncertainty for those who have them. Portuguese wages range between EUR 500 and 2,000 per month for ordinary work, i.e. about half of what Germans earn (but for a 6-day week and 10-hour day). Of course the cost of living in Germany is high for ordinary workers too. It is only a certain trained sense of superiority that leads workers in Northern Europe to believe they are and will be better off with 250,000 bankruptcies—and counting.
Similar conditions can be expected among the other so-called PIGS, especially since these countries scarcely recovered from the imposed bankruptcy of 2008.[8] Yet none of this counts in the Big Picture, solely dedicated to sustaining the COVID illusion.
The indulgence or similar instrument issued by the Church ostensibly certified the forgiveness of god, divine grace. Of course it was only a license sold for pecuniary and penitentiary benefit. This is what the vaccine together with any “CoviPass” will be. The attention devoted to medical efficacy is a distraction. A vaccine need not do anything. There is no way to prove that one has been protected or cured– except to believe the authorities. All your neighbours and/ or their children will be sure that you confess your sins– because the wages of sin are death.
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Notes
[1] Privacy, Auricular Confession and Computer Viruses, DV (25 May 2020)
[2] https://www.corbettreport.com/gates/
[3] Anthony Fauci, who despite Donald Trump’s attempts to subordinate him, remains the virus primate in the church of disease, graduated from a Jesuit high school and the Jesuit foundation College of the Holy Cross.
[4] The Marginalist Counter-Revolution, DV (21 July 2020)
[5] It is an unpleasant fact that even the Left is reluctant to acknowledge but the entire UN System is organised based on Anglo-American corporation law. The real decisions—the ones that count—are made by those who own the majority of shares or the controlling shares in the entity. This translates into a US majority in the Bretton Woods machine (IMF/ World Bank) and the UN agencies where the US regime pays the greater part of the budget (e.g. personnel expense). This means that no “well-managed” UN agency can act in ways that would lead to reduction of elimination of funding. It is a matter of public record that the USG and BMGF are the single most important funders of the WHO. This is not merely because of the amount of funding but the fact that no other individual source, whether one or more national contributors, have equal or greater power over the majority shareholders. If more people understood how corporations are ruled in fact, they would not be deceived by the appearance that the US is just one of nearly 200 nations represented in the UN organisation.
[6] Henry C Lea, Superstition and Force. In fact, the idea that arguments could be won or guilt could be proven by scientific evidence is a very recent arrival in Western culture. Despite the popular TV and cinema depictions of supposedly “scientific” investigation, the presumption that the authorities are justified and correct in their accusations or hypotheses is so strong that evidence is presented as the task of affirming the official story, not discovering the truth.
[7] https://covipass.com/
[8] Since everything that ever happened prior to March 2020 has been erased from historical memory—well almost—it should be recalled that PIGS was the common abbreviation used in the mass media to identify Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, the countries most seriously plundered by the 2008 financial coup.
On August 9, presidential elections were held in Ukraine’s neighbor, Belarus. Economically, they are mutually dependent on each other, and Russia is too, but currently it seems as if trade, like flights, could soon be put on hold. Meanwhile, far right neo-Nazi elements from Ukraine are attempting to increase unrest in the two countries. In the August update, New Cold War’s regular contributor and analyst, Dmitriy Kovalevich, pinpoints the issues facing the two countries following the elections and addresses how and if they can be resolved.
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In August, the situation in Belarus and the mass protests that engulfed the country almost completely dominated the information agenda of the Ukrainian media.
On August 9, presidential elections were held in neighboring Belarus. According to the Belarusian CEC [Central Electoral Committee], it was won by the incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the country since 1994. The opposition did not recognize the election results, calling on its supporters to protest in the streets, acting according to the scenario of “Color Revolutions.”
Police violence triggers response
During the dispersal of the protests, at the beginning the police actively used violence. The violence later triggered protests from a number of workers’ collectives, since many workers. Despite not participating in the initial protests, they “appeared in the wrong place” and the police beat them too.
It is noteworthy that the opposition called for strikes only in state enterprises (the overwhelming majority in Belarus), never calling on workers of private or foreign enterprises to strike. Only a week after the elections, similarly massive rallies and demonstrations, in support of the incumbent president, began to congregate in Belarus, in which the Communist Party of Belarus, which supports the incumbent president, took an active part.
Comparison to Euromaidan 2014
Many commentators compare the protests in Belarus and the 2014 Ukrainian coup in Euromaidan. There are indeed many common features, but there are also significant differences. Lukashenko pursued a fairly balanced social policy. In Belarus, most large enterprises have been nationalized (state-owned). There are no oligarchs in Belarus, and, accordingly, no large media owned by oligarchs, like those which summoned Ukrainians to Euromaidan in 2014. The standard of living and social guarantees in Belarus are much higher than in Ukraine, while tariffs for gas and electricity are some 50% lower. Food prices are also significantly lower.
According to recent polls, Ukrainians consider Alexander Lukashenko the best among foreign leaders[1]. It is because of this trust that Minsk was chosen as a platform for negotiations to resolve the conflict in Donbas.
Impact of Belarus events on Ukraine
The events in Belarus have divided Ukrainian society and caused serious concerns. Euromaidan supporters, radical nationalists and activists of Western NGOs support the Belarusian protesters. Pavel Klimkin, the Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister, said that the outcome of the protests in Belarus is a matter of Ukraine’s survival. He wrote,
“The elections in Belarus will neither be a logical end, nor the end at all. All the fun will begin after them. We need to fight for European Belarus, we cannot and should not lose this fight, it is a matter of our security and our existence.”[2]
Ukrainian radical nationalists and neo-Nazis rushed to Belarus to help carry out some kind of Euromaidan in the country. According to the concept promoted by the Ukrainian ultra-right: Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Belarus should be united in an anti-Russian confederation, and it should become a kind of fortress of the “white race” opposing both “Asian Russia” and Western Europe, “spoiled by migrants.” Ukrainian neo-Nazis from the C-14 group support Belarusian protesters with flags used by both the modern Belarus opposition and Nazi collaborators during the Second World War[3].
“They were preparing this mess for us”
A similar concept is being promoted by so-called experts from the Atlantic Council, only citing the need to create a buffer zone between Europe and Russia. The real goal is, most likely, the decline in trade relations between Russia/China and Western Europe[4]. Until now, Belarus has been the missing link in this chain.
President Lukashenko says that the opposition is ruled from Poland and Europeans are just following the lead of the US:
“They were preparing this mess for us. And Russia was afraid of losing us. The West decided to pull us up somehow, of course—as we see now—against Russia. Now they want to establish this Baltic-Black Sea corridor, a sort of buffer zone: the three Baltic republics, us and Ukraine. We are one link in this chain. The USA is planning and directing all this, and the Europeans are playing along. It has been ordered – they’ll do it. A special center was established near Warsaw. We are watching, we know what it does. They began to brandish their arms. You know, when disturbing things happen in the vicinity and tanks begin to move and planes fly nearby – this is not a coincidence.”[5]
There again, at the same time, President Zelensky and official Kiev are in no hurry to take one side or the other; they are prepared to wait. And one of the reasons for this is the importance of Belarus for the economy of Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe.
The significance of the ‘Belarus window’
After the imposition of sanctions against the Russian Federation, the Ukrainian economy has become highly dependent on the “Belarusian window,” through which Russian goods are supplied to Ukraine and Ukrainian ones – to Russia. For years Belarus has profited from re-labeling goods as ‘produced in Belarus’. It became the main supplier of sea food to all post-Soviet countries without a coastline. It supplies two times more fruit to Russia than it is able to produce. It is possible to buy Russian goods in every Ukrainian supermarket; they are simply marked, made in Belarus.
After Russia, Ukraine ranks second on the list of main recipients of Belarusian exports, totalling at around $ 4 billion. On the list of Belarus’ main importers, Ukraine is in fourth place (a total volume of $ 1.5 billion).
Ukrainian financial analyst Vasyl Nevmerzhitskiy said he believes that in the event of border closure by Belarus (in case of serious political problems) it will negatively impact the Ukrainian budget, as it would lose a major source of supplies: “If they go [as far as] the closure of borders in Belarus because of public unrest,” he said, “then our trade turnover will severely decrease. After all, through this neighbor Ukraine buys not only Belarusian goods, but also Russian ones. The supply of goods will be curtailed at once, to two key trading partners. This will be felt by the Ukrainian budget, since the collection of VAT and customs duties, as well as our currency market, will decrease.”[6]
Impact on Ukraine’s industry, trade and economy
However, the cornerstone of Ukrainian-Belarusian economic relations is oil and petroleum by-products. Although Belarus is not an oil-producing country, it is the main source of oil and diesel fuel for the Ukrainian market. About 35% of gasoline is supplied to Ukraine by Belarus and about the same amount by the Russian Federation via Belarus. Oil is imported mainly from the Mozyr oil refinery in Belarus through Korosten, in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine. As Ukrainian analysts have said since 2014, not a single Ukrainian tank would move without oil supplied by Belarus.
Moreover, since Ukraine’s industry has largely collapsed, Kiev also now repairs its military vehicles and aircrafts in Belarus. Minsk has become a middleman, working on military contracts for Russia as well as Belarus (often in the same factories). In the meantime, Belarus supplies military vehicles and optic devices for both the Russian and Ukrainian armies.
Since Ukraine banned flights to Russia, despite millions of its citizens working there, Ukrainians must fly to Russia via Belarus. Likewise, Russians visit their relatives in Ukraine by flying via Belarus.
Thus, in supporting the protesters in Belarus, the Ukraine authorities would be acting against their own economic interests. Nevertheless, under the pressure of the United States, they will sooner or later have to decide which stand point to adopt. Ukrainian nationalists and activists of Western-funded NGOs have already made up their minds, but their actions in support of the Belarusian opposition in Kiev are gathering no more than a dozen people. Already having experienced two Color Revolutions and a period of state repression, the Ukrainian Left is calling for the focus to be on economic rather than political issues during the Belarusian crisis. It is this question that the Belarusian opposition is trying to silence, claiming that it is first necessary to overthrow Lukashenko, and then – “we’ll see.” At the same time, the opposition economic program, published in June on the website zabelarus.com, suggests neoliberal reforms and mass privatization[7].
Alternative views on events
The Ukrainian Marxist organization, Borotba, which was banned in Ukraine after the Color Revolution in 2014, warns that the economic program of the Belarus opposition is against workers’ interests, although the opposition is trying to manipulate with them, for its own interests.
“The picture of the confrontation between the “people” and the “dictator” imposed by the imperialist media should not overshadow a political and class analysis. Sympathy for the victims of police brutality does not mean supporting their political agenda.
Borotba continues, “The leading force in the protests against the Lukashenko regime was the urban middle class, which has grown and strengthened during the years of relative economic prosperity. The middle class considered the framework of the paternalistic welfare state to be restrictive, seeing its ideal in the “free market” and “free enterprise.” Having no experience of the neoliberal reforms that have destroyed the economies of Ukraine and Russia, a significant part of the Belarusian people sees the future of their country in market-driven “freedom.”
“Nevertheless, a neoliberal program of large-scale privatization, health cuts and the freedom to lay off workers is unlikely to appeal to most workers. That is why the “reform” program, initially widely advertised by opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and her supporters, was later basically hidden. But it was too late,” Borotba concluded.[8]
What is obvious to Ukrainians who closely follow the events in neighboring country, regardless of protests’ outcome Belarus will not be the same as it was prior to August 2020. If Lukashenko remains in power, his position will be weaker and he will have to make significant concessions to foreign trade partners. Any change of power in Belarus may be at the risk of a long period of instability, the closure of big enterprises and civil conflict, since the liberal opposition cannot rely on mass support, or prove its legitimacy.
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Big Oil has frequently been chided for merely trying to burnish its green credentials, and so far, it has done little to convince us that it is truly moving forward to greenness. Despite the much-vaunted megatrend involving the global electrification drive and shift to renewable energy, the most ambitious pledges by Big Oil to pursue net-zero agendas remain weak at best.
An analysis of near-term spending plans on renewables by the biggest oil and gas companies shows that real investments in renewable energy will continue to pale in comparison to capex plans for greenfield fossil fuel projects.
Let this sink in: In 2018, Big Oil spent less than 1% of its combined budget on green energy projects.
Further, according to Rystad Energy, Big Oil is expected to pump in $166B into new oil and gas ventures over the next five years, thus dwarfing the currently specified outlay of just $18B (less than 10% of capex) for solar and wind energy projects. Indeed, much of Big Oil’s reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions leans on the so-called natural gas bridge.
Good case in point: Italian multinational oil and gas giant Eni S.p.A. (BIT:ENI) recently unveiled what has been hailed as the most ambitious climate pledge yet by an oil supermajor. Eni has announced plans to cut down its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% over the next three decades. Yet, its natural gas output will still comprise 85% of its total production by the end of the forecast period.
Source: NS Energy
Whereas no Big Oil company is likely to earn its stripes as a true renewables energy outfit over the next decade, here are the best bets that are likely to come closest. Notably, U.S. oil and gas supermajors are conspicuous by their absence on this list.
#1 Equinor
It is instructive to note that a NOC, and not an independent oil company, has the most ambitious green strategy of them all. Of the $18B that the supermajors plan to invest in clean energy over the next five years, more than half will come from Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company, Equinor ASA’s (NYSE:EQNR) coffers. In fact, if you remove Equinor from the equation, Big Oil’s renewable investments will actually decline over the next three years before even factoring in the industry-wide deep capex cuts due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Equinor has announced plans to invest $10B into clean energy by 2025, mostly through its offshore wind portfolio. The company plans to grow renewable energy capacity tenfold to 4 GW-6 GW by 2026 and up to 16 GW by 2035, thus catapulting it to an offshore wind major. Further, Equinor plans to reduce its net carbon intensity by at least 50% by 2050 by deploying CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage) and hydrogen technologies.
#2 Total SA
French multinational integrated oil and gas company, Total SA (NYSE:TOT) stands out as the supermajor with plans to develop the most renewable capacity in the near-term.
In the current year alone, Total plans to double its gross global renewable energy capacity to 6 gigawatts (GW) from just a year ago, with the company playing the lead role as the developer and owner of the renewable energy assets over the long-term. For instance, Total has lined up an 800 megawatt (MW) solar project in Qatar where it will own a 49% stake in the project when it is completed in 2021.
But Total is not just content to compete in the traditional renewable energy arena of wind and solar but is also giving Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) a run for its money thanks to its 2016 acquisition of battery company Saft. Thanks to that savvy M&A move, Total is not only currently developing the largest energy storage facility in France, but it is also providing batteries for diverse industries including electric vehicles, military vehicles, medical applications, and even to the oil and gas sectors.
Saft has already gained considerable traction after generating $100 million in free cash flow for its parent company in 2019.
#3 ENI SpA
As we have pointed above, ENI has the most ambitious climate change pledge with plans to lower its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. ENI also says that its renewable projects will achieve an installed capacity of 3 GW in 2023 and 5 GW in 2025.
What separates the Italian major from the likes of Repsol and BP with comparable commitments is that ENI has pledged to rein in Scope 3 emissions as well–or emissions generated by ENI’s supply chain partners and end-users. Repsol and BP have also set 2050 as their deadline for net-zero carbon emissions but have mostly been vague about their Scope 3 strategies. For instance, in February, new BP chief executive Bernard Looney pledged to meet the demands of the Paris climate change agreement but provided precious few details on how his company planned to make this a reality.
Still, ENI’s renewable energy and climate pledges come with a caveat: The company considers natural gas as a necessary bridge as the world tries to wean itself off fossil fuels and also has plans to continue growing its fossil fuel output till 2025.
Natural gas does produce about 28% less CO2 emissions than heating oil and 50% less than coal for the same amount of energy when burned. Further, natural gas can be used to keep the power grid stable as solar and wind power fluctuate.
So, at first glance, that does not sound like such a terrible idea, until you consider that a cross-section of climate experts have warned that we only have a ten-year window in which to take decisive action to prevent irreversible damage to our climate and ecosystems. During the first five years of that timeframe, ENI plans to take a detour to first ramp-up oil production before beginning a ramp-down at an unspecified future date.
In other words, it is mostly business as usual for ENI and other oil and gas supermajors–for now.
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Alex Kimani is a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer and researcher for Safehaven.com.
The British Ministry of Defence has blacklisted Declassified UK, a media organisation producing in-depth, critical journalism on UK foreign and security policies. It is the latest attempt by Whitehall to censor the media and the National Union of Journalists has called on Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to “intervene”.
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The blacklisting was revealed after a journalist working for Declassified UK asked the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) press office for a comment on the case of a British soldier being investigated by the military police for protesting against the war in Yemen.
The journalist, Phil Miller, asked an MOD spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Wade, for a comment on Lance Corporal Ahmed Al-Batati who protested near the prime minister’s office at Downing Street on 24 August 2020 saying the British government had “blood on its hands”.
After commenting that he “did not know too much about Declassified”, Wade then asked Miller: “What sort of angle are you taking about the war in Yemen?”
Wade told Miller he would get back to him “shortly”. An hour later, Wade said: “I’m afraid that I’m not going to be able to send you anything today.” He said Miller would have to submit a Freedom of Information Act request for an answer – an uncertain process that can take many weeks.
Shortly afterwards, the Daily Telegraph published a story about the same soldier, which carried a quote from an army spokesperson who commented on Al-Batati’s situation.
‘We no longer deal with your publication’
Asked why Declassified was not being given a comment for the same story, Wade told Miller that “we no longer deal with your publication”.
When asked for a justification, Wade replied that “someone else in the press office” might be able to explain.
Al-Batati said in an Instagram post before his arrest: “Saudi Arabia are [sic] responsible for multiple airstrikes killing innocents, targeting hospitals and breaking international law. Saudi Arabia are also responsible for blocking aid from going into the country. This has left 80% of the population in need of emergency aid. Our government continues to arm and support Saudi Arabia. It is clear that this government has blood on its hands.”
The move by the MOD is the latest and most blatant example of a long-standing attempt by Whitehall departments, and the MOD in particular, to control and even censor the British media.
In February 2020, one of Boris Johnson’s communications advisers tried to exclude reporters from selected publications, including the Mirror and the Independent, from a media briefing at Downing Street. The Labour Party said the move showed the prime minister was “resorting to tactics imported from Donald Trump to hide from scrutiny”.
Declassified, which was launched in 2019, has earned acclaim for critical and well-documented investigations into British foreign, military and intelligence policies.
They include reports into how GCHQ, the government’s electronic eavesdropping and cyber warfare agency, is running programmes in British schools, how Britain has been training the Belarusian armed forces and Hong Kong police, how British troops and RAF pilots have been deployed “on loan” to Oman, and the fullextent of Britain’s role in the Saudi-led militarycampaign in Yemen.
During August 2020, it emerged that London’s Metropolitan police has opened an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed by British mercenaries after reports by Miller based on his book on a private military company, Keenie Meenie Services (KMS).
The book exposes how KMS members were involved in atrocities against Tamil civilians at the start of Sri Lanka’s civil war in the mid-1980s, but escaped accountability.
In an email to Wade, Mark Curtis, the editor of Declassified, wrote:
“As journalists, we undertake the normal practice of always seeking MOD comment on stories we write concerning the UK military. It is also incumbent on civil servants to act with impartiality. For example, the Civil Service Code states that, ‘You must not: act in a way that unjustifiably favours or discriminates against particular individuals or interests.’” The MOD did not respond to Curtis.
Seamus Dooley, assistant general secretary at the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), told Declassified:
“The NUJ would be extremely concerned at any unilateral ban by a government department on questions from selected news organisations or publications. The secretary of state for defence Ben Wallace needs to intervene and ensure that there is no banned list within the ministry.”
Dooley continued:
“Journalists from Declassified UK have regularly contacted the Ministry of Defence for comment as part of their normal journalistic practice. It is the duty of journalists to question and to challenge those who exercise power and responsibility. Part of that role is to verify reports and to afford all sides of a story the opportunity to respond to allegations which may be made.”
He added:
“The Ministry of Defence is a public entity. Government ministers, senior departmental officials and military personnel responsible for communications should not curtail the media’s right to investigate stories that are clearly in the public interest. Investigative journalism may well prove inconvenient for those in positions of authority, but openness and transparency are fundamental to a functioning democracy.”
The MOD might well have shot itself in the foot. Blacklisting a media organisation means that it cannot now properly give the MOD’s side of a story, something journalists are professionally trained to do, however critical they are of the government.
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Richard Norton-Taylor is a board member of Declassified UK. He was the Guardian’s defence correspondent and its security editor for three decades, and is the author of several books, most recentlyThe State of Secrecy. Follow Declassified on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up to receive Declassified’s monthly newsletter here.
Featured image: Defence Secretary Ben Wallace (R) and Chief of the General Staff Nick Carter (L) arrive at Downing Street. (Photo: EPA-EFE/Andy Rain)
Nós, pessoas de boa vontade, de todas as etnias e de todas as classes socioeconómicas, a viver em todos os continentes e a professar credos e religiões distintas, dirigimos a vossa atenção para a ameaça de uma guerra nuclear total que pode explodir facilmente, devido a acções deliberadas de qualquer Estado detentor de armas nucleares ou devido a erro não intencional, humano, técnico ou a qualquer outro.
Constatamos que, recentemente, o limiar do uso de armas nucleares num ataque limitado ou em grande escala, tornou-se drasticamente reduzido, levando o mundo inteiro à iminência de um Armagedom nuclear.
Muitas oficiais de alta patente e militares e autoridades civis, políticos e especialistas falam, abertamente, sobre a possibilidade de usar, sob muitos pretextos, armas nucleares com cargas nucleares de baixo ou alto rendimento, num ‘first strike’ contra qualquer nação.
De facto, devido a razões duvidosas e a explicações ilógicas, os Estados Unidos retiraram-se de uma série de tratados e acordos bastante conhecidos e úteis, sobre o controlo de armas nucleares.
Os veículos de transporte de armas nucleares estão a tornar-se cada vez mais sofisticados, mais rápidos e mais precisos. Foram programados para obter uma combinação perigosa de armas que abrangem armas nucleares estratégicas e tácticas, com técnicas de defesa antimíssil e capacidades convencionais, e com a possibilidade de colocar armas de ataque no Espaço, incluindo sistemas de defesa anti-míssil e armas anti-satélite.
Muitos exercícios militares que antes eram programados com o uso de armas convencionais, estão a ser transformados gradualmente, em exercícios que usam armas nucleares simuladas.
Os peritos em armas nucleares calculam que, durante um ataque nuclear inicial intenso, pelo menos 34 milhões de pessoas morrerão imediatamente e 57 milhões de pessoas receberão ferimentos e lesões múltiplas que causarão dores horríveis, sofrimento, todas as doenças causadas pela radiação nuclear e morte. Além disso, vários tipos de infraestruturas, a flora e a fauna, as centrais nucleares, os recursos hídricos – incluindo a água potável e as barragens hidroeléctricas – serão fortemente danificados ou completamente destruídos por enormes tempestades de fogo, pela vasta contaminação nuclear, por explosões poderosas e por terremotos.
Mas o que acabamos de descrever é apenas o impacto imediato. O inverno nuclear que seria criado até mesmo por uma guerra nuclear limitada, aterrorizaria toda a Humanidade com a fome e com outros riscos mortais.
Nós, que assinamos voluntariamente este apelo, aconselhamo-vos, na qualidade de dirigentes das nove nações nucleares, a concretizar as seguintes acções em 2020:
Primeiro, como passo inicial que conduz ao desarmamento nuclear abrangente e irreversível, à escala mundial,comprometerem-se a não usar e a denunciar qualquer tipo de uso de arma nuclear num ‘first strike’contra qualquer nação, em qualquer momento.
Segundo, comprometerem-se a assinar e ratificar o Tratado sobre a Proibição de Armas Nucleares com o compromisso subsequente especificado na cláusula a seguir.
Terceiro, comprometerem-se desmontar irreversivelmente todas as armas nucleares até 6 de Agosto de 2045, ou antes dessa data – em todos os nove Estados que possuem armas nucleares, em fases cuidadosamente controladas e por meio de mecanismos de inspecção bem desenvolvidos e mutuamente aceitáveis, desde que todos os Estados com armas nucleares sigam, simultanea e honestamente, este padrão.
Assinado pessoalmente por mim, como manifestação da minha boa vontade
Assinatura ………..
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em (data) ………………………. 2020.
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We are living in unprecedented times. The mass and indiscriminate containment of citizens, the restriction of access to parliament, the courts, medical and educational services, the destruction of local economies and livelihoods, and the requirement to physically distance, along with the forced use of non-medical masking are extraordinary measures that have never before been imposed on the citizens of Canada.
The impact of these aberrant measures on our physical, emotional, psychological, social and economic well-being is profoundly destructive and these actions are unsustainable, unwarranted, extreme and unconstitutional.
During times of emergency, Constitutional rights do not stop being important. They become even more important.
Vaccine Choice Canada has made numerous formal requests of the Government of Canada and various provincial governments to provide evidence that justifies the declaration of an emergency, the imposition of unscientific and unwarranted measures, and the violations of our Charter rights and freedoms, to no avail.
An over-hyped COVID-19 pandemic narrative is being utilized to create unnecessary panic and to justify the systemic violation of the rights and freedoms that form the basis of our society, including our Constitutional rights, sovereignty, privacy, rule of law, financial security, and even our very democracy.
Many recognized global health and research experts have offered their severe and valid criticism of government overreach and the draconian and unjustifiable measures taken in response to COVID-19. The warning bells are being rung about the dire consequences of these unwarranted, irresponsible, and extreme actions that are in violation of the rights and freedoms well established in Canadian and international law. All this continues to fall on the deaf ears of governments.
On Monday, July 6, 2020, Vaccine Choice Canada formally filed legal action in the Ontario Superior Court to hold multiple parties accountable for their actions with respect to COVID-19 measures. The defendants include: the Government of Canada, the Government of Ontario, the Municipality of Toronto, various public health officers, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, among others. Vaccine Choice Canada has a long history and enviable reputation of advocating for and defending the rights and freedoms of Canadians when it comes to public and individual health.
A copy of the issued statement of claim will be available on our website: www.vaccinechoicecanada.com following the press conference. Any questions with respect to the claim are to be addressed to our legal counsel, Mr. Rocco Galati at 416-530-9684.
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