The Armenian-Azerbaijani tensions have once again turned South Caucasus into a hot point increasing chances of a new regional war.

The key difference with previous military incidents between the two countries is that the point of confrontation shifted from the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Republic to the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border. Clashes first erupted on July 12 in the area of Tovuz and since then both sides have repeatedly accused each other of provoking the conflict, attacking civilians and declared defeats of the ‘enemy’.

According to the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan, the fighting started after Armenian forces opened fire on positions of Azerbaijani forces in the Tovuz district. The fighting which included the use of combat drones, artillery, mortars, and battle tanks continued over the following days, including July 17. The Azerbaijani military confirmed that at least 12 personnel, including Major General Gashimov Polad and Colonel Ilgar Mirzaev, were killed. In turn, Kerim Veliyev, Azerbaijan’s deputy defense minister, said that 100 Armenian soldiers were killed, several fortified positions were destroyed and that a UAV was shot down. Armenia, according to Veliyev, is hiding the real number of its casualties.

Azerbaijani media and top leadership describe the current situation as an act of Armenian aggression, and say that Azerbaijani forces are only responding to it. President Ilham Aliyev even called Armenia a “fascist state” adding that “Armenian forces could not enter Azerbaijan in one centimeter of soil and will never be able to do this”.

The Armenian version of events is quite different. According to it, the clashes started after a group of Azerbaijani soldiers violated the Armenian state border in an UAZ vehicle. The defense ministry press service claimed that after the warning from the Armenian side, “the enemy troops returned to their positions”. It added that later Azerbaijani forces attacked an Armenian checkpoint.

As of now, the Armenian military said that it had repelled two ‘offensives’ involving at least 100 soldiers supported by fire of several artillery battalions. These attacks were allegedly actively supported by combat and reconnaissance drones of Azerbaijan. A spokesperson for the Armenian Defense Ministry Artsrun Hovhannisyan said that Azerbaijan lost at least 20 soldiers, a battle tank and other equipment during the clashes. Armenia says that only 4 of its service members were killed.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan claim that their forces are repelling an aggression of the enemy, which has been attacking it and killing civilians. However, despite the harsh rhetoric, the leadership of the both countries are sending signals that they are not interested in a larger military confrontation.

At the same time, years of war propaganda and historic tensions between the nations push the situation towards a further escalation. A unilateral move towards the cessation of hostilities by leaders of either country would be presented by the other one as a sign of weakness and promoted as an admission of defeat. Taking into account the complicated political and economic conditions in both countries, neither Armenian nor Azerbaijani leaders could afford such a public move. Therefore, de-escalation is possible only through international mechanisms.

The situation is further complicated by the complex diplomatic situation in the region of the South Caucasus. Armenia, alongside with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The CSTO expressed its concerns over the situation and called on the sides to commit to a ceasefire regime. Nonetheless, the Russia-led security bloc, and Russia itself, demonstrated that in the current situation they will focus on diplomatic measures.

Since the 2018 coup, when Nikol Pashinyan came to power in Armenia, the country has been consistently undermining its relations with the CSTO and Russia by persuing a quite weak, but apparent anti-Russian and pro-Western foreign policy course. The bright dream of the Pashinyan government is to sell its loyalty to the United States for some coins and commit itself to the way of the so-called ‘European integration’. The issue with this plan is that Washington and its partners need Armenia only as a tool of their geopolitical gains and are not interested in providing it with any kind of military protection or economic assistance. The Pashinyan government is forced to play a double game in an attempt to simultaneously please its ‘democratic’ masters and receive protection and assistance from Russia. This attitude is not a secret for Moscow.

On the other hand, in the event of a large-scale military confrontation, Azerbaijan will be supported by its main ally Turkey, which also has close bilateral ties with Russia. Ankara already declared that it fully supports Azerbaijan and condemned the supposed ‘Armenian aggression’. Thus, in the event of full-scale military confrontation, Armenia will immediately find itself in a very complicated situation, and direct military assistance from the CSTO and Russia will be unlikely until there is no threat to Armenian statehood.

So, the Armenian chances in a limited military conflict with Azerbaijan and Turkey is at least shaky. Turkey and Azerbaijan fully understand this. By undermining strategic relations with Moscow, and thus the balance of power in the region, Erevan put the entire South Caucasus on the brink of a new regional war.

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US seeks to disrupt growing Thai-Chinese relations. US-funded protesters seek to remove elected government and rewrite constitution, or at the very least, cause Hong Kong-style chaos.  

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The Western media is claiming “pro-democracy” protests are taking place in Thailand.

English-language paper Bangkok Post in their article, “Hundreds rally for democracy,” would claim:

Several hundred people led by a group called Free Youth gathered on Saturday near the Democracy Monument in Bangkok to call for the dissolution of the House and a rewrite of the constitution.

Little information is provided as to who “Free Youth” is or where they are getting their money to organize this event at a time when the vast majority of Thais are struggling to get back to business after the COVID-19 crisis.

But there were clues.

The article included photos of the protest at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, as well as professionally printed “missing” signs attempting to attribute a large number of missing activists to the current government.

However, at least one poster is of an activist – Somchai Neelapaijit – who went missing under the government of Thaksin Shinawatra -a politician favored by the US but long since ousted from power – who is one of several sponsors of the current protests. His “red shirt” mobs are visibly present in the ranks of recent protests.

Another poster is of Cha Lee Rakchongcharoen aka “Billy” who went missing under Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra’s regime whom many in the current government helped oust from power.

Another poster still is of Surachai Saedan – a convicted murderer and terrorist who helped lead Thaksin’s militant “red shirt” street front in past episodes of violence.

The photo of the posters was courtesy of “Thai Lawyers for Human Rights” (TLHR). The Bangkok Post never mentions who TLHR is or that one of their members – Anon Nampa – is leading the current protests.

Also not mentioned is that TLHR is funded by the US government.

TLHR, Prachatai, others – All US-funded, All involved in Recent Protests 

The US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has funded TLHR since 2014. Bangkok Post in a 2016 article titled, “The lawyer preparing to defend herself,” would admit:

…[TLHR] receives all its funding from international donors including the EU, Germany and US-based human rights organisations and embassies of the UK and Canada.

One of the founding members – Sirikan “June” Charoensiri – was later awarded the US State Department’s “2018 International Women of Courage Award.” She is also regularly accompanied by US and European embassy staff when hearing charges regarding her overt foreign-funded sedition.

Prachatai – which claims to be “an independent, non-profit, daily web newspaper” is also funded extensively by the US government as well as various European govenrments and multiple corporate-funded foundations including convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society.

To date, Prachatai has only made one disclosure regarding its foreign funding and ties and has not updated it since 2011 (9 years ago). Virtually all of the 8 million baht it disclosed came from the US government or affiliated corporate and government foundations.

It is still listed by the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as a recipient of funds (1.5 million Thai baht) as of 2019 under the “Foundation for Community Educational Media” after previously being referred to as “Prachatai” in previous NED disclosures.

Prachatai’s “executive director” – Chiranuch Premchaiporn – is still listed by the US NED as an NED “Fellow.”

In a world dominated by American exceptionalism and neo-colonialism, hunger has become a weapon of war. “The use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare is prohibited” under international humanitarian law yet the U.S. regularly reduces entire nations to dangerous levels of food insecurity in order to subjugate them.

Food, next to life itself, has become our greatest common denominator. Its availability, quality, price, its reflection of the culture it feeds and its moral and religious significance make it quite literally history’s staff of life.’ Today, in the never-ending worldwide struggle to determine who will control its production, quality and accessibility, food is no longer viewed first and foremost as a sustainer of life. Rather, to those who seek to command our food supply it has become instead a major source of corporate cash flow, economic leverage, a form of currency, a tool of international politics, an instrument of power,a weapon!” – A.V. Krebs, “The Corporate Reapers: The Book of Agribusiness”

The U.S. Coalition’s hybrid war strategy on Syria under the cover of COVID-19 is so vast and interconnected that a single article could never give it the breadth it deserves. In this article, I will demonstrate that the U.S. and its allies are deliberately seeking to plunge Syria into a state of blockade, food insecurity, and aggravated poverty. Infuriated by a failed military campaign to remove the Syrian leadership and government, the U.S. Coalition is now turning the economic screws on a nation that has endured a 10-year brutal war of attrition waged by extremist mercenaries power-multiplied by the U.S. supremacist alliance.

Criminal Caesar Law

On June 17, 2020, the Caesar Act went into effect. According to Morgan Ortagus, U.S. State Department Spokesperson, the law is a sustained campaign of sanctions targeting the Syrian government.

Today, we begin a sustained campaign of sanctions against the Assad regime under the Caesar Act. The individuals and entities targeted today have played a key role in obstructing a peaceful, political solution to the conflict.”

The law targets 39 officials or entities associated with the Syrian government. First Lady, Asma Al Assad is identified as a “war profiteer” and her financial dealings will be restricted alongside other members of her family, even those not living in Syria. Journalist Eva Bartlett, who has spent time in Syria and has consistently challenged dominant, U.S. narratives, recently wrote movingly, for MintPress News about the initiatives set up by the First Lady to heal her war-battered country contrary to the Caesar Law interpretation of her role.

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, political and media advisor to President Bashar Al Assad, has spoken extensively on the Caesar Act and the economic war on Syria. Dr. Shaaban says that the Caesar Act is a concerted attack against Syria’s allies and that pressure will be brought to bear upon those who have steadfastly supported Syria in its campaign to rid itself of the terrorist occupation financed and equipped by the “regime change” alliance led by the U.S. Dr. Shaaban’s full statement can be heard here

Rime Allaf, a Syrian analyst deeply embedded in the Western institutions that continue to drive the political campaign to criminalize the Syrian government, confirmed Dr. Shaaban’s opinion of such multi-spectrum-war strategies. “Any company, any government, any entity around the world is going to be sanctioned if they deal with the Syrian regime elite who the State Department believes are responsible for committing these atrocities,” she wrote.

The U.S. has already threatened the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with coercive measures should it dare “violate the Caesar Law.” The UAE recently began working to normalize relations with the Syrian government as the military victory against terrorist factions the UAE once supported becomes a reality.

Banksy-style graffiti on a wall on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. Photo | local source

The Caesar Act is intended to derail Syria’s post-war reconstruction efforts. Several Emirati companies have visited Damascus in recent months and have indicated an interest in collaborating with the Syrian government to rebuild specific areas of the country. Immediately prior to the launch of the Caesar Act, the Syrian parliament approved “oil exploration contracts signed with Mercury LLC and Velada LLC,” both Russian companies with a focus on Damascus and Northeast Syria, which is currently occupied by U.S. Coalition forces and allied militants, predominantly the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Effectively, the Caesar Act and all preceding economic sanctions are designed to prevent the necessary restoration and maintenance of essential infrastructure and basic services that provide stability, food, water, electricity, fuel, income, and medical care to the Syrian people.

The U.S.-led occupation of Syria’s oil fields is meant to prevent access to that oil for the Syrian people and to provide revenue for the U.S. Coalition’s proxy forces. The reality is that the U.S. and its allies are intent upon blockading, besieging and suffocating the Syrian people in a final bid to turn the nation against its government.

Where military measures have failed, economic pressure will now be increased with devastating consequences for a population that has already endured the horrifying effects of war and sectarian violence for 10 long years.

Researcher Rick Sterling’s carried out a thorough investigation into the fraud that was the Caesar Report and wrote a follow-up article detailing the U.S. legislative power grab through the Caesar Act that may be turned against any individual or entity perceived to be violating U.S. full-spectrum dominance with regards to Syria. An important point is made in Sterling’s article:

The exception to punishing sanctions are 1) Idlib province in the North West, controlled by Al Qaeda extremists and Turkish invading forces and 2) north east Syria controlled by U.S. troops and the proxy separatists known as the “Syrian Democratic Forces”. The U.S. has designated $50 million to support “humanitarian aid” to these areas. Other U.S. allies will pump in hundreds of millions more in aid and “investments”. U.S. dollars and Turkish lira are being pumped into these areas in another tactic to undermine the Syrian currency and sovereignty.”

Resource theft and the war on wheat

Just before the Caesar Act went into effect, the Syrian permanent representative to the UN, Dr. Bashar Al Jaafari, launched a stinging attack on the U.S.’ coercive measures that remorselessly target the Syrian people. Jaafari referred to the burning of trucks containing aid from the UN World Food Programme, set on fire by sectarian factions in Lebanon before they could reach Syria.

He describes the “symptoms of political schizophrenia” demonstrated by the West.

When the United States daily steals 200.000 barrels of oil from the Syrian oil fields, 400.000 tons of cotton, 5.000.000 sheep and sets fire to thousands of hectares of wheat fields, and deliberately weakens the value of the Syrian pound, and when it imposes coercive economic measures aiming to choke the Syrian people and occupying parts of the Syrian lands, and when the U.S. representative expresses her concern over the deteriorating situation of the Syrian citizen’s living conditions the logical question will be : are not these acts the symptoms of political schizophrenia? Does that not indicate an acute disease?”

Section 401 of the Caesar Act outlines the conditions for the lifting of sanctions against Syria. The final demand is “accountability for “perpetrators of war crimes in Syria and justice for victims of war crimes.” I have deliberately omitted the reference to the Syrian government. Why? The U.S. Coalition-aligned complex of media and UN agencies focus primarily upon the criminalization of the Syrian “regime” with scant regard for the war crimes being committed by the U.S. and the various terrorist or extremist groups indirectly and directly under their command. Yet there is surely a case for holding the U.S. Government accountable for war crimes and to demand justice for the victims of this protracted psychological war against the Syrian people, those who are rarely if ever mentioned in western media reports.

America’s scorched earth policy in Syria

The essence of food security for any country, but particularly during a grueling and destructive 10-year war, is in locally produced and controlled food sources. A very important element of the war against Syria has been the occupation, destruction, and theft of resources.

In May 2020, the U.S. forces in northeast Syria dropped thermal balloons from Apache helicopters over agricultural lands south of Hasaka which ignited serious crop fires that burned extensive areas of wheat and barley. Local sources reported that American helicopters also buzzed farmhouses and villages, terrorizing local populations.

On May 24, sources in the Hasaka countryside reported that Turkish militias had torched wheat and barley fields in the Tal Tamr and Abo Raseen areas. An estimated 2,000 hectares were devastated by these fires. While ostensibly Turkey’s agenda in Syria is separate from that of the U.S., Turkey is still a NATO member state and therefore it cannot be ruled out that the U.S. and Turkey were collaborating to deprive Syrians of their livelihoods, infrastructure, and food sources while enabling mercenary militias to benefit from the black market trade of resources, with Turkey as one of the main trading routes and receiving hubs.

According to estimates, 130,000 hectares of wheat and 180,000 hectares of barley have been destroyed by these fires to date.

A map produced by researcher and former Syrian Arab Army soldier, Ibrahim Mohammad, based in Aleppo, pinpoints areas that are being affected by the crop infernos. During a recent trip to the southeast, specifically to the villages east of Sweida city that were savagely attacked by U.S.-protected ISIS terrorists on the July 25, 2018 – I was told of fires mysteriously ignited to the West of Sweida destroying food crops there. The reemergence of extremist militia forces to the West of Daraa and in the south, including Nusra Front and ISIS, may point to the culprits responsible for the fires.

Map showing all the crop-fires raging intermittently across Syria. Credit | Ibrahim Mohammad

Another important and related element of this multi-spectrum war against Syria is the potential British intelligence role in training and equipping these armed groups that are now resurfacing and carrying out regular assassinations of government employees or targeting Syrian Arab Army vehicles with IEDs, kidnapping and running familiar subversive operations against the Syrian government and loyalists. A clandestine intelligence war is being ignited south of Damascus which forms part of the US Coalition hybrid war strategy designed to destabilise Syria without the need for all-out war. It is these same armed groups that are suspected, by local sources, to be responsible for the crop fires in the south of the country.

A pattern emerging is of a deliberate scorched earth policy being waged by the U.S. Coalition and its assets on the ground across the country. At the same time, Turkey is reported to be forcing Syrian farmers to sell their wheat to Turkey in exchange for Turkish currency and U.S.-backed Kurdish contras have restricted the sale of wheat to Damascus and are stockpiling reserves in areas they control, which account for an estimated 70 percent of total Syrian wheat production.

Anger among local farmers over the restrictions and hijacking of their livelihoods has grown. On June 30, civilians were filmed blocking trucks that were transporting stolen wheat into Turkey.

On June 14, 2020, Turkish-backed militant groups set fire to large areas planted with wheat and barley on the outskirts of Ras Al Ain and in the suburbs of Abou Rasseine in the north and northwest of Hasaka. The villages of Macharfa and Om Kheir, under occupation by Turkey-backed militants, had their crops devastated by these fires. Civilian homes were burned to the ground by the rampaging fires.

An elderly Assyrian man, Issac Esho Nissan, was one of the victims of the flames that raged in the Hasaka agricultural region. His hands and face were badly burned by the fire but he still valiantly fought the blaze in an attempt to prevent the ravaging of more crops by occupying forces. As elsewhere in Syria throughout this 10-year war, Syrian civilians have been forced to protect their meager resources against overwhelming and disproportionate force. According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) at least two civilians have perished in the fires. The economic devastation and psychological pressure brought to bear upon an already war-ravaged population are hard to quantify and even harder to imagine.

The SDF is not the benevolent force in the region that they are often portrayed to be in the western media, which, along with the U.S. Coalition has attempted to mold them into a “democratic” alternative autonomy to Damascus. They have played an important role in furthering the U.S. Coalition’s plan to balkanize Syria and they are pivotal to U.S. and Israeli plans to occupy the Syrian territory east of the Euphrates, the nation’s bread and oil basket.

On June 27, SDF groups took over the building of the regional Syrian Grain Corporation administration center and occupied it by force. They now also occupy the General Electricity Company in Hasaka and employees have been forcibly removed from the premises. The SDF has effectively flip-flopped between Damascus and the U.S., now reaffirming allegiance to the renewed U.S. occupation of the territory managed by the SDF.

To date, the SDF is still occupying buildings in Hasaka. According to local sources, they have increased their military presence in the complex in order to prevent the return of government employees and the restoration of services to civilians. The SDF is also preventing the delivery of flour to the Al-Baath bakery in Qamishli City which is the main provider of bread to civilians in the area.

On July 2, Israeli forces patrolling the Golan Heights in southern Syria set fire to crops in Sehita, Quneitra (previously occupied by U.S.-backed militants and the White Helmets). Israeli soldiers then fired live ammunition on farmers and civilians who went to battle the flames.

Turkey, the U.S., and Israel form a monstrous triad of marauding forces who have entered Syrian territory in violation of international law and are in the process of asset-stripping on an industrial scale without a single ounce of outrage from the international community, who claim to defend the rights of Syrian citizens. How are these rights defended when their entire infrastructure is being reduced to bare bones by the military vulturism of the “humanitarian” hypocrites? Syria has multiple American knees on its neck, but still, we see no worldwide protests against the slow suffocation that Syrians are being forced to bear.

The mythical US troop withdrawal

While Trump had announced the prospect of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syrian territory in October 2019, the U.S. has, contrary to that announcement, steadily increased its military footprint in the north and northeast under cover of COVID-19. Convoys of military vehicles and equipment have been steadily pouring into the oil-rich region since borders were closed globally to allegedly prevent the spread of the virus. U.S. troop movement is apparently not restricted by social distancing and quarantine regulations.

On July 1, 2020, U.S. forces established a new military and airbase in Al Yarubiya, Hasaka. Reports from the area by SANA indicated that U.S. troops and the SDF are collaborating to secure wheat supplies, reinforcing the base with concrete blocks, and posting SDF guards to protect the perimeters of the camp and the wheat silos.

While reoccupying previously evacuated illegal military bases and imposing new ones upon Syrian territory, the U.S. and the SDF continue their theft of Syrian oil. Simultaneously the US Coalition media and UN “humanitarian” agencies are actively peddling the global Covid-19 “pandemic” narrative in Syria and supporting the push for a crippling lockdown in this already besieged nation.The U.S. “exceptional” and predatory neocolonial campaign continues unhindered by concerns about the spread of the virus to troops on the ground intent on looting a country of all it needs to survive.

On July 1, a convoy of U.S.-commissioned oil-tankers with a U.S. military escort drove through Syria and into Iraq via the “illegal” Semalka crossing in Al Malikiyah city in northeast Hasaka. These convoys are draining Syria of its life-blood. It is summer now and electricity outages caused by a lack of fuel to run generators are not as long or as disruptive, but come the winter, when rural areas could be reduced to one hour of electricity per day, this resource plundering will have a devastating effect upon the Syrian people.

The Trump administration is blatant about the exploitation of Syrian oil to provide revenue for their separatist poster boys in the SDF. In a recent statement, Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, head of US Central Command (CENTCOM) said:

Additionally, we’re there to assist the SDF in the maintenance of theoil facilities for their use to help themgenerate income, which could be used for a variety of things,some of which would be to continue operations against ISIS,” (emphasis added)

The SDF is conducting similar looting campaigns in the northeast under the supervision of the U.S. Coalition. Entire railway tracks, running between Deir Ezzor and Hasaka are being dismantled and the looted iron is being traded across the border by what are effectively criminal racketeers. Nothing is left intact, railway stations that have weathered decades of history are stripped bare and all the metal is reportedly transferred to Turkey where it is melted down and transformed into new railway tracks to be sold outside of Syria.

There have also been reports of the U.S. installing Patriot air defense systems in northeast Syria. While this has not been categorically confirmed, sources inside Syria believe that it is a provocative move by the U.S. neoconservative lobby and the Pentagon, the prospect of which is very possible, especially when the considerable amount of territory actually being reoccupied by the U.S. military is factored in.

Deliberate and inhumane environmental warfare

Another byproduct of U.S. occupation is the pollution and contamination of water sources and agricultural lands. The SDF, who benefit most from the illegal oil revenue, appears to have neglected the maintenance of the dilapidated pipelines. Crude oil and waste products, many of which are carcinogenic, are seeping into rivers and streams. Inevitably when these rivers overflow onto agricultural land bordering their banks, the toxic waste is transferred to the crops.

A goat in oil-drenched areas of north-east Syria. Photo via Al Monitor. 

Recent reports highlight the increase in cancer cases in these areas. The primitive refineries are breeding disease, birth defects, meningitis, skin conditions, and severe respiratory sickness. The birth defects include hypothyroidism at birth, thalassemia, hemophilia. All these horrifying effects on the Syrian population are concentrated in the areas around the oil-wells under control of the U.S. Coalition and their various proxies.

Sheep grazing oil in north-east Syria. Photo via Al Monitor. 

Trees are dying, many of the green spaces are reportedly shrinking due to the air and soil pollution that is ignored by the occupying forces intent only upon the short-term revenue, not the long term preservation of the environment. Needless to say, this environmental disaster will not make it onto the agenda at any of the international meetings to discuss the “humanitarian” crisis in Syria. Creating waves over the mismanagement of occupied resources by a U.S.-sponsored occupier is apparently not an option. The chronic contamination of the vast network of rivers and streams that cover much of the northeast will ensure the toxicity of crops and livestock for decades to come. Plunder without conscience, the shameful hallmark of U.S. neocolonialism.

It must also be noted that the U.S. has admitted to the use of depleted uranium in northeast Syria which is likely also contributing to the toxic waste which is already having a devastating effect upon the Syrian population. This use of WMDs in an illegal interventionist war against the people of Syria is, of course, never mentioned by the U.S.-appointed arbiters of war crimes in Syria whose focus is on the alleged “chemical attacks” that have been hugely discredited by experts from within the OPCW who have exposed the organization to be corrupt and compromised – in particular with regards to the incident in Douma, eastern Damascus in April 2018.

The legacy of depleted uranium radioactive waste and its subsequent, horrifying mutilation of the human form is not something the U.S. is a stranger to. The level of contamination in Iraq after the U.S. allied aggression at various times in their history is still frighteningly high, and the transferral of irradiated scrap metal, often by dealers who are children, is ensuring the spread of the toxic waste. Recovery from U.S. invasion, occupation, and devastation of all resources either by obliteration, theft, or pollution are slow and painful, leaving entire generations suffering from the debilitating consequences while the U.S. walks free, a war criminal at large.

Hydro hegemony and water theft

In addition to the aforementioned “maximum pressure” measures, water is also being weaponized in order to collectively punish the Syrian people for withstanding 10 years of war without abandoning their support for their government, army and their allies.

 Map showing the Euphrates river that dissects much of the region with its source in Turkey

Recently, local Syrian media and activists have been reporting the “shocking” reduction in water levels of the Euphrates river, the largest in Syria. From the city of Jarablus to the Tishreen Dam, Syrians are witnessing a substantial decrease in the water levels which threaten drought conditions if it continues. This is due to Turkey, a NATO member state, closing two dams that release water into Syria, located in Turkish territory, including the giant Elisu Dam.

As part of an agreement signed in 1987, Turkey committed to pumping a minimum of 500 cubic meters per second, yet that rate has now fallen to 150 cubic meters per second, agonizingly reduced for the people of the region and the whole of Syria. In Damascus, we are already feeling the effects as electricity outages have increased because of greater downtimes in running the hydroelectric power stations.

Over the years Turkey has periodically violated this agreement but water hegemony is now a savage instrument of war for the neo-Ottoman would-be emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Drinking water is restricted in the north and northeast and agricultural production is at risk from drought-like conditions.

The administration of Tishreen Dam, the second-largest hydroelectric station in Syria, has warned of devastating consequences for the economy of the local communities if Turkey continues to reduce water levels. Food insecurity and drought threaten to decimate the population. The Euphrates and Tishreen hydroelectric stations have had to reduce their shifts from 18 to 10 hours starting in mid-June. As already mentioned, this will have a knock-on effect upon the remainder of Syrian territory. Amateur video filmed by a member of the local community shows the result of Turkey cutting the water supply to an area in northeastern Syria.

Dr. Al Jaafari has highlighted the Turkish war-crimes at the UN but without any outrage from the “international community” that a NATO member state is effectively cutting off the water supply to more than one million Syrian civilians. Al Jaafari did not hesitate to point out this hypocrisy during his address:

We are saddened that those who are self-appointed defenders of the right of Syrians to restore their daily security and stability – whether from Western States, OCHA or United Nations specialized agencies, have not said a word to condemn these inhumane practices.”

Certainly, it is evident that whether it is Turkey, Israel, or the U.S., water, food, and essential infrastructure, including health and humanitarian sectors, are now being targeted in an effort to further pressurize the blockaded, besieged Syrian people. Criminal operations among the various contra factions are exacerbating the situation on the ground and intensifying economic misery and deprivation.

ISIS airlifts and thermal balloons on Syrian land

I will cover the hypocrisy of UN agencies and western “aid” organizations in another part of this series but in connection with the resource hegemony discussed in this Part One, it is worth pointing out the double-speak deployed by such agencies when it comes to covering the “humanitarian” situation in Syria.

There has been a huge outcry over the apparent inaccessibility for foreign “aid” into northeast Syria due to Russia and China’s veto of a UN resolution to keep “aid” flowing into the U.S.-Turkish-SDF occupied region via the Al Yarubiah crossing that links northern Iraq to northeastern Syria.

It is no secret that aid that enters this region may be hijacked by Turkish or American-backed “boots on the ground,” but there is another element to this issue that should raise eyebrows. While the claim is that “aid” is not reaching these U.S.-controlled areas, the U.S. is allegedly transporting ISIS fighters from Syria across the border into Iraq. So the movement of troops during a “global pandemic” crisis is not restricted to the U.S. Army but also to the terrorist group which has been the pretext for the “war against terror” on Syrian soil.

While the U.S. can move client terrorist fighters around on Syrian territory and is quite happy to transport them into Iraq, the U.S. does not apply itself to providing genuine humanitarian aid to the Syrian people effectively under their control. The hue and cry at the UN and among aligned human rights groups like Amnesty International are based upon the usual deliberate obfuscation of reality on the ground.

How many of you actually thought about COVID-19 while reading about the U.S. military and economic strategy that has been ramped up against Syria while we are all focused on a virus that has brought the world to a standstill? For the U.S. alliance, business as usual, supporting terrorism, destroying the planet and bringing misery, poverty, and starvation to yet another nation in the name of “democracy” because the government does not comply with U.S.-dominated foreign policy.

The Syrian government’s defense of agricultural lands

The genuine resource crisis in the northeast is being used to further criminalize the Syrian government by the UN and aligned media in the West.

A recent article in the Financial Times sheds copious crocodile tears over the starvation of Syrian children without one mention of U.S. Coalition sanctions, resource theft, the fraudulent Caesar Act and the 10-year war waged by the U.S. alliance to remove the Syrian government in violation of any applicable version of international law. This lying-by-omission has been a regular tactic used by the war-mongering establishment media outlets when it comes to Syria. Nor does the article mention the measures being taken by the beleaguered Syrian government to combat the agricultural crisis.

The Syrian government has increased the purchase price of wheat from 225 Syrian pounds (SYP) to 400 SYP per kilogram in order to support the agricultural sector. The funding plan to combat the effects of the U.S. scorched earth policy with regards to wheat and barley crops amounts to 800 billion SYP per annum in “extraordinary” response to the looming crisis generated by hostile external forces.

Anyone who is being misled by western media into believing the Syrian state would relish the starvation or wholesale deprivation of its citizens should read this enlightening essay by a former research intern at the British Embassy, Damascus, Louis Allday. Allday describes the Syrian government, comprising a complex of national institutions, civil society organizations and charitable institutions, as responding proactively and rapidly to the drought that ravaged the country from 2006 until the start of the U.S. allied aggression in 2011.

How that drought may well have been orchestrated by Turkey in order to tenderize the population prior to the fabrication of the “Arab Spring” charade in Syria, is a subject for another article at a later date.

Turning a blind eye to the causes of Syrian misery

At the end of June, “donor nations” from within the U.S. Coalition that has plunged Syria into the abyss of war and economic anguish for the last 10 years, pledged a total of $ 7.7 billion to tackle the “deepening” humanitarian crisis in Syria. COVID-19 was cited as one of the factors compounding the misery of 17 million Syrians – to date, Syria has had 372 confirmed cases, 14 deaths and 126 recoveries from the virus. The majority of cases have been found in Damascus or the surrounding countryside, many among those returning from abroad.

I have outlined the flaunting of global “lockdown” policies by the U.S. military and their affiliates on the ground in Syria so this pseudo protectionism towards the Syrian people over COVID-19 is exposed as the fraud it really is.

“EU Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarcic announced the total at the end of a day-long online pledging conference organized by the EU and United Nations” – he said:

We have today expressed solidarity with the Syrian people, not only with words, but with concrete pledges of support that will make a difference for millions of people.”

I will be investigating the destination of the financial and material “aid” that enters areas of Syria not under the control of the internationally recognized Syrian government, at a later date. However for these nations to be genuinely in solidarity with the Syrian people they should be campaigning for America and allies to lift their knee from the neck of these people and to end sanctions, to banish the Caesar Law which is illegal and immoral and to end the support for terrorist and separatist factions inside the country.

Professor Michel Raimbaud, a former French diplomat, argues that the Western silent complicity with economic terrorism must come to an end. Raimbaud said:

Imposing sanctions on countries is more barbaric than military confrontation which is nearing an end – it is an illegal and immoral war. It is a stain on humanity. These sanctions must be lifted immediately and unconditionally.”

What we are seeing in Syria is the unfolding of the US/UK-led neo-colonialist blueprint that was previously used against Iraq. In 1991 the U.S. alliance deliberately bombed Iraq’s water purification and electricity infrastructure before imposing sanctions that prevented their restoration. Sanctions that are more accurately described as a military blockade, just as we are seeing now in Syria. In both 1991 and 2003, US allied bombing campaigns targeted animal feed stores, poultry farms, fertilizer warehouses, water pumping stations, irrigation systems, fuel depots and agricultural installations. These destructive tactics designed to undermine the survival mechanisms of the nation under attack are being replayed in Syria with similar cataclysmic consequences.

Late 2019, I had a meeting with the administration of the Ministry of Agriculture in Lattakia on the Syrian coast. During the meeting, I was informed that the US Coalition-sponsored occupying forces have decimated 30% of the Syrian livestock sectors, 60-70,000 beehives have been stolen and merchanted in Turkey. Villages they invaded were looted, agricultural equipment was either destroyed or sold in Turkey. Over 30% of Syrian forestry has been cut down and the wood sold to Turkey. Between 2012-2015, terrorist groups occupied protected zones in an area about 47km away from Lattakia – this led to extensive damage to land that had nurtured 260 rare plant species including 65 species of medicinal plants.

Around 650,000 hectares of Syrian land are planted with an estimated 90 million Olive trees. In Afrin (north-west of Aleppo) there are 18 million trees under control of the Al Qaeda-led militants. Aleppo has traditionally been the leading producer, followed by Idlib, Tartous, Homs, Lattakia and Hama. The average annual production is 150,000 tonnes of oil and 350,000 tonnes of olives. There are 800 distilleries across Syria with most of them clustered in the above mentioned provinces. Currently, about half the productive areas are under the control of Turkish proxy forces, dominated by Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria). Turkish traders have made huge profits buying Olive oil at low prices, blending with Turkish oil and exporting to Europe at elevated prices.

US Coalition economic sanctions do not affect Syrian resources stolen by coalition members. Syrians who, themselves, might attempt to revive trade with Europe would be immediately punished and restricted by these unilateral economic shackles.

American barbarism and genocidal supremacism must be called to account. The rogue-state standards that the U.S. is setting for the world will threaten all Humanity now and in the future. Syrian lives matter because without this beleaguered nation setting us the example for resilience, resourcefulness and resistance against neo-colonialist hegemony, perpetual war will be the status quo for the foreseeable future.

Special thanks for help with research for this article and the double checking of information goes to Ibrahim Mohammad, Syrian activist and researcher, former Syrian Arab Army soldier.  

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Citizens worldwide are still being urged to avoid direct contact with other people in order to protect themselves from infection with the corona virus, even though this virus does not pose any particular danger and “social distancing” has not been proven to be an effective protection. The relationship with the conspecifics is as important for us humans as the air we breathe. The restriction of social contacts is therefore an attack on human nature and leads to serious consequential damage for young and old: feelings of loneliness, depression, addictive behavior, stress, hopelessness and suicidal thoughts increase dramatically. In older people, serious physical illnesses are added as a result of lack of family contact and lack of exercise. Their premature demise is not collateral damage for the global elite, but is intended. We also have to worry about the youth.

As an educational scientist and psychologist, I have long been pointing out to parents and educators that a large part of the young generation, despite countless virtual contacts with peers, is isolated and lives in its own “Facebook world”. Renowned brain researchers and psychiatrists are also sounding the alarm. Since the adult generation often does not seek or have access to this world of their children, many of them are left to themselves and no longer in exchange with their parents and the adult world. They prefer to hang on the drip of the Internet giants and internalize their view of man and the world.

More and more parents are complaining that they have difficulties in getting into a relationship with their children, that they don’t let their children tell them anything and even turn away from them. Enlightened psychologists and educators know that this development has been consciously driven forward by interested parties for years. For the isolated human being, isolated from his conspecifics, whose family and communal roots have been cut off, is for global rat catchers and their governments an easy prey. It can be better controlled, manipulated and instrumentalized for violent excesses and wars.

In difficult times like the present, the lonely and isolated young person lacks the maintaining family and friendship ties and thus loses courage and orientation. The new virtual “friends” and companions are also followers or even part of the global rat catchers. This development has followed a hidden agenda for decades. All parents, educators and those interested in the common good must know this.

Recently, French bestselling author Michel Houellebecq also commented on this topic: He does not believe in a better world after Corona. On the contrary, he sees a tendency to accelerate isolation and alienation. In a letter to the radio station “France Inter” he writes:

“We will not wake up in a new world after the containment; it will be the same, only a little worse… (…) For some years now, all technological developments, whether small (video on demand, contactless payment) or large (teleworking, internet shopping, social networks), have resulted in the reduction of material and especially human contacts (as the main objective?).(1)

He believes that the pandemic is a great pretext for this serious trend.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is an educational scientist and graduate psychologist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Note

1. https://www.styleupyourlife.at/adiweiss/autor-houellebecq-glaubt -nicht-an-bessere-welt-nach-corona/

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Memoirs written by prominent figures and professionals, often appear on the lists of best-selling books, due to the great interest of the readers that seek comprehensive understanding of issues not found in academic or theoretic publications that are mainly concentrated on pure facts and evidences. In this case, John Bolton’s latest book “The Room Where It Happened” became one of the best-selling memoirs in truly short period.

Grasped the attention of the international media, remarks came from John Bolton himself and high US officials such as President Trump and secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Interestingly, both have criticized John Bolton for not covering the truth;

President Trump has called him stupid, and Mike Pompeo has mentioned that John Bolton is a liar. It is evident that there are many controversies regarding John Bolton’s latest Memoir; especially among the politicians close to Trump administration and the commentators who often appear on Fox TV Channel.

Thus, this article will bring forward my response in terms of analysis of the important aspects that have been taken place in global politics. I will cover issues related to the Middle East, Russia, and the growing impact of China. Hence, this article should not be considered merely a book-review.

The Conservative hawk that seems has never changed

John Bolton, is known for many decades as one of the harshest politicians when it comes to issues such as Iraq, Syria, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea and China and he continues to believe that those countries are considered as threats to the United States. In his Memoir, John Bolton often tries to persuade President Trump to take tough actions such as military interventions and regime changes in Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea. On Russia and China, the US administration have chosen the strategy of economic sanctions to balance the growing global influence of Russia and China; the two superpowers that have been deteriorating the world hegemony of the United States in global arena.

It will be crystal clear for the memoir readers, that John Bolton as an expert, hasn’t developed and learnt about the new circumstances have taken place in global politics and his ideology-strategy looks the same as it was during the George W.Bush administration, as the United Stated had invaded Afghanistan, Iraq and called several countries as “Axis of evil”.

America’s old song and outdated lyrics VS Russian and Chinese new melodies

In my opinion, the Trump administration in general and John Bolton in particular, have shown lack of understanding of the changes that have taken place in global politics starting from the financial crisis that hit the United States in 2008.

Meanwhile, China has used the opportunity and has taken the initiative of building effective social system and economic reforms, gradually developed its economy which resulted to the revelation of the “One Belt One Road Initiative” that is known today as a strategy to become from a regional actor to a global superpower. Parallel to China’s economic advancements, the current situation in the Syrian war has shifted the balance of power in Middle East towards Iran and Russia. Currently, Russia and Iran considered as one of the most advanced countries in terms of its military and sophisticated defense systems. Particularly, Russia is the key military actor in Eurasia and Iran is the ballistic missiles champion in middle East.

As a consequence, such outcomes have become the pillars of the emergence of the multilateral world where the unilateral hegemony of the United States started to erode in such regions which are not fully under the influence of the Western orbit; the Middle East, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America (Venezuela-Cuba). Although, the United Stated is still considered a superpower, its influence shifted from global into local (specific spots).

In other words, in all above mentioned regions, the United States has local allies with limited power of influence, and other emerging countries have started to play a bigger role. For instance, Israel and the Kurds with no national country are the key allies of the United States in Middle East, whereas its adversary countries have been making alliances and presented in one anti-American faction; such as Iran, Syria, the resistance bloc in Lebanon, Shia militants in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine.

The current situation in the Middle East (presented by Bolton) depicts Israel under constant threat and “out of fear willing” to annex the West Bank. As it is mentioned in the memoir, Israel does not have the capabilities and the chances to defend itself from any sudden attack orchestrated by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. On the other side, Kurds are described by Bolton as totally abandoned by their allies and left alone under the control of the Turkish invading troops in Northers Syria.

Thus, even localized allies of the United States seem incapable to shift the balance of power to their side, let alone their ambitions to defend American interests in the region. As a proof, Trump often used harsh language regarding Bashar al Assad, Nicolas Maduro and Kim Jong-un in John Bolton’s Memoir during meetings with his administration members; such as “ kill Maduro” or “Assad is an Animal”, but in reality those words stayed only as expressions and most of the time he wanted to have a meeting and solve problems through negotiations. Moreover, Trump’s harsh tweets and silent actions shows the inability of the United States of taking tough measures against its enemies. This means, the United States today, is very different from what it was during the George W.Bush administration, where words very quick were transformed into military actions.

One Belt One Road

As for “One Belt One Road Initiative” plan, international experts in general have been emphasizing its economic importance and the positive outcomes that the trade route could bring to the world from Asia to Europe; taking into consideration the high quality of some of the Chinese products and services specially in technology and robotics and its eligible price compared to its American products and services. Moreover, I should stress that the “One belt One Road Initiative” is more than simply a trade route.

As it was during the Old Silk Road, people to people relations brought countless cultural, linguistic, and philosophical exchanges among the people who had been in interactions due to the trade. For Example, a Chinese dress with a dragon appeared in Armenia that time and a statue of Armenian man holding a cup of wine. The word (ma) in Chinese mandarin have appeared in Armenian (mi) that to this day it is used as a question mark. Today, China’s modern political and social system interests many people around the world, and that became evident after China won over the pandemic and have been able to reach for help to countries both with medical equipment and medicines and by online seminars linking doctors, academics and diplomats from all over the world. China’s model needs further exploration and know-how implementation specially for developing countries. On the Other hand, the United States in on the top of the countries who failed to combat the Coronavirus epidemic and for many years it represented itself as the most advanced, civilized, and powerful nation on earth. At last, to my surprise, John Bolton, in his 500 pages long memoir, blamed China for its communist regime, without mentioning China’s success in combatting the Coronavirus Pandemic.

John Bolton’s memoir is an interesting book for those who are interested in knowing the personal interactions within the Trump administration, how decisions are made regarding US foreign and national policy and how American politicians see and evaluate the world. In terms of John Bolton’s writing style, the memoir was full of detailed facts, but lacks philosophy. At the same time too boring to read till the end. It cannot be compared with the memoirs of Henry Kissinger or Barack Obama.

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This article was originally published on JUST.

Ararat Kostanian is a Junior research fellow, Oriental Studies Institute, National Academy of Science of Armenia. Areas of specialty: Middle East current affairs, Turkish foreign policy, International politics.

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The Guardian, and all the other predictable voices, are currently reporting that Russian “state sponsored hackers” have been attempting to steal “medical secrets” from British pharmaceutical researchers.

At this stage they offer no substantiation, but it does serve as good teaching exercise in the techniques of modern propagandists.

First the lack of evidence. Observe the Guardian article, note the complete absence of sources or references. There’s not a link in sight. There’s no content there beyond the parroted words of UK government officials, whose honesty and/or competence is never interrogated.

Second, the lies by omission. They don’t mention, for example, the Vault 7 revelations from Wikileaks that the CIA/Pentagon have developed technology to make one of their own cyber-attacks appear to come from anywhere in the world, Russia obviously included. This is clearly vital information.

Third, the multitasking. When you splash a huge red lie on your front pages, it’s always best to make it serve several agendas at once. In fact, an unsupported statement which serves multiple state-backed narratives at the same time is one of the telltale signs of propaganda.

With this one completely unverified claim, the Guardian – or rather the people who tell the Guardian what to say – back up three narratives:

1. The further demonisation of an “enemy”. Russia is portrayed as pursuing “selfish interests with reckless behaviour”, whilst we (and our allies) are “getting on with the hard work of finding a vaccine and protecting global health.”
2. Promoting the vaccine. The vaccine is coming. It will likely be mandatory, it will certainly have been insufficiently tested, if tested at all. They need some pro-vaccine advertising, and nothing sells better than “our vaccine is so good, people are trying to steal it”.
3. Most importantly – Enhancing the idea that Sars-Cov-2 is a unique global threat which puts us all in danger. The unspoken assumption is that Russia needs to steal our research because the virus is so dangerous we all need to be afraid of it…despite it being harmless to the vast majority of people.

Whether it’s the (totally unsubstantiated) allegation that Russia put bounties on NATO servicemen in Afghanistan, or the (very predictable) “leak” that “Russian interference” was backing Corbyn in the general election, it’s clear that any Globalist deal on the coronavirus is dead and buried, and it’s very much open season on Putin’s Russia again.

Nothing shows just how much the Guardian has become the voice of the Deep State more than its coverage of anything Russia-related. And nothing serves as a better exemplar of how modern propaganda works.

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On July 6, 2020 I posted my extended view and analysis why the 3rd quarter US GDP would falter–and lead to a W-shape recovery, as it typical of all Great Recessions. The current recession’s scenario was compared with 1929-30 and 2008-09, and 8 reasons were given why the US current economic rebound (not recovery) would falter. In this follow-on post a somewhat longer term scenario is added to the prior shorter, 3rd quarter view. It’s an addendum and sequel to the prior post, focusing on the more permanent impacts on the economy that will continue well into 2021 and beyond. Here’s the addendum piece, “What Lies Ahead”

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The US economy at mid-year 2020 is at a critical juncture. What happens in the next three months will likely determine whether the current Great Recession 2.0 continues to follow a W-shape trajectory—or drifts over an economic precipice into an economic depression. With prompt and sufficient fiscal stimulus targeting US households, minimal political instability before the November 2020 elections, and no financial instability event, it may be contained. No worse than a prolonged W-shape recovery will occur. But should the fiscal stimulus be minimal (and poorly composed), should political instability grow significantly worse, and a major financial instability event erupt in the US (or globally), then it is highly likely a descent to a bona fide economic depression will occur.

The prognosis for a swift economic recovery is not all that positive. Multiple forces are at work that strongly suggest the early summer economic ‘rebound’ will prove temporary and that a further decline in jobs, consumption, investment, and the economy is on the horizon.

A Second Wave of Permanent Job Losses

Through mid-June to mid-July, the COVID-19 infection rate, hospitalization rate, and soon the death rate, have all begun to escalate once again. Daily infections consistently now exceed 60,000 cases—i.e. more than twice that of the earlier worst month of April 2020. Consequently, states are beginning to order a return to more sheltering in place and shutdowns of business, especially retail, travel, and entertainment services. The direction of events cannot but hamper any initial rebound of the economy, let alone generate a sustained economic recovery.

Exacerbating conditions, a second wave of job layoffs is clearly now emerging—and not just due to economic shutdowns related to the resurging virus.

Reopening of the US economy in June resulted in 4.8 million jobs restored for that month, according to the US Labor Department. That number included, however, no fewer than 3 million service jobs in restaurants, hospitality, and retail establishments. These are the occupations that are now being impacted again with layoffs, as States retrench once more due to the virus resurgence underway. But there’s a new development as well: A second jobless wave is now emerging in addition to the renewed layoffs due to shutdowns not only of the resumed service and retail occupations, but reflecting longer term and even permanent job layoffs across various industries.

Household consumption patterns have changed fundamentally and permanently in a number of ways due to both the virus effect and the depth of the current recession. Many consumers will not be returning soon to travel, to shopping at malls, to restaurant services, to mass entertainment or to sport events at the levels they had, pre-virus.

In response, large corporations in these sectors have begun to announce job layoffs by the thousands. Two large US airlines—United and American—have announced their intention to lay off 36,000 and 20,000, respectively, including flight attendants, ground crews, and even pilots. Boeing has announced a cut of 16,000, and Uber in just its latest announcement, a cut of 3,000. Big box retail companies like JCPenneys, Nieman Marcus, Lord & Taylor, and others are closing hundreds of stores with a similar impact on what were formerly thousands of permanent jobs. Oil & gas fracking companies like Cheasepeake and 200 other frackers now defaulting on their debt are laying off tens of thousands more. Trucking companies like YRC Worldwide, the Hertz car rental company, clothing & apparel sellers like Brooks Brothers, small-medium independent restaurant and hotel chains like Krystal, Craftworks—all are implementing, or announcing permanent layoffs by the thousands as well.

Reflecting this, since mid-June new unemployment benefit claims have continued to rise weekly at a rate of more than 2 million—with about 1.3 million receiving regular state unemployment benefits plus another 1 million independent contractors, gig workers, self-employed receiving the special federal government unemployment benefits. The latter group’s numbers are rising rapidly since mid-June.

As of mid-July no fewer than 33 million are receiving unemployment benefits, with another 6 million having dropped out of the labor force altogether and no longer even being counted as unemployed. Unemployment therefore remains at what will likely be a chronically high number, at around 40 million—with about 25% of the US labor force unemployed—as renewed service-retail sector layoffs, plus new permanent layoffs, both loom on the horizon.

Added to the growing problem of renewed service layoffs and the 2nd wave of permanent layoffs in the private sector is the growing likelihood of significant layoffs in the public sector, as states and cities facing massive budget deficits are forced to lay off several millions of the roughly 22 million public sector workers in the US. This potential public employee layoff wave will accelerate and occur sooner, should Congress in summer 2020 fail to bail out the states and cities whose budgets have been severely impacted by the collapse of tax revenues while facing escalating costs of dealing with the health crisis. Estimates as of last May are that the states and cities will need $969 billion in bailout funding this summer—roughly two-thirds for the states and the rest for cities and local governments.

The resurgence of layoffs from all these sources is a sure indicator that the economy’s rebound—let alone recovery—is in trouble. Rising joblessness means less wage income for households and therefore less consumption and, given that consumption is 70% of the economy, a slowing of the rebound and recovery. Problems in consumption in turn mean business investment suffers as well, further slowing the economy and recovery. Exacerbating the decline in personal income devoted to consumption due to unemployment is the evidence that even those fortunate enough to return to work after spring 2020’s economic shutdown are doing so increasingly as part time employed—which means less wage income for consumption compared to the pre-COVID period before March 2020.

Overlaid on these negative prospects for employment, consumption, business investment is the intensification of economic crisis-related problems.

Rent Evictions, Child Care & Education Chaos

There is an imminent crisis in rents affecting tens of millions. At the peak in April, it is estimated that roughly one-third of the 110 million renters in the US economy had stopped making rent payments due to the COVID-related shutdowns of the economy. The CARES ACT, passed in March, provided forbearance on rental payments, although perhaps as many as 20 states failed to enforce it. That forbearance directive expires at the end of July, with as many as 23 million rent evictions projected in coming months. A major housing crisis is thus brewing, as well as the second wave of job layoffs.

A combined education-child care crisis is about to occur almost simultaneously. The K-12 public education system is approaching chaos, as school districts plan to introduce remote learning on a major scale in order to deal with the renewed COVID-19 infection and hospitalization wave. The heart of the crisis is that tens of millions of US working class families dependent on two paychecks to survive economically cannot afford to accommodate school district practices for remote learning—especially for young children in the K-6 grade levels. Even if such families could afford to pay for expensive child care, the current US child care system is far from being able to accommodate them. Many minority and working class households, moreover, lack the computers and networking equipment, or even the requisite skills to set it up, to enable their children participate in remote learning.

Several forces are driving the shift to remote learning: school district fears of liability actions by parents if children become ill, the significant cost of ensuring disinfected classrooms, the lack of classroom space to allow distance learning on site, and the growing concern of teachers regarding their own exposure to infection. At least 1.5 million public school teachers are over age 50 and have health conditions that put them at greater risk of serious infection, should they attend closed-in classroom environments.

The child care plus K-12 education crisis will likely erupt within months on a major scale. Chaos in education is around the corner.

This fall, higher education—colleges and universities—will also experience chaos of their own kind. While distance learning will not be as serious an implementation problem as it will in K-12 levels, costs from the pandemic will force many smaller, private colleges into bankruptcy, consolidation or closure. Public colleges’ funding problems will require them to sharply reduce available services. Remote education will create a two-tier system of higher education—educational services delivered remotely and those of a more traditional nature on campus; or a hybrid of both.

However, demand for higher education services will likely decline sharply in the short term, during which higher education will experience a devastating decrease in tuition and other sources of college revenues. Some estimates show a third of freshmen plan to take what’s called a ‘gap year’: i.e. accept entrance but not attend for a year. That’s a massive revenue loss. Some estimates foresee a 15%-30% decline in new student attendance, with another 5%-10% decline in transfer students, and a similar decline of 5%-10% in continuing students. In addition, the attendance by international students, the ‘cash cow’ for most colleges, will also decline sharply due to the Trump administration’s new rules.

Still other developments will sharply reduce college revenues. Students forced to attend classes via remote learning will demand lower tuition. One can expect a wave of legal suits as students seek to ‘claw back’ full tuition expenses. Other secondary sources of college revenues—from fees, on-campus room and board, endowment earnings and gifts, and sports revenues—also spell a looming revenue crunch.

A wave of college consolidations and closures is inevitable. And with student loan debt at $1.6 trillion it is unlikely that the federal government will introduce new aid through that channel. Nor will States increase their subsidization of public colleges, given the severe state budget deficits on the horizon.

In short, the economic crisis is about to assume more socio-economic dimensions and character: rent, child-care, education chaos will soon overlay the continuing unemployment problem and worsening recession. Social and political discontent, frustration, and anxiety are almost certainly to rise in turn in coming months as a consequence.

Global Recession & Sovereign Debt Defaults

The weakness of the global economy is yet another factor likely to ensure the US economy’s W-shape trajectory. As noted previously, with 90% of other countries in recession, global demand for US exports will remain weak or declining. In addition, global supply chains have also been severely disrupted by the health crisis, or even broken, and will not be restored soon. The global economy is suffering from deep problems of both demand and supply. This too is a unique historical event. Never before have demand and supply problems occurred congruently. Together, they increase the potential for a global depression.

Commodity producing economies have been hard hit, especially oil and metal producing countries. Many were in a recession well before the COVID health crisis. Global trade in general had stagnated, registering little to no growth in 2019, for the first time since modern records were kept. Many countries had over-extended their borrowing, expanding their sovereign debt loads during the last decade. This was money capital borrowed largely from western banks and capital markets (i.e. shadow banks).

Now, with global trade flat and declining, and prices for their export goods deflating in price as well, these debt-extended countries cannot earn sufficient income from exports in order to pay the principal and interest on their debt. As a result, several countries in the worst shape may soon default on their debt payment to western banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, and so on. Debt defaults potentially mean the same western financial institutions that loaned the funds now experience financial crises in turn. In such a manner, financial instability events abroad are often transmitted to the domestic US economy through its banking system. It would not be the first time, moreover, that foreign bank crashes have spilled over the US and rest of the world economy and in the process significantly exacerbated a recession already underway.

Theoretically, countries experiencing severe sovereign debt crises could borrow from the International Monetary Fund. However, the IMF has nowhere near the funds to accommodate multiple large sovereign defaults that occur simultaneously. Nor is it likely that the US and Europe will increase the IMF’s funding to enable it to do so. Once it becomes clear the IMF cannot handle a crisis of such potential dimensions, the global capitalist economy will slip even further toward global depression.

The further deterioration now already occurring in economic relations between the US and China may also potentially impact the Great Recession in the US, and ensure its continued W-Shape recovery. Trump’s trade pact with China signed December 2019 has proven thus far a colossal failure. The president declared at the deal’s signing it would mean $150 billion in China purchases of US goods in 2020—especially farm products, oil & gas, and manufactured goods. At mid-year, China has purchased only $5 billion of the agreed $40 billion in farm products and only $14 billion of $85 billion in US manufactured goods. Trump’s promised $150 billion was never agreed to by China, even before the Covid pandemic struck the US economy in 2020. China never agreed to a dollar value of purchases of US exports, but announced it would purchase based on conditions in 2020-21. Trump’s $150 billion was typical Trump misrepresentation of a deal never made. At best China would purchase perhaps $40 billion in agricultural goods—i.e. about the level of it purchases before Trump launched a trade war with it in March 2018. Failure to deliver his exaggerated public promise in 2020 Trump turned on on China and embraced further his anti-China hard line advisors on trade and other matters. The former ‘trade war’ with China will likely transform now, in the wake of Covid, into a broader economic war with China. Furthermore, the deterioration of relations with China, set in motion by the current recession and the collapse of global trade, shows signs of spilling over to other political and even military affairs.

Permanent Industry Transformations

The COVID health crisis is accelerating the transformation of entire industries and sectors of the economy, US and global. As noted above, household consumption patterns are already changing fundamentally and will continue as changed even after the health crisis passes. Entire industries will shrink as a consequence. Company consolidations and downsizing are inevitable in airlines, cruise lines, and even public land transport. So too will companies fail, consolidate and restructure in the hospitality, leisure and hotel industries, in mall-based retail establishments, inside entertainment (movies, casinos, etc.) to name but the obvious. Sports and public entertainment companies are struggling to redefine their business models and how they bring their ‘product’ to the public for consumption. Even education—public and private—is undergoing a radical shift. Not so obvious is similar fundamental change in oil & energy industries, and later as well in manufacturing as supply chains are slowly returned to the US economy.

Not only will these changes significantly (and often negatively) impact employment levels and wage incomes, but business practices as well. Already businesses are instituting new cost cutting practices under the pressure of the health crisis and shutdowns. These practices will become permanent. And since much of the practices and cost cutting will focus on workers’ pay and benefits, more of what economists call ‘long term structural unemployment’ will result—in addition to the current ‘cyclical unemployment’ occurring due to the current recession.

An historic consequence of the current Great Recession precipitated by the COVID-19 health crisis is the accelerating introduction underway of what some call the Artificial Intelligence revolution. AI is about cost-cutting. It’s about new data accumulation, data processing and statistical evaluation, to allow software machines to make decisions previously made by human beings. AI will eliminate millions of low level decision-making by workers in both services and manufacturing. A 2017 report by the business consulting firm, McKinsey, predicted no less than 30% of all workers’ occupations will be severely impacted by AI by the end of the present decade. 30% of jobs will either disappear or have their hours reduced significantly. That means less wage income and less consumption still.

The important linkage to the current Great Recession 2.0 is that the introduction of AI by businesses will now speed up. What McKinsey formerly predicted for the late 2020s decade will now take place by mid-decade. The economic consequences for the next generation of US workers, the late Millennials and the GenZers will be serious, to say the least. After decades of the permeation of low pay, low benefits ‘contingent’ part time and temp jobs since the 1990s, after the impact of the 2008-09 crash and aftermath on employment, after the acceleration of ‘gig’ jobs with the Uberization of the capitalist economy since 2010, and after the even more serious negative economic effects of the current Great Recession 2.0, the tens of millions of US workers entering the labor force today and in coming years will have to face the transformation of another 30% of all occupations. The future does not portend very well for the 70 million millennials and GenZers. US neoliberal economic policies and the Great Recession 2.0 is accelerating the long term structural unemployment crisis of both the US and the global capitalist economy.

Return of Fiscal Austerity

The US federal budget deficit under Trump averaged more than a trillion dollars annually during his first three years in office. The federal national debt at the end of 2019 was $22.8 trillion. As of July 2020 it has risen to $26.5 trillion—and rising. Earlier projections in March were that it would increase by $3.7 trillion in 2020. That has already been exceeded. So, too, will projections for 2021, or another $2.1 trillion. The deficit and debt will likely rise to more than $4 trillion in this fiscal year and another $3 trillion in 2021. That means the current national debt within 18 months will reach $30 trillion. And that’s not counting the debt level rise for state and local governments, already $3 trillion; nor the debt carried on the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, balance sheet which is scheduled to rise another $3 trillion at minimum.

The point of presenting these statistics is that the US elites, sooner or later, will introduce a major austerity program. It will likely come later in 2021. And it will make little difference whether the administration that time is headed by Democrats or Republicans. It will come and it will target social security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, education, housing, transport and other social programs.

A The first Great Recession provides a historical precedent. Obama’s recovery program in January 2009 provided for $787 billion in stimulus. But the joint Republican-Democrat austerity agreement introduced in August 2011 took back nearly twice that stimulus, or $1.5 trillion, in 2011-13. That austerity contributed significantly to the W-shape recovery from the 2008-09 economic crash and contraction—i.e. the first Great Recession. With the current deficit surge of $6 trillion to date, likely to increase to $9 to $10 trillion, the US economic elites will no doubt pursue a new austerity regime at some point within the next few years. That austerity will, like its predecessor, ensure at best a W-shape recovery typical of Great Recessions. At worst, it may prove the final event that pushes the US economy into another Great Depression.

Financial Instability

Those who deny that the US and global economy have already entered a second Great Recession offer the argument that the 2008-09 crash and recession was caused by the banking and financial crash of 2008-09, and therefore, since there has not yet been a financial crash, the economy at present is not in another Great Recession. But they are wrong.

Great Recessions are always associated with a financial crisis, but that crisis need not precede the deep contraction of the real, non-financial economy. The COVID-19 pandemic has played the role of a financial crash in driving the real economy into a contraction that is both quantitatively and qualitatively worse than a ‘normal’ recession. Furthermore, a subsequent banking system-financial crash is not impossible in the coming months, although not yet likely in 2020.

The preconditions for a financial crisis are in development. It won’t be precipitated by a residential mortgage crisis, as in 2007-08. But there are several potential candidates for precipitating a financial crash once again. Here are just a few:

• The commercial property sector in the US is in deep trouble. Commercial property includes malls, office buildings, hotels, resorts, factories, and multiple tenant apartment complexes. Many incurred deep debt obligations as they expanded after 2010 or just kept operating by accruing more high cost debt when they were unprofitable. Today they are unable to continue servicing (i.e. paying principal and interest) on their excessive debt load. Many have begun the process of default and chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Banks and investors hold much of the commercial property debt that will never be repaid. Excess derivatives (credit default swaps) have been written on the debt. A debt crisis and wave of defaults and bankruptcies in 2020-21 in the commercial property sector could easily precipitate a subprime mortgage-like debt crisis as occurred in 2008-09. And derivatives obligations could transmit the crisis throughout the banking system—as it did in 2009. Regional and small community banks in the US are particularly vulnerable.
• The oil and gas fracking industry, where junk bond and leverage loan debt had already risen to unstable levels by the advent of the COVID crisis. The collapse of world oil and gas prices—which began before the COVID-19 impact and continues—will render drillers and others unable to generate the income with which to service their debt. Already more than 200 companies in this sector are in default and bankruptcy proceedings. Again, regional banks that financed much of the expansion of fracking in Texas, the Dakotas, and Pennsylvania will be impacted severely by the defaults. Their financial instability could easily spread to other sectors of banking and finance in the US.
• State and local governments, should Congress fail to appropriate sufficient bailout funding in its next round of fiscal spending in July 2020. State and local governments are capable of default and bankruptcy—unlike the Federal government, which is not. The US has a long history of state defaults associated with the onset of Great Depressions. This time around, state financial instability will quickly spill over to public pension funds, and from public to private pensions, and from there to the municipal bond markets with which state and local governments raise revenue by borrowing to fund deficits.
• Global sovereign debt markets, as previously noted. Defaults on massive debt accumulated since 2010 by many countries could result in serious contagion effects on the private banking systems of the advanced economies, including the US, Europe, and Japan. Should the IMF fail to contain a chain of sovereign debt crises that could follow in the wake of the current Great Recession, a chain reaction of defaults across emerging market economies in particular has the potential to precipitate a global financial crisis.

History shows that financial crises often originate from unsuspected corners of the economy. The above candidates are the ‘known unknowns’. There may also lurk in the bowels of the capitalist global financial system still more ‘unknown unknowns’—i.e. what are sometimes called ‘black swan’ events.

Political Instability

The US and other countries are on new ground in terms of potential political instability. The piecemeal curtailment of democratic and civil rights has been progressing at least since the mid- 1990s. In the 21st century it has been accelerating, both in the US and across the globe. Recent years have seen a growing public confrontation between contending wings of the capitalist elites and their political operatives. Institutions of even limited capitalist democracy are under attack and atrophying. And now political instability is growing as well at both the institutional and grass roots levels. One should not underestimate the potential for even more intense political confrontation among elites, or between segments of the US population itself, from having a negative impact on the current economic crisis and 2nd Great Recession. A Trump ‘October Surprise’ or a November 2020 constitutional crisis are no longer beyond the realm of the possible, but even likely.

The expectations of both households and business may serve as transmission mechanisms propagating political instability into more economic and financial instability. Political instability has the effect of freezing up business investment and therefore employment recovery. It has the further effect of causing households to hoard what income they have and raise the savings rate—at the expense of consumption. It also leads to government inaction on the policy necessary to provide stimulus for recovery.

On a global front, political instability may even assume a global dimension. History in general, and US history in particular, reveals that US presidents seek to divert public attention from domestic economic and social problems by provoking foreign wars. Targets for US attack, in the short term, are Iran and Venezuela—especially the latter, which is more susceptible to US military action. But tomorrow, in 2021 and after, it could well be Russia (Ukraine or Baltics US provocations), North Korea (a US attack on its nuclear facilities) or China (a US naval confrontation in the South China sea)—irrespective of the unlikely success of such ventures.

Like another financial-banking crash, a major political instability event—domestic or foreign—could easily send an already weak US economy struggling in the midst of a Great Recession into the abyss of the first Great Depression of the 21st century.

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Dr. Jack Rasmus writes on his blog site where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Falling Darkness

Behind a veil of corporate media PR, the Gates Foundation has served as a vehicle for Western capital while exploiting the Global South as a human laboratory. The coronavirus pandemic is likely to intensify this disturbing agenda.

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President Donald Trump’s announcement this July of a U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) set into motion a process that will have a dramatic impact on the future of global public health policy – and on the fortunes of one of the world’s richest people.

The US abandonment of the WHO means that the organization’s second-largest financial contributor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is soon to become its top donor, giving the non-governmental international empire unparalleled influence over one the world’s most important multilateral organizations.

Bill Gates has achieved a hero-like status during the pandemic. The Washington Post has called him a “champion of science-backed solutions,” while the New York Times recently hailed him as “the most interesting man in the world.” Gates is also the star of a hit Netflix docu-series, “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak,” which was released just weeks before coronavirus hit the U.S., and was produced by a New York Times correspondent, Sheri Fink, who previously worked at three Gates-funded organizations (Pro Publica, the New America Foundation, and the International Medical Corps).

The tidal wave of mainstream media praise for Gates during the Covid-19 era has meant that scrutiny of the billionaire and his machinations is increasingly prevalent on the far–right of the politicalspectrum, where it can be dismissed by progressives as the conspiratorial ravings of Trumpists and Q-Anon quacks.

But beyond the public relations bonanza about Gates lies a disturbing history that should raise concerns about whether his foundation’s plans for resolving the pandemic will benefit the global public as much as it expands and entrenches its power over international institutions.

The Gates Foundation has already effectively privatized the international body charged with creating health policy, transforming it into a vehicle for corporate dominance. It has facilitated the dumping of toxic products onto the people of the Global South, and even used the world’s poor as guinea pigs for drug experiments.

The Gates Foundation’s influence over public health policy is practically contingent on ensuring that safety regulations and other government functions are weak enough to be circumvented. It therefore operates against the independence of nation states and as a vehicle for Western capital.

“Because of the Gates Foundation, I have watched government after government fall in its sovereignty,” Dr. Vandana Shiva, a scholar and founder of the India-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, told The Grayzone.

Saving the world?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation on Earth, reporting over $51 billion in assets at the end of 2019. Bill Gates says his foundation spends a majority of its resources “reducing deaths from infectious diseases,” and through this philanthropy, he seems to have bought a name for himself as an infectious disease expert.

Corporate media networks rolled out the red carpet for Gates as he advised the world on how to handle the Covid-19 outbreak. In just the month of April, while the virus was severely impacting the U.S., he was hosted by CNN, CNBC, Fox, PBS, BBC, CBS, MSNBC, The Daily Show and The Ellen Show. On the BBC, Gates described himself as a “health expert,” despite his lack of a college degree in medicine or any other field.

The billionaire’s media appearances are shot through with a single, undeniable theme: If global leaders listened to Gates, the world would be better equipped to fight the pandemic. As the fashion magazine Vogue asked, “Why Isn’t Bill Gates Running the Coronavirus Task Force?”

So what does a Gates-led COVID response look like?

The ultimate solution

According to Bill Gates, creating and distributing a Covid-19 vaccine to everyone on Earth is “the ultimate solution” to the outbreak. Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman echoed these sentiments, proclaiming that “a successful vaccine has to be made available for 7 billion people.”

On CNN in April, the wife of Bill Gates the co-director of his foundation, Melinda Gates, lamented that she was “kept up at night” worrying about vulnerable populations in Africa and how unprepared they were for this virus. In June, she told Time Magazine that, in the U.S., black people should get the vaccine first.

Bringing a life-saving vaccine to vulnerable black populations in Africa and the U.S., and then to everyone around the world, seems noble, and Bill Gates is certainly putting his money where his mouth is. In March, he stepped down from his position on the board of directors at Microsoft and is apparently “now spending the predominant amount of his time on the pandemic.”

The Gates Foundation, the “biggest funder of vaccines in the world,” has already directly donatedmore than $300 million toward the global response to the coronavirus. This includes backing vaccine trials by companies like Inovio Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca, and Moderna Inc., all of which are being described as frontrunners in the race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine.

The foundation also co-founded and funds the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI), which is investing up to $480 million in “a wide range of vaccine candidates and platform technologies.”

Even so, there might be cause for skepticism when examining the reality of a Gates-led global vaccination effort.

Conflicts of interest

As the second-richest person on Earth, Bill Gates has no reason to crave money. This is a common response to claims that Gates’ philanthropy isn’t motivated solely by the kindness of his heart. But despite these frequent characterizations of Gates “giving away” his fortune, his net worth has actually doubled in the last two decades.

At the same time, strong evidence suggests that the Gates Foundation functions as a trojan horse for Western corporations, which of course have no goal greater than an increased bottom line.

Consider the revolving door between the Gates Foundation and Big Pharma.

Former director of vaccine development at the foundation and current CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, Penny Heaton, hails from drug kingpins Merck and Novartis.

The foundation’s president of global health, Trevor Mundel, served in leadership positions at both Novartis and Pfizer. His predecessor, Tachi Yamada, was previously a top executive at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

Kate James, worked at GSK for almost 10 years, then became the foundation’s chief communications officer. The examples are almost endless.

LEft: former Gates President of Global Health Tachi Yamada. Right: Gates Foundation President of Global Health Trevor Mundel. Both previously worked as pharmaceutical industry executives.

Moreover, the Gates Foundation invests in these corporations directly.

Since shortly after its founding, the foundation has owned stakes in several drug companies. A recent investigation by The Nation revealed that the Gates Foundation currently holds corporate stocks and bonds in drug companies like Merck, GSK, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Novartis, and Sanofi.

The foundation’s website even candidly declares a mission to pursue “mutually beneficial opportunities” with vaccine manufacturers.

Gates buys the World Health Organization

The WHO relies on two streams of revenue. One comes in the form of assessed contributions, or obligatory funding from UN member states which is assessed through population and income. The second is voluntary contributions, which can be earmarked for specific causes.

Voluntary earmarked contributions account for more than 80 percent of the current WHO budget. In other words, most of the WHO’s money comes with strings attached.

As Dr. David Legge, public health scholar emeritus at the School of Public Health at La Trobe University in Melbourne, told The Grayzone,

“Obligatory contributions by nation states really only cover the cost of administration. It doesn’t cover any of the project costs, which means that all project funding is dependent on donors. [And] virtually all donor money is totally earmarked to highly specific projects that the donors want to fund.”

Through these voluntary contributions, the WHO took in over $70 million from the pharmaceutical industry in 2018 (the last year for which complete data is available). Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation has provided Big Pharma with the perfect vehicle for influencing the WHO.

In 2018 alone, the foundation gave $237.8 million to the WHO, making it the second-largest contributor after the U.S.

The foundation also funds the WHO indirectly through Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI), a “public-private partnership” that facilitates bulk sales of vaccines to poor countries. GAVI is the second-largest non-state funder of the WHO (after the Gates Foundation), and gave $158.5 million to the WHO in 2018.

In the late 1990s, Bill Gates sponsored the meetings that led to the creation of GAVI, establishing it up with $750 million in seed money. To date, the Gates Foundation has given GAVI more than $4.1 billion, accounting for close to 20 percent of GAVI funds. It also occupies a permanent seat on the GAVI board.

GAVI itself discloses that the Gates Foundation “plays both a technical and financial role in [its] efforts to shape vaccine markets.”

Citing GAVI as an example, the activist group Global Health Watch explained that “other global health actors are accountable to the Gates Foundation, but not the other way round.”

If the foundation’s and GAVI’s WHO contributions are combined, they outweigh the U.S. government’s contributions, making the Gates Foundation the unofficial top sponsor of the WHO, even before the Trump administration’s recent move to withdraw from the organization.

To sociologist Allison Katz, who worked for 18 years in the WHO headquarters, the WHO “has become a victim of neoliberal globalization.” Katz wrote an open letter to then-WHO Director General Margaret Chan in 2007, criticizing public bodies that “go begging to the private sector [and] to the foundations of celebrity ‘philanthropists’ with diverse agendas, from industry.”

To be sure, the WHO’s close financial relationship with a private organization is only a problem to the extent that it relies on quid pro quo donations. And that seems to be exactly what is taking place.

Because most of both the Gates Foundation’s contributions to the WHO are earmarked, the WHO doesn’t decide how these funds are spent – the foundation does. For example, the WHO program that receives the most money is its polio eradication program, because the Gates Foundation earmarks most of its contributions for polio.

Additionally, the sheer magnitude of the foundation’s financial contributions have made Bill Gates an unofficial  – albeit unelected – leader at the organization. That’s why the World Health Assembly that sets the WHO agenda adopted a “Global Vaccine Plan” in 2012 that was co-authored by none other than the Gates Foundation.

According to Dr. David Legge, scholar emeritus at the School of Public Health at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Gates’ financial “donations” are actually a mechanism for agenda setting. Legge told The Grayzone that “his massive contributions totally distort the kind of budget priorities that the World Health Assembly would wish to see.”

According to Foreign Affairs, “few policy initiatives or normative standards set by the WHO are announced before they have been casually, unofficially vetted by Gates Foundation staff.” Or, as other sources told Politico in 2017, “Gates’ priorities have become the WHO’s.”

In an interview with Global Health Watch, one senior health policy officer from a large NGO put it this way: “The people at WHO seem to have gone crazy. It’s ‘yes sir’, ‘yes sir’, to Gates on everything.”

In 2007, the chief of the WHO malaria program, Dr. Arata Kochi, warned of the Gates Foundation’s financial dominance, arguing that its money could have “far reaching, largely unintended consequences.”

Seven years later, the organization’s then-Director General Margaret Chan noted that because the WHO’s budget is highly earmarked, it is “driven by what [she calls] donor interests.”

Image on the right: Former WHO Director General Margaret Chan and Bill Gates

When Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus became WHO Director General in 2017, Gates’ influence came under fire again.

Tedros was previously on the board of two organizations Gates founded, provided seed money for, and continues to fund to this day: GAVI and the Global Fund, where Tedros was chair of the board.

Today, Tedros, the first WHO director general who is not a medical doctor, can be found tweeting praise for Bill Gates’ op-eds.

Great op-ed by @BillGates about the #COVID19 response. I thank him for his support of @WHO’s call for global solidarity, investing in new tools now before it’s too late and ensuring equitable access. https://t.co/UyDhCUkEzN

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) April 12, 2020

Another mechanism the Gates Foundation employs to influence the WHO is the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), the principal advisory group to the WHO for vaccines. SAGE is a board of 15 people, legally required to disclose any possible conflicts of interest.

During a recent virtual meeting, half of the board’s members who did so listed Gates Foundation connections as possible conflicts of interests.

The foundation’s influence in the international health arena goes well beyond the WHO. A 2017 analysis of 23 global health partnerships revealed that seven relied entirely on Gates Foundation funding and another nine listed the foundation as its top donor.

As the UK-based NGO Global Justice Now noted, “the Foundation’s influence is so pervasive that many actors in international development which would otherwise critique the policy and practice of the Foundation are unable to speak out independently as a result of its funding and patronage.”

“The World Bank and the IMF look like midgets in front of the Gates Foundation, in terms of power and influence,” Dr. Vandana Shiva remarked to The Grayzone.

Molding the media

The Gates Foundation has also directed its wealth toward influencing news coverage of global health policy – and to perhaps suppress criticism of its more unsavory activities.

The foundation has donated millions to major media outlets, including NPR, PBS, ABC, BBC, Al Jazeera, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, Univision, and The Guardian. In fact, The Guardian’s entire “Global Development” section was made possible through a partnership with the Gates Foundation.

The foundation has also invested millions in journalism training and in researching effective ways of crafting media narratives. According to the Seattle Times, “experts coached in Gates-funded programs write columns that appear in media outlets from the New York Times to the Huffington Post, while digital portals blur the line between journalism and spin.”

In 2008, the communications chief for PBS NewsHour, Rob Flynn, explained that “there are not a heck of a lot of things you could touch in global health these days that would not have some kind of Gates tentacle.” This was around the time when the foundation gave the NewsHour $3.5 million to establish a dedicated production unit to report on important global health issues.

Mickey Huff, the president of the Media Freedom Foundation, told The Grayzone that the Gates Foundation exerts influence in a way that is typical for foundations working through PR firms, grants, and endowments of professors. “In short,” Huff said, “Edward Bernays would be proud of the achievements of this type of propaganda.”

It is no wonder glowing coverage of the foundation is so common in mainstream media, or that its more unsavory activities in the Global South get so little attention.

Deadly double standards

The Gates Foundation has helped engineer global health policy for poor countries for over 20 years, working mainly in Africa and South Asia. Its close relationship with the drug industry seems to have colored that work.

While the foundation’s mission statement reads, “we see equal value in all lives,” an exploration of this recent history proves otherwise. The foundation appears to see the Global South as both a dumping ground for drugs deemed too unsafe for the developed world and a testing ground for drugs not yet determined to be safe enough for the developed world.

The so-called “flagship of Bill Gates’ / WHO African vaccine program” is the diphtheria tetanus pertussis (DTP) vaccine. It is a bundle of three immunization shots given to virtually every child on the African continent, but not currently administered in the U.S. or in most other developed nations.

As far back as 1977, a study published by British medical professionals in The Lancet established that the risks of the whole-cell pertussis jab (used in the DTP vaccine) are greater than the risks associated with contracting wild pertussis. After mounting evidence linking the drug to braindamage, seizures, and even death, the U.S. and other Western countries phased it out in the 1990s and replaced it with a safer version (called DTaP) that did not contain the whole pertussis cell.

However, African nations are still being financially incentivized to continue using the out-of-date, deeply dangerous DTP vaccine, with GAVI making DTP a priority for African children.

Shockingly, a 2017 study funded by the Danish government concluded that more African children were dying at the hands of the deadly DTP vaccine than by the diseases it prevented. The researchers examined data from Guinea Bissau and concluded that boys were dying at almost quadruple (3.93) the rate of those who had not received the shot, while girls suffered almost 10 times (9.98) the death rate.

Yet these staggering numbers have not stopped the Gates Foundation from spending millionsannually to push the DTP vaccine onto African healthcare systems.

There is perhaps no more famous element of the Gates Foundation’s work than its polio eradication effort. Yet once again, the polio drugs the Western world uses and the drugs given to the Global South are dramatically different.

The foundation has spent more than $1 billion distributing an oral polio vaccine (OPV) that contains a live polio virus to African and Asian countries. This live virus can replicate inside a child’s intestine and spread in places with poor sanitation and plumbing. That means people can contract the virus from the vaccine.

According to a 2017 study by the University of California San Francisco and Tel Aviv University, the polio virus used in the OPV has done just that in at least two dozen cases the researchers examined – it rapidly regained its strength and started spreading on its own.

In recent years, more children have been paralyzed by the vaccine strain of the virus in OPV than by wild polio. In an interview with NPR, professor of microbiology Raul Andino said, “It’s actually an interesting conundrum. The very tool you are using for polio eradication is causing the problem.”

Back in 2000, the U.S. halted its use of the OPV. But in the developing world, the Gates Foundation uses its instruments of influence to ensure governments continue administering it.

Polio outbreaks in both the Philippines and the Congo are the result of the OPV. In 2005, Oxford’s Clinical Infectious Diseases Periodical contended that polio outbreaks in China, Egypt, Haiti, and Madagascar were also caused by the OPV, declaring that “the time is coming when the only cause of polio is likely to be the vaccine used to prevent it.”

A few years later, the same periodical, while arguing that developing countries should shift to the Inactive Polio Vaccine (IPV) that the U.S. uses, wrote that the OPV is not only giving kids polio, but also “seems to be ineffective in stopping polio transmission” to begin with.

As the British Medical Journal reported in 2012,

“the most recent mass polio vaccination programs [in India], fueled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, resulted in increased cases [of polio].”

According to doctors in India, the OPV is also causing outbreaks of another disease called non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP). After an epidemic of NPAFP paralyzed 490,000 children between 2000 and 2017, the doctors published a report suggesting that “the increase in NPAFP and the later decrease in such cases was indeed an adverse effect of the [WHO’s] polio immunization program.”

NPAFP is “clinically indistinguishable from polio but twice as deadly.” Keith Van Haren, Child Neurologist at the Stanford School of Medicine explains that, “it actually looks just like polio, but that term really freaks out the public-health people.”

In 2012, the British Medical Journal wryly noted that polio eradication in India “has been achieved by renaming the disease.”

That same year, the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics observed both vaccine-derived polio outbreaks and the massive increase in NPAFP. It likened eradication efforts in India to the occupation of Iraq, stating:

“When the U.S. was badly mired in Iraq in 2005, Joe Galloway suggested that the U.S. must simply declare victory, and then exit. Perhaps the time is right for such an honourable strategy with regard to polio eradication.”

However, the Gates Foundation and the WHO have stayed the course, distributing the OPV in countries including Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, where the foundation says the WHO is now providing “unprecedented levels of technical assistance” for polio vaccination campaigns.

In Syria, the Gates-backed GAVI pledged $25 million for polio immunization in 2016. A year later, the WHO reported that 58 children in Syria had been paralyzed by the vaccine-derived form of the virus.

Despite the scientific consensus against the OPV, and the opposition to such programs in the target countries, OPV remains administered in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia as part of “aid” programs, creating windfall profits for pharmaceutical giants who may not have been able to sell their products elsewhere.

With drugs discarded by the West, an illusion of choice for African women

The Gates Foundation’s practice of pushing dangerous drugs onto health systems of the Global South is not limited to vaccines. It also helps distribute long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs).

Melinda Gates often refers to LARCs as a way to empower women of impoverished countries and give them more control over their lives. However, some of these LARCs have had adverse effects, and the distribution of the products without informed consent offers women little self-determination.

One example is Norplant, a contraceptive implant manufactured by Schering (now Bayer) that can prevent pregnancy for up to five years. It was yanked from the U.S. market in 2002 after more than 50,000 women filed lawsuits against the company and the doctors who prescribed it. 70 of those class action suits related to side effects like depression, extreme nausea, scalp-hair loss, ovarian cysts, migraines, and excessive bleeding.

A human development website called Degrees, which was bankrolled by the Gates Foundation, alleges that Norplant “never gained much traction globally” because inserting it and removing it “proved cumbersome.”

Slightly modified and rebranded as Jadelle, the dangerous drug was promoted in Africa by the Gates Foundation in conjunction with USAID and EngenderHealth. Formerly named the Sterilization League for Human Betterment, EngenderHealth’s original mission, inspired by the racist pseudoscience of eugenics, was to “improve the biological stock of the human race.” Jadelle is not approved by the FDA for use in the U.S.

Then there is Pfizer’s Depo-Provera, an injectable contraceptive used in several African and Asian countries. The Gates Foundation and USAID have collaborated again to fund this drug’s distribution and introduce it into the healthcare systems of countries including Uganda, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Bangladesh, and India.

In 2012, Melinda Gates promised to supply contraceptives like Depo-Provera, which cost between $120 and $300 a year, to at least 120 million women by 2020. In 2017, Melinda Gates authored an article on Medium reporting that she and her partners were on track to keeping that promise, and pledging $375 million in additional funds to do so. That meant that Pfizer made between $14 and $36 billion through this program.

Disturbingly, Depo Provera’s active ingredient – depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) – has been associated with side effects like life threatening blood clots in the lungs, blindness, and breast cancer.

Pfizer’s one-time use version of the drug, called Sayana Press, is intended to be administered by “community health workers.” In Senegal, however, almost half of these workers had no more than a sixth grade education.

Senegal’s Health Ministry was forced to change its laws so the health workers could legally distribute the drug. According to the Population Research Institute, USAID-funded NGOs “strong armed the government” into this decision.

Additionally, training materials for Sayana Press did not provide information on all the side effects of DMPA, violating principles of informed consent. According to WHO guidelines, DMPA shouldn’t be used by women with rheumatic disorders. But USAID funded patient screening checklists for Uganda did not instruct health workers to ask women about a history of such disorders.

Guidelines for trainers of providers of Sayana Press also don’t mention that the drug has been strongly associated with bone density loss and an increased risk of bone fractures. As the Population Research Institute put it, “The FDA requires that U.S. women be informed of this fact, but African women are kept in the dark.”

In 2015, 70 Indian feminist groups and scholars signed a statement protesting the regulatory approval of Depo-Provera, citing side effects like excessive bone density loss, weight gain, excessive bleeding, and depression. Their statement argued that women’s organizations have consistently opposed the introduction of dangerous contraceptives like these, and that “there are risks that the women are not given enough information to make an informed choice of contraceptive method.”

Despite widespread domestic opposition and the mounting evidence of negative side effects, the Gates Foundation continues working with USAID to distribute drugs like Depo-Provera.

Guinea pigs in the Global South

Bill Gates’ channels of influence have also been instrumental in testing drugs on people in poor countries.

Before a drug can be sold to the public, the FDA and similar agencies in Europe mandate that a company test the drug on human subjects. The third and final phase of these tests before the drug can go to market are phase III clinical trials, during which companies are required to give the drug to large numbers of people in controlled studies.

It is estimated that about 90 percent of drug development costs are incurred in phase III trials. But these companies can avoid costs by conducting the trials in so-called developing nations.

This cost-cutting strategy has been outlined by the U.S. consulting firm McKinsey, which suggested including “emerging markets” in drug trials to reduce “the loss of significant revenues.”

So it comes as no surprise that the Gates Foundation, a McKinsey client, outwardly stated its “goal” was to help drug companies side-step safety trials and accelerate the drug approval process for pharmaceutical companies. Or, as they put it, to “refine potential interventions such as vaccine candidates before they enter costly and time consuming late-stage clinical trials.”

While conducting clinical trials on the poor is financially advantageous, it can also be dangerous. Citing numerous examples of the danger, a South African newspaper once declared, “We are the guinea pigs for the drug makers.”

From 2009 to 2011, phase III clinical trials of the first malaria vaccine – funded by the Gates Foundation and manufactured by GSK – took place in seven African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Gabon, and Tanzania).

In 2011, GSK’s own data showed female children were dying (from any cause) at more than twice the rate of those in the control group. Children who received the vaccine also had a risk of meningitis that was 10 times higher than those who didn’t.

Yet the WHO still coordinates the administration of the drug to more than 700,000 children in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi,  as part of an unofficial clinical trial it calls a “pilot implementation.” (It was the Gates-aligned SAGE that recommended the pilot implementation.)

Since this product is administered to children as part of the countries’ vaccination schedule, the WHO claims consent is implied. But parents aren’t always given information regarding safety risks, again rendering them unable to give informed consent for their children. As the associate editor of the British Medical Journal put it, “an implied consent process means that recipients of the malaria vaccine are not being informed that they are in a study.”

The Gates Foundation also funded clinical trials of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines made by GSK and Merck. These drugs were given to 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces as part of an initiative by the Gates-backed Program for Appropriate Health and Technology (PATH).

Again, study participants were robbed of the ability to give informed consent, as the “pros and cons of vaccination [were not] properly communicated to the parents/guardians.”

According to Professor Linsey McGoey from the University of Essex,

“Most of the vaccines were given to girls at ashram pathshalas (boarding schools for tribal children), side-stepping the need to seek parental consent for the shots.”

PATH also failed to implement a system for recording major adverse reactions to the vaccines, which is legally mandated for large-scale clinical trials. The Indian Committee on Health and Family Welfare brought PATH to court for this alleged transgression, accusing it of human rights violations and of child abuse. In 2013, the court’s two judge panel observed that while foreign companies “are treating India as a heaven for clinical trials, and it is proving hell for India.”

India’s parliamentary committee charged that the “sole aim” of the Gates-funded project was to promote “commercial interests of the HPV vaccine manufacturers, who would have reaped windfall profits if PATH had been successful in getting the HPV vaccine included in the universal immunization program of the Country.”

The editor emeritus of the National Medical Journal of India concurred with the panel’s report, writing that this was an “obvious case where Indians were being used as guinea pigs.”

Weakening the public health systems of states

In addition to pushing dangerous products onto poorer countries, the Gates Foundation actually stunts improvements to public health systems and access to health care. Thus, changes in social and economic determinants of health take a backseat to more profitable, technology-centric solutions like vaccines.

This phenomenon is reflected in the WHO budget. The foundation is the largest contributor to the WHO’s polio eradication program, but the largest funder of WHO’s “health systems” program is the government of Japan.

According to Global Justice Now, the foundation’s “heavy focus on developing new vaccines… detracts from other, more vital health priorities such as building resilient health systems.”

As Dr. David Legge explains, Gates

“has got a mechanistic view of global health, in terms of looking for silver bullets. All of the things he supports are largely framed as silver bullets … That means that major issues that have been identified in the World Health Assembly are not being addressed, including in particular the social determinants of health, and the development of health systems.”

In 2011, Gates spoke at the WHO, saying,

“All 193 member states, you must make vaccines a central focus of your health systems.”

University of Toronto public health professor Anne Emanuelle Birn wrote in 2005 that the foundation had a “narrowly conceived understanding of health as the product of technical interventions divorced from economic, social, and political contexts.”

“The Gates Foundation has long championed private sector involvement in, and private sector profit-making from global health,” Birn told The Grayzone.

One of GAVI’s senior representatives even reported that Bill Gates often told him in private conversations “that he is vehemently ‘against’ health systems” because it is a “complete waste of money.”

This phenomenon is also reflected in how the policy agenda is set at GAVI. GAVI, too, focuses on vertical health interventions like vaccines, instead of horizontal approaches, like building and strengthening health systems in poor countries.

A report by Global Public Health outlines the “Gates approach” to health systems, analyzing how disease-specific projects like vaccines have eclipsed efforts to work on publicly funded health systems. The article’s author, Katerini Storeng, pointed to GAVI as an example of how “global health initiatives have come to capture the global health debate about health systems strengthening in favor of their disease specific approach and ethos.”

According to a former GAVI staffer who spoke with Storeng, even former GAVI CEO Julian Lob-Levitt was aware of the “absurdity of vaccine campaigns that consume four weeks to plan, implement and clean up and that, when repeated eight times a year, totally paralyze the health system.”

At one point, Lob-Levitt commissioned a series of evaluations of GAVI, which identified weaknesses in health systems and the need to strengthen them. The push to do so, however, was “strongly resisted by many powerful actors [on GAVI’s board]” including USAID and the Gates Foundation, according to Storeng’s interviews.

Storeng writes that a GAVI staffer told her that the Foundation was a “very loud, vocal voice, saying that we do not believe in the strengthening of health systems.”

The report also notes:

“Gates’ reputation for being ‘not very good at listening’ has encouraged a non-confrontational approach within the global health arena … a former GAVI employee and HSS [health systems strengthening] proponent recounted how he and his colleagues used to ‘roll down the HSS posters’ when Bill Gates came to visit the GAVI headquarters in Geneva because he is known to ‘hate this part’ of GAVI’s work.”

The foundation’s preference for weak public health systems, and for techno-centric solutions to public health problems is not limited to its work with the drug industry. It also shapes policy in the crucial sector of food.

Early this year, Gates set up a new non-profit institute based in St. Louis, Missouri, home of Monsanto. The foundation said the new organization, dubbed Gates Ag One, will “enable the advancement of resilient, yield enhancing seeds” and introduce them into “crops essential to smallholder farmers, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.”

Yet while helping small farmers sounds like a noble endeavor, the foundation has worked to ensure that the Global South is dependent on Western industry, whether through drugs or high-tech seeds and agrochemicals.

Much of this activity began in 2006 when the Gates Foundation partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation to give birth to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Gates committed $100 million, while the Rockefeller Foundation ponied up $50 million.

The approach of AGRA, which opened up African markets to U.S. agribusiness, is based on the belief that hunger is due to a lack of Western tech, instead of the result of inequality or exploitation.

According to a report by the African Center for Biosafety, “It is striking that none of those in the forefront of the revolution is African. No different from the colonial project in Africa, this new revolution is created and most ardently advocated by white men claiming to fight for the emancipation of Africans from the clutches of hunger and poverty.”

Through AGRA, the Foundation pushes for the introduction of patented, genetically modified (GM) seeds and fertilizers. While these technologies help seed and chemical giants like Monsanto, they often undermine food security.

Dr. Vandana Shiva maintains that the idea that GM crops increase yields is a “scientific falsehood.” For another, the foundation again ensures that valuable resources are diverted away from systemic solutions to hunger and poverty.

As The Ecologist asserted, Gates and Monsanto partner in the “inappropriate and fraudulent GMO project which promotes a technical quick fix ahead of tackling the structural issues that create hunger, poverty and food insecurity.”

What’s more, the Gates Foundation actually influences African governments to change laws to accommodate the agriculture industry

According to Grain.org:

“In Ghana … AGRA helped the government review its seed policies with the goal of identifying barriers to the private sector getting more involved. With technical and financial support from AGRA, the country’s seed legislation was revised and a new pro-business seed law was passed in mid-2010. Among other things it established a register of varieties that can be marketed. In Tanzania, discussions between AGRA and government representatives facilitated a major policy change to privatise seed production. In Malawi, AGRA supported the government in revising its maize pricing and trade policies.”

Commenting on the role of Gates in reshaping agriculture markets, Shiva told The Grayzone, “You create a new field, you invest in it. You force governments to invest in it, you destroy the regulation. You destroy the alternatives, you attack the scientists.  And you create a whole machinery for your monopoly.”

As in the case of Gates and Big Pharma, these moves can be explained by the Gates Foundation’s apparent conflicts of interest. And as before, the examples go on and on.

Former deputy director of the foundation’s agriculture program, Robert Horsch, was previously a high-ranking executive at Monsanto, where he worked for 25 years. Horsch led the team that manages agricultural grants, and according to Global Policy Forum, “he was asked to join the Gates Foundation particularly for the purpose of continuing his Monsanto research.”

Sam Dryden, the former director of the Gates Foundation’s agriculture program, previously led two of the largest genetically modified seed companies, Emergent Genetics and Agragentics Corporation. In 2005, Emergent was bought by Monsanto, where Dryen stayed for six months. While he was at the Gates Foundation, The Guardian called him “the most powerful figure in the global south’s agriculture.”

The former program officer for Gates’ agriculture program, Don Doering, was previously a founding member of Monsanto’s Biotechnology Advisory Council. Doering led an agricultural development team that directed money into “help[ing] poor farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.”

Then there’s Florence Wambugu, who authored the book “Modifying Africa” and has been called “an apostle of Monsanto in Africa.” After receiving a scholarship from USAID, Wambugu became a researcher at Monsanto. She was then appointed to the Gates Foundation’s Global Development board.

As with several of its pharmaceutical endeavors, the Gates Foundation works with USAID in the agriculture sector. Pamela K. Anderson, the current director of agriculture development at the Gates Foundation, is currently on the board of USAID.

22,000 children die each day due to poverty. Yet socio-economic causes of health problems can be neglected when industry aligned interests call the shots. Such is the case with the Gates Foundation’s primacy in the global health arena.

In short, the foundation’s leadership in previous global health efforts displays an allegiance not to public health, but to the imperatives of Western capital. It prefers not to strengthen health systems, but to ensure nations remain dependent on Big Pharma and/or Big Agriculture for as long as possible.

It is in this light the Gates’ leadership in the global fight against Covid-19 can be understood.

Operation Warp Speed immunizes Big Pharma from lawsuits

In March, the U.S. passed federal regulations granting liability immunity to corporations producing coronavirus drugs, including vaccines. It also provided liability immunity to any entity distributing the drugs.

With more than 100 Covid-19 vaccines currently in development, this means products will be indemnified against lawsuits, even if they produce harmful effects.

If vaccine makers are indeed exempted by governments around the globe from legal penalties, these companies have little incentive to protect people from harmful side effects. As in the past, it seems that citizens of the world’s poorest countries are set to become “guinea pigs for the drug makers.”

Bill Gates’ advocacy for legal immunity for drug manufacturers dates back to at least 2015, when he lamented during the Ebola outbreak that there was no clear process for “providing indemnity against legal liability.” He suggested that during a “global epidemic,” drug companies should be indemnified to “avert long delays.” Now, his proposal is coming to fruition.

Gates justified his position on the grounds that companies will need to produce drugs as fast as possible to save lives, and these new drugs may not always be safe.

“Understanding safety… is very, very hard,” he said to CBS. “There will be some risk and indemnification needed before [getting a vaccine out] can be decided on.”

Normally, a drug goes through a phase of animal testing before it gets tested on small (phase I), medium (phase II), and large numbers of people (phase III). But with Covid, Gates wants to “save time” by conducting tests on humans and animals at the same time.

Today, the U.S. is “compressing what is typically 10 years of vaccine development,” according to the head of the National Institute of Health (NIH).

This may produce some troubling effects. For one, a successful coronavirus vaccine has yet to be produced, and a new one could trigger lethal reactions. Tropical disease specialist Dr. Peter Hotez, who worked on a failed vaccine for another coronavirus (SARS), said that during experimental tests of the drug, animals fell victim to what he calls “immune enhancement.” The animals that were given the shot developed more severe (and often fatal) versions of the virus when compared with unvaccinated animals.

Hotez told Reuters, “The way you reduce that risk [for humans] is first you show it does not occur in laboratory animals.” The medical expert stated that while he understands “the importance of accelerating timelines for vaccines in general, but … this is not the vaccine to be doing it with.”

Without performing the initial phase of animal testing normally required to bring a vaccine to market, a biotech company named Moderna is now conducting human trials for its Covid-19 vaccine. Moderna’s vaccine is an mRNA type which has never been approved by the FDA for use on humans.

This technology, which contains genetically engineered cells that can permanently alter human DNA, was developed with grants from both the Gates Foundation and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Moderna says it has a “strategic alliance” with DARPA, which gavethe company $25 million in total.

Moderna’s mRNA technology has been singled out by Bill Gates as “one of the most promising options for COVID.” Gates even has a “global health project framework agreement” with Moderna to give it up to $100 million for the development of its mRNA technology, in exchange for receiving “certain non-exclusive licenses.”

Moderna’s co-founder Robert Langer has partnered with Gates in the past on projects such as the contraceptive microchip implant that can be activated wirelessly.

When Moderna announced the completion of its phase 1 safety trial May 18, corporate news outlets parroted Moderna’s “good news.” But the fine print in the release revealed that three of the 15 participants injected with the highest dose of the vaccine developed grade three systemic symptoms, which the FDA defines as “severe,” “disabling,” and requiring “hospitalization,” although “not immediately life-threatening.”

On May 15, President Trump appointed Moncef Slaoui,  a board member of Moderna who until May 19 held more than $10.3 million in Moderna stock, as chief scientist of the nation’s effort to find a Covid-19 vaccine.

Slaoui, who calls himself a “venture capitalist,” is also on the board of directors at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), a “public-private partnership” organization that has received more than $359 million from the Gates Foundation.

Slaoui also held leadership positions at GSK. While heading the company’s Research and Development, GSK pleaded guilty and paid $3 billion in what the U.S. Justice Department referred to as the “largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history.” The fraud included the coverup of the link between the drug Paxil and suicidal and depressive side effects (predominantly in children), the coverup of the link between the drug Avandia and heart attacks, which the FDA estimated lead to 83,000 excess heart attacks, as well several bribery and illegal kickback schemes.

While he was GSK’s chairman of vaccines, Slaoui oversaw the development of the swine flu vaccine named Pandemrix, which was rushed to market without proper testing during the swine flu outbreak. The result was an unsafe shot that left at least 800 people with brain damage, 80 percent of them children. Since GSK only agreed to give governments the vaccine on the condition that it be indemnified from liability, U.K. taxpayer money was used to pay millions of pounds in compensation to the victims.

Slaoui was hired to be the Trump administration’s “vaccine czar” as a private contractor, not a government employee. This means, as Public Citizen explained, that Slaoui can “maintain an extensive web of conflicting financial interests without the need to divest of, recuse from, or disclose those conflicting interests.”

The corporate media likes to paint the Covid-19 response as a tug of war between anti-science blowhards like Donald Trump and “champions of science” like Bill Gates. However, Slaoui’s appointment to co-direct “Operation Warp Speed” indicates that, here, the Trump administration and the Gates Foundation are on the same team.

After entering his new Trump administration role, Slaoui declared that Moderna’s clinical trial data made him confident “we will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020.”

Although the U.S. government has picked Moderna as one of its five coronavirus vaccine “finalists,” financial moves by some company executives suggest Moderna’s best days might be behind them.

According to SEC filings, the company’s Chief Financial Officer Lorence Kim sold 214,000 Moderna shares on the day of the press release, immediately profiting more than $16 million.

Thomas Lys, a professor of accounting at Northwestern University, was quoted by Stat News saying this could simply be a financial decision by Moderna to get some liquidity, but that “there’s always that other possibility – that these guys really know the whole thing is bogus and they’re selling while the selling is good.”

Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks, who held close to 100,000 shares of Moderna stock at the beginning of the year, started dumping shares a few days before Moderna announced its vaccine was ready for human testing, has profited more than $18 million in 2020, and now owns zero shares.

A centralized stockpile to “make WHO dependent on the goodwill of Big Pharma”

In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted “Event 201” in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation.

A former steering committee member of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security is now the Trump administration’s stockpile chief, and the CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine is also on the board of directors at the pharmaceutical corporation Merck.

Event 201 was an exercise simulating the outbreak of a novel coronavirus. It included representatives from the U.S. National Security Council, as well as corporate leadership from drugmakers like Johnson & Johnson.

While similarities between the mock outbreak and the real outbreak have prompted unsubstantiated theories about Bill Gates “predicting” COVID 19, it is undeniable that the policy proposals that emerged out of the exercise are being implemented today.

Following the simulation, complete with chillingly realistic mock press conferences and newscasts by an imitation network called GNN, the three organizations issued recommendations for dealing with a “severe pandemic.” One recommendation was to have a “robust international stockpile” of medical countermeasures like vaccines.

During the simulation, the Gates Foundation’s global health president, Chris Elias, urged such a stockpile. He explained that “a global stockpile would certainly help ensure a rational and strategic allocation,” but that a collaboration between the WHO and the private sector is necessary to make one effective.

From an objective standpoint, a centralized stockpile of medical countermeasures can be of value during a health crisis. But the question of who controls and distributes it raises troubling issues.

Dr. David Legge told The Grayzone that Elias’s suggestion would further increase the influence of for-profit pharmaceutical corporations, because “undoubtedly, a public-private partnership with a procurement focus and distribution focus would involve Big Pharma and make WHO dependent on the goodwill of Big Pharma.”

Gates might argue that the control and distribution of such stockpiles should also be influenced by Western institutions like NATO. In 2015, he wrote that during a “severe epidemic,” “some global institution could be empowered and funded to coordinate the [epidemic response] system,” that there should be discussion about splitting authority between the WHO and “others (including the World Bank and the G7 countries),” and that “the conversation should include military alliances such as NATO.”

Gates has also argued that “low-income countries should be some of the first to receive” the Covid-19 vaccine. If NATO is playing a role in controlling and distributing vaccines, such aid could be used to further a Western military agenda, as such “aid” has been used in past humanitarian interventions.

Gates has nearly monopolized the realm of public health policy, both nationally and internationally. “Fauci and I are in constant contact,” he has proclaimed, referring to the face of the U.S. Covid response, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci.

At the same time, the mega-billionaire is apparently talking to both CEOs of pharmaceutical companies and heads of government “every day.”

While maintaining relationships with government organizations and the profit-driven private sector, the Gates Foundation has become perhaps the most influential player in the global Covid-19 response. So if the foundation’s work has favored Western multinationals at the expense of public health in the past, why should anyone expect a different result this time?

History repeats itself

This July, the Associated Press reported that South Africans had gathered in Johannesburg to protest the presence of the phase III AstraZeneca clinical trial in Africa. The Gates Foundation had poured$750 million into this vaccine effort in the last month, and protestors were photographed holding banners that read, “we not guinea pigs” and, “no to Gates poison.”

Demonstration organizer Phapano Phasha told AP that vulnerable groups were being manipulated into participating in the trial without being able to make an informed choice. “I believe in science,” Phasha said. “I’m not against vaccinations, I’m against profiteering.”

Reports say both Moderna’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccine could be available for public distribution by the end of 2020.

The Grayzone contacted the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), and the Program for Appropriate Technologies in Health (PATH) with requests for comment on this article, and has yet to receive a response.

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Jeremy Loffredo is a journalist based in Washington D.C. He has worked on various independent documentaries in New York and helped produce several international news programs. He is currently putting together a documentary on the Green New Deal which you can support at https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-green-new-deal-explained-for-real

Michele Greenstein is a journalist based in Washington D.C. A former correspondent for RT America, she produced a series on the technology war between the U.S. and China and a documentary from the field on 2019’s anti-government movement in Hong Kong.

All images in this article are from The Grayzone

This article published in October 2009, provides a historical understanding of the evolving relationship between the US and India, as well as its conflict with China.

Author’s Note and Update

Since May 5, 2020 military skirmished between India and China have intensified in the Himalaya Mountains. India has taken steps to reduce its economic needs on China. Traders ties between the two Asian titans have also started being restructured since the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Signs of trouble, however, between the two Asian giants began earlier with US overtures to India. In part, the “Howdy Modi” rally (held in the US on September 22, 2019) and “Namaste Trump” rallies (held in India on February 24 and February 25, 2020) not only represent a warming of ties between Washington and New Delhi, but represent a convergence of US and Indian interests. This has taken place under the leaderships of US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Trump and Modi seek to rebalance world trade. This comes at the expense of China. In fact, while Trump was in India, he indirectly said that global manufacturing should be relocared to China.

The admittance of both India and Pakistan as full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on June 9, 2017 aimed to prevent any problems clashes between India or China that would disrupt Eurasian integration.

A cirlcle of Indian elites, however, seem to be directing an Indian power play to make India a larger epicentre of global cheap labour manufacturing at the expense of China. Clashes between both countries need to be carefully analyzed. 

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, July 17, 2020

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Since 1947, India has not fully pledged itself to any camp or global pole during the Cold War and as a result was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement (N.A.M.). Since the post-Cold War era that position has eroded. New Delhi has been gradually moving away from its traditional position, relationships, and policies in the international arena for over a decade.

India has been vied for as an ally in the “Great Game” that is underway, once again. This round of the “Great Game” is, however, being played under a far broader spectrum than the one played between Britain and Czarist Russia. In question is the Indian power relationship with two geo-political entities: the first is the “Periphery” and the second is “Eurasia.”

The Periphery and Eurasia: Vying for India on a Geo-Strategic Chessboard

Physical geography alone does not form or carve or determine geographic entities. The activity of people also is of critical importance to this process. Geographic units, from blocs and countries to regions, must be understood as a product of people interacting in socio-economic and political terms. The geographic entities that are subject herein are social constructions. In this conceptual context, Eurasia itself can be defined as a geo-political player and entity.

In a physical sense, Eurasia as a geographic landmass and spatial entity is neutral, just as are other geographic regions or units, and carries no meaning or value(s). Eurasia in socio-political terms as an active player, however, is altogether different. Herein, it is this active and politically organized Eurasia that is a product of the anti-hegemonic cooperation of Russia, China, and Iran against the status quo global order of the Periphery that is the Eurasia being addressed.

The Periphery is a collective term for those nations who are either geographically located on the margins of the Eurasian landmass or altogether geographically outside of the Eurasian landmass. This grouping or categorization of geo-political players when described are namely the U.S., the E.U., and Japan. In almost organic terms these players at the broader level strive to penetrate and consume Eurasia. This objective is so because of the socio-economic organization and political mechanisms (all of which serve elitist interests) of the Periphery. Aside from the U.S., the E.U., and Japan, the Periphery includes Australia, Canada, South Korea, Singapore, and Israel.

It is in this tugging match that India is centred. It is also in this geo-strategic bout that India has adopted a pragmatic policy of open opportunism. Yet, New Delhi has also been steadily moving towards a stance favouring the Periphery against Eurasia.

India’s historically warm relationship with Iran has been tainted because of negotiations with the U.S. and E.U. and New Delhi’s relationship with China appears cordial on the surface, but it is fragile and double-edged. Although Russia and India maintain cooperation in regards to the purchase of Russian military hardware by India, this relationship too is in question regardless of continued Russian weapons supplies.

State policy, in turn influenced or controlled by local elites, is also pivotal to the formation of the larger geographic entities being addressed. The ruling circles and elites of India are pragmatic opportunists and their is no question in this. This characteristic, however, is a trademark of almost all elitist circles and is not unique to Indian elites alone. The position of the Indian elites, however, is noteworthy because they can flex their muscles and they can play both sides.

New Delhi Caught between Alliances?

As stated, New Delhi has been walking a pragmatic path between the emerging Eurasian pole and between the more established Peripheral pole. The Eurasian pole was originally formed out of a reluctant necessity for survival against the thrust of the Periphery by Moscow. As the Russian-initiated Eurasian-based alliance gains global momentum it is also working to cultivate an end to Eurasian rivalries.

Since 2003, the lines of cooperation with the U.S., Britain, Germany, and France have been shifting and continuously restudied by Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and their other allies, such as Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Tajikistan. The U.S., Britain, Germany, France and their shared proxies, NATO and the European Union, have been trying to obstruct the solidification of a united Eurasian entity. This is where India is key.

A factor that has obstructed Eurasian cooperation, with the inclusion of India, is the mutual suspicions of the Eurasians and, in general terms, their underlying resource rivalries. Due to these factors, the Eurasians appeared to be working together and alternatively to be keeping the lines of cooperation open with both the Periphery.  A case in standing of this schizophrenic policy is what was once called the “Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis” that clasped Russia on one side and France and Germany on the other. This Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis flexed its muscles in international relations and at the U.N. during the Anglo-American march to war against Iraq in 2003.

India and the Encirclement of China

New Delhi is not a constituent of the Periphery. Nor does India fully trust the nations of the Periphery. India does,, however, appear to favour the Periphery. This can be attributed to the demographic nature of global resource competitions and long-standing Sino-Indian cleavages and tensions. The tensions and cleavages between China and India have also been capitalized on by the Periphery just as the Sino-Soviet split was by Henry Kissinger during the Cold War to keep China and the Soviet Union divided.

Due to tensions with China, the Indian ruling establishment still holds onto a vision about a showdown with the Chinese. Both states are demographic dinosaurs and are competing between themselves and with the status quo Peripheral powers for resources. Despite the fact that it is the nations of the Periphery that are disproportionately exploiting a far larger share of global resources, in the eyes of many in New Delhi the perception is that it is far easier to reduce the effect of global resource competitions by working to eliminate China rather than competing with the Periphery. It is these two reasons that are the basis for the formation of Indian animosity to Beijing.

An encircling military ring that involves India has been created around China. New Delhi has been involved in the framework of military cooperation with the Periphery aimed at China. Under this framework, India has joined Japan, the U.S., and Australia in forming a de facto “Quadrilateral Coalition” to neutralize China through the establishment of a ring of containment that could see a naval blockade form in the event of a war around the borders of China. [1]

In a war between China and an outside power, cutting off Chinese energy supplies would be central to defeating Beijing. Without any fuel the military hardware of the People’s Liberation Army would be rendered useless. It is from this standpoint that India is building its naval strength and cooperating militarily in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific with the Periphery. It is also with Chinese energy supplies, Indian naval expansion, and the encirclement of China in mind that the Indian military has prepared to introduce, by 2014, what it calls “Indigenous Aircraft Carriers” (IACs), each with two takeoff runways and one landing strip for up to 30 military aircraft. [2]

China, as well as Iran, also has a direct border with NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, which can be used as a military hub against the more vulnerable western flank of China. In this regard, the massive American-led NATO military build-up in Afghanistan is monitored with the utmost suspicion by Beijing and Tehran. In many senses, the Periphery is moving or pushing inwards towards the heart of Eurasia. The encirclement of China also parallels the rings of military alliances and bases created around Russia and around Iran. China also faces the threat of a missile shield project in East Asia just as the European core of Russia faces one in Eastern Europe and Iran faces one via such countries as the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Israel, and Turkey in the Middle East.

Playing all sides to get New Delhi its Place in the Sun?

The 2006 meetings between George W. Bush Jr. and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, including the Indo-U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement, are examples of the “divide and conquer” game the White House and its allies are playing. India is not passive in this game and is an active player too. The trilateral summits held between Russia, China, and India represent the opposite push to bring India fully into the Eurasian coalition of Moscow and Beijing. The U.S. has also been trying to obstruct the creation of a trans-Asian energy grid in Asia or a trans-Eurasian energy grid that would involve both sections of Europe and Asia within a single framework. One of these projects is the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline and another is the building of pipelines from the former Soviet Union to China.

Moreover, India has nurtured military ties with Russia, China, and Iran on one hand and the U.S., NATO, Australia, Israel, and Japan on the other hand. This is evident from the joint naval exercises held in April, 2007 between India and China off Qingdao and the joint Indian, U.S., and Japanese trilateral military exercise in the Pacific Ocean. [3] Yet, India has not been neutral. India has also upgraded its missile arsenal so that it can target deeper into Chinese territory.

All in all, New Delhi has tilted in favour of the Periphery. At first glance, this is reflected by the fact that India is the only Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) observer member that has not applied for full membership within the Eurasian bloc and through New Delhi’s growing ties with NATO. India’s course also became clearer after an important trilateral conference between Russia, China, and India in 2007 that saw India diplomatically refuse Chinese and Russian demands to rebut America and reject full cooperation. In this regard, Indian officials have said that they do not want to compromise their strategic flexibility. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India has also degenerated the situation further and expanded the rift between India on one side and Russia, Iran, and China on the other.

An Expanded Missile Arsenal for India

New Delhi has also been working to upgrade its military capabilities to match those of the U.S., Russia, and China. The process involves the possession of inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), and ballistic missile defence (BMD) capabilities. The Times of India reported on May 13, 2008 that Indian military scientists predicted that India would posses all three capabilities by 2010 or 2011:

By 2010-2011, India hopes to gatecrash into a very exclusive club of countries, which have both ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) and SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles) as well as BMD (ballistic missile defence) capabilities.

Only the US and Russia strictly qualify for this club as of now, if all the three capabilities — ICBM, SLBM and BMD — are taken together, with countries like China not too far behind.

Top defence scientists, on the sidelines of the annual DRDO awards on Monday, told TOI [Times of India] they were quite confident India would have ICBMs and SLBMs, even though their strike ranges would be much lesser than American, Russian or Chinese missiles, as also a functional BMD system soon after the turn of this decade. [4]

The nature of such a military build-up must be questioned. Who is it aimed at and what are its primary objectives? Are these capabilities meant to act as a deterrence or are they part of something more? These are important questions.

The United States Directly Threatens China

The answer to the Indian military build-up is embodied in two parts. One element to this answer is the military dogma of the U.S. towards China. The U.S. attitude is clarified in a May 2008 interview given to the Voice of America by Admiral Timothy J. Keating after a new Chinese submarine base was discovered, which was called a threat to U.S. interests in Asia. Admiral Keating is the American flag officer commanding U.S. forces in East Asia and the Pacific under United States Pacific Command (USPACOM), one of the highest military posts in the U.S. military.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on May 12, 2008:

China’s new underground nuclear submarine base close to vital sea lanes in Southeast Asia has raised US concerns, with experts calling for a shoring up of alliances in the region to check Beijing’s growing military clout.

The base’s existence on the southern tip of Hainan Island was confirmed for the first time by high resolution satellite images, according to Jane’s Intelligence Review, a respected defence periodical, this month.

It could hold up to 20 submarines, including a new type of nuclear ballistic missile submarine, and future Chinese aircraft carrier battle groups, posing a challenge to longstanding US military dominance in Asia.

China should not pursue such “high-end military options,” warned Admiral Timothy Keating, the top commander of US forces in Asia, in an interview with the Voice of America last week.

He underlined America’s “firm intention” not to abandon its dominating military role in the Pacific and told Beijing it would face “sure defeat” if it took on the United States militarily.

(…)

He said Washington should “tighten” its alliances in Asia to check China’s growing military might and develop “interoperability” capabilities among allies such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Singapore, as well as Indonesia and Malaysia.

James Lyons, an ex-commander of the US Pacific Fleet, said the United States needed to reestablish high-level military ties with the Philippines as part of efforts to enhance US deterrence in the wake of China’s naval expansion.

He said “operational tactics” used against the former Soviet Union during the Cold War should be applied against China.

He suggested US leasing a squadron of F-16 fighter jets and navy vessels to the Philippines, where Washington once had naval and air bases, as part of the deterrence strategy.

“We don’t need a permanent base but we need access,” Lyons said, suggesting also that Japan play a more “meaningful” role in protecting critical sea lanes in the region.

“Again the Soviets, we raised that deterrence equation and we won the war without firing a shot basically … there is no cheap way out and we have to improve our posture in the Western Pacific along with our allies,” he said.

Richard Fisher, an expert of China military affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a US think tank, expected US confrontation with China as Beijing modernized its nuclear ballistic missile submarines, referred to in military jargon as SSBNs. [5]

What James Lyon suggests as an ex-military officier about the U.S. using Japan as a counter-balance against China is clearly being applied with other nations in Asia. In addition, without India using Japan or a whole coalition of other Asian states carries far less weight against China, especially one supported by Russia. India is clearly key in the U.S. geo-strategy for dealing with China and in general for Eurasia.

The Hindustani Wild Card: India as a Eurasian Wedge against China?

To obstruct the unification of Russia, Iran, and China the Bush Jr. Administration in 2004 intensified the venture of using India as a Eurasian wedge or counter-weight to China. The U.S. aim is to eventually undermine the coalition between Russia, China, and Iran by using India or alternatively to use India as a spearhead against the Chinese. This latter tactic would be similar to the strategy used by the U.S. government in relation to Iraq and Iran, which resulted in the Iraq-Iran War in 1980.

In this Iraq-Iran War model both Baghdad and Tehran were seen as enemies by U.S. strategists and the aim was to get both Middle Eastern republics to neutralize one another. Henry Kissinger summed this U.S. policy by saying the point was for both the Iraqi and Iranian sides to destroy one another. The same scenario could happen and be applied to India and China. The realization of this confrontational project has already been announced by the Indian military. What has long been thought has become public and that is that the Indian military has been preparing for war against Beijing. This is the second element to the question about the Indian military build-up.

The Hindustan Times reported on March 26, 2009:

The Indian military fears a [sic.] ‘Chinese aggression’ in less than a decade. A secret exercise, called ‘Divine Matrix’, by the army’s military operations directorate has visualised a war scenario with the nuclear-armed neighbour before 2017.

“A misadventure by China is very much within the realm of possibility with Beijing trying to position itself as the only power in the region. There will be no nuclear warfare but a short, swift war that could have menacing consequences for India,” said an army officer, who was part of the three-day war games that ended on Wednesday.

In the military’s assessment, based on a six-month study of various scenarios before the war games, China would rely on information warfare (IW) to bring India down on its knees before launching an offensive.

The war games saw generals raising concerns about the IW battalions of the People’s Liberation Army carrying out hacker attacks for military espionage, intelligence collection, paralysing communication systems, compromising airport security, inflicting damage on the banking system and disabling power grids. “We need to spend more on developing information warfare capability,” he said.

The war games dispelled the  notion that China would take at least one season (one year) for a substantial military build-up across India’s northeastern frontiers. “The Tibetan infrastructure has been improved considerably.  The PLA can now launch an assault very quickly, without any warning, the officer said.

The military believes that China would have swamped Tibet with sweeping demographic changes in the medium term. For the purposes of Divine Matrix, China would call Dalai Lama for rapprochement and neutralise him. The top brass also brainstormed over India’s options in case Pakistan joined the war to [sic.; too]. Another apprehension was that Myanmar and Bangladesh would align with China in the future geostrategic environment. [6]

Although the materialization of a war against China is not a guaranteed event, war preparations are being made against the Chinese. The disturbances within the borders of China in Xinjiang and Tibet and in Myanmar (Burma), which is important to Chinese energy security, that are so widely advertised in the name of democracy and self-determination in the U.S. and E.U. are part of an effort to destabilize and weaken China. It is also in this context that India is involved with operations, such as supporting the Tibetan government-in-exile of the Dahali Lama, that have been destabilizing China.

The Australian military has also announced it is expanding its military in preparation for a forecast major war in the Asia-Pacific region. [7] Japan has also been expanding its military, while Tokyo has been preparing itself to join a NATO-like sister-alliance in the Asia-Pacific that would include Australia, the U.S., and South Korea and be directed against China, Russia, and North Korea. [8] Myanmar and Laos can be targeted too by this military build-up and NATO-like alliance, as can the other Southeast Asian states of Indo-China, specifically Vietnam and Cambodia, if they change their policies.

The Strategic Ties of New Delhi and Tel Aviv: Indo-Israeli Military and Space Cooperation

On January 21, 2008 a new chapter in Indo-Israeli strategic cooperation was unveiled; India launched a Israeli spy satellite, known as TecSAR (TechSAR) or Polaris, into space via an Indian space rocket at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Padesh. [9] The Israeli satellite was bragged to be mainly aimed against Iran by Israeli sources. [10] Israel’s spy satellite launched by India has greatly enhances Israel’s intelligence-gathering capabilities against Iran, Syria, and Lebanon.

The satellite launch by New Delhi has revealed that the Indian government has little reservations in assisting in any Israeli or Anglo-American military ventures in the Middle East against Iran and its allies. Tehran immediately voiced its strong and official disapproval to India for aiding Israeli military objectives against Iran’s national security. The Israeli satellite launch was delayed several times. The Jerusalem Post and one of its noted reporters, Yaakov Katz, published an article that claimed that the delayed space launch of the Israeli satellite was a result of strong Iranian pressure on the Indian government. [11]

Politicians in India opposed to Indo-Israeli military and space cooperation denounced the Indian government’s attempts to present the launch as merely “business as usual” by hiding the military implications and objectives behind an act with underlying hostile intentions against Iran. The Indian government officially argued to the Indian people that the satellite launch was just a commercial transaction between Tel Aviv and New Delhi, but the military implications of the deal reveal that India is no longer neutral in regards to Tehran. The fact that the Israeli spy satellite has been described by Tel Aviv as a means to confront Tehran and Damascus  (officially described as “enemy states”) is an omission in itself that New Delhi is knowingly an accomplice to hostile acts against Iran and Syria.

The satellite launch was shrouded in complete secrecy by the Indian government. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) which had always announced all its space launches as a symbol of national pride kept silent for the Israeli satellite launch. Large numbers of different Indian groups and people across India condemned the secrecy behind the mission and cited it as a sign of guilty by the Indian government. People’s Democracy, the official mouth piece of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CP-M), complained that the citizens of India had to learn about the details of the launch from Israeli news sources. [12]

The Israeli spy satellite was built by Israel Aerospace Industries, which has major business interests in regards to India. On February 18, 2008 Israel Aerospace Industries, and the Tata Group signed a corporate agreement with Israel Aerospace to cooperate and jointly develop military hardware and products through a memorandum of understanding. [13] Like a tell-tale sign this agreement was announced less than a month after the launch of the Israeli spy satellite built by Israel Aerospace Industries. The Tata Group and its companies also have corporate agreements with Boeing, Sikorsky Aircraft, and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), which are all competing against Russian arms manufacturers.

Indian cooperation with Israel extends all the way into the realm of nuclear politics and policy. On September 17, 2008 at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna a vote was almost unanimously cast for a IAEA resolution urging all Middle Eastern states to abandon making nuclear bombs. In a case of irony, the only state that voted against the IAEA resolution was Israel, which accuses Iran and Syria of pursuing nuclear weapons. Tel Aviv voted against the IAEA resolution, while Tehran and Damascus voted for it and the U.S., Canada, Georgia, and India all in support of Israel abstained.

New Delhi Deepens ties with the U.S., NATO, and Israel

In military terms, there is a real strategic “American-Indian-Israeli Axis.” New Delhi’s strategic ties with the U.S., NATO, and Israel have been deepening. The strategic axis formed by the U.S., India, and Israel has also been denounced by various political parties and figures across the political landscape of India.

Firstly, the geo-strategic rationale for an alliance between the U.S. and India is the encirclement or containment of the People’s  Republic of China. The other rationale or intentions of such cooperation are the neutralization of Russia as a player in Central Asia and the securing of energy resources for both the U.S. and India. In this project, the U.S. sees India as a natural counter-weight to China. The U.S. also has used India in its objective of trying to isolate Iran.

In regards to Tel Aviv, Israel sees India as part of a broader periphery. This broader or so-called “new periphery” was imagined and utilized as a basis of geo-strategy by Tel Aviv after 1979 when the “old periphery” that included Iran, which was one of Israel’s closest allies, buckled and collapsed with the 1979 Iranian Revolution. [14] In this context, Israel’s “new periphery” has been conceptualized against both the Arab World and Iran (or compounded as the Arabo-Iranian World). This is why the Israeli relationships with India, Georgia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Turkey are important, and in some cases full fledged alliances. [15]

Likewise NATO and India also have shared interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia, which India sees as part of its own periphery or “near abroad.” These shared interests and the mutual animosity to Chinese energy interests in Central Asia has brought India and NATO, led by the U.S., into the same camp. NATO also sees India as a military partner in its strategy to become a global military alliance. In addition, dealing with Pakistan is also another shared commonality between NATO and India.

The Project for “Greater South Asia” and Indian Ambitions in its “Near Abroad”

As Hindu means everything beyond the Indus and Hindustan the “land beyond the Indus” in ancient Iranian, the word “Industan” can be used to talk about the land and basin around the Indus River. Hereon, this term will be used to refer to the geographic area adjacent the Indus to India’s western flank. [16] This area includes Pakistan and can be extended to include Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Although Industan may not be exactly an accurate definition for the area beyond Pakistan, Industan still fits well, especially in light of Indian geo-political thinking. That is why the term will be used.

Industan, is part of India’s “near abroad” or periphery, and in a sense even a part of an expanded periphery that emerged with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It is with this in mind that India established its first military base, at Ayni, on foreign soil in Tajikistan. [17] The converging interests of the U.S. and India are clear in the U.S. State Department’s re-definition of Central Asia as a part of “Greater South Asia.” Greater South Asia is the conceptualization of Central Asia as a region within South Asia, which is synonymous with the Indian sub-continent. The concept of Greater South Asia is part of the project to bring the former Soviet republics of Central Asia into the orbits of the U.S. through cooperation with India, as a regional gendarme.

Turning to Pakistan, India has a shared interests with the U.S. and NATO in the subjection of Pakistan. Pakistan would cease to be a client state of the U.S. or a manageable state, because of a likely revolution that would occur in the scenario of a broader war in the Middle East against Iran or a far larger Eurasian war involving China and Russia. Nuclear weapons in the hands of such a revolutionary government in Islamabad would be a threat to Indian national security, NATO operations in Afghanistan, and Israel. It is in the shared interests of the U.S., NATO, Israel, and India to neutralize such a strategic and tactical threat from emerging in Pakistan. This is why NATO has underpinned the objective of balkanizing Pakistan and why the U.S. has talked about taking over Pakistani nuclear facilities via the U.S. military. The subjection of Pakistan is also territorially and militarily to the advantage of New Delhi, because it would eliminate a rival and allow India to gain territory that in the view of many Indians was lost with the partition of India in 1947.

The Naval build-up in the Indian Ocean and the Geo-Politics of the Sri Lankan Civil War

To the southern borders of Eurasia is the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean is the scene of major international rivalries and competition(s). Sri Lanka is also a front in these rivalries. It is in this context that India is part of a major naval build-up running from the coastline of East Africa and the Arabian Sea to the waves of Oceania. Aside from the fleets of the U.S. and its NATO allies that have large presences in the Indian Ocean, the naval fleets of Iran, India, China, Japan, and Australia are also all being expanded in league with this trend of militarization. Also, India and China are working to release large nuclear submarine fleets into the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. The naval encirclement of Eurasia and the naval expansion of China are also reasons why U.S. Navy ships have been repeatedly caught violating Chinese waters and illegally surveying Chinese territory. [18]

The water around the Arabian Peninsula all the way around from the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea (Arabian Gulf) carries large fleets of ships either belonging to the U.S., NATO, or their allies. At any point the U.S. and its allies can stop international shipping in these waters. The problem of piracy in these waters is very closely linked to their militarization and is a justification for militarization. This is one of the reasons that the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the Horn of Africa, where Somalia is located, have seen the deployment of the naval forces of Russia, China, and Iran as a strategically symmetric move. [19]

It should be noted that relations between Sri Lanka and India started to unravel in 2009. The Sri Lankan government has accused the Indian government of supporting the Tamil Tigers drive to create a Tamil state by dividing Sri Lanka. Much of this has to do with the geo-strategic struggle between the Periphery and Eurasia in the Indian Ocean.

In this regard, India is not only working against Chinese interests in the Indian Ocean, but it is also actively cooperating with the U.S. and its allies. In the scenario of a conflict between Eurasia and the Periphery or between China and India the maritime route that passes by Sri Lanka would be vital to the Chinese military and Chinese energy security. For this reason Sri Lanka has joined the SCO as a “dialogue partner” under the protective umbrella of Russia, China, and their allies. Not only has Sri Lanka joined the SCO, but it also hosts a Chinese port in a pivotal point in the Indian Ocean and near the borders of India that has put Colombo at odds with New Delhi.

Arms Manufacturer and Nuclear Rivalry in India

Since the end of the Cold War there has been a drive to push out Russian arms manufacturers out of the Indian market by Anglo-American, Franco-German, and Israeli military contractors. France and Israel have also been traditionally the second and third largest weapon sources for India after Russia. Russian manufacturers have been competing fiercely against military manufactures based in France, Germany, Israel, Britain, and the U.S. to remain as New Delhi’s top arms suppliers.

In addition, the elites in New Delhi have been putting their weight behind Russia’s rivals in India. India has become one of the most significant markets for Israeli military hardware and has replaced the void left to Israeli weapons exporters by the loss of the South African arms market that was caused by the collapse of Apartheid in 1993. Additionally, Israel has moved on to replace France as the second largest provider of military hardware to India. [20] This is while France in 2006 and 2008 has made headway in nuclear cooperation agreements with India, following the 2005 Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. [21]

India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA): “Superalignment” or “Counter-Alignment?”

In addition, the U.S. is trying to use the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum, a loose trilateral alliance of go-between states, against China, Venezuela (and its Latin American bloc that can be called the Bolivarian Bloc), Russia, and Iran. In reality and simplistic terms the IBSA powers are rising, second tier global players. They originally appeared to be engaging in a policy of “superalignment,” the cultivation of strategic relations with all major powers and blocs, as opposed to “counter-alignment.” A global web of alliances, counter-alliances, cross-cutting, and intersecting alliances are beginning to come into view, just like the environment in Europe and the Middle East on the eve of the First World War.

Despite the fact that Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance, along with Germany and the Austro-Hungarians, it decided to side with the Triple Entente after secret negotiations and promises that were never honoured by Britain and France. There are circles in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran that believe that India could act treacherously just as Italy did by not honouring its obligations to its allies, Vienna and Berlin. These suspicions also see this as a possibility even if India entered the SCO as a full member and joined the Chinese-Russian-Iranian coalition in Eurasia.

In the frankest words, India, Brazil, and the Republic of South Africa are benefiting from the compounded friction between the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, China, Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. To clarify, the reason that this friction is best described as compounded is because the Anglo-American alliance and the Franco-German entente work as two separate sub-units and sometimes align with the interests of opposing powers. This is also true about cooperation between Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and China. In Eurasia, Russia and Iran sometimes work as a pair, while Russia and China or China and Iran do so at other times. This trend in regards to the Eurasians, however, is changing as the cohesion between Russia, China, and Iran increases.

This behaviour is observable in the positions of both India and Brazil on Kosovar Independence. Both the foreign ministers of India and Brazil, Celso Amorim and Pranab Mukherjee, made a joint statement in Brasilia about the declaration of independence by Kosovo by announcing that India and Brazil were studying its legal ramifications under a wait-and-see policy of the “evolving situation” as Pranab Mukherjee called it. [22]

The Case of Elitism: Where the Indian Elites Stand 

On April 2, 2009 the Group of Twenty (G-20) met in London in regards to the global economy and declared that New Delhi would have a bigger role in the global economy. The question about “India’s place in the sun” that is often mentioned in international studies about its emerging status as a global power is not really about India as a nation-state or even the interests of its general population, but is really a question about the position of its ruling and economic classes or its elites (a small minority that make decisions on behalf of the majority) and their place within the global power structure and the international elitist compact that is forming through neo-liberal globalization.

Part and parcel of this enterprise is what appears to be India’s demands for a greater role, or share, for its elites in the global economy through some form or another of expanded interlocking directorships. Interlocking directorships is a term used to describe when the members of the board of directors or managing body of one corporation also serve as members of the board of directors or managing body of other corporations. This is very frequent amongst elitist circles and a way for them to maintain a monopoly on their power. It is these interlocking directorships that are uniting global elites and the impetus for global amalgamation.

India has always had indigenous elites, who in numerous cases worked hand in glove with the British during the period of the British Raj. Starting from the colonial period, borrowing from a term used by the Canadian political economist Wallace Clement, most the Indian indigenous elites became “comprador elites.” Comprador elites are any elite groups that represent or manage the interests of  “parasite elites” or foreign elites, which in the case of the British Raj would have been the British elites. A modern example of a  comprador elite would be the Indian chief executive officers (CEOs) of Indian subsidiaries of foreign-controlled corporations, such as PepsiCo India and Monsanto India.

Moving on, the British could not rule most of India without these elites and therefore cooperated with them. London made sure that the Indian elites would be fully integrated into the British Empire by involving them in the administration of India, sending them to British schools, and making them Anglophiles or lovers of all things British. Britain would also grant the Indian elites their own economic fiefdoms in return for their cooperation. The relationship was very much symbiotic and in reality the Indian elites were the biggest supporters of the British Empire and opposed Indian independence. It is only when the Indian elites were offended by London, because of the denial of their requests to have a status within the British Empire like the Dominions, such as Canada and Australia, that the Indian Independence Movement gained momentum.

With Indian independence many of the comprador elites became indigenous elites, in the sense that they were serving their own interests and no longer serving British interests in India. Yet, some comprador elites remained who served British economic interests. For a period of time after Indian independence there were tensions between the Indian indigenous elites and both the comprador elites and their parasite elite backers in London as the indigenous elites moved into the former niches of the British. This does not mean that there were not those within the indigenous elites that made agreements or compromises with the British for the post-independence period.

As time passed and the Cold War supposedly ended, the Soviet Union fell apart, neighbouring China accepted capitalism, and a push for unipolarity accelerated, the different types of elites in India started cooperating even more. More specifically, the indigenous elites of India and foreign elites in the U.S. and E.U. started collaborating, with the comprador elites helping interlock the indigenous and foreign sides even more. The state of elitist modus vivandi, living together in uneasy post-independence armistice, was gradually evolving into broader cooperation. For example, in the financial sector the comprador elites, indigenous elites, and parasite elites have worked together to erode state control of the banking system that has resulted in the mushrooming and growth of private and foreign banks in India starting in the 1990s.

Enter Dr. Manmohan Singh: The Economic Origins for New Delhi’s Strategic Shift?

The Indian shift away from non-alignment and its strategic partnerships is deeply connected to the unseen regime change in New Delhi that was initiated with the restructuring of Indian economic policy. 1991 was a year of change for India. It was also the year that President George Bush Sr. declared that the “New World Order” was beginning to emerge and also the same year as the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A common denominator between 1991 and India in the late-2000s is Dr. Manmohan Singh, the current head of the Indian government. Dr. Singh received his doctorate (PhD.) as an economist from Oxford University and also attended Cambridge University. He is a former ranking officer of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in India. His positions included Deputy for India on the IMF Committee of Twenty on International Monetary Reform (1972-1974), IMF Associate (1976-1980, 1982-1985), Alternative Governor for India on the IMF Board of Governors (1982-1985), and Governor for India on the Board of Governors of the IMF (1991-1995). Several of these positions coincided with appointments within the government and national cabinet of India. This also includes the position of Dr. Singh as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (1982-1985).

Dr. Singh was one of the faces behind the restructuring of the Indian economy in 1991, in league with the IMF. He was appointed as the Indian Finance Minister in 1991 by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, a man accused with corruption, during a financial crisis that was brought about by IMF policies. India was nearly bankrupted during this period of reforms and state assets surrendered to domestic and foreign private investors. The economic policies of establishing a truly self-sufficiently Indian economy were abandoned and privatization became wide spread. Economic liberalization pushed aside the long-term goals of eliminating poverty in India and providing high standards of living. The Indian agricultural sector was also infected by foreign multi-national corporations through the so-called “Green Revolution.”

Before being appointed to the post of Indian Finance Minister, Dr. Singh was decisive in creating the financial crisis in India through coordination with the IMF. The policies of Dr. Singh by design also left India without enough reserves to meet its financial commitments. India was also deprived of the means to improve its economy by IMF policies The origins of these policies became obvious when Indian civil servants started complaining of sloppy, American-style, and non-British spelling, writing, and grammar in Indian government finance documents and papers. As a result Indian national assets and wealth were siphoned off and foreign control, including that of the Bank of England, of Indian finances began. 1996 spelled the death of the Rao Administration in India because of the backlash of economic liberalization and the unpopularity of the government.

With the economic shifts of 1991 began the road down the path to political shift. On May 22, 2004 the IMF’s man in New Delhi, Dr. Singh,  returned to office to became the Prime Minister of India. This time political reforms including turning India’s back on the Non-Alignment Movement (N.A.M.), Iran at the IAEA, and Russia’s aim to realize the Primakov Doctrine were on the table.

India and the Manufactured “Clash of Civilizations” in Eurasia

In many Indian circles the colonial bonds with London are still strong and there are views that New Delhi, or at least the Indian elites, are natural members of the Anglo-American establishment. There is also a taint of racial theory attached to these views with links to the caste system and the Indian elite’s Aryan self-concepts. Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” notion and Mackinder’s geo-strategic population model are factors behind these views too. Resource competition, demographics, and economic competition are seen as fuel that will inevitably draw India and China into a clash for supremacy in Asia.

Is it primarily because of geography, amongst other factors, that Indian Civilization (labeled as Hindu Civilization in regards to Huntington’s model) is said to have a conflicting relationship or affiliation with Chinese Civilization (labeled as Sinic Civilization by Huntington’s model) and Islamic Civilization? This theory is short-sighted; if true where are the centuries of fighting between Chinese and Indian civilization? For the most part both lived in peace. The same applied to Islamic Civilization.

A clash is not the natural ends of interaction between different civilizations or societies. Interaction is always based initially on trade and it is the form of economic trade and the aims of either party that can result in a clash. Foreign powers that utilize a “Clash of Civilizations” scheme do so because of the economy of control. A mere reading of Anglo-American strategic doctrine and observations of Anglo-American practices brings this to light.

A historical look will prove the “Clash of Civilizations” as a theory to be wrong and actually illustrates that Indian Civilization really overlaps with both Islamic Civilization and Chinese Civilization. Moreover, it is wrong to categorize the conflict between Pakistan and India as a conflict between all Muslims and the nation-state of India or even any of the internal fighting amongst Muslims and non-Muslims in India. Vedicists (one of the proper names for Hindus) and Muslims, as well as several other religions lived together in relative peace until the the start of British involvement in India. [23] The animosity between Pakistan and India is a synthetic construct where local elites and foreign powers worked together, not only to divide territory, but to control local groups that have lived together for hundreds of years by alienating them from one another.

Why a “Clash of Civilizations” in Eurasia?

By extension of the utilization of the “Clash of Civilizations” notion, which predates Samuel P. Huntington, India and Vedicism are depicted as enemies by the Pakistani elites as a means of domestic distraction and to direct internal tensions about social inequality and injustice towards an outside source. The outside enemy, the “other,” has always been used domestically to distract subject populations by local leaders. In the case of the Indian sub-continent certain native circles have jointly invested in continuing the British policy of localized conflict as a means of monopoly.

In an over simplistic understanding, even if one were to use Huntingon’s model to explain who benefits from civilizational conflict because of global civilizational rivalry, it would have to be the civilization with the most relationships due to the fact that it has the most rivals to put down. In relation to trade a civilization with the most relationships would also be in a position to initiate the most clashes because it can afford to burn some of its bridges (or cut ties) and is in a position to initiate clashes between other civilizations.

Under a system of cooperation and fair-trade conflict of a grand scale would not happen, but under a competitive international system pushing for monopoly this is a direction being taken by the status quo. This is where critics of global capitalism lament about the unnatural nature of capitalism. This system, however, is not a system of capitalism. It is fitting to apply a new term at this point: ubercapitalism. Ubercapitalism is a system where the framework of regulation, taxation, and law are controlled and directed by elites for their own benefits. In Marxist-Leninist terms the state is an agent of elite interests. Even the capitalist concept of laissez-fair commerce is violated and disregarded because the state and the business environment are controlled by these elites.

If there was fair-trade between these so-called civilizational entities there would be no need for clashes, but this by itself does not mean that there would altogether be no conflict. Ideology, faith, and hubris are also factors, but in most cases ideology and faith have been manipulated or constructed to support the economic structure and to justify conflict and hierarchy. A lack of fair-trade or control over finite resources necessitates manufactured conflict; this is the only way the players controlling wealth can retain their positions.

Despite the talk about a “Clash of Civilizations” the most natural path of social evolution is one of relative peace and cooperation. The conceptualization of Latin America, India, Israel, the so-called West, China, the Muslim countries, the Orthodox Christian countries, and the Buddhist nations as different or distinct civilizations is also a fallacy in itself and very abstract. Distinctions do exist, but they are far less than the similarities and not enough to support Huntington’s civilizational model.

New Delhi’s Trajectory: A Reversion to the British Raj?

Is India reverting to the status quo of the British Raj? India has moved beyond a policy of superalignment. India’s elites believe that to achieve their place in the sun they must buy into the socio-economic and political agenda of the so-called, “Core countries” — the global financial power holders of the Periphery. India’s commitment to the Non-Alignment Movement (N.A.M.) is also dead all but in name. The foreign policy course that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had charted for India has been abandoned.

Internally, for the last two decades India has been colonizing itself. Communities and ethnic groups have been played agains one another. These are both cases where local and foreign elites are working hand-in-hand. The ruling elites, with the aid of the Indian government, are appropriating all forms of resourses, rights, and property from countless people to fuel the so-called economic liberalization process with no regard for their fellow citizens. Water and national assets are being privatized and virtual slave labour is, once again, being institutionalized — everything that Mahatma Gandhi and his follower worked hard to eliminate. The free trade deals being struck by the U.S. and E.U. with India are a part of this process and have been integrating India into the global economic order.

Hand-in-hand with India being part of a global economic order goes the domination of Eurasia. India is on a serious path of militarization that will lead New Delhi towards conflict with China. In such a war both Asian giants would be losers and the U.S. and its allies the real winners.

Due to their flexibility the Indian elite may still change course, but there is a clear motion to exploit and mobilize India in Eurasia against its neighbours and the major powers of Eurasia. This is the true meaning, intent, nature, and agenda behind the so-called “Clash of Civilizations” in Eurasia. The threat of a nuclear war between China and India is real in the words of the Indian military, but what is important to realize is that such a confrontation is part of a much larger series of wars or a wider struggle between the powers of Eurasia and the nations of the Periphery, led by the United States.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Reseach Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) specializing in geopolitics and strategic issues.

NOTES

[1] Indrani Bagchi, India-Japan strategic talks begin, The Times of India, March 23, 2007.

[2] India to lay keel of new aircraft carrier on Saturday, Russian News and Information Agency (RIA Novosti), February 26, 2009.

[3] Pallavi Aiyar, India to conduct naval exercises with China, The Hindu, April 12, 2007.

[4] Rajat Pandit, Going ballistic: India looks to joing elite missile club, The Times of India, May 13, 2008.

[5] China’s new naval base triggers US concerns, Agence France-Presse (AFP), May 12, 2008.

[6] Rahul Singh, Indian Army fears China attack by 2017, The Hindustan Times, March 26, 2008.

[7] Commonwealth of Australia, Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030, 2009.

[8] Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Military Alliance: Encircling Russia and China, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), May 10, 2007.

[9] India launches Israeli satellite in boost to space business, Agence France-Presse, January 20, 2008.

[10] Yossi Melman, Satellite launch bolsters ability to spy on Tehran, Haaretz, January 21, 2008.

[11] Yaakov Katz, Iran delayed satellite launch, The Jerusalem Post, January 22, 2008.

[12] Israeli Satellite Launch: Harmful Course, People’s Democracy, vol. 32, no. 6, February 10, 2008.

[13] Sandeep Dikshit, Tata-Israel Aerospace Industries ink memorandum of understanding, The Hindu, February 18, 2008.

[14] Johan Nylander, Israel drops Indian venture under ‘US pressure,’ Agence France-Presse (AFP), July 6, 2009.

[15] Aaron S. Klieman, Israel and the World After 40 Years (Washington:Pergamon-Brassey’s International Defense Publishers, 1990), p.92, pp.168–9, p.236.

[16] Infra. n.23.

[17] Sudha Ramachandran, India makes a soft landing in Tajikistan, Asia Times, March 3, 2007.

[18] Jane Macartney, China accuses US naval ship of illegal surveying, The Times (U.K.), March 10, 2009; Chris Buckley, China says U.S. naval ship broke the law, Reuters, March 10, 2009.

[19] Atul Aneja, Iran, China will begin counter-piracy patrols, The Hindu, December 22, 2008; Russia, China conduct anti-piracy exercises in the Gulf of Aden, Russian News and Information Agency (RIA Novosti), September 18, 2009.

[20] Klieman, Israel and thr World, Op. cit.

[21] Amelia Gentleman, France and India agree on atom deal, The New York Times, February 20, 2006; India-France nuclear accord provides opening for Areva, The New York Times, September 30, 2008.

[22] Kosovo legal issues being studied: Brazil, India, Agence France-Presse (AFP), February 19, 2008; World split on Kosovo issue, Agence France-Presse (AFP), February 19, 2008.

[23] Sanatana Dharma or Vedic Dharma (Vedicism) is the proper name for Hinduism. The terms Hindu and Hinduism are misnomers, just as Mohammedan and Mohammedanism are misnomers for Muslims and Islam. The term Hindu is originally a geographic definition used by the ancient Iranians to label all the peoples living in the lands of the Indus Valley or east of the Indus River regardless of religious affinity or faith. The term Hindu was later adopted by the Arabs who conquered Sassanid Iran and then expanded towards the the Indian sub-continent. As the Altaic peoples, such as Mongolian and Turkic-speaking tribes, migrated westward in Eurasia they also adopted the term through interaction with both the Iranians and the Arabs. At this time in history and up to the rule of the Mugal Dynasty in India the term Hindu started gaining popular and recurrent usage, but was still used as an ethnographic term and not a religious identification label. The Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, and Vidicists of India were all called Hindus. It was during the colonial era that the British, who ruled India, coined the English-language term/word Hinduism and assigned the already existing and ancient Iranian term/word Hindu in 1830 to describe and designate the faiths and peoples of India belonging to Vedicism. Hindus are in reality all the people of India. The term Hindi, also used to label Indians and one of the main Indic languages, comes from Hindustani which also reflects the geographic nature and origins of the term Hindu; Hindustan means land of India and Hindustani people of India.

Foreign hackers are determined as ever to steal technology, meddle in elections and skew foreign policy, but fear not! The CIA has apparently been authorized to deliver preemptive cyber-strikes based on partisan mythmaking.

Remdesivir’s fight against Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is somewhat symbolic of the fight of medical journals, of corrupt institutions against field medicine, of the many general practitioners who are at the bedside.

Remdesivir is an expensive molecule, owned by a pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences Inc. In the race for a miracle cure for COVID-19, Gilead is trying to win because it can make a lot of money [1].

1] Hydroxychloroquine is a royalty-free, publicly available and very inexpensive molecule. In other words, although it was originally manufactured by a pharmaceutical company, Sanofi, it will not benefit the industry and therefore will not benefit all the people corrupted by it.

Remdesivir’s fight against Hydroxychloroquine is the symbol of the fight of false medicine, big money medicine, against evidence-based medicine, a medicine that can bring big money to the patient (his health), at little or no cost to society.

Hydroxychloroquine (a treatment defended by Professor Raoult in Marseilles, France, among others) is said to be ineffective in COVID-19, even dangerous [2].

This is simply not true. [2]

There is ample evidence that Hydroxychloroquine, whether or not combined with azythromycin and zinc, is effective in inhibiting viral replication in SARS-CoV-2, with a completely satisfactory safety profile, especially for physicians who are used to and authorized to prescribe it. These molecules, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, have been known for decades [3]. This is the truth.

Conversely, it is said that Remdesivir is effective and without any particular danger.

This is not true.

Remdesivir can cause severe kidney failure (requiring dialysis, kidney transplant), liver failure, genetic mutation, heart problems up to cardiac arrest, among others [4]. This is the truth.

On the one hand, the [fake] Lancet study [which was retracted] was trying to demolish hydroxychloroquine [5], on the other hand, the New England Journal of Medicine praises Remdesivir [6-7].

In a previous article, I wrote that what the former editors of these journals say is what we should think: corruption and lies at every level [8].

[8] For all doctors of integrity, true scientists, the public, this could even become a criterion of analysis: when a “big” medical journal praises a drug, beware! When it demolishes a treatment, then you’d do well to take an interest in it.

Remedying Hydroxychloroquine is still a big money story.

Medicine is more than that now.

Remdesivir would bring 4,500 dollars per treatment to Gilead [9].

Hydroxychloroquine, even in combination with Azithromycin, costs only 10 euros [US$ 12] per treatment and brings nothing to the pharmaceutical industry.

-Instead of blaming and scaring everyone with exaggerated mortality figures and second waves that do not exist,

-instead of imposing measures as ineffective as well as toxic such as wearing masks everywhere for everyone,

-instead of making people believe that effective and cheap drugs are dangerous and that expensive and dangerous drugs are the solution,

-instead of bowing down to vaccination, the illusory Holy Grail in the fight against VIDOC-19, here is what our high health authorities should do :

1. Take the advice of scientists calling for calm and realism along the lines of Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University
2. Observe and measure real facts, not statistical mathematical models.
3. Do not confuse positive RT-PCR test with COVID-19 disease.
4. Drastic protective measures should be provided only for fragile and high-risk people.
5. Let healthy, healthy people, especially young people and children, move freely without masks.
6. To offer the entire population psychological care adapted to manage post-traumatic stress states generated by anxiety-provoking media.
7. Enable all primary care physicians to prescribe the hydroxychloroquine-azythromycin-zinc combination to real patients with VIDOC-19 at the first sign of illness, according to the safety procedures that have been well established over the years that these drugs have been prescribed for their various indications.

 

This is only possible if these high health authorities are not the object of corruption with all the money accruing from pharmaceutical companies.

On the last point, number 7, the Brussels general practitioner Eric Beeth and I have sent a letter to all the officials concerned, the Minister of Health, members of the COVID-19 council within SCIENSANO, which is supervising the government in the management of the crisis, requesting the freedom for all Belgian doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment and, above all, the constitution of a sufficient stock of this drug in Belgian pharmacies.

We are waiting for an answer.

Dr Pascal Sacré

Featured Image: By BaptisteGrandGrand, Remdesivir 3D structure, April 30, 2020. Wikipedia.

Notes :

[1] Une brève histoire du remdésivir (GS-5734),  17 juin 2020, mise à jour le 25 juin 2020

[2] Hydroxychloroquine versus Remdesivir, 8 juillet 2020

[3] Hot Topic, Chloroquine for the 2019 novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, February 2020

[4] L’entreprise Gilead aurait-elle dissimulé la vraie toxicité du Veklury© (remdesivir) ?, 8 juillet 2020, “It therefore appears that, based on the evidence presented above, we can strongly believe that Veklury (remdesivir) is a harmful drug and that this evidence has been concealed by Gilead. We believe that the lobbying operation conducted in the media and certain public health authorities in order to discredit hydroxychloroquine, specifically in hospitals, was intended to make Velkury (remdesivir) the only solution in this situation.”

[5] RETRACTED: Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis

[6] Compassionate Use of Remdesivir for Patients with Severe Covid-19, NEJM 10 avril 2020

[7] Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 — Preliminary Report, NEJM 22 mai 2020

[8] COVID-19: le côté obscur de la science révélé, “Much of the scientific literature, probably half of it, could be simply wrong, afflicted by studies with small samples, minute effects, invalid preliminary analyses, and blatant conflicts of interest*, with the obsession to follow trends of dubious importance in fashion, science has taken the wrong turn into darkness. “

[9] Remdésivir : une molécule d’intérêt thérapeutique très discutable sur le COVID-19

经济发展中的合作理念加上无止境的创造–避免冲突和前进，这是一个坚实的道原则–使中国发展到今天的地位–成为世界第二大经济体，而70年前几乎是零起步。中国是社会主义成功的一个生动例子。或者像中国人所说的那样，”有中国特色的社会主义”。一个从不寻求冲突或侵略其他国家，而是努力建立伙伴关系，和平共处的国家。这让西方国家，尤其是自诩为美帝的国家感到担忧。

2013年9月7日，远见卓识的习近平主席在哈萨克斯坦纳扎尔巴耶夫大学重启了具有2100年历史的古老丝绸之路。调整到21世纪，它被称为 “一带一路 “倡议，但它的基础还是老一套，在各国人民之间搭建桥梁，交流商品、研究、教育、知识、文化智慧，和平、和谐、’双赢’的风格。

**

你可以点击下面的链接阅读整篇文章的英文版，也可以用手机翻译

China’s Economy and Globalization: A Look into the Future                                                                  

By Peter Koenig, July 17, 2020

In the first week of July, the Ontario government announced the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act (Bill 197). The sweeping omnibus bill changes twenty pieces of existing legislation and introduces several new acts. There has been little discussion in the mainstream media regarding the content of the bill, outside of the talking points provided by the Minister of Municipal Affairs, Steve Clark, and Education Minister Stephen Lecce. According to Clark, the Recovery Act would speed up the process for environmental assessments, address unemployment, create new consumer protections, and attract investors to the province. Lecce has declared that the omnibus contains measures to end school suspension prior to the fourth grade.

Any criticism of the bill that has appeared in the media, insofar as there has been any published criticism at all, has centered around the inclusion of measures which have little to do with COVID-19 or the economy. Such unrelated measures include changes to the Education Act, modifying the appointment process for provincial justices of the peace, and an array of other bureaucratic alterations. What has not yet been significantly interrogated is what impact the relevant measures to economic recovery will have. Who is being saved through this economic recovery plan? In a neoliberal economy, there is no such thing as mutually beneficial legislation for labour and capital, and of these antagonistic classes, it is capital that, almost without fail, is the beneficiary of state economic planning. This is the case with the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act. The measures by which the Ford government intends to save the economy signals the end of pandemic politics and elucidates the establishment’s forthcoming post-Covid political project. The emergency fiscal and monetary policy appears to be over, and the omnibus bill warns of a swift return to the neoliberal orthodoxies of flexibilization, deregulation, and codification of the power of investor capital.

Back to the Neoliberal Project

The provincial government’s renewed commitment to the neoliberal project is, of course, unsurprising. All three of the major provincial parties have been fully invested in the neoliberal policy consensus since the 1990s, transforming Ontario from the former Keynesian heartland of Canada to the epicenter of pro-market governance (Albo 2019, 5). Doug Ford’s specific adherence to the market enabling tenets of neoliberalism is also well understood. Ford came to power campaigning on the mixed messages of ‘anti-elite’ right-wing populism, dogmatically neoliberal fiscal policies, and, oxymoronically, promises to increase public spending with no cuts to public services (Albo 2019, 30). These contradictions were resolved by the 2019 budget, which proved that Ford’s populist message had little impact on his neoliberal project, and that the promises of increased spending on transit, housing, and childcare were not to be believed. Ford almost immediately imposed a public spending and hiring freeze, cut the carbon trading system, and halted the planned minimum wage increase, while the budget entrenched the administration’s commitment to the neoliberals’ ideals of austerity, low taxes, labour discipline, and market expansion.

So, while the neoliberal reforms woven throughout the omnibus bill are not surprising, they are significant at this moment in history. The global pandemic has exacerbated the inherent violence and legitimation crisis of neoliberalism and plainly exposed underlying systemic conflicts along the lines of class and race. This defining public health crisis of our time has reinforced and accelerated the need to confront the neoliberal project. The ruling class’s sustained commitment to the project at this historical juncture must be met with the highest levels of scrutiny and with vehement opposition.

Modernization as Neoliberalization

What does this omnibus bill contain? There are several minor COVID-19 related safety measures imposed on an array of ministries and departments. Changes to the City of Toronto Act and the Municipal Act, for instance, will allows for electronic participation in City Council and committee meetings and will permit the practice of proxy voting. Furthermore, changes are made across several departments to allow for electronic rather than paper pathways.

These minor nods to safety aside, the true nature of the bill is in its neoliberal regulatory agenda. The most salient part of the bill to this effect is the new piece of business legislation it introduces, the Modernizing Ontario for People and Businesses Act (MOPBA). Repealing and replacing the Reducing Regulatory Costs for Business Act, 2017, and the Burden Reduction Reporting Act, 2014, the primary intention of MOPBA is to ease the ‘regulatory burden’ of corporations doing business in Ontario. It codifies into legislation neoliberal principles of regulatory reduction, which the government has been operating under informally up until this point. Furthermore, the act broadens the reach of existing burden reduction requirements, extending them to cover legislation, regulations, policies, and forms (Office of the Premier 2020). It is a perfect example of the contradictory nature of neoliberalism as a deregulatory project, as regulations are not being repealed, but rather, corporate profits are being protected through the imposition of new regulations.

The role of MOPBA in protecting businesses from the auspices of state regulation should come as little surprise. The idea of “modernizing” markets has become a grim euphemism for pro-corporate regulatory reforms since the neoliberal turn. One might consider the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, enacted in 2000 by President Clinton, which legally exempted the burgeoning derivatives market from regulatory oversight, contributing greatly to the 2008-9 financial collapse. For a more recent and closer-to-home example, there is the Ontario Capital Markets Modernization Taskforce, formed in the Fall of 2019. The taskforce, composed of Bay Street executives and lawyers, was given a mandate by the provincial government to identify and propose methods of decreasing the regulatory burden on capital investors.

Regulatory burdens for corporations are further eroded by the omnibus bill through its significant overhaul of the Environmental Assessment Act (EAA), making it even more clear that the primary effect of this act is insulating businesses from public oversight. The most significant change made to the act is the creation of a “streamlined” assessment process for new projects. The degree to which the environmental assessment process will be altered by this streamlining is yet unclear, but statements made by government officials suggest that this new process will be significantly less scrupulous than the previous system. In their review of the proposed streamlining process, the Canadian Environmental Law Association has concluded that it will likely be implemented to eliminate existing requirements for Class environmental assessments, and undermines the public-interest purpose of the existing EAA (Lindgren 2020).

The goal of this amendment is to accelerate new development projects by reducing the requirements for environmental assessments. While this may encourage new building initiatives in the province, it comes with significant cost to environmental sustainability, as the true environmental impact of new projects may not be fully understood or considered. Furthermore, no clear criteria exist for determining which new projects qualify for the new streamlined assessment, but the bill does clarify that the Environment Minister can make such determinations. This leaves open the possibility that the less rigorous streamlined process will be applied far more broadly than the alternate comprehensive assessment option.

Protecting Investment Capital

In addition to the pro-business measures established by the omnibus bill, last week the Ford government announced the creation of Invest Ontario, a new agency tasked with attracting foreign investment to the province. This appears to be the latest of a series of semi-autonomous provincial agencies, with broad-neoliberal mandates, similar to the aforementioned Capital Market Modernization Taskforce. The agency will be mandated to make Ontario “more competitive while sending a strong signal to investors that the province is open for business” (Office of the Premier 2020). Through this mandate, the provincial government is committing to a renewed race to the bottom. Previous attempts, in Ontario and elsewhere, to foster a competitive investment climate have involved reducing corporate taxes, eliminating protective measures for workers and the environment, and legislatively protecting foreign capital from any risk of expropriation or limitation to its mobility.

There is currently little information available about this proposed agency outside of its mandate; however, it is not difficult to imagine the measures that will be recommended to make Ontario a “one-stop shop” for investors (Invest Ontario 2020). The specific agenda of the agency will be highly dependent on the, yet unknown, composition of its board of directors. Past indicators suggest that the board will be full of Bay Street executives and the like. State actions that heighten the power and security of international capital necessarily have the inverse impact on the working class. Government funding will likely be depleted by providing corporate tax breaks which in turn, may lead to cuts in essential public goods. Anti-union legislation is also a common instrument employed by the state to attract international corporations, as is the weakening of employment and labour securities to limit regulatory restrictions on prospective new employers.

Neoliberal Ontario in a Post-Pandemic World

Not all economic recoveries are created equal. It is important to question who exactly the beneficiaries of a recovery plan will be and who will bear the associated burdens. Will it be the workers, the unemployed, and the precariously employed who are rescued? Or will the economic recovery plan solidify the power of capital and be paid for by the working class? The COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act provides a clear answer: the province intends to save employers, developers, and investors, using workers and the environment as fodder.

It is, of course, no surprise that the “Make Ontario Open for Business” government has again implemented a range of neoliberal regulatory reforms. While not surprising, it is significant at this historical juncture. The COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act is a harbinger of the post-pandemic political landscape. It affirms the role of the state, at least in Ontario, within the post-pandemic world as being the handmaiden of capital. Elements of the omnibus, like the introduction of MOPBA and the changes to the EAA, further demonstrate that the role of the neoliberal state is not necessarily one of deregulation, but rather it is tasked with the imposition of new regulations that insulate corporate capital from democratic challenges to accumulation.

The pandemic has yielded immense suffering and exacerbated the systemic violence of neoliberalism, and the province appears unwilling to help the working people of Ontario through the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act or any other means. The public health crisis is far from over, but the provincial government is already signalling its sustained commitment to the neoliberal political orthodoxy that will define their post-pandemic response. As the economic recovery unfolds, the guiding logic behind the omnibus bill suggests that Ontario is likely to enact further neoliberal policy reforms, promoting workforce flexibility, limiting regulatory oversight, and generally promoting the privileged position of corporate capital. The left has been contesting the provincial government along these lines for decades, and opposition of this nature from unions, the organized anti-austerity front, and community solidarity groups remains vital.

*

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Bruce Kecskes is a Toronto-based writer and researcher concerned with issues pertaining to labour and political economy.

Sources

Albo, Greg. “Divided Province: Democracy and the Politics and State Restructuring in Ontario.” In Divided Province: Ontario Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism, edited by Greg Albo and Bryan Evans, 3-40, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Invest Ontario. 2020. “About Invest Ontario.” Invest in Ontario. July 9, 2020.

Lindgren, Richard. 2020. Preliminary Analysis of Schedule 6 of Bill 197: Proposed Amendments to the Environmental Assessment Act. Canadian Environmental Law Association.

Office of the Premier. 2020. “Ontario Starting Down the Path to Growth, Renewal and Economic Recovery.” Ontario Newsroom. July 8, 2020.

Featured image is from The Bullet

Current federal unemployment benefits expire in days.

In May, House-controlled Dems narrowly passed a new $3 trillion stimulus package.

So-called Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) legislation extends current federal benefits through at least yearend.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans called the measure “dead on arrival.”

The GOP-controlled Senate and Trump want aid going largely to corporate America, favoring crumbs alone for ordinary people in need.

Trump opposes extension of benefits in any amount that doesn’t include suspension of employer and worker payroll taxes at least through yearend. More on this below.

Days earlier, McConnell suggested support for renewed stimulus to individuals earning $40,000 or less annually.

Corporate giveaway CARES Act legislation gives households a one-time direct deposit of $1,200, married couples $2,400, plus an additional $500 per child.

Benefits apply to households earning up to $75,000, $150,000 for married couples, scaled down amounts going to households earning up to $99,000/$198,000 for married couples.

Unemployed workers now get $600 weekly for four months through July 31.

If benefits aren’t extended at a time of economic collapse, punctuated by 17 straight weeks of over a million new claims for unemployment benefits — real US unemployment exceeding 32%, based on how calculated pre-1990, things will be catastrophic for millions of US households.

Last week, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said the White House now favors more stimulus, based on what the GOP-controlled Senate agrees on.

According to Center on Budget and Policy Priorities chief economist Chad Stone, Dems and Republicans may agree on reduced stimulus in the coming days.

Without vitally needed federal aid, jobless US workers will only get state benefits to last from 26 to 39 weeks — amounts ranging from $531 in Massachusetts to $101 in Oklahoma.

Economic collapse produced an unprecedented housing crisis, millions of unemployed Americans missing recent rent and mortgage payments.

In 29 states, no moratorium on evictions exists. CARES legislation granted a temporary reprieve for residents of dwellings backed by federal mortgages or  government-assisted housing payments.

The provision covers about 30% of renters. What’s needed is a moratorium on rent and mortgage payments for unemployed workers — as long as economic crisis conditions affect them.

The same goes for student loan indebtedness.

House Dems support these policies for political reasons — ahead of November elections. Many Republicans oppose them.

Are mass evictions coming in the weeks and months ahead without enough federal unemployment aid to prevent them?

So far, over 51 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits — around one-third of peak employment pre-economic collapse levels.

As large numbers of layoffs continue, the ranks of America’s unemployed are rising steadily, an unprecedented Greater Depression calamity for affected tens of millions.

Most likely before end of July, Republicans and Dems will agree on extending reduced federal stimulus benefits.

The White House suggested willingness to accept a scaled-back amount to needy households on the order of between $200 and $400.

According to the Washington Post this week, the White House signaled a “willingness to approve a narrow extension of the enhanced unemployment benefits” well below the current amount — along with another one-time stimulus payment, similar to what the CARES Act authorized for the most needy households.

With little time left before current federal benefits expire, it’s vital for legislation to be adopted by Congress and signed into law by Trump in the coming days.

On Thursday, Politico reported that DJT won’t agree to more stimulus without a payroll tax cut, citing three unnamed White House sources.

His aim that’s supported by hardline Republicans is cutting Social Security and Medicare funding to kill both programs over time.

So far, Dems reject the scheme. Politico said the idea “has fallen on deaf ears on Capital Hill,” Dems and most Republicans against it — with November elections less than four months away.

“(T)here is no sign” that Senate Majority Leader McConnell will include a payroll tax cut in a GOP stimulus bill.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Grassley opposes the idea. For Dems, it’s “a non-starter,” Politico reported.

On July 16, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) stressed that US unemployment remains at historically high levels.

In the most recent week, 2.5 million US workers applied for unemployment insurance — not the reported 1.3 million figure, EPI saying “that’s not the right number to use.”

It ignores “pandemic unemployment assistance (PUA)” for workers not eligible for regular unemployment benefits.

The weekly headline number is also seasonally adjusted, distorting reality that affects the nation’s unemployed.

If a large enough amount of stimulus isn’t extended for as long as economic crisis conditions exist, individuals with less money will spend less because they have less to spend — making dire economic conditions worse than already.

EPI explained that households now getting $600 weekly support the equivalent of “over 5 million jobs.”

If the amount expires entirely, “more than 5 million jobs” will be lost. If the amount is scaled back, lost jobs will be proportional to amounts no longer received.

If Congress doesn’t pass veto-proof legislation quickly to circumvent possible Trump opposition, state agencies will face an “administrative nightmare,” said EPI, adding:

If benefits aren’t reinstated right away, “recipients will face a lapse in benefits of two to four weeks.”

Most Americans are enduring the most dire economic conditions in US history — that are likely to be protracted.

If federal aid to the unemployed isn’t continued in large enough amounts and renewed as long crisis conditions continue, tens of millions of America’s most disadvantaged will face harder than ever hard times that seemed unimaginable last year.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Relations between the U.S. and European powers like Germany and France are reaching a historic low. This is especially true after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew a large portion of the American military stationed in Germany to other European countries and after German Chancellor Angela Merkel refused to travel to the G7 summit in the U.S. because of the out of control coronavirus situation in the North American country. Another major reason for the breakdown of relations is Washington’s announcement that companies participating in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project will be sanctioned.

Merkel said in an interview for The Guardian that the Germans grew up knowing that the U.S. wanted to be a world power. However, now that the U.S. is abusing its power against some of its strongest allies, Germany, which is currently holding the EU Presidency, could make efforts for the European bloc to be more independent of the U.S.

Although a multipolar world order has been emerging for over a decade, the pandemic has accelerated the redistribution of the current international balance of power. Europe has found itself needing to make an urgent decision – remain in Washington’s orbit or establish greater independent thinking to serve its own interests. The idea of European independent decision making has been gaining clout. A strong advocate is French President Emmanuel Macron who speaks of the “brain death of NATO” and attempted to impose extremely high taxes on American network giants like Google. In fact, many of the major EU countries have pushing for the bloc to be more independent of Washington. This is contrast to most of the former Warsaw Pact members of the EU, like Poland and Lithuania, who are aggressively pro-U.S.

Along with Macron, Ursula von der Leyen often said that the EU Commission, that she is the president of, would make its own decision on its geopolitical direction. In addition, Merkel, who has taken on the leadership role in the EU for the second time, has chosen the motto for her second chairmanship: “Together. Making Europe Strong Again.” Some major European politicians now understand the geopolitical direction that Europe should develop – and if it wants to remain relevant it needs to find its own independent path. We are beginning to see this, especially with Germany strongly resisting pressure from the U.S. to cancel the Nord Stream 2 pipeline construction with Russia.

It is unlikely that Europe will fully break off from Washington’s orbit due to historical and ethnic ties, but European independent decision making is becoming more apparent.  The order by Trump for 10,000 U.S. soldiers to be withdrawn from Germany could convince Berlin and the other EU countries that it is time to reconsider the foundations of NATO that lost its legitimacy after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This is why Europeans could take a big step towards establishing a pan-European defense system or an organization that could replace NATO – a proposition that Macron fully supports.

While the U.S. remains the greatest military and economic power in the world today, it is clear that it is losing its global influence to China and Russia. Therefore, the U.S. will actively defend its status, whether Trump remains in power or his Democrat rival Joe Biden wins the upcoming election. The most important geostrategic interests for the U.S. will remain constant no matter who is in power.

Trump wants to block China’s Belt and Road Initiative from expanding, keep Chinese companies like Huawei away from Europe’s technological infrastructure, curb Chinese expansion in the Pacific region, and challenge Beijing’s influence in Africa, Latin America and Central Asia. For her part, Merkel wants to use her upcoming meeting with the Chinese president to determine future relations with China. In fact, the EU is facing a dilemma: maintain its current relationship with the U.S. or gradually turn to China.

Relations between the major powers have become much more changeable than before. The EU has every opportunity to develop new models of cooperation between different civilizations, especially between Europe and Asia. An advantage Europe has is that it can emphasize thousands of years of trade between Europeans (beginning with Ancient Greeks and Romans) and East Asian kingdoms. However, for this to occur, Germany needs to make the first brave step of pursuing policies that are to the benefit of Europe and not the agendas of Washington. It is for this reason that Merkel is defying Trump’s orders to stop the construction of Nord Stream 2. It is also why Macron is planting the idea of NATO being a redundant organization and that Europe must work towards normalcy with Moscow after European Union-Russian relations strained when Crimea reunited with Russia in 2014.

None-the-less, Germany’s presidency over the EU may be the most important junction of the bloc’s history since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The world is on the cusp of a multipolar order with a more evenly distributed power structure – Germany representing the EU must decide to join this new world order or remain stuck in the old one.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Like everyone, I would love to live in a pollution-free world.

I would love to see human civilization strike a balance with nature and at the risk of sounding like a naïve idealist, I sincerely do believe that this is ultimately our destiny as a species.

My personal experience has led me to the conclusion that we have only failed to achieve this paradigm as a species due to the system (and cultural influence) of oligarchism which has managed to stubbornly sink its claws parasitically onto its host for a few too many generations- corrupting and perverting everything that it dominates.

Due to the pervasiveness of oligarchism, mass exploitation, wars and pollution have lain waste to ecosystems and countless human lives alike, and as the neo-liberal order continues to careen towards the inevitable breakdown of a 2 quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble which our un-repentant decades of decadence has caused, very serious choices will need to be made.

False Remedies to the Oncoming Meltdown

Many false solutions will be presented as society wakes up to the burning building it is trapped in, and unless our minds have become aware of those false solutions, (not to mention those arsonists managing this fire from the top), then many well-intentioned souls from all walks of life may sign onto their own death warrants and accidentally usher in a solution far worse than the disease they sought to remedy.

Before you, dear reader, accuse me of being overly dramatic in my claims, let me bring your attention to a June 3^rd event sponsored by the World Economic Forum (WEF) entitled The Great Reset featuring impassioned calls by leaders of the IMF, World Bank, UK, USA, corporate and banking sector to take advantage of COVID-19 to shut down and “reset” the world economy under a new operating system entitled the Green New Deal.

 

WEF founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab said

“the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions… Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

Schwab’s message was amplified by Prince Charles who gushed over the this golden opportunity to radically modify human behaviour in ways that decades of environmentalism have failed to accomplish when he said:

“We have a golden opportunity to seize something good from this [COVID-19] crisis. Its unprecedented shockwaves may well make people more receptive to big visions of change,”

While the World Economic Forum is usually known as a forum of global corporate elites, this organization branched out in recent years to become a leader in global pandemic coordination as a co-sponsor of the creepy October 2019 Event 201 and has embraced leaders of typically “anti-capitalist” resistance groups like Greenpeace who now speak regularly at their events.

Jennifer Morgan (current head of Greenpeace) stated at the event

“We set up a new world order after World War II… We’re now in a different world than we were then. We need to ask, what can we be doing differently? The World Economic Forum has a big responsibility in that as well—to be pushing the reset button and looking at how to create well-being for people and for the Earth.”

So is this definition of international wellbeing truly what it appears? Or does something more nefarious lurk under the surface? How can we know?

Those who are ignorant to their history will easily believe the cover story they are being fed by the players managing the World Economic Forum. The cover story is as follows: A new system was shaped during a two week conference in Bretton Woods New Hampshire 1944 under the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt and this was designed to export the New Deal program which reconstructed America after the Great Depression to the rest of the world. Since our current crisis demands a new system in a similar manner as the world needed a reset in 1932 and again in 1945, so too must we do so again.

On the surface this is all true. But here’s the rub…

FDR’s New Deal was premised around:

1) Stopping a bankers’ dictatorship in 1933 when he singlehandedly torpedoed the Bank of England/League of Nations’ London Conference,

2) imposing mass regulation on Wall Street speculators under Glass-Steagall laws and the broad bank acts that broke up megabanks, created the SEC, protected legitimate savings and put hundreds of elite bankers on trial under the Pecora Commission,

3) launched vast infrastructure projects under the Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electrification projects, Grand Coulee Dam, Hoover Dams etc which increased the national productive powers of labor turning America into a FULL SPECTRUM agro-industrial economy capable of constant growth, and 4) fought valiantly to guarantee those same capabilities to all nations of the world in total opposition to the British Empire.

Today’s Green New Dealers use the form and name of FDR’s historic precedents but are totally committed to the opposing goals.

Under the global response mechanisms being proposed by the oligarchs running the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset strategy, green energy grids designed to lower the world temperature by two degrees within 30 years by de-carbonizing society will have the effect of reducing the productive powers of labor of all nations rather than increasing those powers as the original New Deal had done.

Meanwhile Cap and Trade/Carbon pricing mechanisms designed by the Bank of England and the Carney/Bloomberg Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures promise to create financial incentives to reduce the world population potential by deconstructing the industrial economic order needed to sustain the nearly 8 billion souls on the surface of earth currently. In a recent speech to the City of London the former head of the Bank of England who now leads Boris Johnson’s Climate Finance team said:

“Achieving net zero emissions will require a whole economy transition – every company, every bank, every insurer and investor will have to adjust their business models. This could turn an existential risk into the greatest commercial opportunity of our time.”

Carney, who also happens to be the architect of the Central Bankers Climate Compact has previously threatened destruction on all businesses that refuse to conform to the new green standards which he and his controllers wish be imposed upon the world saying: “the firms that anticipate these developments will be rewarded handsomely. Those that don’t will cease to exist”.

While the new reset green system promises to feature more regulations onto finance, will those regulations be controlled by sovereign nation states in the interests of the general welfare of their people or by private central banks in the interests of an oligarchical elite obsessed with control, balance, and keeping nations gullible, confused, divided, depopulated and impoverished?

I think you can figure this out for yourself.

The only form of a legitimate Great Reset that will protect people, nations and reduce the influence of the financial oligarchy WHILE actually protecting the environment in the long-run is tied to the modern International New Deal known as the Belt and Road Initiative. By creating a new system of finance tied to long-term development, agro-industrial growth of full spectrum economies across the world, China and its allies have taken up the torch which was dropped by Franklin Roosevelt’s early death on April 12, 1945. Any arrangement for a new economic reset would have to adhere to the proven principles of anti-fascist political economy that have been proven to work in the past and continue to work in the present.

A powerful start to this reset would involve President Trump agreeing to an emergency summit of Russia-China and the USA followed by a five-nation summit featuring the UK and France under the guidelines set forth by President Putin in January 2020 and reiterated again weeks ago.

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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Mike Pompeo’s statement that Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea are unlawful was seen by some as a dramatic step toward war. But it’s little more than bluster as the US knows it is not yet capable of taking military action.

What: Israeli missile kills four children of the same family on a beach in Gaza

When: 16 July, 2014

Where: The Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine

What happened?

Israel’s military offensive on the Gaza Strip in 2014 — “Operation Strong Cliff” from 8 July until 26 August — was one its deadliest ever against the Palestinians besieged in the coastal strip of land. Aside from the destruction of the civilian infrastructure and its disproportionate use of air strikes, among the war crimes that Israel committed during this offensive was its often deliberate targeting of civilian areas. This was arguably the most shocking crime of all.

On the afternoon of 16 July, four children belonging to Bakr family ventured onto the beachfront at Gaza City’s small harbour, playing near the boats that their fathers used as fishermen to earn a living. During the offensive, Israel banned all Palestinian fishermen from going out in their boats and essentially closed the port.

As the four cousins – 11-year-old Mohammad Ramiz Bakr, 9-year-old Ismail Mahmoud Bakr, and Ahed Atef Bakr and Zakariya Ahed Bakr, both aged 10 – continued to play with other children from their family, Israeli forces shelled the area and the fishing boats. One of the boys was killed immediately. The other three children started running from the beach when a second shell killed them too.

Three other members of the Bakr family were severely injured in the attack: 13-year-old Hamad Bakr was hit by shrapnel in the chest; 11-year-old Motasem Bakr was injured in his head and legs; and 21-year-old Mohammad Abu Watfah’s stomach was pierced by shrapnel.

A photographer for the New York Times, Tyler Hicks, witnessed the second strike after he heard “a loud, close blast.” He then heard the second blast while grabbing his equipment, later recalling that “I saw that boy running, and by the time I had reacted he was already dead. That’s the image that will stay with me.”

What happened next?

Following the killing of the four boys, the Israeli military admitted that it had conducted the strike and called it, dismissively, “a tragic outcome,” claiming that it mistook the children for Hamas militants. International outrage followed and Israel launched its own internal investigation into the killings, which was completed almost a year later in June 2015.

The resulting report essentially exonerated Israel from any responsibility:

“The incident took place in an area that had long been known as a compound belonging to Hamas’s Naval Police and Naval Force (including naval commandos), and which was utilised exclusively by militants.” This compound, said the statement, “spans the length of the breakwater of the Gaza City seashore, closed off by a fence and clearly separated from the beach serving the civilian population.”

This was what the Israel military claimed, even though the hut around which the children were playing was in the clear sight of nearby hotels where international journalists were staying. All of them reported that they saw no militants in that area at the time of the strike.

The Israeli military statement continued, saying that it had “carried out a number of attacks on the compound in the days prior to the incident” and, in one attack the day before, “a container located inside the compound, which was used to store military supplies, was attacked.”

This, again, contradicts the accounts of many of the journalists who were there. The compound in question, they confirmed, was easily accessible to both fishermen and local Palestinians who visit the beach to swim and relax, therefore making it a poor location for Hamas to store its military supplies. Furthermore, the container which the Israeli report described was found to have contained no military equipment when investigated.

In August 2018, it was revealed by The Intercept that a secret report by the Israeli military police said that the strikes were conducted without authorisation. According to the leaked report, the Israeli drone operators confessed that they contacted their superiors after they killed the first child, seeking authorisation for the second strike and clarification on what to do about the fleeing children who they allegedly mistook for militants. The report states, however, that “less than a minute later, the drone operators decided to launch a second missile, killing three more children, despite never getting an answer to their question.”

The killing of the Bakr boys was, as far as many people are concerned, evidence that Israel was targeting civilians and civilian areas indiscriminately in the numerous air attacks that it has conducted on the Gaza Strip. It symbolised the killing of innocents by the Israeli military, children being regarded as blameless and easily distinguishable from Hamas fighters, and not connected at all to the politics in the name of which civilians are all too often crushed.

Barely three years later, Israel detained the Bakr family fishermen, while at least 1,500 homes destroyed in that same 2014 offensive still need to be rebuilt.

Six years later, justice for the Bakr family has yet to be seen. Israel’s “investigation” of its own war crime has made sure of that.

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As the combined impact of the corona virus and the wholesale destruction of America’s history and culture, or at least the part of it that is white, continues, it is nice to see that other nations are getting into the game that will lead to the de facto elimination of western civilization. No one is yet quite up the U.S. level of senseless destruction and looting by the heroes of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa, but in Britain mobs are beating policemen, statues including that of Winston Churchill are being attacked and the Cenotaph commemorating the country’s war dead has been vandalized. In a bizarre incident demonstrating the fundamental ignorance of the wreckers, a memorial to those who died at the 1651 Battle of Worcester in the English Civil War has suffered “significant damage”, with the letters BLM painted on the marker.

Perhaps the most ridiculous SJW demand arising out of the ethno-racism nonsense that has induced the politicians and journalists to go down on their knees and beg for forgiveness is the argument that the Arch of Titus in Rome, which has been standing for two thousand years, should be destroyed because one of its panels depicts the triumphal parade that displayed the loot obtained from the Roman capture of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Yeshiva University senior Michael Weiner writing in the Jewish magazine “The Forward” argues that “…like Columbus, Robert E. Lee, and King Leopold II, it too must come down. There is no excuse for Italy to maintain, fund, and proudly display a structure that celebrates the destruction of Jerusalem, the forced displacement of the Jews of Judea, and the burning of the Temple… As an ancient propaganda tool to glorify Rome’s bloody conquests and a modern emblem of Christian persecution and Jewish subjugation, the Arch of Titus is a cruel symbol.”

Weiner seems unaware, or more likely does not care, that there is considerable irony in his denunciation of the Roman subjugation of Judea while ignoring the very real contemporary genocide of the Palestinian people by his co-religionists in Israel. It just goes to show you that once the destruction game starts, anyone who has a grievance can join in and the damage will increase exponentially as every foolish demand becomes self-justifying.

If the current political turmoil ever reverts to anything like normalcy, what is likely to emerge out the other end is a coalition of grievance groups that have figured out that destroying things indiscriminately to make some people feel consumed with guilt so you can steal their money and property is a whole lot easier than actually having to come up with something reasonable. Whatever it winds up calling itself the “NewPolitics” will look a lot like Nancy Pelosi’s groveling Democratic Party or possibly Britain’s Labour Party under its new dystopian leader Keir Starmer, whose overriding mission appears to be ridding the world of anti-Semitism.

Be that as it may, and assuming that the world will not end in the next year or so, the distraction arising from the virus and demonstrations has provided plenty of opportunity for the Trump Administration’s consigliere Mike Pompeo and his foreign allies to make mischief all around the world. Indeed, there have been opportunities for several “twofers” with condemnation of China’s and Venezuela’s relations with Iran permitting attacks on multiple “enemies” simultaneously.

China is completing a “New Silk Road” trade agreement with Iran that will reduce the impact of U.S. sanctions while Iran has been supplying refined petroleum products to Venezuela. Washington has been working hard to disrupt both developments, even threatening to use counter-terrorism legislation to intercept the Greek-owned but carrying-Iranian-fuel tankers in international waters.

The real question all along has been whether the United States and Israel will attack Iran now or later, but the usual anonymous sources in Washington that provide the New York Times with fodder for its fabricated foreign policy pieces are now suggesting that we are looking at something that might be called “incremental conflict management”, which would consist of a series of “short-of-war clandestine strikes, aimed at taking out the most prominent generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and setting back Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

Brian H. Hook, the State Department’s special envoy for Iran described the U.S. government’s vapid Iran policy by observing “We have seen historically that timidity and weakness invites more Iranian aggression.” Also, in an election year, “incremental” sounds better than real war and it also obscures the reality that Israel is already attacking Iran and its allies, almost daily, aided by the Trump Administration and also encouraged by a belligerent U.S. Congress.

The U.S. approach to Iran is only marginally more subtle than that of the Jewish state, consisting of seeking to destroy the country’s economy by blocking its oil exports and its banking sector. Last week a U.S. court in Washington cited “anti-terror legislation” to rule against Iran, awarding $879 million in damages to the survivors and families of the U.S. airmen killed in the Khobar Towers bombing attack in 1996. Iran has denied involvement in the bombing and there is certainly no hard evidence that it was behind it, but the victims will in any event have a hard time collecting their money as the Iranian government has had many of its bank accounts frozen by the U.S. Treasury.

The “incremental war” crowd sees a situation in which the United States and Israel have de facto been pursuing a plan to bring down the Iranian government while also devastating its nuclear program. The United States is applying the economic pressure through an increasing use of sanctions, while Israel regularly bombs Iranians and Iranian proxies in Syria and Lebanon. The two governments believe that the combination of military force and economic sanctions will eventually force the Iranian regime to basically surrender and effectively disarm without having to escalate into an open, shooting war.

The only problem with the staged approach is that Israel has already, in the past two weeks, directly attacked major research and development facilities inside Iran, and has apparently done so in part with missiles fired either from Israeli fighter-bombers or from ships offshore in the Persian Gulf. The two attacks took place on July 2, 2020, one directed against the Iranian nuclear research facility at Natanz and the second was targeting a claimed missile development center at Parchin. Neither attack was much reported in the western media even though they together appeared to be a major escalation of the Iran-Israel conflict, with potentially significant consequences.

Even the Times, again relying on an anonymous “Middle Eastern intelligence official with knowledge of the episode,” eventually reported that Natanz was not hit by a cyber-attack, as had been previously suggested, but by a “powerful bomb” which might well have been placed in the site’s main building by an Israeli agent. One assumes that the “Middle Eastern official” was Israeli and Israeli media sources also confirmed that Parchin was hit by missiles fired from an F-35 Israeli Air Force plane, which suggests that the Benjamin Netanyahu is not exactly being shy about what his government did.

The point is that the U.S. and the Israelis are intent on going to war against enemy number one Iran and are packaging their actions in such away as to suggest that they are really behaving in a moderate fashion. They are assuming that Iran will retaliate, but in such a way as to avoid intensifying the conflict. In reality, taking action to destroy a nation’s economy is an act of war just as much as is staging attacks using bombs carried by spies or using missiles fired from planes. There is already a war going on, but the smokescreen provided by the coronavirus spread and BLM means that no one seems to want more on their plate and there is great reluctance to call it for what it is.

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

On July 15, 2020, the right-wing candidate for the upcoming October 20 presidential elections in Bolivia, Luis Fernando Camacho, issued an appeal to the Organization of Americans States (OAS). Camacho, who led the violent coup (backed by Trump, Trudeau and the OAS) against Evo Morales last fall complained about the electoral system.

Camacho concluded that “we must not allow the elections to become an act of resurrection” of Evo’s party MAS (Movement for Socialism). It is an open appeal to the US-controlled OAS to interfere once again in the elections as it did last fall. Camacho, according to the polls, would garner only 7 per cent of the votes while the MAS ticket is ahead in the polls.

After the coup last fall, Evo was forced into exile while the Camacho clique carried out massacres against the Indigenous and violent suppression of the MAS militants.

Evo Morales tweeted on July 15:

“Asking the OAS to rule on the suspension of the elections in Bolivia is a new blow against democracy, it is a form of intervention against the sovereignty of the State and the dignity of the people;  and furthermore it is being asked by those responsible for the tragic events of 2019”

Pedir que la @OEA_oficial se pronuncie para que se suspendan las elecciones en #Bolivia es un nuevo golpe contra la democracia, es una forma de intervención contra la soberanía del Estado y la dignidad del pueblo; y lo piden los responsables de los trágicos sucesos de 2019. pic.twitter.com/LDYts3EAHQ

— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) July 15, 2020

Moreover, the resistance seems to be gearing up. On July 16, the on-the-ground Kawsachun News reported that:

“The Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), Bolivia’s main workers federation, demands adhesion to the September 6th election date as adopted by the TSE [Election authority].”

The Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), Bolivia's main workers federation, demands adhesion to the September 6th election date as adopted by the TSE. The regime is pursuing criminal charges against the COB's leadership for the nationwide protests held on Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/BT8FhFUqKK

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) July 16, 2020

This is a story in development. However (for the moment) in order to provide some background information, please take the time to view this short YouTube clip. It forecasts the role of the Trudeau government as an active proponent of the coup.

This second youtube clip consists of my appeal to Canadians, Québécois and Indigenous nations in English, French and Spanish.

This appeal is, generally speaking, still applicable. We have to act now to stop the hand of Trudeau — once again — to back this latest blatant attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of Bolivia.

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If you are adamant about not wearing a mask, you are not going to like this news one bit.  Coming into this week, Costco, Starbucks, Best Buy and Panera Bread were requiring customers to wear masks to come into their stores, but most other major retailers were still giving people the freedom to choose whether they wanted to wear a mask or not.  I know that a lot of people appreciated this freedom to choose, but it is about to come to an abrupt end.  On Wednesday, Walmart and Kroger announced that they will be starting to require consumers to wear masks in all of their stores, and the National Retail Federation is pushing all of the rest of their members to do the same thing.  In the days ahead it is expected that most of them will follow suit, and that means that soon there will be very few major retail stores that you are able to enter without wearing a mask.

Walmart says that they decided to make this change in order to “bring consistency” across all of their stores.  The following comes from the official Walmart website…

As the number of confirmed cases has spiked in communities across the country recently, so too have the number and types of face covering mandates being implemented. Currently about 65 percent of our more than 5,000 stores and clubs are located in areas where there is some form of government mandate on face coverings. To help bring consistency across stores and clubs, we will require all shoppers to wear a face covering starting Monday, July 20. This will give us time to inform customers and members of the changes, post signage and train associates on the new protocols.

In the region of the country where I live, there are a ton of people that feel very strongly about not wearing masks, and this announcement is going to hit them really hard.

There is only one Walmart within a 90 minute drive of where I live, and virtually everyone in the region pops in there at some point.  But now those that do not want to wear masks will be excluded, and there will be some very hard feelings over this.

If you try to enter a Walmart without a mask next week, you will be greeted at the door by a “Health Ambassador” wearing a black shirt.  I find it very interesting that they specifically chose the color black, and I think that it would have been helpful if they had chosen a more friendly color.  In any event, these new positions are being created in order to ensure that only people wearing masks are able to get into the stores.  Of course Walmart is trying to make this sound as non-threatening as possible…

In addition to posting clear signage at the front of our stores, Walmart has created the role of Health Ambassador and will station them near the entrance to remind those without a mask of our new requirements. Our ambassadors will receive special training to help make the process as smooth as possible for customers. The ambassadors, identifiable by their black polo shirts, will work with customers who show up at a store without a face covering to try and find a solution. We are currently considering different solutions for customers when this requirement takes effect on July 20.

Needless to say, this announcement by Walmart is likely to spark an avalanche of other announcements by major retailers.

In fact, Kroger made an announcement just hours after Walmart did…

Within hours, Kroger — the largest U.S. supermarket chain — said it will also require shoppers to wear masks starting July 22.

And as I mentioned above, the National Retail Federation is already pushing all of their members to fall in line…

The president of the  National Retail Federation trade group wants retailers to adopt a nationwide policy that requires customers to wear masks, and hopes Walmart’s decision to do so would galvanize other companies to take similar action, reports Reuters.

“Shopping in a store is a privilege, not a right. If a customer refuses to adhere to store policies, they are putting employees and other customers at undue risk,” the NRF says.

We will be told that this is just a “temporary” thing, but at what point will we be able to start shopping without masks again?

It certainly won’t be any time in 2020.  This week, CDC director Robert Redfield saidthat he anticipated that this fall and winter “are probably going to be one of the most difficult times that we’ve experienced in American public health”…

I am worried. I do think the fall and the winter of 2020 and 2021 are probably going to be one of the most difficult times that we’ve experienced in American public health because of what you said — the co-occurrence of Covid and influenza, and this is where I’d like to continue to work with you to get the American public to embrace the influenza vaccine so we can try to minimize the impact of inluenza, because I think those two respiratory pathogens hitting us at the same time do have the potential to stress our health system.

Ultimately, we will probably be forced to wear masks until the pandemic ends.

But what if this pandemic lasts for years?

A couple days ago, I authored an article in which I discussed three separate scientific studies which all showed that COVID-19 antibodies disappear very, very rapidly.  In fact, some patients no longer had detectable antibodies just weeks after originally testing positive for antibodies.

What this means is that it appears that COVID-19 is very similar to many other less dangerous coronaviruses that are floating around out there.  Just like there is no lasting immunity to “the common cold”, there also appears to be no lasting immunity to COVID-19.

Early on July 16, unidentified warplanes conducted at least 3 airstrikes on the Turkish-occupied town of al-Bab in the Syrian province of Aleppo. The strikes destroyed a large building in the town center and led to multiple casualties. Pro-Turkish sources claim that there were civilian casualties only and that the United States or Russia were behind the strikes.

A few hours later, the Turkish Interior Ministry reported that a reconnaissance plane crashed in the Turkish province of Van, near the Iraqi border. 7 personnel, including 2 pilots, on board died in the incident that happened on Mount Artos.

Earlier this year, a series of airstrikes by unidentified aircraft killed several prominent terrorists, including well-known ISIS members, that were freely hiding in the Turkish-controlled part of Syria. The July 16 strikes could be a part of this campaign.

In response to all these developments, Turkish sources cried foul about the killed terrorists and Turkish-led forces were conducting strikes on positions of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces on the contact line in northern Syria. The Turkish Army reacted in a similar way to the July 16 events by shelling SDF positions near Tell Rifat.

On July 15 afternoon, a weapon depot of the SDF exploded in the province of al-Hasakah. The explosion that erupted next to the residential area of the al-Asrafiyah district reportedly killed or injured several SDF members.

Last month, an ammo depot of the SDF in in the vicinity of the town of Rmelan in the same province also exploded. Some sources claimed that Turkish warplanes destroyed it. However, the SDF didn’t provide any information on the incident.

On top of this, a series of explosions rocked the SDF-controlled city of Raqqa on July 14. Three IEDs exploded inside an abandoned building in the al-Tub al-Hadith district in the city center and the fourth one in the al-Jazzrah district in the western part of the city. There have been no reports on casualties and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Nonetheless, the main suspect is ISIS cells, which recently increased activity on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Army artillery struck positions of Turkish proxies near the villages of al-Bara, Fatterah, Sufuhon and Fleifel in southern Idlib. The tensions in the region heightened since the car bomb attack on a joint Russian-Turkish patrol on July 14. Pro-militant sources reported multiple artillery and air strikes on their positions claiming that the Russians and Assad regime are once again opressing peaceful al-Qaeda members.

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China’s special administration region of Hong Kong saw the passing of a security law outlawing acts universally recognized as criminal and threats to any nation’s security and sovereignty.

Despite what would appear to be common sense legislation, the Western media has cried “controversy.” While the West claims it fears curbs on freedoms inside China – it is becoming increasingly clear that the West’s real fears revolve around the “freedom” of its proxies and their attempts to maintain Hong Kong as a defacto Western foothold.

British state media, the BBC in their article, “Hong Kong security law: What is it and is it worrying?,” would note:

Hong Kong was always meant to have a security law, but could never pass one because it was so unpopular. So this is about China stepping in to ensure the city has a legal framework to deal with what it sees as serious challenges to its authority.

The BBC would also list acts criminalized under the law which include:

• secession – breaking away from the country
• subversion – undermining the power or authority of the central government
• terrorism – using violence or intimidation against people
• collusion with foreign or external forces

Nothing on the list is in any way controversial, with virtually all other nations on Earth maintaining similar laws on their respective books.

Additionally, Hong Kong – a region that belonged to China before being taken by force by the British Empire in 1841 and a region that now once again belongs to China after its handover to Beijing in 1997 – is clearly China’s to govern and to do so in any manner China decides. Laws it passes regarding Hong Kong are not Washington or London’s business just as laws passed regarding US or UK territory are none of Beijing’s.

The BBC and many others across the Western media have attempted to claim the new security law is “controversial” simply because despite the UK’s handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the UK and the US have both attempted to maintain the region as a foothold inside China – and to do so specifically by engaging in literally everything on the list outlawed by the bill – including secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion.

The BBC article explains:

Hong Kong was handed back to China from British control in 1997, but under a unique agreement – a mini-constitution called the Basic Law and a so-called “one country, two systems” principle.

The BBC never explains why China should be bound by an agreement made with the UK – a hostile foreign occupier now fully departed from China’s restored sovereign territory.

Those complaining the loudest in Hong Kong – according to the BBC article itself – include culprits guilty of all the above – including Joshua Wong and his US-backed “Demosisto” political party and other recipients of US and UK funding and support.

Wong and mobs he helped organize and lead systematically destroyed Hong Kong’s infrastructure, used violence against political opponents, and openly appealed to the US and UK to intervene.

Repeatedly exposed have been the vast amounts of resources from the US government funneled into Hong Kong propping up this so-called “pro-democracy” movement.

The generally pro-Western South China Morning Post even admitted to extensive US meddling in Hong Kong in an article titled, “US has been exposed for funding last year’s Hong Kong protests.”

The article noted:

Imagine how the American government would react if multiple Chinese state agencies such as Xinhua were exposed secretly helping protest groups across the United States to evade surveillance and crackdowns by law enforcement agencies.

Washington would probably threaten China with war. Roughly, though, the little-known but powerful US Agency for Global Media has been doing just that in Hong Kong. It oversees funding for various news and information operations around the world, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

About US$2 million was earmarked for the protest movement in Hong Kong, but has now been frozen as part of a general overhaul and restructuring by a new agency boss.

As clear as the South China Morning Post article makes US meddling in Hong Kong, it is just scratching the surface of the scale and duration of US meddling in China’s internal affairs – particularly in regards to Hong Kong.

Virtually every aspect of Hong Kong’s opposition is a product of US meddling with the majority of protest leaders having literally been hosted in Washington D.C. and the direct recipients of US funding and support to build up their respective movements and carry out US objectives under the smokescreen of promoting “democracy.” This has been the case for years, long before the most recent protests.

All of this constitutes a clear breech of China’s sovereignty – a violation of international law and norms – but also a violation in terms of Washington’s own laws. For example, were China – as the South China Morning Post article imagined – aiding subversion in the US in a similar manner – it would be deemed absolutely illegal under US law and those involved would face equal or harsher punishments than under Hong Kong’s new security law.

That China’s move to shield its borders from overt, admitted foreign meddling should be considered “controversial” by the West illustrates just how deep the West’s double standards run and how Western foreign policy is driven by the principle of “might makes right” with all other principles serving merely as smokescreens.

And while the US and UK condemn China for reasserting itself over its own territory and people, the US and UK both continue illegal wars and occupations thousands of miles from their own shores all across the globe. The Western media is tellingly silent about this hypocrisy.

While the US and UK may believe crying “controversy” over the new Hong Kong security law helps paint themselves as defenders of “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy,” it in fact only further paints Western foreign policy as dangerously hypocritical.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Global Times

After the corona crisis, may the world be facing a monumental paradigm shift of power towards a more balanced civilization – more social justice and equity? The global almost total lockdown, chosen by most governments around the globe in response to mastering the Covid-19 crisis, devastated the world economy, as we know it – and hundreds of millions of lives. Was it necessary? Will there be a time when those responsible for this universal, scientifically unnecessary lockdown be held accountable?   

The last six months, governments around the world have almost unilaterally committed an auto-destruction of their socioeconomic fabric and collectively of the global economy. It may never return to the “normal” of the times before COVID. That, per se, may not be a bad omen, though, as our pre-corona existence – especially in the west – was everything else but an ethical “normal”.

Pre-Corona Globalization and Economic Development

Neoliberal economics have “normalized” greed, inequity, exploitation of people and depletion of resources. This was largely possible due to an ever more reckless ultra-capitalist globalization and privatization of everything – goods, services and assets through international corporatism and globalized private banking.

Global finance was – and still is to some extent – dominated by a fiat US-dollar system aiming at total control of the world’s riches towards a global economic and resources hegemony, enforced by sanctions and confiscation of assets, coercing dissenting nations under the dictate of the United States and her western allies. The countries that did not cave in – Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Yemen, North Korea – and not least, of course, China and Russia are relentlessly assailed.

The corona pandemic temporarily slowed western pressure on China and Russia, as it brought about an abrupt stop to world economic activities, causing a melt-down of assets, plunging stock markets by over 30 percent, creating untold bankruptcies, unemployment and human misery unrecorded in past history. The calamity may be far surpassing the Credit Crisis of 1772, the Great Depression (1929 – 1933) and the Financial Crisis of 2007 – 2009, possibly by orders of magnitude, once the dust settles and a more accurate accounting can take place. This may take months, if not years.

Estimates from the International Labor Office (ILO) now predict unemployment and underemployment may reach up to 2.0 billion people, worldwide, more than half of the globes total workforce, many of them living in precarious conditions well before the corona outbreak. The World Food Program (WFP) fears that hundreds of millions of people may be affected by famine and tens of millions may die. This is a somber base from which to look forward into – let’s hope – a brighter future.

The silver lining of this dark corona cloud is that the dollar hegemony is coming to an end, and instead the world is presented with a wide-open window of new opportunities to stitch a social fabric that fits all or most of humanity – forging a new social contract towards creating a common future for mankind.

Salient features under globalization as we know it

Economic development under unfettered globalized capitalism has in the past 70 years ravaged the globe and in the Global South has drastically increased inequality, injustice among peoples and nations. The Washington Consensus (1989) has given free reign for forging unequitable trade agreements which often undermined and even annihilated national sovereignties of poorer countries, for example, driving local farmers off their land by forcing subsidized western agricultural crops into their countries.

Globalization under the neoliberal concept has also brought privatization of everything, but especially of social services and infrastructure, destroying the peoples’ accumulated asset base – shuffling social capital from the bottom to the top, to the western private banking sector and a few oligarchs, thereby destroying the little and often flimsy social safety nets poorer nations may have established – safety nets which would come in handy now with Covid-caused poverty skyrocketing. CNBC reports that America’s billionaires added US$ 434 billion to their fortunes during the 3 months of U.S. lockdown between mid-March and mid-May 2020.

China’s 1949 Revolution initiated by Chairman Mao presented a new concept of economic and social development, one that still holds as of today. After western devastation of China, it started wisely in building strength by seeking self-sufficiency in education, health and nutrition – and in eradicating poverty. The Chinese society worked and keeps working in a flux of constant creation – with natural ups and downs and trials and errors – but steadily advancing, learning – and succeeding which, in turn, motivates new creation, new achievements.

After reaching this first objective of basic autonomy, China opened her gates to the world to continue the harmonious flow of creating relationships for trade and investments, educational and cultural exchange and gradually moving into research and cutting-edge science to share with the world. It is the contrary of what the west is used to. It is cooperation instead of competition. A concept hardly understood in the profit-driven capitalist west.

The idea of cooperation in economic development coupled with an endless flow of creation – avoiding conflicts and moving forward, a solid Tao principle – has grown China to where she stands today – becoming the world’s second largest economy, after starting practically from zero only 70 years ago. China is a vivid example of socialist success. Or, as the Chinese would say, “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. A nation that never seeks conflicts or invasions of other countries, but strives for partnerships and peaceful cohabitation. This worries the west, especially the self-declared US empire.

On 7 September 2013, Visionary President Xi Jinping re-initiated the ancient 2100-year-old Silk Road at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University. Adjusted to the 21^st Century, it is called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but it is based on the same old principles building bridges between peoples, exchanging goods, research, education, knowledge, cultural wisdom, peacefully, harmoniously and ‘win-win’ style.

In his inauguration speech, President Xi spoke about “People-to-People Friendship and Creating a better Future”. But he went further, pointing to the history of exchanges under the Ancient Silk Road among people from different creeds and cultures,

“they had proven that countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes.”

This is the corner stone for the development endeavor of the 21^st century. It signals a globalization under different terms – a globalization under equals. And, yes, a New Social Contract. Partner countries are invited, not coerced, to participate in this mammoth enterprise to span the world with land and maritime routes, for trade, for joint research and scientific exchanges, leading to an endless flow of ideas for new technologies but also of social sciences to enhance peaceful human interactions. A case in point may be the new China-Cuba collaboration in health science that emerged from the corona crisis.

Globalization under a new normal

China will play a major role in the new emerging world order – not a One World Order, as a small western elite envisions, but a new paradigm built on partnership, on equality on building bridges, instead of walls, avoiding and resolving conflicts peacefully and without violence. Call it a new Social Contract to span the world for all those who are interested in participating. The corona crisis is gradually bringing an awakening for a new consciousness, one that we always had but got buried in the rush of things – greed, power, comfort and also neglect for the less privileged and destitute.

China may be a guiding light for the realization of this new paradigm. Why? – Because China experienced in her 70 years of Revolution what the corona-devastated world needs today to rebuild and to restart with a new set of values towards a better equilibrium of access to goods, services and resources, while maintaining a healthy environment.

What propelled China forward, was the simple principle of local production for local markets and local consumption with a local currency through a public banking system managed by a sovereign central bank working for the good of the people (not for shareholders), gearing towards an equitable development and self-sufficiency for all. This does not preclude private sector participation at all. But the State sets rules and parameters within which private interests may move. That’s why China is “A socialist nation with Chinese characteristics.”

Prospects for a new concept of globalization

China’s economy is strong. Despite a practical standstill of about two months, China has almost recovered, while the west is still struggling to find common denominators for collaboration and for revamping their economies. The IMF had originally predicted a global GDP decline of 3% for 2020, and a slight growth for 2021. In the meantime, the IMF adjusted the decline to 5.5 %; still way too little, since the world hasn’t even seen the tip of the iceberg yet of this global mammoth socioeconomic disaster. For China the IMF foresees a modest growth of 1.1% in 2020. Both figures are likely underestimates. Given the massive wipe-out of much of the global economy, 2020 negative GDP for the world may be as high as 10% to 15% when the chips are down and counted.

On the other hand, China having recovered rather quickly and with a public banking sector destined to address the economy’s weak spots, 2020 growth might be in the order of 3% to 3.5%. But as a leading economist from the International Monetary Institute (IMI) of Beijing’s Renmin University says – “we are talking about quality growth”, meaning, growth will focus on the social dimension of people’s needs.

China will forge ahead with the socioeconomic development program of the century – the BRI and expand her partner and associate members, already more than 160 today. Due to the corona catastrophe, foreign debt has been rising almost in reverse proportion as GDP has declined. President Xi has pledged 2 billion dollars to fight the virus. Additional debt relief especially to the poorer debt-strangled Belt and Road partners, might facilitate progress towards a better-connected world.

A new kind of globalization will rise from the ashes of the corona crisis. Restoring individual countries sovereignty, as well as their monetary, financial and economic autonomy and without a debt stranglehold preventing them from prospering, is crucial for becoming equal partners in a new globalized world. BRI is the new vehicle promoting self-assured partners that do not have to fear “sanctions” for wanting to preserve their sovereignty.

The west, especially Washington may not like this “game changer” approach. Therefore, China may not be spared in the foreseeable future from western bashing and aggressions. The reasons are NOT corona guilt or mismanagement, or unfair trade, reasons Washington likes to propagandize. These false accusations are meant to denigrate China to break or weaken the world’s trust in China’s economy and in particular her strong and gold backed currency, the yuan.

China’s central bank (People’s Bank of China – PBC) has just launched a trial run in a number of cities, including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Xiong’an of her new crypto-currency, the e-RMB (Ren Min Bi, meaning People’s Money), or Yuan.

Eventually the new cyber money will be rolled out internationally for trade, commodity pricing – and even as a safe and stable reserve currency. The digital blockchain money assures the users total security, no interference from outside. It is a protection from” sanctions” and arbitrary confiscation. This will add a new dimension to China’s economic strength. Not only will her economy soon outrank that of the United States, but the yuan may also shortly become the key reserve currency in the world.

Look at the huge continent of Eurasia which is also connected to Africa. To serve this enormous landmass no seas have to be crossed. Its easy trading, friendly relations, no conflicts, because equal partners strive for the real meaning of trade, no losers, only win-win. Then there are the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which in addition to China include also Russia, India and Pakistan – and soon also Iran, with Malaysia and Mongolia in observation status waiting in the wings.

China is also boosting trade among the ASEAN+3 countries (Association of Southeast Asian Nations – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam; plus 3 = Japan, South Korea and China). Monetary transactions will take place in local currencies, not the US dollar. They will be using CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), avoiding the dollar controlled SWIFT payment scheme.

SCO and ASEAN+3 account for about half the world population and for one third of the globes economic output. It is a formidable market and most of it on this huge landmass called Eurasia. No need for the belligerent west.

This new form of non-aggressive and non-invasive globalization may make example and evoke reflection. Perhaps it may serve others, Europe for instance – as a vehicle to recover from the colossal corona collapse. Imagine a globalized world among equals – a community seeking a common future for mankind.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO); RT; Countercurrents, Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press; The Saker Blog, the and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Though Bernie Sanders is less dishonest than any other of the U.S. political leaders who have contested in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Presidential primary campaigns, no one should trust his endorsements of the DNC’s choice (which was what it was) of Joe Biden to carry the Party’s banner against Trump. Sanders knows that he was cheated out of the nomination by the DNC’s billionaires in 2020, just as he had been in 2016. And he knows that Biden is just as corrupt as Trump. Why, then, does Sanders endorse Biden?

Is it because “the voters of the Democratic Party chose Biden?” Well, in a sense, they did — from 29 February 2020 onward they did, because the billionaires were no longer donating mainly to Pete Buttigieg (23 billionaires), Cory Booker (18), Kamala Harris (17), Michael Bennett (15) and Joe Biden as #5 (at 13). (Sanders was at 0.) So, they suddenly piled in, on Biden, right after Sanders’s win in Nevada, the last before the February 29th South Carolina primary, and the final score of billionaires became Biden 66, Buttigieg 61, Klobuchar 33, Steyer 13, Warren 6, Gabbard 3, Bloomberg 1, and Sanders still 0 (and nothing being shown for candidates who had withdrawn early).

Instead — and no one can say why or what with any certainty — Sanders probably has some commitment from Biden regarding national policies once Biden becomes the President. (Trump himself does everything he can to assist that outcome, Biden’s Presidency. He might not be doing it intentionally, but he is doing it very successfully.)

Furthermore, Sanders knows, or ought to know, that Joe Biden was one of the leading segregationists in the U.S. Senate and was condemned in 1977 by Ted Kennedy and others for the insincerity of his protestations to the contrary. At the very same time in the 1960s when Sanders himself was being arrested in Chicago for demonstrating peacefully against the segregationist policies of Mayor Richard J. Daley, Joe Biden was a college playboy but subsequently lied to say that while in college he worked with civil rights leaders to end segregation. Yet Sanders, himself, remains silent about Biden’s lying, and about Biden’s actual support for segregation. Why?

Everything in politics is for only two purposes: winning power, and exercising power.

Sanders’s promise to support the Party’s nominee was implicitly based upon his expectation that he would not be, yet again, cheated out of receiving its nomination. That expectation was not fulfilled. The DNC knew, even back in May 2016, that Sanders would be stronger than Hillary against Trump, but they nonetheless rigged the results for Hillary against Sanders (and sometimes even blatantly) because their billionaires are more important to them than their voters are. And the same happened with Biden against Sanders in 2020. So: what obligation does Sanders have now to the DNC? Clearly, none. What obligation does he have to the American people? To keep on his fight to become FDR’s successor! If he withdraws from it, then surely America is heading into a massive economic crash which will result (under a President Biden) in martial law, and, then, an extremely bloody revolution, the outcome from which can’t be predicted (but one can only hope that enough troops will quit or even mutiny against their commanders).

Consequently, only a private commitment from Biden can explain this.

In a dictatorship such as the United States is, a politician’s commitments made to the public, such as Barack Obama’s back in 2007 and 2008, that he would have a “public option” in his healthcare plan, are lies, which they have no intention to fulfill (and Obama dropped his “public option” virtually the day after he beat John McCain for the Presidency in November 2008). However, a politician’s private commitments to the billionaires who funded his career are kept and honored. As a general rule, also the private commitments that are made to other politicians — such as to Sanders — are kept.

We just don’t know what those commitments are.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

What nations say they stand for and what the evidence suggests they stand for can be – and frequently are – two entirely different things. This highly thought-provoking book puts the world’s most powerful nation in the spotlight and compares the US government’s stated aims with its actual behaviour. The US government projects an image of itself as the global guardian of freedom and democracy; as ever watchful and as prepared, reluctantly, to intervene in the politics of other nations if, and only if, freedom and democracy are under threat. However, in contrast to opposing tyranny in all its forms, the author notes how, in reality, the US government actually funds, arms and trains a wide range of oppressive governments, including dictatorships, if such support is regarded as being in US interests, irrespective of the track records (with respect to democracy and human rights) of the governments themselves.

Supporting dictatorship

In the introductory sections, David Swanson considers the wide range of oppressive governments backed by the US and then specifically focusses on dictatorships, since they are the regimes that the US government regularly claims to oppose. He shows how the majority of the world’s ‘unfree’ states (as defined by Rich Whitney [2017] who, in turn bases his approach on the taxonomy provided by ‘Freedom House’, an organisation funded by the US government – ‘free’, ‘partly free’ and ‘unfree’) are supported militarily by the US. He shows also that, contrary to the contention that US military intervention is always on the side of ‘democracy’, the US commonly sells weapons to both sides involved in numerous conflicts around the world. The author both highlights the longevity of this approach: that it is in no way merely to be viewed as a feature of the Trump presidency and contends that the US position of support for oppressive governments follows from the powerful alliance between the US government and US arms producers (the so-called ‘military industrial complex’).

In the following sections, Swanson looks at the great majority of the world’s current dictatorships and shows how they are supported by the US, particularly militarily. He does so by providing twenty current case-studies of dictatorships from around the world, all of whom are backed by the US. We argue that, in so doing, the author provides compelling evidence to refute the view that the US stands in opposition to dictators and the nations they control. The author notes the value of providing corroboratory evidence in the form of lists. It is always very difficult to shift opinion from its established position. A weight of evidence is usually required, especially when the strength of vested interests is extremely high.

In the concluding sections, the author highlights the US government’s highly unconventional behaviour in arming and training overseas militaries. He provides strong statistical evidence for his claim that the US is, by far, the leading international supplier of weapons, responsible for widespread war-related deaths across the globe and the operator of 95% of the world’s military bases located outside their controlling nation.

The author discusses how the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011 highlighted the contradictory stance of US; it publicly claimed to support the forces pushing for increased democracy but, in reality, its actions had provided important props for the regimes led by the dictators attacked by the protest movements. He develops the line of argument in a highly convincing manner by pointing to the fact that the US has a track record of supporting dictatorships for long periods – most often militarily – and then turning against them once it feels its interests have changed. He points to US support of Saddam Hussein, Noriega and Assad by way of examples and goes on to provide numerous other instances, such as Rafael Trujillo, Francisco Franco, Francoise Duvalier, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Fulgencio Batista, and the Shah of Iran.

Rhetoric vs reality

We argue that Swanson hits the nail on the head when he notes:

‘If U.S. support for dictators seems to be at odds with U.S. rhetoric about spreading democracy, part of the explanation for that may lie in the use of “democracy” as a code word for “our side” regardless of any connection to actual democracy or representative government or respect for human rights’ (p.88).

He then argues that if the enemy is not actually,

‘tyranny but rather the Soviet Union or Communism or Terrorism or Islam or Socialism or China or Iran or Russia, and if anything done in the name of defeating the enemy is labelled “pro-democracy,” then plenty of so-called democracy spreading can involve supporting dictatorships and all kinds of other equally oppressive governments’ (p.88).

In his conclusion to this part of the work, the author also stresses the importance of finance, again backed up by numerous examples, in particular, the significant extent of foreign funding of the think tanks which are highly influential on the shaping of US policy.

The final section of the book deals with the pressing and challenging issue of how US support for dictatorships might be ended. Swanson points to ‘The Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act, H.R. 5880, 140’, introduced by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Swanson notes that if the bill became law it would prevent the US government from providing a wide range of support to the world’s most oppressive governments. It is hard to disagree with the sentiment expressed by author at the end of his book:

‘The world desperately needs to take control of its governments away from tyrants and executioners. The United States desperately needs to shift its own priorities from out-of-control militarism and weapons dealing to peaceful enterprises. Such a move would be superior morally, environmentally, economically, and in terms of the impact on prospects for human survival’ (p.91).

The author produces a highly convincing falsification of the argument that the US always fights on the side of democracy, arguing instead that whether a state (or leader) is viewed as pro-US or anti-US is the key question (a viewpoint that can, and frequently does, change). The nature of the foreign government itself is not the driver of intervention.

As abroad, so at home

Swanson thus highlights the deeply contradictory approach to foreign policy and looking deeper, we argue that contrasts are equally apparent in domestic policy. According to popular (American) opinion, freedom is the foundation on which the USA is built. But in the application of this supposedly fundamental principle the American government is worryingly selective – in domestic as well as foreign policy. American citizens’ First Amendment freedom of speech and peaceful assembly have in many cases been ignored by their own government when inconvenient to the latter’s interests.

Rarely has this been more apparent than in the response to ongoing Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. Despite clear First Amendment protection, many peaceful protests have been repressed by force. One June 1^stincident is emblematic, in which police used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades to clear Lafayette Square of peaceful protestors to allow President Trump a photo-op outside St John’s church (Parker et al 2020). Meanwhile in a White House speech, the president proclaimed himself an ‘ally of all peaceful protesters’ – an ally, it seems, who condones the use of entirely non-peaceful methods to shut down free speech.

Interestingly, similar repression of protest has been unequivocally condemned when another country is the perpetrator. In a May 2020 tweet, Trump urged the Iranian government not to use violence against protestors and to ‘let reporters roam free’. Such a principled defence of the importance of a free press has not, however, led the president to acknowledge or condemn the numerous police attacks on journalists covering the Black Lives Matter protests in the USA (according to U.S Press Freedom Tracker, as of June 15, physical attacks on journalists by police officers number at 57). The root of this inconsistency is not difficult to explain.

Nor, unfortunately, is the disregard for First Amendment freedoms exclusive to the tumultuous Trump presidency, or even to those of Republicans. The Obama administration, for example, saw the 2016 Standing Rock protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Native American land – to which police responded with tear gas, concussion grenades and water cannons in freezing temperatures. President Obama failed to condemn this rampant police violence against peaceful protestors (Colson 2016), a clear case of free speech being repressed by force.

Whilst this current climate of repression is extreme, it is not entirely unprecedented. The US government’s selective approach to the importance of freedom is apparent in its treatment of its own citizens, especially in the realm of protest (Price et al 2020). Ultimately, constitutional rights mean little in practice if they are ignored or outright violated by the government which is supposed to uphold them, and instead decides to enact policy which flies in the face of democracy.

At the beginning of the work the author notes,

‘The purpose of this short book is to make people aware that U.S. militarism supports dictatorships, toward the end of opening up minds to the possibility of questioning militarism’ (p.11).

We argue that he is surely successful in achieving this goal. Importantly, he does so whilst highlighting the deep contradictions involved in US foreign policy; contradictions which we argue above are also apparent in domestic policy. US policy is thus ‘consistently inconsistent’. It is presented as being fundamentally based upon the defence of freedom and democracy whereas, in practice, it is founded upon following the interests of the US government and the powerful pressure groups behind the US establishment.

We believe that Swanson’s book makes a significant contribution to the debate; he backs up all his arguments with highly persuasive evidence; evidence that we argue should be enough to convince the open-minded reader of the validity of his analysis. We heartily recommend this work to all those interested in understanding the driving forces that lie behind the conduct of US foreign policy.

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Sources

Colson, N., ‘Obama’s Cowardly Silence on Standing Rock’, Socialist Worker December 1, 2016.

Freedom House, ‘Countries and Territories’.

Parker, A., Dawsey, J. and Tan, R., ‘Inside the push to tear-gas protesters ahead of a Trump photo op’, Washington Post June 2, 2020.

Price, M., Smoot, H., Clasen-Kelly, F. and Deppen, L. (2020), ‘“None of us can be proud.” Mayor slams CMPD. SBI to review chemical agent use at protest,’ Charlotte Observer June 3.

Whitney, R., ‘US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World’s Dictatorships,’ Truthout, September 23, 2017.

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to trigger the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair. 

Michel Chossudovsky interviews Economist and Geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig on the Global Research Report.

“Imagine, you are living in a world that you are told is a democracy – and you may even believe it – but in fact your life and fate is in the hands of a few ultra-rich, ultra-powerful and ultra-inhuman oligarchs. They may be called Deep State, or simply the Beast, or anything else obscure or untraceable – it doesn’t matter. They are less than the 0.0001%.” (Peter Koenig, July 2020)

The COVID-19 Lockdown. Economic and Social Impacts

 

In June 2019, the small landlocked nation of Moldova found itself in a life or death struggle between two opposing futures: Oligarchs like the notorious Vladimir Plahotniuc had worked diligently for years to bring this nation into the hull of the collapsing NATO-EU Titanic while nationalists sought to re-align Moldova’s future with the new emerging Multipolar Alliance led by China and Russia.

The greatest moment of decision (until now) occurred in June 2019 when elections resulted in a three-way split between a pro-Russian Socialist Party, the pro-EU ACUM and another pro-western Democratic Party run by the arch Moldavian kleptocrat Vladimir Plahotniuc.

Vlad Plahotniuc: Deep State Tool and Force of Regime Change

A renowned oligarch whom by all accounts is known as the richest man in Moldova, Plahotniuc was not only a media and advertising mogul controlling the vast majority of the news, and entertainment of the small nation, but was also a power in Moldova’s banking, hotel and services industry who, with the support of Victoria Nuland, took charge of the pro-EU Democratic Party from December 2016. Although his highest political office was Deputy Speaker of Parliament, it was known by all, that Plahotniuc was the hidden hand controlling the state and aspired to make that power official by becoming Prime Minister.

During the dark days of the Obama era, Plahotniuc interfaced closely with Asif Chaudhry (U.S. Ambassador to Moldova from 2008-2011) who acted as power broker and mediator during the tumultuous period of change that saw the elimination of the pro-Russian Communist Party and the rise of the pro-Euro Integration movement under the Democratic Party in the wake of the 2009 “Twitter Revolution” (sometimes called the “revolution of Twits”). This crisis saw a near color revolution as 30 000 Jacobin youth in Chisinau aspired to overthrow the government by declaring the recent elections to be fraudulent. The slogans shouted by the mob included “we want Europe”, “we are Romanians” and “down with Communism”. Romania had joined NATO in 2004 and the movement to absorb Moldova into Romania was supported by many in the west wishing to see NATO’s unabated growth.

Beginning in April 7, 2009, these mobs took over (and set fire to) government buildings and replaced Moldovan flags with Romanian and European Union flags. While this effort was quashed by crackdowns by police, a taste of the potential for regime change was felt by all and then-President Vladimir Voronin called it a “coup d’etat”.

In hindsight, we can observe the growth of the media empire under the control of Plahotniuc and the vast investments into “democracy building” by the National Endowment of Democracy to get a sense of the causal hand behind these events, though at the time the culprits never came to light.

One thing is clear: The American State Department’s hand pervaded this story as Ambassador Chaudhry (connected closely to Victoria Nuland according to Wikileaks emails), was a major power broker and brags that his work in carrying out Moldovan democracy reforms during this time was the most rewarding experience of his career.

In the wake of this attempted coup, three pro-western opposition parties created the Alliance for European Integration winning 53 seats and pushing out the Communist Party from power.

By 2014, the long-sought for EU association agreements were signed by Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine with NATO’s bureaucrats salivating at the prospect of assimilating all three. At this time, Ukraine’s pro-Russian government had just fallen to its own color revolution and the new regime of Yatseniuk was calling for speedy NATO entry. Even though its 1994 Constitution prevented it, Moldova was already a part of the NATO Partnership for Peace Program and had participated in NATO’s Kosovo Force since 2014. A change in Constitution to permit for NATO entry by way of Euro integration (or total regime change) was not a huge stretch of the imagination at this point.

During this time high level Obama-era regime change agents like Joe Biden and John McCain made stops in Moldova and encouraged speedy western integration, meeting with kleptocrats like Plahotniuc and celebrating the new age of western “liberalism” that would transform the eastern bloc.

With such a powerful machine supporting them, Plahotniuc and other local Moldovan kleptocrats had every reason to feel as though they had the power of gods. The lords of high finance of London and Wall Street had ensured their unchallenged success for years, and with Moldova’s full integration into the NATO/EU cage nothing would hold them back… but with this hubris came a fair dose of sloppiness.

“The Theft of the Century” and Its Aftermath

Working closely with Israeli-Moldovan businessman Ilan Shor and fellow oligarchs Vyacheslav Platon and Vlad Filat, Plahotniuc carried out a blatant “theft of the century” to the tune of $1 billion stolen from Moldova (representing 1/8^th of the nation’s GDP) between 2011-2014. The model was simple and based on the use of offshore shell companies which laundered money and received fraudulent loans issued by the Moldovan Central Bank. That bank had itself taken over three major financial institutions (the Banca de Economii, Unibank and Banca Sociala) which extended fraudulent loans and businesses controlled by Ilan Shor and others within Plahotniuc’s network to the tune of $1 billion. $100 million were used directly by Plahotniuc to purchase, banks, businesses, hotels and other luxury real estate around Europe and Moldova.

Even though the facts of this fraud could not long be kept secret, Plahotniuc’s control on the levers of justice (especially the Constitutional Court which is packed with his partisans) ensured that little could be done to bring the oligarch to justice.

Vlad Filat was sacrificed by his former partner in 2016 and given 3 years in prison for bribes and participation in the heist while Ilan Shor was charged with laundering and embezzlement in abstentia though never saw a jail cell. In April 2017, Vyacheslav Platon was found guilty and given 18 years in prison but Plahotniuc never faced a single charge in Moldova. Things were a bit different elsewhere however and in 2017, Moscow’s Basmanny Court found the oligarch guilty of attempted murder.

In 2019, a Moscow court found Plahotniuc guilty of drug trafficking and money laundering and he was also charged with 28 counts of smuggling and sales of drugs (mostly hashish from North Africa)- and to these charges Plahotniuc obviously cried “Russian fantasies and fake news”.

During the hot phase of blowback during 2016, Plahotniuc was a guest of the pro-NATO Atlantic Council in Washington where he met with Victoria Nuland and other members of the Obama regime change party. The ‘Atlantic Council Moldova Program’ was also advancing a steady stream of pro-NATO propaganda funded by Jashi’s Trans Oil Group (on whose board sat former U.S. Ambassador Chaudhry).

Upon his return from America, Plahotniuc speedily moved to take full control of the Democratic Party.

In spite of his control of mass media, news of this “theft of the century” spread widely, and in an impoverished nation ranked lowest on the European Union poverty index where nearly 50% of the male population lives and works abroad as cheap labor, public tolerance for Plahotniuc’s sank to new lows with a 96% disapproval rating. The Democratic Party machine fell from favor and the pro-Russian Socialist Party again took power under Igor Dodon.

President Dodon wasted no time accelerating Moldova’s observer status in the Eurasian Economic Union which was made official on March 14, 2018 when Dodon called for a pro-Europe and pro-Russia policy (a blasphemy for some technocrats). At this time, Putin laid out the philosophy of EU-EAEU cooperation saying: “The Eurasian Union will be built on universal integration principles as an integral part of a harmonious community of economies from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”

In a February 2020 interview, Dodon echoed this orientation stating: “I believe in a big Europe, from Lisbon to Vladivostok. It was Charles de Gaulle who came up with this idea and its repeated often by various world leaders. I think this is the only solution to make Europe stronger.”

This had to be stopped.

From 2017-2019, the Plahotniuk apparatus licked its wounds, regrouped, and waited for the right moment to strike… and on June 7, 2019 that moment came.

Plahotniuc Attacks and Trips

Three months had passed since the February 2019 elections and a government had not yet formed. The three opposing parties that each won over 20% of the votes included Plahotniuc Democratic Party, the pro-EU ACUM party of PM Maia Sandu and the Socialist Party of Igor Dodon. Sandu’s role as a former World Bank executive didn’t bode well, but luckily her recognition that an alliance with Plahotniuc was political suicide kept her from making a devils pact and at the last minute chose to form a coalition government with Dodon in defense of the nation’s true interests where both parties united in the common cause to flush the swamp of oligarchs.

This alliance was arranged at the same moment that Plahotniuc’s Constitutional Court deemed the February elections invalid (party leaders have 3 months to shape a new government after elections). The court demanded that Dodon be deposed as President (for failing to call new elections), and the new coalition government declared null and void. Former PM Pavel Filip refused to recognize the new government calling it illegal and demanding a new election while Plahotniuc waited with bated breath for his moment to take over.

From June 7-15^th a dual power struggle erupted and with the highest court in the land backing regime change, it wasn’t looking good. The Democrats staged demonstrations and blocked state buildings for days. Everything was in place for a coup.

The only missing ingredient was the expected American support that had always been there for Plahotniuk and the Trans Oil Machine which ran Moldova for decades.

Then something unexpected happened.

On June 15, 2019 Moldova’s Democratic Party officially announced that their leader had left the country to visit family “for a couple of days”. Over a year later, the oligarch still has not returned knowing that to do so could mean decades in a Moldovan (and possibly even Russian) prison.

Although there are many facets to this plot twist that are still hidden from public view, TASS’s coverage on June 15 made clear that the Democratic Party “leaders had never stopped to hope for Washington’s support in the confrontation with the President, parliament and Sandhu cabinet, but received none.”

U.S. Ambassador Horgan revealed in December 2019 that Plahotniuc’s departure was the result of his news that the USA would not help him.

Without this support, all hope was lost.

Within a month PM Sandu described the anti-corruption crackdown underway saying: “We are in the process of liberating this captured state. The servants of the Plahotniuc regime are leaving, one after the other.” Although Plahotniuc may have been a corrupt beast, he was no dummy and recognized the Transparency International report published in June 2019 outlining his sordid role in the $1 billion bank theft was not going to disappear.

By August 2019, a Russian arrest warrant was unveiled after Plahotniuc was tried in abstentia in Moscow for “creating and participating in criminal groups” and “carrying out illegal transactions in foreign currencies and rubles using fake documents”- referring to $569 million scheme that turned Moldova into a laundromat using the oligarch’s offshore shell companies. It was at this time that the oligarch applied officially for asylum in the USA.

As Sandu was replaced by PM Igor Chicu in November 2019, the cleaning of the swamp continued in full force with the new Prosecutor General Alexandru Stoianoglo tasked with bringing Plahotniuc to justice. In May 2020, Moldovan prosecutors charged Plahotniuc again and sought extradition from the USA where he has been holed up illegally in Florida.

Why do I say “illegally”?

Because on January 9, 2020, the USA State Department annulled his (and his family’s) VISA, with Pompeo declaring in a public statement four days later:

 “Today, I am designating former Moldovan official and oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc due to his involvement in significant corruption. In his official capacity, Plahotniuc was involved in corrupt acts that undermined the rule of law and severely compromised the independence of democratic institutions in Moldova… Once the Secretary of State designates officials of foreign governments for their involvement, directly or indirectly, in significant corruption, those individuals and their immediate family members are ineligible for visas to the United States.”

The fearful oligarch has taken the unprecedented decision to launch a last Hail Mary effort to save his skin by suing the U.S. State Department on June 11 2020 saying “this action arises out of an unlawful and unjustified designation as ‘undesirable’ entered against Vladimir Plahotniuk and his immediate family members by the State Department” adding without a shred of evidence that Putin even attempted to kill him using Albanian hitmen on several occasions.

The question now remains:

Who is protecting Plahotniuc?

It is obvious that the Obama-era deep state that ran Moldova’s 2009-2016 EU/NATO integration insanity is no longer the sole force driving U.S. foreign policy and a fight between this apparatus and the Trump presidency has been waging for four years. Plahotniuc’s current status in Florida, in spite of an undesirable status and with no VISA indicates powerful forces are protecting him. Both in America and abroad alike.

The fact that within the same Florida luxury complex that Plahotniuc has been seen living in, also contains a $2.2 million condo owned by Trans Oil executive Dmitriy Kurilo should be taken seriously. The fact that Kurilo’s purchase was carried out by Trans Oil president Vaja Jhashi to whom Kurilo gave powers of attorney should also be considered. The connection of these figures to former U.S. Ambassador Asif Chaudhry who sits on Trans Oil’s board of directors and last served as the architect of Obama’s “Asia Pivot” while serving as advisor to the Chief of the NAVY in the Pentagon from 2011-2014 should also not be ignored. Lastly the fact that the Trans Oil group’s monopoly over Moldovan agriculture was made possible by multimillion-dollar U.S. government loans granted to the company while Chaudhry was the American Ambassador to Moldova is worth holding in mind.

We already know there are many two faced figures within the Trump presidency who project one patriotic face publicly yet who have actively worked against Trump’s oft-stated desires to have “good relations with Russia and China”, rebuild American manufacturing and end the “forever wars”. Bolton and Bannon were two of them, but Pompeo himself is another. Even former director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell had worked for Plahotniuc on various occasions.

Then there is the matter of international deep state support. For example, France’s Interpol has stalled repeatedly from issuing an international arrest warrant even though both Russian and Moldovan governments have made legitimate requests. Why this resistance? Even the European Parliament has passed a resolution in 2018 calling Moldova “a state captured by oligarchic interests”- making Interpol’s resistance ever more odd.

So where does Moldova go from here?

Regardless of whether or not Plahotniuc is extradited sooner or later, the game is most certainly up, and beginning in late 2019, Moldova began to reclaim its ancient heritage as a keystone in China’s East-West Silk Road as two major infrastructure deals worth $400 million were signed with China, including two major highways: One encircling Chisinau and the other connecting to Ukraine.

President Dodon beautifully expressed his understanding of this process in March 2020 saying:

“We should acknowledge that this pandemic has shown ‘who is who,’ who is a real friend and who will be always by our side in need, even if they also face hard times… I will cite as an example Russia and China here because these were the first countries that responded to our request.”

“We enjoy strategic partnership and strategic dialogue at the levels of presidents, prime ministers, and parliament speakers… I think one of the major achievements is that we have got rid of the oligarch regime,” he said. “An important result is that we started carrying out a balanced foreign policy. Even against the background of those deals signed with the European Union, we managed to obtain an observer status in the Eurasian Economic Union.”

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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review.

Featured image is from SCF

Israel just bombed Iran. And no one noticed.

On July 2, 2020, two explosions erupted in Iran, and both seem to have been ignited by Israel. Neither explosion attracted much reporting, and what reporting there has been remains thin and confused.

The first report came out on the afternoon of July 3. The Jerusalem Post picked up a story from Kuwait’s Al-Jarida, reporting that a fire had broken out at Iran’s civilian Natanz nuclear enrichment site. The Kuwaiti report says that an unnamed senior source informed them that the fire was caused by an Israeli cyber attack. They suggest that Iran will need about two months to recover from the attack. Iranian officials have since confirmed that, though none of the underground centrifuges were damaged, the above ground damage is extensive, and that their centrifuge program has been substantially set back.

The second attack exploded near Parchin, at a site claimed to be a missile production facility. Citing the same Kuwaiti paper, The Times of Israel attributed the Parchin explosion to missiles dropped by Israeli F-35 stealth fighters.

The Parchin story has drawn little further attention and remains undeveloped, but the Natanz story has confusingly evolved. Though unnamed Iranian officials seemed at first to side with the cyber attack theory, some experts sided with a different theory: that the Natanz explosion was not a cyber attack but an actual, bolder physical attack. In a rare piece of mainstream reporting, The New York Timesseems to confirm the physical attack theory. Relying on a “Middle Eastern intelligence official with knowledge of the episode,” the Times reports that the Natanz nuclear complex was not hit by a cyber attack, as it has been previously, but by a “powerful bomb.” The intelligence official added that “Israel was responsible for the attack.” The Times report supports the intelligence source by adding that a “member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who was briefed on the matter also said an explosive was used.” According to the Revolutionary Guards source, it is likely that someone carried the bomb into the building.

SATELLITE IMAGES OF NATANZ NUCLEAR PLANT. PICS: GOOGLE (BEFORE) AND IRAN INTERNATIONAL (AFTER) (IMAGES VIA SKY NEWS)

These two attacks seem to add dropping missiles from the sky and walking bombs in on the ground to Israel’s resume of acts of war on Iran. And the resume is long.

Cyber Attacks

Though Israel did not hit the Natanz facility with a cyber attack this time, it has hit it with a serious cyber attack in the past. In the past operation, Israel partnered with the United States, specifically Israel’s secret military unit 8200 partnered with the American CIA and NSA.

When a massive virus called Flame was injected into Iranian computers, it mapped and monitored the system of Iranian computers and sent intelligence back that was used to prepare for cyber war campaigns against Iran. Officials have confirmed that Flame is one part of a joint project of the CIA, NSA and unit 8200.

One of the cyber wars that Flame prepared the way for is the now famous Stuxnet. Stuxnet was a computer virus that infected Iran’s centrifuges and sent them spinning wildly out of control before playing back previously recorded tapes of normal operations that plant operators watched unsuspectingly while the centrifuges spun faster and faster until they literally tore themselves apart. The New York Times says that, according to intelligence and military experts, the Dimona nuclear complex in Israel was the testing ground for the virus. There are nuclear centrifuges in Dimona that are virtually identical to Iran’s, making it a perfect model to test the effectiveness of the virus. Stuxnet seems to have wiped out about 20% of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.

So that puts missile attacks, bomb attacks and cyber attacks on the Israeli resume of acts of war on Iran. And the cyber attack was an act of war. A NATO study has admitted that Stuxnet qualified as an “illegal act of force.” According to Stephen Cohen, after the U.S. accused Russia of hacking computers, NATO issued a statement saying that “hacking a member state might now be regarded as war against the entire military alliance, requiring military retaliation.”

Assassinations

But the resume is nowhere near exhausted. It also includes assassination, multiple assassinations. On January 12, 2010, Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was killed when a remote-control bomb planted on a motorcycle detonated next to his car. The investigation undertaken by Iranian security forces led to the arrest of ten Iranians who were accused of working for the Israeli Mossad. One of them, Jamali Fashi, who had a computer and cell phones that tied him both to Mossad in general and to the assassinations specifically, confessed to being recruited and trained by Mossad to assassinate Ali-Mohammadi.

In November 2010, Majid Shahriyari, was killed when motorcycle riders attached a magnetized bomb to his car. On the same day, assassins tried to kill Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani in the same way but failed when he noticed the suspicious motorcyclists and jumped out of his car. Also a scientist, Abbasi-Davani was named head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Association a few months later. He says that British spies shadowed him to gather information ahead of the failed assassination attempt.

The Iranian physicist and nuclear scientist Darioush Rezainejad was killed when two gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on him while he was entering his garage. His wife was also wounded. This was the fourth consecutive assassination or attempted assassination employing motorcyclists. According to the IAEA, Rezainejad played a key role in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has blamed the United States, Britain and Israel for his assassination. And “a source in Israel’s intelligence community” told Germany’s Der Spiegal that Mossad was behind the assassination of Rezainejad.

In January 11, 2012, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a scientist involved in purchasing equipment for Iran’s nuclear program, was assassinated when a motorcycle placed a magnetized bomb on the roof of his moving car. Thirteen people found to be working for an Israeli spy ring were arrested.

A fifth important player in the Iranian nuclear game was killed in November when a massive explosion at the military arms depot that houses Iran’s long-range Shahab missiles killed seventeen and wounded fifteen more. Included in the dead was Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a pioneer in Iranian missile development. An earlier explosion occurred at a Shahab missile base in October of 2010. Time Magazine revealed in November 2011 that a western intelligence source says that Mossad is behind the explosion.

Two senior officials in the Obama administration revealed to NBC news that the assassinations were carried out by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that spent many years on America’s terrorist list. They also confirm that the MEK was being financed, armed and trained by the Israeli Mossad and that the assassinations were carried out with the awareness of the Obama administration. The Americans, too, have secretly trained and supported the MEK.

Qassem Suleimani

The American assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani drew tons of media attention. But Israel’s role in the assassination did not. According to an “Israeli army officer with knowledge of Israeli military assessments,” the assassination of Suleimani “did not come as a surprise” because, according to Israeli military and diplomatic analysts, “Israel had advance notice of the U.S. plan.” Channel 13’s Barak Ravid reported that “the United States informed Israel about this operation in Iraq, apparently a few days ago.” Netanyahu was the only American ally to know about the operation, having been informed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

But Israel did more than know about it. Israel participated in it. “Israeli intelligence was instrumental” in the assassination. Suleimani was killed in Baghdad when his vehicle was struck by American hellfire missiles. Israeli intelligence “confirmed and verified” informants’ information tipping the U.S. off to which plane Suleimani was on.

In a report published on July 7, 2020, U.N. expert on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, concluded that the assassination was “unlawful” and that it was an “arbitrary killing” that was in violation of the U.N. charter.

That adds assassinations and political assassinations to the resume.

Economic Warfare and Isolation

The New York Times article that reports that the Natanz attack was actually a bomb adds that the sneaking of the bomb into the enrichment facility would not be the first time Israel has been able “to strike in the heart of Iran.” They add Mossad’s 2018 breaking into a secret nuclear archive in Tehran to the list of Israeli attacks in Iran. That would add another violation of Iranian territory and act of aggression to the Israeli resume if it were true. But, it’s not true.

Though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the stolen archival documentation proved that “Iran lied, big time, after signing the nuclear deal in 2015,” it was Netanyahu who was lying.  Olli Heinonen, the chief inspector of the IAEA at the time of the JCPOA negotiations – and not someone who was in any way soft on Iran – said that the IAEA first saw the “significant new” evidence that Netanyahu revealed thirteen years earlier in 2005. Watching Netanyahu’s revelation, Heinonen could only say, “I just saw a lot of pictures I had seen before.” Those old pictures had been carefully discredited by many experts, including Gareth Porter in Manufactured Crisis. The IAEA was finished with them by December of 2015. The day after Netanyahu’s revelation, the IAEA said that there was “no credible indications” of Iran working on a nuclear weapons program for several years before the JCPOA. As Gareth Porter has shown in many places, including The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis, the archival documents were contaminated by inaccuracies that clearly revealed that they were fabrications.

Nonetheless, when Donald Trump illegally withdrew from the JCPOA Iranian nuclear agreement, he boasted that Netanyahu’s revelation “showed that I’ve been 100 percent right.” And, citing only Netanyahu’s presentation as evidence, he pulled out of the agreement, locked Iran back into isolation and put it under economic siege: an act of economic warfare.

Though Israel did not really physically attack Iran by breaking into the Tehran warehouse, the fabrication and sleight of hand propaganda war epitomized Israel’s crucial role in massaging and pushing Trump into a maximum pressure economic war on Iran.

So, although The New York Times was wrong, it was right. The illusory event did not add another physical act of war to Israel’s resume. It added another new kind of war to the resume: missile attacks, bomb attacks, cyber attacks, assassinations, political assassinations and, now, economic warfare. How many different ways can Israel wage war on Iran before it is transparent that Israel is waging war on Iran?

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A human being is by nature a social being, related to the community of fellow human beings, and has a natural inclination for the good. According to Thomas Aquinas this is “written in his heart” by the eternal law (lex aeterna). It helps him to better recognize what is right in nature. A human being is also autonomous and thus able to see himself as a being of freedom and to act from this freedom. This enables him to refuse obedience to “authorities”. The free human being has the power to refuse (Adorno).

Equipped with these natural abilities, we humans should be able to stand up to a small group of ultra-rich and ultra-inhuman cerberus. They want to sell us the planned New World Order (NWO), which is in reality a satanic one, euphemistically as technical progress and “4th Industrial Revolution”. In the past, these irresponsible psychopaths have instructed the governments of the world to let us citizens look briefly into the abyss by means of gigantic crimes. Since they revealed their diabolical agenda, we were able to get to know them – and are not afraid of them (anymore).

“They’re not robbing a bank, they’re going to be bank president”

If you comb through the biographies of the so-called elite of this world from politics, economy, military and partly also from science and art, this reads in places like pure “psychopathology”, the doctrine of pathological changes in the life of the soul. The Canadian criminal psychologist and university professor emeritus Robert D. Hare lists a total of 20 criteria in his Psychopathology Checklist (PCL-R). Here is a small selection:

Tricky eloquent dazzlers with superficial charm, considerably exaggerated self-esteem, pathological lying, fraudulent manipulative behavior, lack of remorse or guilt, emotional coldness, lack of empathy, unwillingness and ability to take responsibility for one’s own actions, parasitic lifestyle, etc., etc. (1)

According to Wikipedia, people with this personality disorder are not only overrepresented among criminals and in prisons, but also in higher hierarchical levels, about six times in leadership positions. For this reason, the founder of psychopathology research said: “They’re not robbing a bank, they’re going to be bank president.” (2)

“Strength does not come from physical ability. It comes from an indomitable will.”

The Indian lawyer, moral teacher and pacifist Mahatma Gandhi, from whom the quote originates, was able to show the world in the last century what a person with an unbending will can achieve. The Indian independence movement, of which he was the spiritual and political leader, took up his ideas of non-violent action and civil disobedience and in August 1947 reached the end of British colonial rule over India. Why should we, the citizens of today, not succeed in this?

On the role of the individual in a situation perceived as hopeless, the writer and philosopher Albert Camus wrote in a “Letter to a Desperate Man” shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War:

“Every human being has a more or less large sphere of influence. (…). You can convince ten, twenty, thirty people that this war was not and is not inevitable, that not all means have been tried to stop it, that one must say it, write it if possible, shout it out if necessary! These ten or thirty people will pass it on to ten others, who in turn will pass it on. If you are held back by inertia, well, start again with others.“ 3)

So we have something in hand. A few months ago, when the WHO declared a worldwide epidemic (pandemic), most people initially became very afraid and reacted with a reflex of obedience, especially since this feeling of fear was stirred up by totalitarian governments from outside (“The diabolical “game” with fear as an instrument of domination”) (4). But in the meantime the cerberus of the New World Order (NWO) have revealed their diabolical agenda. Thus, what is going on in the world right now is no longer an indefinite threat, but quite obviously the agenda of nefarious psychopaths.

This means that we citizens no longer have to be afraid, but can do everything we can to ensure that these human parasites will not succeed with their planned “scientific dictatorship” (Huxley) and their “Green New Deal”, this so-called ecological turn of industrial society or 4th Industrial Revolution.

It is a great joy to observe how relatives, good friends and other fellow citizens are becoming more and more sensitive and are waking up more and more, because they want to look their children and their children’s children openly and without shame in the eyes, when one day they will ask them what role they played in these difficult and obscure times.

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This article was originally published on NRhZ-ONLINE.

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

(1) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Hare

(2) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathie

(3) Marin, L. (ed.) (2013). Albert Camus – Libertarian writings (1948-1960). Hamburg, p. 273

(4) http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26792&css and https://www.globalresearch.ca/diabolical-game-fear-instrument-domination/5712556

Belarus blamed Russia last month for stoking Color Revolution unrest ahead of its presidential election in early August, but even though this accusation is completely false, it still risks being instrumentalized as part of a perception management plot to convince its largely Russophilic population to accept the country’s accelerated pivot towards the West (deceptively disguised as a “balancing” act) in the predictable event that President Lukashenko wins another term in office.

The Syrian government seems to be deploying Pantsir-S1 air defense systems to Libya to assist forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in their battle against the Turkish-controlled Government of National Accord.

An unusual Pantisr-S1 air defense system was for the first time spotted in Libya last week, when local activists released a video of a Libyan National Army convoy moving towards the port city of Sirte besieged by Turkish-led forces.

A spokesman for the GNA forces in the region, Brig. Abdul Hadi Draa, also said that the Pantsir-S1 systems and other weapons were deployed at the Sirte airport on July 11. One of the convoys moving towards the airport included the Pantsir-S1 system on the unusual KAMAZ-6560 8×8 chassis. Previously, all the Pantsir-S1 systems operated by the LNA were based on the German MAN SX 45 8×8 chassis. This variant was supplied by Russia to the UAE, which later supplied systems to the LNA.

Other discriminant marks of the filmed Pantsir-S1 were a desert yellow paint and the older passive electronically scanned array search radar. The only country in the Middle East that operates Pantsir-S1 systems with such specifications and supports the Libyan National Army is Syria.

Earlier in 2020, Syria officially established diplomatic ties with the House of Representatives, a democratically elected body that supports the Libyan National Army and manages the daily social and economic life in the territories controlled by it.

Damascus also sees the Libyan National Army and the House of Representatives as a natural ally because they also fight against the occupation of their country by Turkey.

In the last few weeks, Syrian Il-76 cargo planes made several unusual flights between Damascus International Airport and the al-Khadim Air Base in northeast Libya. The base is known to be hosting service members of the UAE that are involved in the assist and advice mission to support Haftar’s forces. The Pantsir-S1 system spotted on the road to Sirte may have been shipped from Syria to Libya during one of these flights.

At the same time, the Syrian government currently have good relations with Egypt, the UAE – the main backers of the Libyan National Army, and obviously with Russia – the producer of Pantsir-S1 systems and the country that provides background diplomatic support to the UAE-Egypt bloc in the conflict.

The Syrian Air Defense Forces operate dozens of Pantsir-S1 systems. Most of the Syrian systems are equipped with the advanced active electronically scanned array search radar. Therefore, Damascus may have opted to sell a part of its older systems to Haftar.

If this is confirmed, this move will likely allow Syria to improve its relations with the Libyan National Army, the UAE and Egypt, complicate Turkish plans to capture Srite, and last but not least strengthen the Syrian regional positions, which were significantly undermined by the ongoing war inside the country.

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For the past several years, the war between Ukraine and the breakaway and still-unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic has settled into a tense routine of attritional trench warfare, punctuated by sniping, clashes between patrols, small-scale raids, offensive minelaying, and ambushes using anti-tank guided missiles. There have been few operations by units larger than company. The front line has remained almost entirely unchanged. At the same time, both sides have been preparing for the possible next round of high-intensity warfare. What would happen if the fighting were to break out again?

That particular prediction is made more difficult by the very fact of the long lull in high-intensity fighting during which both sides have undergone a certain degree of transformation which remains relatively unknown to the other party. Both sides have seen certain material improvements, though apparently nothing dramatic.

Ukraine’s armored vehicle fleet still relies on the same, but now even more worn out vehicles it went to war with in 2014. The planned re-equipment with the Oplot MBT never took place, and even the upgraded T-64BU Bulat was found to be flawed. Therefore the elderly T-64BV remains the main tank of Ukraine’s forces. Light armored vehicle fleet has seen some improvement thanks to domestic production and deliveries from former Warsaw Pact member states. If there is one area where Ukraine’s military may have made a major step forward, it is the artillery, using the large store of inactive weapons for Soviet-era reserve forces. However, artillery munition production continues to be a problem.

While the number of Ukraine’s brigades has grown, the military experiences major problems with recruitment and retention, meaning that many of these brigades have the strength of a reinforced combined arms battalion.

On Novorossia’s side the situation is hardly different. DPR and LPR units continue to use the same types of equipment they used during the campaigns of five years ago. The numeric strength does not appear to have changed much, either, and here too recruitment and retention remains a problem.

The other factor making predictions difficult is the level of morale of these two forces that have been bogged down in an apparently endless war that is beyond their power to finish. The combination of trench warfare boredom and terror means it is debilitating to the units’ morale and proficiency if they are forced to remain in the trenches for too long. While the most offensive-capable forces are kept out of the trenches as mobile reserves, they too can only maintain their state of alert for so long before losing their edge.

Paradoxically, this state of affairs give an advantage to the side that intends to go on the offensive, because the preparations for the attack and associated training would imbue the troops with the hope that, after the next big push, the war will finally be over. At the same time, both sides know such an offensive would be an exceedingly risky proposition, because if it fails, it will grind down the attacking side’s most effective units and render the army vulnerable to a counteroffensive to which it would not be able to respond.

Therefore the likelihood of renewed fighting also heavily depends on who actually makes the decision. While local leaders may be cautious enough, foreign ones in distant capitals may have different considerations in mind.

A big unknown hanging over the future of the Donbass is the position of Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee and the potential winner of the November elections. Biden has already played a highly destructive role in the politics of Ukraine and the US-Russia relations. It is Biden that blackmailed Poroshenko into firing the Chief Prosecutor Shokin due to his interest in the corrupt dealings of the Burisma energy company which infamously had Joe’s son Hunter on its board of directors. It is also Biden who held a lengthy, 30-45 minute telephone conversation with Poroshenko on the day MH17 was shot down and promptly came out blaming Russia for it, even as the wreckage was still smoking where it fell. Biden identified himself as a Russia foe much earlier, during the 2012 vice-presidential debates where he positioned himself as being “hard on Putin”, which in retrospect proved to be an early indicator of where the second-term Obama administration foreign policy would go. It also goes without saying Biden is an ardent promoter of the “RussiaGate” effort to paint Donald Trump as a Russian agent/stooge/fellow traveler/useful idiot.

At the same time, Biden’s line against China has hardened as well, which may have implications for US-Russia relations during the probable Biden presidency. As late as May 2019, Biden would describe People’s Republic of China as “they are not bad folks”, adding that “they are not competition to us”, comments that may yet come to haunt him on the campaign trail. However, once the COVID-19 broke out of control in the United States, Biden sought to out-do Trump in his accusations the high US death toll was due to China misleading the United States on the nature of the virus and not allowing US public health officials access to Wuhan and China’s epidemiology labs. Even before that, Hunter Biden resigned from boards of directors of China-based firms. While that might have been motivated by his, and his dad’s, desire to keep a low profile due to the scrutiny Hunter’s business dealings have attracted during Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings, it may also have been preparation for Joe Biden’s anti-China pivot.

The emergence of PRC as Biden’s perceived number one international adversary may mean a desire to improve relations with Russia in the way that Trump, compromised from the start by RussiaGate and without a history of own anti-Russia rhetoric to fall back on, could never deliver. Biden, however, is in the same position as Nixon was in the late 1960s. His earlier anti-Russian rhetoric and actions now make him nearly immune from the same sort of accusations which, even though false, nevertheless effectively stuck to Trump. Nixon’s own enthusiastic participation in McCarthyite witch hunts made it possible for him to do what his Democratic Party predecessor Lyndon Johnson could not: end Vietnam War, engage in arms control treaties with USSR and “go to China” in order to exploit the growing divide between the two main Communist powers. Biden has the political capital necessary to repeat the process: end the war in Afghanistan (something he had proposed already as vice president), enter into arms control treaties with China and…go to Moscow, which is currently seen in Washington in the same way that Beijing was in the 1970s, namely the secondary challenger which needs to be peeled away from the primary one. Moreover, just as in the early 1970s, United States of the 2020s is wracked by a massive internal crisis requiring international retrenchment in order to focus on internal reforms.

But that optimistic scenario remains less likely than the prospect of renewed escalation. Nixon-era United States was not suffering from the hubris of American Exceptionalism. On the contrary, it was a country full of self-doubt and under no illusion concerning the limits of its power. It entered into arms control treaties because it did not feel it could win them. Disasters abroad and at home notwithstanding, the US elite still has not been shaken out of its complacency, and it does appear to sincerely believe it can win a strategic and conventional arms race against both China and Russia. We have not seen any indications so far that Biden intends any moderation in the area of foreign policy or returning to a policy of cooperation with Russia. One should expect that, in the event of Biden victory, Ukraine will launch an offensive against the Donbass shortly after the inauguration, in other words, in February or March of 2020. This offensive would accomplish two objectives for Biden. One, it would establish his hawkish, “patriotic” bona fides, make him look “presidential” in the eyes of the mainstream media and the national security establishment. Secondly, it would allow the US to exert even more pressure on Germany and other EU member states concerning North Stream and other areas of cooperation with Russia.

In order to achieve these goals, particularly the second one, the offensive would not need to overrun the Donbass, in fact, that would not be the aim at all. Rather, the goal would be to force Russian forces to intervene directly in support of the Lugansk and Donetsk republics to justify depicting Russia as the aggressor in the matter. And even if the republics’ militaries can cope with the UAF assault on their own, the sheer level of violence will still make enough headlines to satisfy Biden’s requirements. Whether Zelensky wants that kind of escalation for his country is almost irrelevant. Both he and Biden know very well what the balance of power in that relationship is. Ukraine is a failing state seriously dependent on foreign financial assistance in the form of continual IMF loans, debt rescheduling, favorable trade deals, etc. Biden knew how to use these levers to achieve an important change in Ukraine’s politics that benefited him personally, he will not hesitate to use them again.

Moreover, even if Biden were driven by the Nixonian motives described above, it’s doubtful the foreign policy Deep State would allow him to do that. Biden’s own conversations with Poroshenko no doubt contain great many embarrassing moments whose release would instantly embroil him in a massive scandal. The fact that Donald Trump was impeached solely due to the desire of national security apparatchiks to continue their pet war in Ukraine is indicative of their power to make foreign policy quite independently of their supposed civilian bosses.

The situation is further complicated by the widening rift between the Western neo-liberal world and conservative societies of eastern European countries. This includes a large part of the Ukrainian population which is committed to traditional values. The rapidly deteriorating social and economic situation in Ukraine contributes to a further antagonism of this part of the society towards the forcefully imposed Western ideology and its local agents. Another point of tensions is the existing contradictions between the Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchy) and the artificially assembled pseudo-church organizations in Ukraine. The Moscow Patriarchy is returning to its former position among the Ukrainian faithful. In the event of a further dissatisfaction of the society by the declared pseudo-Western way of development, positions of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchy will strengthen even more.

While a Ukrainian offensive is relatively unlikely in 2020, its probability increases considerably in 2021, particularly in the event of a Biden victory. The conflict in Ukraine has lasted this long mainly because Ukraine’s current sponsors in the West are not interested in ending it, irrespective of what the will of the Ukrainian people might be. The situation will get even worse should the US presidency be taken over by someone with a well-established hostility toward Russia who believes his aims would be better served by another bloody campaign on the Donbass.

The next US administration will employ every option that it has in order to prevent the return of Russian influence in the country. Besides furthering the conflict in eastern Ukraine, it will expand efforts against it in the ideological sphere as well, likely including direct provocations.

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The rage, desperation, and determination which continue to bring tens of thousands of Americans to the streets in protest against racism and injustice hopefully will be just the beginning. They are sick and tired of systemic racism against Black people, of bigotry at the top, crude discrimination, police brutality, a prejudiced criminal justice system, economic disparity, and society’s robbing black people of experiencing real freedom and equality. Hypocritically, white people blame the victims of racism for their own plight, claiming that Black people would do better in life if they were only willing to work harder.

We are now reaping the harvest of the seeds of racism and discrimination—the devaluation of black life. The whole socio-economic and cultural system is lopsided, as it lacks the fundamentals of justice and equality. The pandemic provided the wakeup call that pointed out the ugly tradition of subjugation of the Black community, which sadly did not stop with the end of slavery, but continued in the wanton indifference to their pain and agony, our uncanny negligence, and our failure to understand what they are really experiencing.

Ingrained Racism

The fact that Black people were slaves, and the carefully cultivated myth that slaves were always obedient and happily served their white masters, left an indelible imprint on white people that has lasted generations. They maintain that African Americans were born to servitude and hence they do not qualify for equal treatment, equal opportunity, and equal status.

Films such as D.W. Griffith’s immensely influential Birth of a Nation (1915), which helped to reestablish the Ku Klux Klan, also reinforced the racist stereotype that Black men are unintelligent and an inherent danger to the white community—specifically white women. When on May 25 (the same day George Floyd was killed) a white woman, Amy Cooper, called the cops on a Black man, Christian Cooper, who was birdwatching in Central Park, she was tapping into the long history of that racist trope. To put it plainly, Black lives are simply not valued the way white lives are, as white people consciously or subconsciously view Black man as both sub- and supra-human, threatening, and expendable.

Thus, due to this entrenched prejudice, any activity, however innocent, in which a Black man is engaged in invites suspicion, alarm, and often puts the life of Black men in danger – such as 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot and killed by white residents of the suburban Georgia neighborhood he was jogging in. The mayor of Minneapolis bluntly said “Being black in America should not be a death sentence.” Racism, to be sure, is so ingrained it flows in the veins of many Americans without notice.

The insidious, learned biases pitting white against Black Americans directly leads to the treating of Black Americans as second-class citizens and suppression by white Americans—a necessary ingredient that satisfies their ego and elevates their self-worth. Although the majority of white Americans may not be white supremacists, they certainly hold onto their privileges in all walks of life as they view their relation with Black people (and other people of color) as a zero-sum game, as if a Black man’s gain invariably chips away at a white man’s privileges.

Wanton discrimination

Racial prejudice in America takes a heavy toll on African Americans, which translates to discrimination in all walks of life, including education, job opportunities, professional advancements, and medical treatment, especially maternal health. Black workers receive 22 percent less in salary than whites with the same education and experience; Black women receive even less—34.2 percent. According to a University of Chicago/Duke 2016 study, when factoring in all African American and white men (inclusive of those incarcerated or otherwise out of the workforce), the racial wage gap is the same as it was in the 1950s. Even where racial discrimination should not occur, in medical treatment, when Black patients access medical care, doctors regularly prescribe fewer pain medications and believe Black patients feel less pain than white patients, even among veterans seeking care.

Whereas Black men have served in the military and fought and died alongside white soldiers in every war since the Revolutionary War (when 5,000-8,000 Black soldiers fought against the British), they had to face the revulsion of discrimination and segregation while still serving in the military, hardly recognized for acts of bravery. Indeed, until 1948—after the end of WWII—the US military was entirely segregated. While the top brass of the military, who are mostly white, like to claim that military institutions are ‘colorblind’, the reality is that “racism and discrimination remain extensive problems even in the U.S. military”.

Police brutality

Although police brutality against Black men in particular, which instigated the current protests, is a known phenomenon, police killings of Black men continue unabated. It can and has taken different forms historically – including harassment and intimidation, assault and battery, torture and murder, and even complicity with the KKK. Often, police officers approach any situation connected to a Black man with apprehension and fear. White police officers see threats where they do not exist; they are too quick to draw and as quick to fire to kill.

Here are just a few glaring examples: a Black man taking a nap in a car in a parking lot was shot dead. Another pulled over in a traffic stop was shot and killed in front of his girlfriend and her daughter. A Black man sitting in his home eating ice cream was shot dead by his neighbor, an off-duty white police officer. A Black woman playing video games with her nephew was shot and killed through her window. A Black woman (and EMT) sleeping in her home was shot eight times when officers entered her apartment executing a no-knock warrant.

It is rare for a prosecutor to decide to charge a police officer, especially because they often know each other and have developed close working relationships. Even Internal Affairs divisions of police departments, which ostensibly exist to investigate and report misconduct among officers, have widely conducted sub-standard investigations and failed to identify problem officers who commit wanton abuse.

This cultural pattern enables police officers like Derek Chauvin, Daniel Pantaleo, and Nathan Woodyard to commit the heinous crime of slowly squeezing the life out of George Floyd (MN), Eric Garner (NY), and Elijah McClain (CO). As troubling is the fact that police officers have been known to give false testimony in court, whether to avoid punishment for their own criminal and/or unconstitutional actions, to ensure a conviction, or for other reasons.

Disproportionate incarceration

Although the US judiciary is considered to be just and impartial, in most court hearings race is present albeit it is not spelled out. It is as though Black men inherently have no equal rights and to this day, 230 years since the constitution was written, injustices still exist in both federal and state courts.

Blacks are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites—while they are 13 percent of the total US population, they constitute 40 percent of the total male prison population. The mass incarceration of African Americans in this country has created what sociologist Becky Pettit, citing the novelist Ralph Ellison, calls “invisible men”—the millions of black men in the American penal system. Prison inmates are not included in most data-collecting national surveys, so these men are effectively invisible to social institutions, lawmakers, and most social science research. It is almost as if they do not exist, they do not count; their reality is ignored, neglected, and brushed aside.

A staggering 75 percent of young Black men will be imprisoned at some point in their lives. These statistics can only begin to convey the enormity of the injustice that is being compounded day after day. Pettit’s book reveals that “penal expansion has generated a class of citizens systematically excluded from accounts of the American populace. This exclusion raises doubt about the validity of even the most basic social facts and questions the utility of the data gathered for the design and evaluation of public policy and the data commonly used in social science research. As a consequence, we have lost sight of the full range of the American experience.”

Economic disparity

Economic disparity between white and Black Americans is glaring, and reverberates through generations of Black families. Economic exclusion is the source of inequality. It is caused by a confluence of factors, beginning with nearly 250 years of chattel slavery (during which Black families were torn apart, let alone able to accumulate wealth), to sharecropping and unrestrained lynchings, to 90 years of Jim Crow laws, to redlining neighborhoods on demographic lines. All of these factors are manifested today in hiring decisions, property valuation, mortgage applications, interest charges, and even how credit scores are tabulated. The average white family’s net worth is more than ten times greater than a Black family. Economic disparity, to be sure, is the “mother of all evil” in the lives of Black people.

A poor Black man cannot pay for decent housing, cannot pay for health care, and cannot afford to send his kids to higher education, which directly impacts his social standing and professional competency. Thus, he has to settle for menial jobs, low wages, and little or no prospect of ever climbing out of the vicious cycle. The saddest thing of all is that he is blamed for his own dilemma, as if the conditions and lack of opportunities in which he lives has nothing to do with his sorry state of affairs.

The bigotry of the leadership

During the past four years, racism in America has been on the rise and in no small measure Trump, the Racist-in-Chief, has made race a campaign issue from the very start. He began his political campaign by branding Hispanics as rapists; in his presidency he banned Muslims from entering the US, cruelly separated children from their parents at the borders, described white supremacists in Charlottesville as “very fine people”, and celebrated this 4th of July by defending Confederate statues.

Trump’s racism against Blacks in particular is nothing new. It was there in 1973 when Trump Management Inc. was sued by the Department of Justice for housing discrimination against African-American renters. We could see it in 1989, when he took out a full-page advertisement in four New York City newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty over the Central Park Five, who were wrongfully convicted and sent to prison. Trump refuses to apologize for that, even though, as Innocence Project founder Barry Scheck said, “…by calling for the reinstitution of the death penalty, it contributed to an atmosphere that deprived these men of a fair trial.” He also refused to apologize for his persistent perpetuation of the ‘birther’ lie that Obama was not born in the US.

Trump’s Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore was laden with racially divisive and partisan rhetoric, but that makes no difference to many conservative Republican leaders and his misguided supporters who follow him blindly. They wrap themselves with the flag as a sign of American patriotism, when in fact their patriotism is defined by their racism and intolerance of people of color.

Although some Republican leaders disagree with him on race, they are fearful of his anger to say anything publicly, lest they risk losing their power or position. Sadly, their silence suggests consent, which only reinforces Trump’s racism. With Trump, as with much of the country, racism is deeply ingrained, something he refuses to admit.

Although racism did not start when Trump came to power – as it is imbued into America’s history and culture – and it will not end with his departure from office, his overt racism brought to focus racism in America. The persistent protests reveal the deep sense of frustration with a president who fans the flame of racism, who sees the country as his own enterprise, who does whatever he wants to serve his own interests. He is cruel, cunning, and careless about the pain and suffering of Black America; he cannot count on their political support and hence completely rejects their outcry.

Unlike any other protests in the past against racism, this year’s protests have had a greater impact in part due to the spread of the coronavirus and its disproportionate impact on Black people, who are being infected and dying at higher rates than whites. That, and in conjunction with a presidential election, provides a rare opportunity to start a process of mitigating racism in earnest. What will be necessary, however, is for the protests to persist through Election Day in the hopes that the Racist-in-Chief will be ousted. Only then we stand a better chance that a new day will dawn and a new administration will commit to relentlessly addressing the plight of Black people for the sake of all Americans, especially because the day when America will have a majority of people of color is fast approaching.

Although there are scores of measures that must be taken and many years and huge financial resources to make a discernible change for the better in the life of Black Americans, we have no choice but to start, regardless of how insurmountable the obstacles and the culture of resistance to change. It will take the collective efforts, determination, and consistency of local, state, and federal authorities to begin this process if we ever want to reach a modicum of equality.

The work to change the culture of innate racism in America will be long and hard, but we must not shy away from it. As a small start, the immediate focus should be on educating students about Black history, changing the police culture and training, investing in housing in black neighborhoods, offering educational support for young Black boys and girls starting at elementary age, up to providing free education for them to attend college or professional schools, and providing job opportunities and equal pay to give them the chance to climb up over time the social ladder.

The continuing demonstrations throughout the country suggest not only the obvious—that Black lives matter—but that racism is consuming America from within, that injustice affects the perpetrators just as much as the victims, that enough is enough.

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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

According to US Energy Information Agency data, America, Russia, and Iran are the world’s leading natural gas producers, in that order — followed by Qatar, Canada and China.

US shale oil and gas development made it the world’s leading producer of both energy sources.

According to data compiled by Forbes magazine, published in early July, the US has a “23.1% share of global natural gas production” — ahead of Russia’s 17% and 17.4% for Middle East countries combined.

In 2019, the world’s top 10 natural gas producing nations accounted for around 70% of global supply.

The US has a 40% market share of global liquified natural gas (LNG) — what it’s pressuring and bullying EU countries to buy in lieu of much cheaper and readily available natural gas from neighboring Russia.

When completed, Moscow’s 745-mile-long Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea will deliver 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to Germany and other EU countries.

Together with Nord Stream 1, both pipelines will deliver 110 billion cubic feet of natural gas to Western Europe.

Nord Stream 2 gas will come through exclusive economic zone territorial waters of five countries: Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany.

Russian natural gas is around 30% cheaper than US liquified natural gas (LNG), why Western Europe highly values it.

Trump regime hardliners are going all-out to block completion of the project — projected to be operational by yearend or early 2021.

On July 15, the State Department  “updated…guidance for Section 232 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA)” that imposed unlawful US sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea.

The measure signed into law by Trump on August 2, 2017 flagrantly breached the UN Charter and other international law.

At the time, CAATSA was congressionally adopted with only 2 Senate and 3 House profile in courage members voting against the illegitimate measure.

Nations complying with it are complicit in US lawlessness against three nonbelligerent UN member-states threatening no one.

The State Department updated its so-called “guidance” to include threatened lawless sanctions on “investments or other activities related to a broader scope of Russian energy export pipelines, including Nord Stream 2 and the second line of TurkStream (a joint project with Turkey to go through Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary to Vienna),” adding:

“Persons making such investments or engaging in such activities, including but not limited to financing partners, as well as pipe-laying vessels and related engineering service providers engaging in the deployment of the pipelines, may be subject to (lawless) sanctions pursuant to Section 232.”

Both right wings of the US war party consider legitimate actions by Russia, China, Iran, and other nations on its target list for regime change “threats to US national security and foreign policy interests” — including completion of Nord Stream 2.

Defying reality, the Trump regime’s State Department falsely claimed that Nord Stream 2 and Turkstream “strengthen Russia’s ability to use its energy resources to coerce our European partners and allies (sic),” adding:

“The projects would hinder the process of European energy diversification (sic).”

“These projects could also severely limit gas transit through Ukraine, depriving the Ukrainian government of significant transit revenues and reducing a large deterrent against further Russian aggression against Ukraine (sic).”

Last December, Moscow and Kiev agreed on delivering 65 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas to and through Ukraine in 2020, another 40 billion cubic meters from 2021 – 2024 at a discounted price – on condition that the recipient country enables deliveries to Western Europe.

The State Department “encourage(d)” nations and entities “to reassess their participation in Russian energy export pipelines subject to Section 232” — threatening sanctions on noncompliars with its unacceptable demands.

In response to the above threats, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed what she called a textbook example of politicized “unfair competition,” adding:

It shows “weakness of the American system…Except for raw power, (Trump regime hardliners) don’t have any effective tools.”

Pompeo warned participants in Russia’s Nord Stream 2 project to “(g)et out now or risk the consequences.”

A Final Comment

According to Germany’s Die Welt,  Gazprom’s Akademik Cherskiy pipe-laying vessel is completing Nord Stream 2, overcoming US aims to block the pipeline from becoming operational.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak explained that the “project has already been completed in terms of investment and economic viability.”

“All possible technical means are used for the purely physical completion of construction work.”

Vladimir Putin said Nord Stream 2 will be completed and become operational no later than early 2021, two Russian pipe-laying vessels finishing its construction.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Asia Times

Let’s assume that the events of the last five months are neither random nor unexpected.

Let’s say they’re part of an ingenious plan to transform American democracy into a lockdown police state controlled by criminal elites and their puppet governors.

And let’s say the media’s role is to fan the flames of mass hysteria by sensationalizing every gory detail, every ominous prediction and every slightest uptick in the death toll in order to exert greater control over the population.

And let’s say the media used their power to craft a message of terror they’d repeat over and over again until finally, there was just one frightening storyline ringing-out from every soapbox and bullhorn, one group of governors from the same political party implementing the same destructive policies, and one small group of infectious disease experts –all incestuously related– issuing edicts in the form of “professional advice.”

Could such a thing happen in America?

What’s most astonishing about the Covid-19 operation is the manner in which the elected government was circumvented by public health experts (connected to a power-mad billionaire activist.) That was a stroke of genius. Most people regard the US as a fairly stable democracy and yet, the first sign of infection triggered the rapid transfer of power from the president to unelected “professionals” whose conflicts of interest are too vast to list.

Equally fascinating is the fact that the lockdowns were not the brainchild of Donald Trump but the mainly Democrat governors who shrugged-off any Constitutional limits to their power and arbitrarily ordered people to stay in their homes, wear masks and avoid close physical contact with other humans.

All of this was done in the name of “science” and condoned under “emergency powers” despite the fact that mass quarantines of healthy people have no historical precedent or scientific basis. No matter, this was never about science or logic anyway, and it certainly wasn’t about saving lives. It was always about power, pure, unalloyed political power. The power to push the economy into freefall destroying millions of jobs and businesses. The power to bail out Wall Street while diverting attention to a fairly-mild infection that kills roughly 1 in every 500 people. The power to create a permanent underclass willing to work for table scraps or less. And the power to fundamentally restructure human relations so that normal intimacies like handshakes, hugs or social gatherings are entirely banned. This, of course, was the most ambitious part of the project, the basic changes to human interaction that date back thousands of years, and which are now seen as an obstacle to a new order in which the individual must be isolated, desensitized and kept in a constant state of fear to be more easily controlled and manipulated.

On top of that, all of this is taking place in plain sight where anyone with even minimal critical thinking skills should be able to see what is happening, but very few do. Why is that?

Fear. Fear has gripped the population and is preventing typically intelligent, perceptive people from seeing something that’s right beneath their noses. Check out this clip from an article titled “When Will the Madness End?”:

“What’s happening now is a spread of this serious medical condition to the whole population… The public is adopting a personality disorder … paranoid delusions, and irrational fear. … It can happen with anything but here we see a primal fear of disease turning into mass panic….

…. Once fear reaches a certain threshold, normalcy, rationality, morality, and decency fade and are replaced by shocking stupidity and cruelty.…..We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. ..…

…This is made far worse by politics, which has only fed the beast of fear. This is the most politicized disease in history, and doing so has done nothing to help manage it and much to make it all vastly worse.” (“When Will the Madness End?“, AIER)

We’re not saying that Covid doesn’t kill people, and we’re not suggesting that Covid is a bioweapon released on the public for nefarious purposes. (although that’s certainly a possibility.) What we’re saying is that scheming elites and their allies in the media and politics see every crisis as an opportunity to advance their own authoritarian agenda.

In fact, the restructuring of basic democratic institutions can only take place within the confines of a major crisis. That’s why the CIA, the giant corporations, the WHO and the Gates Posse gathered for meetings that anticipated an event just like the Covid outbreak. They needed a crisis of that magnitude to achieve their ultimate objective; total control. That’s what they mean when they say there will be “no return to normal”, they mean they’re replacing representative government with a new totalitarian model in which the levers of state power will be controlled by them. So while the virus outbreak might be coincidental, the management of the crisis certainly is not. This is from an article by Gary Barnett:

“We are in the midst of an attempt by the oligarchs to eliminate the human spirit, and if this attempt is successful, the singular majesty of the human experience will have been abolished, and only a technocratic black hole of emptiness and despair will remain. This is the essence of a failed society brought about by the destruction of human intellect by state education, mass propaganda, and the planned control of individuals through physical and psychological manipulation due to fear.”(“Pandemic Madness: The State’s Plan Rests on the Destruction of the Human Spirit“, Gary Barnett, Lew Rockwell)

Is the author exaggerating?

I don’t think so. Our species has withstood myriad epidemics in the past without ever resorting to the extremist measures we have taken during this latest outbreak. Take the state of Oregon, for example, whose Democratic governor Kate Brown just signed another executive order extending a state of emergency through Sept. 4. The move comes months after the peak in deaths was reached in mid-April. As of Tuesday, Oregon’s death toll is a meager 240 nearly 90% of who are over 65 with underlying health conditions. That means that Brown shut down a $226 billion per year economy, put tens of thousands of people out of work, destroyed countless small and medium-sized businesses and plunged the state deep into debt, to save roughly 24 or 25 people under 65 with no underlying health conditions. That’s not the reaction of an intelligent, responsible political leader acting in the best interests of the people. That is the reaction of someone who is either criminally insane or doing someone else’s bidding. So which is it?

Like many of the other mainly Democrat governors, Brown also issued a “mask” mandate, punishable by a fine. The new executive order was neither approved by the House or by any other democratic body. It’s just Brown testing the limits of her new emergency powers. Interestingly, the mask mandate comes a full three months after the state reached its peak in fatalities which means that it has less to do with controlling the infection than it does with using the virus to usurp tyrannical powers. Does that mean Brown or the other Democrat governors are closet tyrants?

Probably not. But it does suggest that the people who fund Brown’s campaigns and pull her strings want to see how far they can push things before the public fights back. Here’s a comment by Carlo Caduff in the Medical Anthropology Quarterly that helps to put these developments into perspective:

“Across the world, the pandemic unleashed authoritarian longings in democratic societies allowing governments to seize the opportunity, create states of exception and push political agendas. Commentators have presented the pandemic as a chance for the West to learn authoritarianism from the East. This pandemic risks teaching people to love power and call for its meticulous application.” (“What Went Wrong: Corona and the World After the Full Stop“ Academia.edu)

Once again, we are not denying that Covid kills people. All we’re saying is that powerful elites are using crisis management to advance their own narrow political agenda.

It should be no surprise that states governed by Democrats are doing considerably worse than those run by Republicans. Watching the eagerness with which the Dems impose their economy-crushing measures, one can only wonder how the states will ever dig out of the current mess and regain solvency. Of course, maybe that’s the goal, to generate so much red ink that essential social services will have to be slashed, the poor will be left to starve, and the big money guys will buy-up public assets for pennies on the dollar. Indeed, that must be the plan, “shock therapy for the proles while the Democrat governors act as a battering ram to open the state to the plunder and looting of their Wall Street crony friends and others in the parasite class. Here’s how Israel Shamir summed it up in a recent article at the Unz Review:

“There are people who think we have it too good. They think we did nothing to deserve our high civilization. They think we shouldn’t be able to afford food, the roof above our heads and other goodies. This is the view of some very wealthy people. They are annoyed at seeing Tom, Dick and Harry going to Acapulco and eating in a restaurant, instead of being at their beck and call. They want to lower our income and raise the cost of living. They are willing to fund anyone who calls for more austerity.

Now they support lockdowns, claiming that it is the best way to fight disease. Yesterday they were calling on us to shut down industry in order to save the climate. Today these same people are still trying to reduce us to poverty, this time for the sake of Covid” (“Unmasking Freedom, The Unz review)

Shamir is right of course, the justifications are forever changing while the ultimate goal remains the same, wreak havoc the economy, divide the people into warring camps, and clear the way for the new streamlined system of authoritarian government, the glorious NWO. And the speed at which we are moving towards this new order is truly breathtaking. Take a look at this sampling of articles I’ve compiled which illustrates the catastrophic damage that is being done to the economy but swept under the rug by the media. In short, Covid is the diversion that keeps the American people from realizing that the system that keeps them employed, pays the mortgage and puts food on the table is being decimated by voracious oligarchs who want to start fresh. Check out these articles:

• Some 42% Of Jobs Lost In Pandemic Are Gone For Good
• US Consumer Credit Crashes As Americans Repay A Record Amount Of Credit Card Debt
• A Tidal Wave of Bankruptcies is Coming
• “More Than Half Of The US Population Is Not Working”
• “52% Of Small Businesses Expect To Be Out Of Business Within Six Months
• “53% Of Restaurants Closed Amid Coronavirus Have Shuttered Permanently”
• Tsunami” Of Evictions Could Make 28 Million Americans Homeless This Summer Alone
• Hurtling towards Depression–Based on information as of May 2020, we show that global consumption losses amount to 3.8$tr, triggering significant job (147 million full-time equivalent) and income (2.1$tr) losses.
• Eighty percent feel country is spiraling out of control, according to Wall Street Journal/NBC poll

Anyway, you get the picture, the situation is dire. But as severe as the economic carnage may be, the psychic damage is that much worse. Many readers probably already know that suicides, divorces, child abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence have all risen sharply in the last 5 months. The impact of the lockdowns on people suffering from chronic depression or other mental health conditions has also increased dramatically. As Doctor Waqar Rashid opines in an article at The Spectator:

“Many people are… still terrified.,… afraid of venturing back into the outside world…. Masks are everywhere, and are compulsory on public transport. The result is a reminder that this ‘new normal’ is utterly unlike what we are used to. Even to those who don’t suffer from mental health problems it’s a depressing and dispiriting sight. And I fear this ongoing state of stress and anxiety is doing profound damage to people’s psychological wellbeing...

It was widely acknowledged before the pandemic struck that mental health problems were not only increasing in number but also being seen more frequently in younger people. As a neurologist, the people I see are especially at risk from suffering from mental health problems. It’s a sad fact that in my line of work, we can cure very little. But we can try to control and mitigate the illnesses we seek to treat. Much of this relies on the patient remaining hopeful and optimistic about their prospects. But now, surrounded as we are by this ‘invisible enemy’, all too often hope has been substituted for fear, even terror.” (“What’s the true cost of lockdown?”, The Spectator)

Covid-19; Phase 1 of the “Permanent Crisis”

It all boils down to this: Ruling class elites are using a public health crisis to wage a full-scale war on the American people and their system of representative government. The Democrat-CIA-Media Axis has been instrumental in prosecuting the conflict, as they were in the Russiagate fiasco. These are the shock troops who execute the battleplan of economic strangulation, covert skulduggery, and relentless disinformation. By the time the American people figure out what’s going on, the political landscape will have changed completely.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

Israeli Proxies Profit from U.S. Coronavirus Funding

By Philip Giraldi, July 16, 2020

Recipients included 600 mostly large equity and asset management firms that were actually ineligible because of their involvement in “investment or speculation.” Cash rich law firms also benefited with more than 45 of top firms receiving at least $210 million in PPP loans while companies owned in whole or part by nine congressmen also received funds. A business partially owned by Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, obtained a loan as did a real estate project run by the family of Jared Kushner.

Chaos in UK Health Care. NHS Staff Are Being Silenced Over COVID-19. “Lose Their Jobs if They Speak Out”

By The Bernician, July 16, 2020

The trust has been running empty ambulances during lockdown and is still doing it now. By this I mean ambulances are driving around, with their emergency alert systems active (sirens & / or lights) with no job to go to. This I believe has been to give the impression to the public that there is more demand for ambulances than there actually is. Staff only wear face coverings/ masks & social distance when public facing, as soon as they are out of public view, the masks come off and social distancing is not observed. Indeed jokes are made about the measures, and I have heard staff express amazement that despite warnings on packets and at point of sales, telling people masks are totally ineffective and dangerous , the public still buy them, because a politician has told them too.

Top Amazon Deforestation Satellite Researcher Sacked by Bolsonaro

By Jenny Gonzales, July 16, 2020

National Institute of Space Research (INPE) researcher Lubia Vinhas, the general coordinator for INPE’s Earth Observation Agency (CGOBT) was dismissed Monday. Vinhas was responsible for overseeing the missions of the DETER and PRODES satellite systems that measure the nation’s monthly and annual deforestation respectively — both pathfinding systems long hailed as the gold standard for deforestation monitoring.

Towards a Totalitarian Regime? European Commission Adopts GMO Vaccine to Combat Non Existent Covid-19 Virus

By Julian Rose, July 16, 2020

In a decision which will shock many, the European Commission has taken a big step towards its ambition to subject its citizens to a totalitarian regime in which DNA altering technology forms the centre piece of mass control and unapologetic rule by despotism. 

Under the chairmanship of the German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, The Commission has adopted a new ruling which calls for ‘the swift development of a GMO vaccine against Covid-19’.

The Battle for Pandemic Sanity: Hydroxychloroquine Efficacy vs. Its Suppression

By Elizabeth Woodworth, July 16, 2020

During February and March of 2020, there was a lot of excitement in the medical community[i] because early indications in China and France seemed to show a cure for people in the early stage of Covid-19. The ancient anti-malarial drug quinine (aka chloroquine, aka hydroxychloroquine, aka HCQ) had been repurposed to show very promising results against Covid-19 when given to outpatients with early symptoms.

Britain Caves to US, Bans Huawei from 5G Network Build-Out, More US Anti-China Sanctions Coming

By Stephen Lendman, July 16, 2020

Britain is on an “irreversible path” to eliminate what he called “high-risk vendors (sic).”

So-called Chinese “risk” has nothing to do with security issues, everything to do with US war on China by other means and trillions of dollars of market potential that 5G technology represents.

Exporting Toxic Chemical Waste to Poor Countries Must End, Says UN

By Alan MacLeod, July 16, 2020

The practice of dumping banned, toxic chemical waste on poorer societies by big corporations in rich countries must end, say experts at the United Nations Human Rights Council. “In nearly every case there is no legitimate public interest justification,” said Baskut Tuncak, a Turkish-American UN special rapporteur on the environment and the disposal of toxic waste.

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Today, the Trump administration has announced a major weakening of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This rollback would increase the risk of environmental damages from major development projects, and limit the power of the communities to weigh in on such projects, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Below is a statement by Dr. Kathleen Rest, executive director of UCS.

“With this decision, the administration has chosen to accept permanent damage to our communities and ecosystems in exchange for short-term gains for politically connected industries. The administration is now using the COVID-19-driven economic crisis as an excuse for this rollback, undermining public health protections in the midst of one of the worst public health crises this country has ever faced.

“These changes weaken the ability of communities—especially communities of color—to weigh in on projects that could impact their own lives for a very long time. The administration would leave communities with less information and less power to challenge corporations, and enable development to proceed without consideration of the long-term impacts. And the rollback specifically reduces the federal government and communities’ ability to consider the impacts of climate change.

“At a time when we need to be prioritizing health, justice and the long-term well-being of our communities, the Trump administration is speeding in the opposite direction—prioritizing short-term industry gains rather than addressing racial inequity and environmental damage. This rollback is short-sighted, insulting, cynical and dangerous.”

UCS experts have written about the administration’s efforts to undermine NEPA. Dr. Rest examined the proposed changes in detail. Adrienne Hollis, senior climate justice and health scientist for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS, interviewed environmental justice leader Dr. Mildred McClain about the impacts and dangers of rolling back NEPA. Senior fellow Derrick Jackson wrote on the racially discriminatory effects of weakening NEPA. And Karen Perry Stillerman, senior analyst and senior strategist for the Food and Environment Program at UCS, wrote about the history and importance of NEPA.

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Dr. Kathleen Rest is the Executive Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Featured image is from FAIR

Washington D.C. is surely one of the most corrupt places on earth. Money talks and nearly everyone into the game sometimes referred to as politics has his or her hand out and expects to end up a millionaire. Given that, it should surprise no one to learn that a large chunk of the CARES Business Assistance Program’s trillions of dollars recently doled out for coronavirus relief, sold to the public as intended to help small businesses survive, has instead gone to those who are politically connected through lobbyists and other special interests.

A recent Time magazine article describes what it calls “a familiar lobbying bonanza.” To be sure, the details regarding who got the cash makes for depressing reading, though there is a familiar smell to it in light of the many boondoggled programs to make America “safe” over the past twenty years. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has provided no less than 663,000 loans over $150,000, but much of the money has gone to “billionaires, country clubs, lobbyists, political allies, Wall Street, and big business,” all of which have better access to government than does the small business owner.

Recipients included 600 mostly large equity and asset management firms that were actually ineligible because of their involvement in “investment or speculation.” Cash rich law firms also benefited with more than 45 of top firms receiving at least $210 million in PPP loans while companies owned in whole or part by nine congressmen also received funds. A business partially owned by Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, obtained a loan as did a real estate project run by the family of Jared Kushner.

Other decidedly questionable recipients include Planned Parenthood, the Church of Scientology, and rapper Kanye West, up until recently a Trump favorite, who, with his wife Kim Kardashian, owns a shoe and clothing company worth an estimated $3 billion.

Given the apparent fact that obtaining a loan was largely a matter of who you know, it is perhaps not surprising that the state of Israel and its myriad supporting entities in the United States were in front of the line when the money was passed out.

I recently wrote about the apparent holocaust scam run out of Israel whereby gullible foreigners have been receiving emails and seeing media solicitations regarding how Jewish survivors of World War 2 currently in Israel are living in squalor and starving due to the impact of the coronavirus. Readers commented that there are similar ads running on television in the U.S. soliciting money from “Christians and Jews” to help relieve the suffering. There have recently been allegations of fraud regarding the millions of dollars that have been raised by Christian groups in the United States. As Israel is a wealthy, socialist state with world class medical and social services systems in part paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, as well as pensions provided mostly by Germany for all survivors, the entire business definitely has a bad smell to it.

If so-called holocaust survivors are actually suffering, the fault should be firmly placed where it belongs: the Jewish “charitable” organizations and the state of Israel itself, which are custodians for the money coming from Europe and elsewhere. Professor Norman Finkelstein has demonstrated in his book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering how all the billions of dollars extorted by Israel and Jewish groups has been diverted and rarely reaches those who might actually have suffered.

A review of the Finkelstein book notes

“…that very little of the recently extracted ‘compensation’ has reached its nominal beneficiaries. Instead, the industry’s concern today lies with winning compensation for law firms, consultants, politicians, Holocaust organizations, and industry elites. ‘When Jewish elites rob Jewish survivors no ethical issues arise; it’s just about the money…’”

In the current economic and healthcare crisis, some of these groups including Israeli start-up companies and proxy groups that lobby in the United States are eligible to received PPP under the multi-trillion dollar CARES Business Assistance Program as long as they have some salaried U.S. employees. The loans can be up to two and a half times the cost of wages actually paid to employees up to a total of $10 million and are issued at 1% interest that is repayable within two years, with a six-month grace period before payments are due. The loan would be converted into a grant if the company can demonstrate that the money was actually spent on salaries that prevented terminating employees.

Predictably, Israeli connected law firms in the U.S. were immediately out of the starting gates.

“’In this program, it’s all about being first to the prize,’ said Attorney Oz Halabi, a partner and head of the U.S. taxation department at the New York office of law firm Pearl Cohen Zedek Latzer Baratz and a former senior official at the Israel Tax Authority. ‘It is very important to submit applications as soon as possible and to understand that the program is relevant to 99% of Israeli startups.’”

Because Israeli companies are well wired into political and financial power brokers in Washington and New York, they inevitably have had insider help applying early and obtaining immediate approvals for loans that struggling American small businesses will not receive. Reportedly 1,000 Jewish and Israel linked groups have already received $500 million but then proceeded to lay off employees anyway after they received their money. There has been, of course, no reciprocity of tax breaks or loans for U.S. companies operating in Israel.

The full measure of PPP spending has yet to be appreciated, but Grant Smith at the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy (IRMEP) has described a C-Span interview that reveals the extent to which Israel has taken advantage of CARES. Smith reports that “Israel lobby organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America ($2-5 million), Friends of the IDF ($2-5 million) and the Israeli American Council ($1-2 million) are grabbing huge loans from the CARES Act PPP program. According to SBA data, Israel’s Bank Leumi has doled out a quarter to a half billion dollars under the program, despite being called out for operating in the occupied West Bank. It has given sweetheart deals to the Israeli company Oran Safety Glass (which defrauded the U.S. Army on bulletproof glass contracts) and Energix, which operates power plants in the occupied Golan Heights and West Bank.”

Grant has also identified PPP money going to the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), which inter alia arranges “terrorism” training for American police; the Jewish National Fund, which supports Israel’s illegal settlements; and the Israel on Campus Coalition, which has harassed students critical of the Jewish state on American campuses. Several of the organizations being supported with American taxpayer money are little more than front organizations promoting Israeli interests in the U.S. They should be required to be registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938 but the Justice Department never does anything about Israeli government fronts active in the United States.

Note that an Israeli bank has somehow been able to grant as much as a half billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money under the program, all of it apparently going to Israeli businesses and other Israel-linked entities. One wonder what the screening process was like, if there even was one. And note that the Zionist Organization of America is essentially an Israeli lobbying group. It too gets the cash, as does the similar Israeli America Bank. Oran Safety Glass, which “won” a Pentagon contract for bulletproof glass for U.S. Army vehicles even though it could not produce the glass, also gets money.

But the most outrageous grant is to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), an organization that raises money in the U.S. for the Israeli military. It held a gala event in Hollywood in 2017 that raised $53.8 million while one in New York City in the same year promoted as a “A Night of Heroes” raised $35 million, so it clearly does not need the money but took it anyway. Donations to FIDF are tax deductible as the organization is registered with the U.S. Treasury as a 501(c)3 educational and charitable non-profit foundation. One might well ask how it is possible that the American taxpayer should subsidize a foreign military organization that is regularly accused of war crimes in its ongoing brutal and genocidal occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem? Where are the screams of outrage from Congress and the media, which are silent even as an estimated 100,000 American small businesses meanwhile go bust?

The multitude of gifts to Israel come at a time when the cover provided by the coronavirus and the BLM disruption have hidden from sight the expansion of the Israeli-American national security state. Writing at MintPress in an article entitled “The Merging of US and Israeli National Security States is Accelerating Amid COVID-19,” Raul Diego reports that:

“A two-pronged initiative by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security is set to substantially increase Israel’s already significant role in America’s digital health, artificial intelligence (AI), critical health infrastructure, as well as law enforcement, public and border protection and other key sectors. Citing ‘health challenges’ posed by COVID-19, the U.S.-Israel Business Initiative (USIBI), a venture of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is advancing a new eight-point policy framework to facilitate a ‘more robust bilateral collaboration’ between Israeli and American companies to realize the ‘potential’ of technologies emerging out of Israel relating to telehealth, robotic diagnostics and AI-powered applications in healthcare.”

Diego also observes how “In a recent article, investigative reporter Whitney Webb uncovered the deep Israeli military roots of virtually every ‘health’ tech startup to emerge in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and their extensive relationships with the U.S. government at both the federal and state level. Regarding the policy framework, Webb stated that it was likely ‘part of a broader effort aimed at using the coronavirus crisis to facilitate the integration of Israeli tech companies, particularly in the “digital health” sector, into the U.S. technology ecosystem. Many, if not the vast majority, of these companies’, she continued, ‘were either founded by ex-members of Israeli intelligence or military intelligence, but also serve as contractors to Israel’s government or its military.’”

Inevitably, the rape of America and its remaining resources by Israel will accelerate with hardly a peep out of politicians or the media. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce U.S.-Israel Business Initiative only works in one direction, delivering money and jobs to Israel as it simultaneously makes Americans poorer and unemployed. The joint projects also enable the stealing of U.S. technology to advance the Jewish state’s own high-tech sector at no cost. There will also be major national security implications as the Israelis will be able to access every telephone to confront “health challenges” while monitoring the movement of Americans as they also record classified conversations to send the “take” back to Jerusalem.

And it all starts with the presumption that Israel is some kind of friend, which it is not. Fake charities and various schemes to otherwise defraud and impoverish the U.S. taxpayer is the name of the game and Israel goes on from there to become a “business arrangement” and “health initiative partner” plus “national security asset.” When will it ever end? Ask your congressman. He or she will not reply. Or write a letter to the Washington Post or New York Times. They will not print it.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

Featured image is from TUR

KoBold Metals, a start-up backed by a coalition of billionaires led by Bill Gates, plans to scour for cobalt in Canada using advanced mapping technology and it’s targeting northern Quebec, just south of Glencore’s Raglan nickel mine.

The company, founded in 2018, has acquired rights to an area of about 1,000 square kilometres (386 sq. miles), where it plans to begin collecting geophysical data before the end of the year.

KoBold’s backers include big names such as Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The latter is financed by well-known billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Ray Dalio, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson and Gates.

KoBold aims to create a “Google Maps” of the Earth’s crust, with a special focus on finding cobalt deposits. It collects and analyzes multiple streams of data — from old drilling results to satellite imagery — to better understand where new deposits might be found.

Algorithms applied to the data collected determine the geological patterns that indicate a potential deposit of cobalt, which occurs naturally alongside nickel and copper.

Chief executive officer Kurt House believes the company’s exploration activities at the site in Quebec could help prove the value of its approach.

“The subtleties in the geophysical signals are really only evident when you have all of the data and can evaluate it in a systematic, statistically rigorous way,” House told Bloomberg on Tuesday. “It’s just too much for the human brain to handle.”

KoBold’s boss noted the company was likely to begin collecting geophysical data in the next three to six months. Drilling, House said, could start in a couple of years.

The California-based firm also expects to bring in other investors, potentially including its current backers, on a deposit-by-deposit basis. It will also seek mining-savvy partners once it has identified an interesting project.

Not a miner

KoBold, as House has stated multiple times, does not intend to be a mine operator “ever.”

This is not the first time the American start-up eyes Canada. Public records show that Faith in Gravity Holdings Inc., which is registered in British Columbia, staked last year claims in the northeast corner of Saskatchewan.

The holding company’s directors, according to The Star Phoenix, are Kobold Metals’ top three executives.

Currently, about 65% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, much of it by hand and employing children and young men.

New cobalt mines outside the DCR could become the preferred source of ethically-mined cobalt in the medium-term.

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Featured image: KoBold Metals has acquired rights to an area in northern Quebec, just south of Glencore’s nickel mine. (Image: Raglan nickel mine. Courtesy of Glencore.)

The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has become increasingly serious. Both countries claim the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and between the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a war between them to decide the control of the region. Tens of thousands of people died in the conflict, which ended in 1994 with a ceasefire agreement, without a winner. The agreement places the Nagorno-Karabakh region as a de facto autonomous republic, remaining de jure as part of Azerbaijan. This agreement gave a break in the massacres but did not prevent the continuation of the territorial disputes between both countries, which until today claim the region, and the situation has worsened even more recently.

On July 12, there was an armed clash in the region, with an uncertain number of victims. Azerbaijani forces accuse Armenia of violating territorial limits. In contrast, the Armenian government blames the opposing country for such violations. Since then, according to Armenian observers, bombings on the border have been reported every 15 to 20 minutes. Data on the dead or injured people remain uncertain.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accuses Azerbaijan of initiating hostilities and says that no violence will go unpunished, promising to react to every move by the enemy country. Data from the Armenian Ministry of Defense points to records of artillery attacks against Armenian territory in the early hours of July 12, when the fighting was recorded. According to the Armenian government, Armenian troops only retaliated against the attacks received. Pashinyan accuses not only Azerbaijan, but also Turkey of involvement in the attacks.

The charges are not unfounded. Turkey has shown support for Azerbaijan in the dispute, encouraging annexation and not a peaceful resolution of the impasse. The day after the clashes at the border, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, spoke in defense of Azerbaijan, saying that this country “is not alone” in the conflict. The statement becomes controversial and dangerous amid an escalation of violence, as it connotes not only support from Ankara, but also an interest in intervening in the conflict. Armenia reacted with severe criticism, blaming Ankara for the return of the violence. According to the Armenian government, Turkey has an interest in destabilizing peace in the region to gain greater control and influence over neighboring territories.

In return, the European Union issued a public note calling on both parties to reduce violence and to avoid the use of force. Likewise, the US State Department classified violence in the region as unacceptable and urged both parties to seek a peaceful solution to the dispute. In the same vein, the Russian government has called on both countries for a peaceful resolution, without showing support for either party. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to an immediate ceasefire and to comply with the terms of the Minsk Group, a committee created in 1992 to manage peace in the region. Since both countries are former Soviet republics, the role of Russian diplomacy in managing the conflict is essential, due to the weight of its influence in the region.

It is important to note the difference in the approach of the Russians, Americans and Europeans to the Turkish stance to the crisis. Demonstrating open support for any party in the current phase of the conflict can be crucial to intensify disputes and encourage an increase in violence. Being Turkey a military potency, the declared support in a conflict in its early stages may encourage the progress of hostilities. In this sense, it is likely that Azerbaijan, with the support of Ankara and possible Turkish intervention, will continue the bombing, assuming strategic advantage and superiority over its opponent. This is the great danger behind the Turkish pronouncement.

The situation, however, must be analyzed in a complete context. Turkey has shown interest in increasing its regional and international geopolitical relevance and, for this purpose, it has called for bold and provocative acts, such as, for example, its role in the Syrian War and the recent conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque, which provoked outcries all over the world for being an unnecessary attack on the memory of Greek Christianity, provoking the resurgence of religious tensions in the region that had not existed for a long time.

In fact, Erdogan has clear plans to constitute a neo-Ottoman geopolitical projection, regaining power and influence at a regional level throughout the territory where the Ottoman Empire, predecessor of the modern Turkish state, operated in the past. Relations between Turks and Armenians, in this sense, do not have a good record and are alive in Armenian memory with the ethnic-religious genocide perpetrated against Christian Armenians in the early 20th century.

In this sense, Turkish interest in creating an area of ​​instability that favors its regional influence can be costly. Russia, as the regional power with the greatest historical influence in the Caucasus, must counterbalance Turkish advances through diplomacy, while Erdogan must be internationally pressured to avoid any intervention in the dispute between neighboring countries.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

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Russia is conducting “military intimidation” in the Mediterranean according to RAND in a newly published article titled “Russia Is Eyeing the Mediterranean. The U.S. and NATO Must Be Prepared.” The authors claim that “As part of its great power exertions Russia seeks more access and freedom of movement in the Mediterranean region, and is bolstering its military footprint to achieve this objective.” The authors also urge the U.S. and NATO to meet “this rising challenge” by developing “a more robust southern strategy with a reinforced air and naval presence.”

RAND is considered the U.S. Air Force’s think tank as it was established by General H. H. “Hap” Arnold, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and by aeronautical engineer Theodore von Kármán. The bulk of its funding in its early formation was from the Air Force. Therefore, when reading RAND reports it must be noted that articles are written through the eyes of US unilateralism and unipolarity.

The authors argue that “By upgrading its military posture in the region, Russia seems to believe it can be more successful in projecting power and minimizing the influence of the United States and NATO.” However, this would imply that NATO has a unified policy in the Mediterranean when in actual fact the Alliance has never been so divided over its so-called southern flank. The article claims that Russia is in direct conflict with NATO and their interests in the Mediterranean, but ignores that the Alliance is deeply divided in Libya, Syria and the Aegean.

It is especially in Libya where NATO’s division is observed, with Turkey supporting the Muslim Brotherhood Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli, and Greece and France backing Libya’s House of Representatives based in Tobruk. RAND’s position on Libya is clearly in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood government by claiming it is “United Nations–backed” but omits the GNA’s mandate from the UN to rule was for a two-year period that expired in December 2017. The authors then describe Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar as a “warlord” despite being appointed as commander of the Libyan National Army by the Libyan House of Representatives, the only institution that has been elected by the Libyan people. By falsely claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood government is UN-backed and describing Haftar as a warlord demonstrates the very division in NATO as RAND also completely omits that the GNA is attempting to steal maritime space from NATO-member Greece.

Russia is on the side of Haftar, and it is here that RAND is willing to gloss over the fact that the Turkish-backed militias fighting for the GNA are overwhelmingly jihadist and include former ISIS fighters. It is also for this reason that RAND ignores that Haftar was appointed by the only elected body in Libya and has the support of NATO members Greece and France. Therefore, RAND is not dealing with the realities occurring in the Mediterranean and rather expects all NATO members to fall into line and ignore their own strategic and security interests in the Mediterranean for the sake of opposing greater Russian influence in the region.

This expectation led RAND to write that “A greater U.S. and NATO presence might also reassure allies in the Mediterranean, which could help by buttressing their own southern-facing postures.” Greece and France do not need to be “reassured” that Russia is not a threat in the Mediterranean, but rather that Turkey’s plan to steal Greek maritime space is thwarted and the jihadists it arms and trains to fight in Libya do not enter Europe. It appears that RAND is trying to unite NATO under the guise of opposing Russia in the Mediterranean, something that is not a major concern for the Mediterranean NATO members, with the exception of Turkey. A unified front in opposing Russia in the Mediterranean is only in the interests of the US and Turkey and not the entire Alliance. Therefore, RAND is effectively admitting that NATO is just a tool used to strengthen Washington’s influence and demands with no interest of other members’ security concerns.

As RAND is one of the most influential think tanks in the US today, sidelining NATO’s deep divisions on the idea that the alliance will unite to oppose Russian influence in the Mediterranean shows how it is divorced from the realities on the ground and demonstrates why Washington is having little influence over events in Syria and Libya, and has a disinterest in de-escalating Turkey’s aggression against Greece in the Aegean. It is for this reason that French President Emmanuel Macron correctly and continually asserts that NATO is experiencing a “brain death” and is open to the idea of Europe restoring relations with Russia.

The disillusionment of RAND is summed up in its conclusion: “Western priorities could change. The United States and NATO might give more thought to a strategy that could better deter potential Kremlin risk-taking in the Mediterranean.”

This is an unlikely scenario since Greece and France are not only on the same side as Russia in Libya, but Greece has fully restored relations with what RAND calls the “Assad regime” in Syria, while France is slowly beginning to thaw its relations with Damascus. Although RAND wants a re-energized and united NATO to oppose Russia in the Mediterranean, its dismissal of the realities and power games in the region will only lead to more misguided foreign policy decisions in Washington that not only weakens their position in region, but helps strengthen Moscow’s as it finds mutual cooperation with Mediterranean countries like France, Greece, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus and others to oppose Turkish ambitions.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst. 

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Just days after the publication of data showing that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has reached destructive levels not seen since the mid-2000s, the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro sacked the top scientist responsible for tracking and analyzing the data.

National Institute of Space Research (INPE) researcher Lubia Vinhas, the general coordinator for INPE’s Earth Observation Agency (CGOBT) was dismissed Monday. Vinhas was responsible for overseeing the missions of the DETER and PRODES satellite systems that measure the nation’s monthly and annual deforestation respectively — both pathfinding systems long hailed as the gold standard for deforestation monitoring.

INPE’s satellite-based deforestation alert system detected 1,034 square kilometers of forest clearing during June 2020, bringing the twelve-month total to 9,564 square kilometers, 89% higher than just a year ago. The extent of deforestation over the past year is the highest recorded since INPE started releasing monthly numbers in 2007.

June 2020 represents the 15th consecutive month of increasing forest loss; Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, roughly 18 months ago. According to DETER, which gathers daily deforestation alerts through satellite images, deforestation grew by 25% from January to June 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

Word of Vinhas’ dismissal was published in the Official Gazette of the Union (DOU) and signed by the Minister of Science and Technology Marcos Pontes. No justification was given for the removal.

Contacted by Mongabay on Monday, the Ministry of Science press office sent an email response concerning the sacking:

“The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations (MCTI) clarifies that the dismissal of Dr. Lubia Vinhas published in the Official Gazette of the Union is part of her reallocation from the position of General Coordinator of the CGOBT to the position of Chief of the Strategic Project Division, to be created as part of the restructuring of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE)….

“The INPE restructuring, which will be announced at a press conference [today] at the MCTI headquarters, aims to seek synergies and optimize the institute’s human and infrastructure resources for a more efficient functioning. Dr. Lubia Vinhas has participated in this process and is in agreement with the changes, which were foreseen and have no relation to the production and dissemination of deforestation data, which will continue to follow the same procedures with quality and transparency.”

Lubia Vinhas, PhD in applied computing (far left), who was removed from her general coordinator position at INPE Monday. She stands alongside Ricardo Galvão, former INPE director, fired last year by the Bolsonaro government. Image courtesy of INPE.

Yesterday, Vinhas told the O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper that she only learned of her dismissal when she read the DOU and that it would be up to INPE Director Darcton Policarpo Damião to explain the reason.

Later that same day, the former coordinator seemed to have gained new information, saying that

“I believe that my departure [as general coordinator] is directly related to the restructuring process of INPE that has been proposed by the current management, and not in direct response to figures related to monitoring.”

Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory — a network formed in 2002, composed of 50 non-governmental organizations and social movements — questioned the Science ministry’s response:

“The justification that the government brings does not make sense, because the CGOBT general coordinator was removed from her role with the promise of taking over a department that does not even exist. Her withdrawal causes a problem with no plausible explanation, since, at a critical moment in the Amazon, when fires are starting and deforestation numbers are being finalized, she would be removed from [her position] and going nowhere.”

Planet image showing fire on recently deforested land near Itaúba in the State of Mato Grosso, Brazil on June 29, 2020. Fire identified by MAAP. Image courtesy of Planet.

Indeed, Vinhas’ removal after the release of Amazon deforestation statistics upsetting to the administration does have precedent. It was just last year that Bolsonaro questioned the reliability of INPE’s data which similarly reflected a rapidly rising Amazon deforestation rate. He even voiced suspicion that Ricardo Galvão, then director of the institute, was manipulating the data in “the service of some NGOs.” Bolsonaro and Ricardo Salles, Minister of the Environment, also went so far as to say that the INPE data were false. Shortly after, in August 2019, Bolsonaro fired Galvão.

Suely Araújo, former president of IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, and a senior public policy specialist at the Climate Observatory, responded critically to the firing of Vinhas, telling Mongabay that “Changes in the INPE team during a period of… intensification of [DETER] analysis is very worrying. In this critical phase, changes in coordination tend to lead to demobilization in work and less transparency. If that is the intention, the [Bolsonaro] government will not be successful. Research institutes and civil society organizations will monitor what is happening in terms of [Amazon] deforestation and fires and demand the necessary measures.” Annual deforestation data for the PRODES system is still scheduled to be released in November.

Araújo is especially concerned that the dismissal comes as the Amazon fire season is beginning, a critical period for monthly satellite monitoring. The Administration last week decreed a 120-day ban on fires in the Amazon and has already deployed the army to the region to try to rein in burning. But fires are already well underway despite it being early in the dry season, according to analysis of satellite data by Amazon Conservation’s MAAP project.

Brazilian Amazon deforestation is occurring at the highest rate since 2007. Image by Fábio Nascimento / Mongabay.

Araújo concluded:

“INPE is an organization with highly specialized and internationally respected technicians. I sincerely hope that the government knows this and does not intend to restructure the institute.”

Astrini is also concerned that the news of Vinhas’ dismissal could be an indicator of Bolsonaro’s future plans for INPE.

“It is no secret that since last year the government has desired to intervene in INPE. Ricardo Galvão’s noisy resignation prevented this, but the dismissal of Lubia Vinhas may be an indication that the plan was never abandoned,” Astrini said. “That this happens in [the midst of the] full acceleration of deforestation, when the government needs to contain threats of [economic] disinvestments, is a sign that Bolsonaro seems to be addressing the concerns of agribusiness and investors as he addresses the concerns of Brazilians terrified by the Coronavirus.”

At present, Bolsonaro is enduring intensifying pressure from major international and Brazilian businesses and investors who are threatening action if Brazil doesn’t curb deforestation, along with warnings from European Union nations who say they may not ratify the $19 trillion dollar EU-Mercusor trade agreement unless Brazil improves its record on the environment, especially Amazon deforestation and climate change.

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Featured image: Besides large-scale farming and logging, many Amazonian rainforests are being slowly fragmented for rural electrification and other activities

While other countries are still lifting quarantine or planning to re-open public activities, Vietnam – a small, developing country that has about 1,400 km of land, river and stream and borders with China – has been opened up for more than a month. Until now, Vietnam has recorded only just over 300 cases on its soil and not a single death as of 15^th June. What “magic” did the country that has a population of 97 million people use to prevent the coronavirus spread? How is Vietnamese people’s daily life after quarantine time? Is it true that Vietnam successfully controlled the pandemic?

“Vietnam has responded well to the COVID-19 epidemic from the very outset, preventing its spread”, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. WHO has indicated one of the most crucial measures that made Vietnam win its “war” on coronavirus: Vietnam prepared for the outbreak before it recorded its first case; a wise decision that many countries did not make. The World Health Organization said in a statement Saturday that the first days of the outbreak, when China had detected just 27 cases of the acute respiratory disease, COVID-19, in Wuhan City, Vietnam’s Health Ministry had already issued prevention guidelines, including close monitoring of border areas and steps to prevent possible infections among people. Vietnam enacted measures that other countries would take months to move on.

Vietnam recorded its first cases on January 23 in Ho Chi Minh City, two days before the Lunar New Year holidays. Two Chinese men from Wuhan had arrived in Vietnam on January 13 and traveled throughout the country before being hospitalized on January 23. Immediately, the Vietnamese government ramped up its response by organizing the National Steering Committee on Epidemic Prevention on January 30, the same day the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. On February 1, when the country had only recorded six confirmed cases, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc signed a decision declaring a national epidemic of what was then known only as the novel coronavirus (nCoV). The Vietnamese government recognized that the medical system would soon become overwhelmed, even by a mild spread of the virus, so they instead chose to focus on prevention early, and on a massive scale.

By mid-March, Vietnam was sending everyone who entered the country – and anyone within the country who’d had contact with a confirmed case – to quarantine centers for 14 days. At the beginning of March, Hanoi recorded the first case in the city. A section of Truc Bach Street, Ba Dinh District, Hanoi City, where the COVID-19 patient lived after traveling to some European countries, was put under quarantine. 61 households with 191 residents were forced to stay at home for 14 days, even though the patient declared that she had not contacted with any neighbors. It may be considered extreme and an over-reaction but it was cost-effective.

This was how the country named the best COVID-19 fighter globally by Politico responded to the pandemic.

On March 16, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said “Vietnam is now at the “golden stage” of COVID-19 prevention and control”. During the 15-day social distancing period from April 1^st to 15^th, residents had to stay at home and could only go outside for “essential needs,” such as food, medicines, urgent medical services or to go to work at companies that were permitted by the government to remain open. Gatherings of more than two people in public areas other than hospitals or workplaces were banned. People had to keep a distance of at least two meters between each other. Schools were closed for the Lunar New Year holiday at the end of January and remained closed until mid-May. Travel from virus-hit areas to other cities and provinces was banned, except for essential reasons, such as the delivery of food or transportation of workers and materials for production. The government directed many businesses across the country, from restaurants to gyms, to shut down and restricted international and domestic flights. As Vietnam saw only a modest increase in coronavirus cases, which went up to 268, with all but 44 recovered and no fatalities, the country eased its coronavirus lockdown. Vietnam successfully took advantage of the “golden stage” to effectively contain the spread of the disease.

As well as the swift government response, another key that made Vietnam’s fight against COVID- 19 successful was cooperation. Social media did a great job of raising citizens’ awareness about the pandemic by the news, dramas, advertisement, and music videos… People had no choice but receive the COVID- 19 information. Vietnamese people understood the seriousness of the pandemic, and knew basic steps to protect themselves and others from the virus. And they voluntarily filled in health declaration forms (nearly 6,5 million NCOVI app downloads within one month). There was a survey conducted by Singapore’s leading social research agency, Blackbox Research and ITWP Group’s Toluna Company, aiming to assess the level of satisfaction of people in 23 countries and territories for their government’s efforts in COVID-19 prevention and control. With 77 points, Vietnam ranks second in the world and ranks first in Southeast Asia in terms of people’s satisfaction with government measures in the prevention and control of COVID-19. The success of Vietnam was not only up to the drastic actions of the government but also the cooperation and trust of the citizens.

More than two months have passed since the country’s last community transmission and it has already returned to a more normal status that aims to increase economic growth and protect people from COVID-19 effectively. The Prime Minister allowed the reopening of the border gate with China, Cambodia, Laos, and so on. Students and workers now go to schools, offices, and factories without wearing masks. Businesses across the countries operate normally. On May 23, the first official football match took place in Thien Truong Stadium with thousands of spectators. It was also the first football match in the world that allowed thousands of spectators to enter after the COVID-19 pandemic. Preventing COVID-19 is not the most urgent issue of the government at this stage. This small country is looking for solutions to recover the economy and stimulate domestic tourism after the effects of the pandemic. Vietnamese people feel safe and live normally. Additionally, the citizens are grateful to their government for protecting them by drastic and immediate actions. Sometimes, they even forget that COVID-19 is still causing problems in many countries around the world.

In short, Vietnam’s success is thanks to both the government and the citizens. The government responded well to the pandemic since most countries disregarded or knew little about it. The country’s leaders also took many correct and timely actions: giving information, instructing people on how to prevent COVID-19 on a massive scale, putting people under quarantine… Vietnamese people’s awareness about COVID-19 and their cooperation with the government are significant. These are the lessons that several developed countries would benefit from learning.

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These easily discernible strategic chain reactions were regrettably missed by many experts owing either to unfamiliarity with the guiding motivations of each related party and/or pressure to comply with the so-called “political correctness” being pushed by some of the players whereby it was previously considered “taboo” to criticize Indian-Iranian relations or rely upon factual evidence to forecast their inevitable weakening.

In Chile, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging with an unprecedented speed. There are more than 300,000 confirmed cases with one of the highest per capita infection rates of 13,000 cases for every 1 million people. The economy is severely experiencing the repercussions of Coronavirus-caused restrictions and the historically high national unemployment rate of 11.2% is an indicator of such damage. Chileans have took to the street to protest against the malfunctioning right-wing government of the billionaire president Sebastian Pinera and the police force has responded aggressively by shooting dead a young agitator.

Amid this Coronavirus chaos, the Chilean lithium sector is poised to economically expand itself due to an anticipated increase in demand. Albemarle, a North Carolina-based corporation and one of the two companies extracting lithium from the Chilean salt plain Salar de Atacama with Sociedad Química y Minera (SQM) or Chemical and Mining Society, said that “the current slump in prices is belying a looming supply shortfall, especially as expansion projects are delayed by the crisis”. TDK, a Japanese multinational electronics companies and battery giant, predicts that the global market is going to witness a surge in demand for lithium. Shigenao Ishiguro, the CEO of the company, told in an interview that “Digital transformation is a huge opportunity for us and I have no doubt that the coronavirus will push the world to go that direction at a faster pace,”.

In spite of Covid-19 pandemic, the battery market is expected to grow “at a compound annual growth rate of about 7% during 2019-2024. The market in cathode for lithium ion batteries, the most common rechargeable car battery, is expected to jump to $58.8 billion by 2024 from $7 billion in 2018”. According to Bloomberg, the pandemic can prove to be an opportunity for the lithium market “with at least some governments, including those of Germany and France, using virus recovery funds to help accelerate a transition from internal combustion engines to battery-powered alternatives. France will offer about 8 billion euros ($9 billion) to its auto sector to bolster support for electric vehicles; Germany’s stimulus package includes about 5.6 billion euros for the sector and will require gas stations to install charging units.”

A likely intensification of lithium exploitation in Chile does not bode well for the working class and the myriad indigenous communities such as the Atacameños, Licanantay, Colla, Aymara and Quechua living in the Atacama desert. The most recent manifestation of the exploitative practices of lithium mining companies has been the maintenance of “operational continuity” to achieve a minimal impact on output. This basically translates into a policy of profit maximization, brutally indifferent towards the existential conditions of workers. In the lithium mining region of Antofagasta, the Coronavirus positivity rate was a stupendous 46.1%. Along with this sheer infliction of necropolitical violence upon the working class, the indigenous people are also reeling under the pressures of lithium extraction in the form of a water crisis. While singular focus has been placed on the issues of water scarcity in urban areas, it is important to remember that indigenous communities living in Salar de Atacama too are coping with an acute water scarcity, artificially caused by lithium operations. In the aforementioned mining region, 65% of water has been consumed by lithium activities. This is one among the many environmental injuries sustained by the ecosystem of the Atacama desert due to the unhindered workings of lithium imperialism.

Instead of seeing the ongoing suppressive squeezing of the working class and indigenous communities in Chile as a one-off phenomenon, it is necessary that it be contextualized in the global structure of lithium imperialism. Lithium imperialism came to be installed as a fraction of global capital and primary commodity production due to two major developments – planetary mine and green extractivism. Firstly, planetary mine, as said by Martin Arboleda, “designates a convoluted terrain where fences, walls, and militarized borders coexist with sprawling supply chains and complex infrastructures of connectivity.” This denotes the establishment of an extractive economic exoskeleton on a planetary scale through the simultaneous use of violent and militarized techniques of oppression and policing.

Secondly, green extractivism refers to “the subordination of human rights and ecosystems to endless extraction in the name of “solving” climate change.” Lithium serves as an important modality for substituting fossil fuel extractivism with green extractivism and consistently maintaining a relentless system of commodification. Instead of “tackling the systemic bloating of northern economies and the excessive demands this places on the world’s resources.”, green lithium extractivism allows capitalists to stabilize the unequal imperialist architecture of core-peripheral countries. Tesla, for examples, uses the discourse of electronic vehicles to cloak its capitalistic carnage of Latin America with the cosmetic coverings of climate change.

Lithium imperialism indicates the cohesive amalgamation of planetary mining with a climate change-covered discourse of extractivism. The fusion of these two distinct strategies initiates a reign of hyper-exploitation, extraction, violence and dispossession in the name of climate change. But this oppressive underside of lithium business is sordidly shadowed by the propagandist puffery of an energy transition which actually feeds upon the body of oppressed workers of Global South. Lithium imperialism, therefore, involves the perpetuation of core-periphery relations under the discursive regime of climate change.

Chile is a victim of contemporary lithium imperialism due to the vast lithium reserves which it has. The country has 48% of the total lithium reserves in the world which amounts to 7.5 million tonnes of lithium, of which 6 million tonnes is found in Salar de Atacama. Chile is part of the lithium-rich area christened and commodified by the bourgeoisie as the “Lithium Triangle”. It is formed by northern Chile, northern Argentina and south Bolivia and has 70%of the world’s lithium brine deposits. Apart from the abundance of lithium, Chile is also attractive for lithium neo-conquistadors “because it costs about $2,000 to $3,800 a ton to extract lithium from brine, compared with $4,000 to $6,000 a ton in Australia, where lithium is mined from rock.” Capital cost for exploration and construction is lower in brine extraction than hard rock extraction due to the different locations of brine lakes and hard rock lithium reserves: “A hard rock project in a remote mountain location with limited access to transportation and energy infrastructure is going to require a lot more money in the exploration budget than a salar in flat terrain…with well-established mining roads and a line to the electrical grid.” In terms of quality, Salar de Atacama “has the best quality reserves of lithium in terms of lithium to potassium concentration as well as low magnesium to lithium ratio.”

The low-cost and high-grade lithium brine deposits have spelled doom for the indigenous people living in the Atacama Salt Flats (AFSs). While lithium brine extraction is economically viable for capitalists, it has deleterious effects on water availability and is therefore, injurious to the social metabolism of indigenous communities. In lithium brine extraction, “up to 95 per cent of the extracted brine water is lost to evaporation and not recovered”. Furthermore, to extract a ton of lithium from brine, 500,000 gallons of water is required. The two companies, Albemarle and SQM, operating in Salar de Atacama have been given “licences to extract almost 2,000 litres of brine per second.” Besides brine water, mining companies “need the fresh water to clean machinery and pipes, and also to produce an auxiliary product from the brine – potash – which is used as a fertiliser.” The use of fresh water by mining companies is indicated by the fact that between 2000 and 2015, the amount of water that was extracted from Atacama was 21% greater than the flow of water to that area.

According to a report produced by the Observatory of Mining Conflicts of Latin America (translated from Spanish), “The greatest socio-environmental impact of lithium mining lies in the indiscriminate expenditure of water for the evaporation of brines and the production of the necessary tasks. Considering that the Atacama salt flat is located in one of the most arid regions in the world, the Atacama desert, the large-scale extraction of water and the basic processing of lithium brines generates severe damage to the fragile ecosystems that depend on those sources.” In the same report, it is written that “the communities originating from the high Andean salt flats suffer serious environmental damage due to the indiscriminate and poorly controlled extraction from the hydro-saline deposits of the salt flats, thus reinforcing their historic place of marginalization, exploitation and subordination.”

This indicates that water scarcity is not a localized phenomenon, restricted to a mere depletion in water levels. Rather, water scarcity contributes to a generalized impoverishment of indigenous people and drastically degrades their everyday living. Degeneration of existential conditions happens, inter alia, through the degradation of soil and vegetation covers. In the Atacama region, indigenous collectivities grow quinoa and look after llamas. For the growth of quinoa plants, an evenly moist soil is required and for herding llamas, it is necessary that there be an adequate vegetation cover on which they can feed. But lithium operations have undermined both these prerequisites and School of Sustainability at Arizona State University reportsthat “An expansion of lithium brine mining area of one square kilometre was found to correspond to a significant decrease in the average level of vegetation and in soil moisture.”

Through the deliberate disorganization of traditional occupational configurations, lithium companies are able to culturally colonize and proletarianize the spiritual and agro-pastoral practices of communal indigeneity. In the international value chains of lithium, the utter subjugation of indigenous people to the deformed logics of e-mobility is cruelly concealed and as said by the Plurinational Observatory of Andean Salares (translated from Spanish), “The incessant production of disposable electronic devices and the growing market for electric cars for the energy transition of countries in the global north…is becoming today the main threat to the subsistence of any form of life in the basins that host these [lithium] mining deposits”.

Chilean indigenous people have not acquiesced to the economically destructive and culturally catastrophic operations of mining corporations and have reacted strongly to lithium imperialism. In 2019, indigenous people protested against the water-intensive mechanisms of lithium brine extraction and the state, in response, paradoxically charged some communities for “water robbery”. The protests were initially triggered by the underhand dealings of SQM in which “the Chilean economic development agency CORFO signed a contract with SQM that enabled the company to triple its lithium extraction over the coming years and extended its mining access to the Atacama until 2030.” The tripling of lithium extraction till 2030 raised SQM’s lithium extraction quota to 350,000 tons. It is not entirely coincidental that a month after the agreement, Eduardo Bitran, head of CORFO, met with Tesla to propose “a project to Tesla in which SQM would provide brine, the raw material from which lithium is produced, to the carmaker for refining into battery component lithium hydroxide in Chile.”

It was in opposition to this intricate complex of lithium imperialism that indigenous people protested. These protests smoothly synchronized with the larger anti-neoliberal protests occurring in Chile and bolstered the indigenous-working class alliance. But this working class-indigenous movement was soon suppressed by the Chilean state which, in order to stabilize neoliberalism and lithium imperialism, cracked down on protests through rapid detentions, declaration of a state of emergency and the deployment of more than 9,000 soldiers. Because of the protection provided by the state, Ricardo Ramos, the CEO of SQM, was able to say that the protests won’t “be a strong issue in our business goals in the medium and long term.” He further added that “We are going to deliver our products to our customers according to our previous forecast despite the situation in Chile,”. From Ramos’s statement, we discern that there exists a structural arrangement for the cementing of lithium imperialism: companies like SQM economically exploit and culturally hegemonize lithium-rich areas; indigenous people combatively confront the predatory mechanisms of these companies; the Chilean state ultimately intervenes in order to regularize mining operations through the violent deactivation of protests.

While it may seem that the 2019 protest against lithium extraction was a spontaneous eruption of anger, it is necessary that we briefly examine the historical background against which it took place. Apart from signing a shady deal without any consultation, SQM “has been investigated for several cases of tax evasion, money laundering and illegal campaign-funding. In a major public scandal in 2014, politicians from across the spectrum were found to have received major sums of money to look after the company’s interests.” SQM also has a dubious distinction of causing major conflicts and in 2007, for example, there was a skirmish between the company and the Toconao community. Increased extraction of water from unauthorized wells and the contamination of water sources by sewage discharge were the contributory causes behind the SQM-Toconao conflict. Albemarle too has been progressing in its march towards class struggle-free lithium imperialism and in 2017 CORFO amended the corporation’s agreement through which Albemarle got “sufficient lithium to produce over 80,000 MT annually of technical and battery grade lithium salts over the next 27 years at its expanding battery grade manufacturing facilities in La Negra, Antofagasta.”

The rapid ramping up of lithium production by two companies in Chile has successfully benefitted major electronic companies such as Samsung, Apple and Panasonic. In the automobile sector, Toyota, General Motors, Tesla, Volkswagen and BMW are some of the companies reaping economic advantages of the lithium sources of Chile. Figure 1 and 2 depict the multiplex and labyrinthine circuit of lithium in the international market. To satiate the vampire-like thirst of different companies for lithium, there has been a global increase in production and the role of Chile in catering to the lithium hunger of “white gold rush” is indicated by the contemporaneous expansion of Chilean lithium output with world lithium output: “The value of Chile’s lithium carbonate production rose to US$200 million by 2007, to US$500 million by 2012 and to more than US$800 million by 2017. It exceeded US$1 billion in 2018. There was a parallel surge in the value of world first-stage lithium output— reaching US$484 million in 2007, US$998 million by 2013 and US$2865 million in 2017.”

Figure 1, Source: Washington Post, “Indigenous people are left poor as tech world takes lithium from under their feet“

Figure 2, Source: Danwatch, “There’s probably Chilean lithium behind the screen you’re reading this on”

With the demand for lithium expected to grow in the global market, indigenous people and the working class would start encountering greater difficulties in sustaining themselves as indigenous ecosystems are efficiently eradicated and labor productivity is ruthlessly increased. During the Fastmarkets’ 11th Lithium Supply and Markets Conference in Santiago, “Producers Albemarle, SQM and Tianqi [which has a 23.77% stake in SQM]… agreed that flexibility in production remains vital for addressing diverse industrial and technological challenges.” This was a colloquial way of saying that workers need to be ready to be exploited, discarded and denigrated as mere commodities. For the indigenous people in Chile, life would be wrung economically dry as energy transition occurs in the Global North and magnificent Tesla vehicles silently operate on their blood-stained lithium batteries.

We need to remember that this dystopia of EVs parasitically procuring lithium from the open veins of Chile is avoidable and as said by Thea Riofrancos, “A world buzzing with hundreds of millions of Teslas (or worse, e-Escalades), made with materials rapaciously extracted without the consent of local communities, manufactured under a repressive labor regime in polluting factories — in other words, a world not unlike our own, but powered by wind and sun — is not an inevitability.” To move away from such lithium imperialism, we need to listen to the smothered voices of the Global South. An economic-ecological model based upon the anti-imperialist foundations of the Global South is radically different from capitalist models of extraction. Instead of conceptualizing a “development alternative”, the oppressed masses of the Global South imagine an “alternative to development”. In the interstices of this “alternative to development”, one can locate the seeds of resistance to lithium imperialism.

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Yanis Iqbal is a student and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India. Read other articles by Yanis.

Trump regime hardliners are pushing a diabolical full-court press to weaken and isolate China on the world stage — wanting its economic, industrial and technological development undermined.

I stressed these points in earlier articles, stressing as well the risk that US war on China by other means could turn hot by accident or design.

What’s manufactured in the US and escalating is the stuff wars are made of.

Possible global war 3.0 should terrify everyone.

What’s unthinkable in the nuclear age is an ominous possibility because Washington is hellbent to rule the world unchallenged by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives.

Two major developments occurred Tuesday. Britain bent to the will of US hardliners as expected.

After initially working with Chinese tech giant Huawei to build out its 5G network, the Boris Johnson government reversed itself.

Culture secretary Oliver Dowden said no new (state-of-the-art) Huawei 5G equipment can be bought after December 31, adding:

Britain is on an “irreversible path” to eliminate what he called “high-risk vendors (sic).”

So-called Chinese “risk” has nothing to do with security issues, everything to do with US war on China by other means and trillions of dollars of market potential that 5G technology represents.

Bipartisan US hardliners want China shut out from what they want to be a sales and profit bonanza for corporate America.

They want other nations to buy American, ignoring Huawei’s 5G technological superiority over what US and other Western firms can offer.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith called for banning Huawei “altogether,” meaning its 2, 3, and 4G networks in the country.

Britain’s Huawei 5G ban will mean a delay to roll out this technology of two to three years and cost up to two billion pounds, Dowden explained — a high price for bending to Washington’s will, likely to be passed on to UK consumers.

Until the policy shift, Britain agreed to let Huawei supply around 35% of its 5G equipment.

No longer. In deference to Washington, harming UK interests, Johnson ignored Beijing’s threat of “consequences” by treating China as a “hostile partner.”

According to the Johnson regime ruling, UK firms now using Huawei equipment must remove it all by 2027.

They’ll incur a significant economic cost by the ruling, along with political fallout for Britain to bear for unacceptably bending to Washington’s will.

The US wants Huawei and other Chinese tech firms shut out of the US market and from using US high-tech products.

Responding to Britain’s action, Huawei’s UK spokesman Edward Brewster said the following:

“We remain confident that the new US restrictions would not have affected the resilience or security of the products we supply to the UK,” adding:

“Regrettably our future in the UK has become politicized. This is about US trade policy and not security.”

“We will conduct a detailed review of what today’s announcement means for our business here.”

From last year to June this year, the Johnson regime shifted from relying on Huawei’s superior technology to banning it.

What clearly was an unacceptable politicized decision, Johnson acted against the interests of UK telecom firms that urged him not to ban Huawei.

According to Singapore-based geopolitical analyst Greg Austin, Britain was “forced into a corner by (months of) stepped-up US pressure,” adding:

Banning Huawei from the UK is “entirely political and based on exaggeration of the intelligence value to China of Huawei’s 5G.”

The move is a “big blow” to its operations in the country. “Many jobs (will) be lost, and business relationships torn up.”

“China will (no longer) trust the UK as a business partner.” Beijing will likely take appropriate retaliatory action in its own way at a time of its choosing.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Beijing “will closely watch (Britain’s) decision.”

He warned that what happened suggests that Britain may not be safe for Chinese investments.

It’s unclear whether other European countries will bend to US pressure and exclude or limit Huawei’s involvement in building out their 5G networks.

Separately, Trump signed the so-called Hong Kong Autonomy Act (HKAA) into law.

Unanimously adopted by Congress, not a single profile of courage in either house opposed the unacceptable politicized measure with no legitimacy.

China’s new national security law was the convenient pretext — legitimate legislation to protect its sovereign territory (including Hong Kong) from hostile and/or intrusive actions by foreign powers.

The unacceptable HKAA was adopted as part of Washington’s war on China by other means.

The measure imposes unlawful sanctions on entities the US claims “violate China’s obligations to Hong Kong,” along with secondary sanctions on banks doing business with these entities.

Ignored by the HKAA is that the city is sovereign Chinese territory. Under the UN Charter and other international law, nations are forbidden from meddling in the internal affairs of others — what never deters the US and its imperial partners from doing as they please extrajudicially.

In response to Trump’s signing the measure into US law — that contravenes international and US constitutional law — a statement by China’s Foreign Ministry said the following:

The US law…maliciously denigrates Hong Kong’s national security legislation, threatens to impose sanctions on China, and seriously violates international law and basic rules of international relations,” adding:

“It is gross interference in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs.”

Separately, Trump signed an executive order that ends US preferential treatment and special trade arrangements for the city.

Defying reality, he falsely claimed China’s national security law “extinguish(es) Hong Kong’s freedom (sic).”

His remarks included a litany of misinformation, disinformation, and mass deception about China.

Threatening no one, Beijing seeks cooperative relations with other countries in contrast to US sought global dominance by pressure, bullying, bribing, and smashing other nations if other tactics don’t accomplish its aims.

It’s a prescription for endless wars on humanity by hot and/or other means.

Considered US public enemy No. 1 for its growing prominence on the world stage, bipartisan Chinaphobes in Washington risk hot war with a nation able to hit back hard if preemptively attacked.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from The Bullet

A constitutional claim against Canadian government actors for their actions in COVID-19 has just been filed at the Superior Court in Toronto, Canada.

A lawsuit against the Trudeau Government for its handling of the COVID-19 Crisis has been launched.

What is at stake is the violation of the fundamental rights of Canadians.

“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 Lawsuit against the Federal and Ontario governments is now in the Ontario Superior Court. Listen to Constitutional Lawyer Rocco Galati

Canadians should support this legal initiative, which has barely been acknowledged by the mainstream media. In fact there is a total media blackout.

The legal action against the Trudeau government is not an object of media attention.

Let us not be under illusions. The lockdown, the fear campaign, social engineering not to mention “corrupt science” and “fake data” constitute a criminal undertaking which has resulted in mass unemployment, poverty, famine, and despair. And much more.

Things are not going to “go back normal” unless people across the land, nationally and internationally confront the architects of this diabolical project (including the governments, the financial elites as well as the WHO).

 

Watch Constitutional Lawyer Rocco Galati Files Claims against Trudeau Government

 

 

Remember the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic. It turned out to be Fake. Lots of people in Canada fell sick after receiving the H1N1 ArepanrixTD vaccine.

And that vaccine killed a little girl called Amina Abu, which then led to a ten year lawsuit against GSK. That legal procedure is still ongoing.

It was a criminal undertaking on behalf of Big Pharma. There was ample evidence of corruption at the WHO and at the highest levels of government.

Today’s COVID-19 pandemic is far more serious. Governments are using the virus as pretext to close down a large part of the global economy, with devastating economic and social consequences.

Politicians are either stupid or totally corrupt. They believe in their own lies. And the lie has become the truth.

Michel Chossudovsky, July 16, 2020

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The steadfast city of Al Sqeilbiyyeh responds strongly to the move of neo-Ottoman would-be-Emperor, Erdogan, to convert the historic church of Hagia Sophia from a secular, inclusive museum into a Mosque.

According to Turkish media (Hurriyet) changes will be applied immediately to the 1500 year old World Heritage building. The holy Christian icons and mosaics may be covered to make way for Muslim prayer, the first will be on Friday 24th July.

The legendary icons include a mosaic made in the 9th or 10th century featuring a seated Jesus holding a book with the words “Peace be with you. I am the light of the world.” There is also a mosaic of Jesus dating back to 1261.

“In 1934, under the rule of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, Hagia Sophia became a museum. Since Ataturk’s conversion of the building it has been a symbol of secular Turkey and religious coexistence.”

The Syrian Christian Orthodox city of Al Sqeilbiyyeh in northern Hama is responding with resistance against this attack on the secular co-existence that is now threatened by Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman ambitions.

Image on the right: Nabel Alabdalla. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The city of Al Sqeilbiyyeh resisted the sectarian extremism that attempted to wipe Christianity from the map of Syria and the region, for ten long years. All members of this resilient community have upheld the pluralist culture of their nation and of their President Bashar Al Assad and they will not allow the same sectarian supremacist agenda to destabilise the region any further.

Nabel Alabdalla, the commander of the National Defence Forces is proposing an initiative to build a symbolic scaled down version of the church in defiance of Erdogan’s decision and to name it after Hagia Sophia. The cornerstone for the church will be laid in Sqeilbiyyeh with the blessings of the Bishop of Hama, Nicola Baalbaki.

Erdogan and his extremist proxies in Syria and throughout the region threaten Christianity with extinction in the Middle East. Syria is the birthplace of Christianity and Nabel has taken this decision because of his profound love for his President, his homeland, its history and its diverse, multi-faith tapestry which must be defended and protected at all costs. The sacrifices of the martyrs and those injured fighting for justice should not be in vain.

Al Sqeilbiyyeh June 2020 (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Syria. The cradle of Humanity and the heart of resistance.

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All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated

Last year, at least 30 rich countries exported locally-banned toxic substances to poorer ones, allowing corporations to write off their costly waste and transferring the costs to some of the poorest people on earth.

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The practice of dumping banned, toxic chemical waste on poorer societies by big corporations in rich countries must end, say experts at the United Nations Human Rights Council. “In nearly every case there is no legitimate public interest justification,” said Baskut Tuncak, a Turkish-American UN special rapporteur on the environment and the disposal of toxic waste.

“These loopholes are a political concession to industry, allowing their chemical manufacturers to profit from inevitably poisoned workers and communities abroad, all the while importing cheaper products through global supply chains and fueling unsustainable consumption and production patterns. It is long-overdue that States stop this exploitation.”

While stricter regulations apply regarding dumping in regions like Europe and North America, they are often virtually non-existent in African, Asian or Latin American countries. Last year, at least 30 rich countries exported locally-banned toxic substances to poorer states, primarily to save money and resources, allowing corporations to write off their costly waste as an externality, transferring the costs on to some of the poorest people on earth.

“The ability to manufacture and export toxic substances banned from use domestically is one, albeit large, element of how states have institutionalized externalities through discriminatory national laws and an outdated system of global governance for chemicals and wastes,” added Tuncak.

The Agbogbloshie dump in Ghana is a prime example of the relationship between rich and poor nations. 10,000 workers shift through millions of tons of Western electronic waste that pollutes the air, land and water for miles around, burning plastics and melting metals, hoping to find small amounts of valuable minerals, drastically reducing their own life expectancies.

“When I was a small boy, I used to be a footballer — but not anymore,” said 28-year-old Abdullah Boubacar, who makes a living burning plastic insulation off wires to salvage copper. “[Now] I have stomach ulcers and I run out of energy very easily.”

There are usually far fewer regulations against harmful substances in poorer countries, often because their governments have been deposed by Western ones, with institutions like the World Bank imposing extreme forms of neoliberalism governance on them, forcing them to deregulate and privatize their economies. The U.S. government made glue manufacturer H.B. Fuller remove a dangerous and addictive additive in one of its adhesives. However, the company continued to sell the same product across Latin America, despite knowing that tens of millions of children were sniffing it to alleviate pain or hunger, leading to terrible health consequences, including death.

When multinational corporations pollute in rich countries, governments have the power to stand up to and punish them. But this is usually not the case with poorer states in the global south. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Department of Justice imposed a fine of over $4.5 billion on petrochemical giant BP. Yet when Ecuador attempted to punish Chevron-Texaco for the massive destruction of its Amazon jungle — spilling 80 times the amount of oil BP dumped in the Gulf of Mexico, they simply refused to pay. Furthermore, Chevron-Texaco has managed to get a New York court to prosecute Steven Donziger, the lawyer representing over 30,000 poisoned Ecuadorians. Since then he has had his accounts frozen and has been under house arrest for successfully standing up to the corporation. The court’s decision was condemned by 29 Nobel laureates.

The UN position strongly clashes with that of the World Bank. In 1991, the Bank’s Chief Economist, Larry Summers, argued that his organization should be “encouraging more migration” of pollution to the poorest countries. “I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted,” he wrote, adding that, in his opinion, “the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.” Summers also bemoaned the fact that the United States and Europe could not export their transport emissions. Summers is now a key advisor to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Activist groups such as Greenpeace and the Working Families Party are attempting to convince Biden to remove him from his position, citing his abysmal record on economics, the environment, and on gender.

On the issue of toxic dumping, some progress is being made. France recently prohibited the export of domestically-produced toxic chemicals, while 25 African countries made it illegal to export to them any substances forbidden from use in their country of manufacture. These laws, however, should not be necessary, according to the experts, who noted that exporting banned chemicals is already illegal under international law. “Failing to address this longstanding exploitation is discrimination, pure and simple,” they concluded.

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Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

Featured image: Young men burning electrical wires to recover copper at Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana. Sept 02, 2019. Photo | Muntaka Chasant | CC

On July 14th and 15th, Syrian Army artillery units and warplanes of the Russian Aerospace Forces conducted extensive strikes on positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkistan Islamic Party and other radical groups in northern Lattakia and southern Idlib. The main strikes hit fortified positions, weapon depots and gatherings of fighters and equipment near Kbana, Sifouhn, al-Muzarra, Ain al-Aruz, Kansafra, Kafr Uwayd, Mawzrah and Humaymat. According to pro-government sources, over a dozen militants were killed and injured, and 2 weapon depots were destroyed.

These strikes came in response to a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack on a joint Turkish-Russian patrol on the M4 highway in southern Idlib on July 14. The explosion hit the patrol near Ariha. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, 3 Russian soldiers and some Turkish troops were injured. The Turkish Defense Ministry added that nobody was killed, but 2 vehicles of the convoy were damaged. A photo of the damaged BTR-82A is also circulating online.

A previously unknown group, Kataib Hattab ash-Shishani, claimed responsibility for the attack saying that the suicide bomber was one of theirs. Nonetheless, there is no such group active in Idlib. Most likely, this is a fake brand used to draw attention away from the real attackers. The main suspect would be the coalition of al-Qaeda-linked groups Fa Ithbatu, which recently lost a conflict for money and power to its elder brother Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which used to be the official branch of al-Qaeda in Syria. The Fa Ithbatu leadership sees the current ceasefire in Idlib as a threat to its interests because Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is using it to solidify its control over the few Idlib areas where its influence is still limited. The new round of clashes between the Syrian Army and Turkish-led forces in Idlib is the only thing that can help it to keep its independence and its access to resources for a significant period of time.

The Turkish military reacted to the situation by sending additional troops and equipment, including trucks with concrete blocks, to Idlib city. Instead of fighting terrorists, Ankara seems to be planning to create more fortifications to protect them from a possible offensive by the Syrian Army or its allies.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Army detained 3 members of the US-backed militant group Maghawir al-Thawra near Palmyra. The militants were tasked with collecting data about Russian, Iranian and Syrian military targets in central Syria. Earlier, Russia warned that the US-led coalition is training groups of militants in al-Tanf  to conduct sabotage operations against civilian and military infrastructure in the government-controlled part of Syria.

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We must make clear that it is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility, and health care a distant dream.

The following is excerpted from a presentation by Ajamu Baraka to a national webinar Electoral School of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, June 13 and 14.

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The Context of Struggle:

The great African revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, reminded us that without revolutionary theory there can be no revolution.

His reminder was not a call for abstract theorizing, quite the contrary. What he meant was that one cannot  advance in practice unless that practice is guided by the most advanced understanding of the material and ideological conditions that revolutionary forces face.

Over the next two days we will ground ourselves in our particular realities as they relate to our strategic and tactical engagement with bourgeois electoral system in the United States.

Let’s begin:

The ongoing and current capitalist crisis has created the most serious crisis of legitimacy since the collapse of the capitalist economy during the years referred to as the Great Depression.

The economic collapse comes on the heels of the deep crisis of the economy that occurred in 2007-8. With the economic instability and the increasing economic competition among capitalist states, divisions have emerged among the nations that those of us in BAP refer to as the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.

The U.S. has responded by moving toward a more confrontational posture, not only with its allies in Europe. It has also elevated China and Russia as national security threats.

Domestically, the African working class never recovered from the collapse of 2007-8. The continued restructuring of the U.S. economy to a low-wage economy has resulted in the African working class being relegated to the lower rungs of the labor force joining undocumented migrants, immigrants, and other colonized workers.

We are now seeing with the economy the genocidal implications of economic conditions, in which young Black workers have more value as human generators of profit locked up in prisons than as participants in the economy as low-wage workers. This reality is one of the factors driving the obscene phenomenon of Black and Brown mass incarceration in the largest prison system on the planet.

Astronomical youth unemployment, millions of Africans without health care, poisoned environments, and crumbling schools reflect the objective conditions that, with COVID-19, are ravaging the Black communities.

This is the colonial/capitalist system in its neoliberal stage. And that was before the coronavirus pandemic!

The Pandemic pulled the ideological curtain from the system and exposed the brutal realities of a rapacious system of greed, human exploitation and degradation, social insecurity, corruption, and the normalization of coercive state violence.

Bipartisan support for neoliberal capitalist policies over last four decades revealed the devastating impacts of neoliberal policies – the closing of public healthcare facilities, including hospitals as giant for-profit hospital chains consolidated; millions, disproportionately Africans, living precarious lives at the bottom of the labor markets and as gig workers with no benefits, no sick leave, no vacation, no security when ordered to shutter in place by capitalist state because the privatization of healthcare resulted in a healthcare system unable to respond to a national healthcare crisis.

Hundreds of Africans are dying unnecessarily from the virus because of conditions of colonial oppression, which amounts to state-sanctioned murder!

So, the murders of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubrey and the phenomenon of vicious killer cops are just the tip of the iceberg

But because there was no video of grandma, alone and shoveled into a corner of the hospital taking her last breath on a ventilator, along with all of the other thousands of Africans who are unnecessarily dying from COVID-19, it took the video of George Floyd to bring the people out of their houses and into the streets.

This is context for the current Black is Back election school as we approach the next round of bourgeois elections. This context informs the ideological, political, and economic issues of the bourgeois electoral arena, and how we see and approach the electoral system.

The Context Determines the Strategy: 

Let me share a few points that I believe must inform how we see and engage the electoral arena in a way that develops and advances our forces.

1. There can be no ideological confusion – we must be clear in language that cannot be co-opted or commodified by the state or its associated institutions like liberal funders. So, we must state in unequivocal language that it is the Western colonial/capitalist imperialist system, now led by the U.S., that is responsible for the billions of human beings living in poverty. It is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, that makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility, and health care a distant dream. It is the rapacious greed and absolute disregard for human life by imperialism that drives the arms trade, turns human incarceration into a profitable enterprise, and transforms millions into migrants and refugees because of war and economic plunder. This parasitic imperialist domination would be impossible without imperialism’s core instrument of enforcement and control – state violence. Beginning with the European invasion of the Americas’ in 1492 to this very moment, previously unimaginable brutality and systematic violence was used to enslave, commit genocide, steal lands, despoil cultures and assault the earth, all in the service of what became the Pan-European colonial/capitalist white supremacist patriarchal project. When you start from that foundation, not only are you clear but everyone that you engage with will be clear where you stand.

2. The struggle is for power not reform. We make demands against the state and the system, but it is clear that those demands are in context of a program for winning power. Demands are strategic – participation in electoral system must be seen as an aspect of the process of building dual and contending power. The BIB 19-point program  represents a useful roadmap for building and shifting power to the people.

3. The entry point for participating in electoral process must be through organization. Reject candidate centered politics. Engagement with electoral system by progressive forces must be informed by a collective power-building strategy that is part of a broader strategy for building independent popular power. Individualistic, candidate-centered politics lacks accountability and is inherently corruptible.

Issue selection – focus on issues that if won will reflect a significant shift in power to the people. Defund the police – questionable, but if linked to community control of the police, stopping Israeli training of police, cutting the military budget and transferring money to the people; and electoral proportional representation represent demands that can’t be easily co-opted by the state.

4. Focus on local races – county commissions, city councils, school board, mayors. The emphasis on the local is connected to what I see as the inevitable disintegration of the U.S. state. As a settler colonial state, the U.S. is, and has always been, a fragile and inauthentic state. That is precisely why a civil war was fought just 70 years after its inception as a constitutional republic in 1791.

We remember the importance of having some degree of local control with the Katrina crisis, where the surrounding white municipalities used their local power to prevent Black people, escaping from the hurricane, to enter their communities. And we watched how regional coalitions were formed during COVID-19 crisis as the Federal Government failed to provide national leadership.

As national and state power become increasingly unable to hold on to a centralized power and there is generalized descent into chaos, having some degree of local control of the state apparatus will be especially important.

In closing.

We are facing some difficult times, but we have faced difficult times before. As we ground ourselves over these next two days during our electoral school, we acknowledge that we are an African people and we are at war! We did not ask for this war – and it has been a one-sided war so far – but we do not intent for that situation to last that long because we do not intend to lose. We understand that we must win this war – for ourselves and for global humanity!

All Power to the People

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Uhuru!

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This article was originally published on Black Agenda Report.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

In a decision which will shock many, the European Commission has taken a big step towards its ambition to subject its citizens to a totalitarian regime in which DNA altering technology forms the centre piece of mass control and unapologetic rule by despotism. 

Under the chairmanship of the German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, The Commission has adopted a new ruling which calls for ‘the swift development of a GMO vaccine against Covid-19’.

Overturning its own earlier regulatory position, the Commission issued a press release on 14 July 2020, stating that this new act provides a ‘temporary derogation’ of clinical trials for a vaccine under what it cites as ‘the contained use of genetically modified organisms.’

The press release goes on to say

“The regulation will apply only as long as Covid-19 is regarded as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation, or as long as an implementing act by which the Commission recognises a situation of public health emergency due to Covid-19 applies.”

The text goes on to state

“The derogation provides that most operations related to the conduct of clinical trials will not require a prior environmental risk assessment or consent.”

Jens Spahn is quoted as saying

“A vaccine against Covid-19 is urgently needed. This regulation will ensure that clinical trials in the EU can start without delay and that no precious time is lost. The act adopted today shows that the EU is ready to take the lead in the global effort to secure the development of a safe and efficient vaccine.”

The European Commission, in need of a further ‘fear factor’ to exacerbate worry about a ‘second wave’, has clearly adopted the deeply flawed and widely disproven WHO position, that Covid-19 is a ‘public health emergency’. More than this, it has decided that only a GMO Vaccine can eradicate that which is supposedly the cause of this emergency.

One could hardly ask for a more blatant example of the New World Order centralised control system – being pressed into service at the hands of unelected technocrats, Big Pharma and  vaccination moguls whose names we are already all too familiar with. 

This calls for a large scale act of international resistance and a reversal of the deeply arrogant rule by despotism which is attempting to wrest control of the planet.

The URL for the Commission’s Press Release and details of the regulation here.

Full text below

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

The Sino-Venezuelan agreement by which the Chinese state petrochemical company Sinopec will invest 14,000 million dollars to achieve daily oil production of 200,000 barrels per day of crude in the Orinoco Oil Belt, (considered the most abundant oil field in the world ), would be a missile on the waterline of the US global geopolitics (whose unequivocal objective would be to dry up China’s energy sources), so the US swore to achieve the defenestration of Maduro.

Likewise, Maduro’s decision to confiscate the General Motors plant was seen by the Trump Administration as an attack against the interests of American multinationals, a scenario that was seized by the US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, (President and CEO of Exxon Mobil when it was nationalized in 2007 by Hugo Chávez), to try a hand coup against Maduro. Exxon Mobil would be part of the Fourth Branch of the US Government, a true shadow power that makes decisions on foreign policy and at the request of Tillerson, the Chavista revolution was already declared a “dangerous enemy of the US”.

Tillerson affirmed that “We are evaluating our political options, reviewing what we can do to create a change of conditions from which, Maduro decides that he has no future and decides to leave power on his own or that we can return the constitutional processes to its Constitution ”, a whole declaration of intent that was reflected in the implementation of sanctions against Venezuela of the countries that surround it to turn it into “territory besieged and ready to be engulfed”.

After a systematic and intense destabilizing campaign based on the selective shortage of basic necessities, obscene speculation, the amplification in the media of the growing citizen insecurity, the taking of the streets by the opposition and the application of sanctions to Venezuelan crude for cause the default or cessation of payments and the fiasco of Guaidó, we would be attending the final phase of the plot to achieve the defenestration of Maduro, for which Putin’s approval seems inevitable.

Trump and Putin would have had a recent telephone conversation in which Putin would have confirmed to Trump their unequivocal will to “not militarily support Maduro” and in this context, we attended the presentation by the US Attorney General, William Barr of charges against the Chavista summit that they accuse of “plotting a conspiracy with the FARC to flood the United States with drugs.” They also offer a million dollar reward that ranges between 10 and 15 million for “providing information that allows the arrest and prosecution of the Chavista summit,” including Maduro, Cabello Diosdado, retired generals Carvajal Barrios and Clíver Alcalá as well as the Minister of Industry, Tareck el Aissami.

Thus, Mike Pence announced the implementation of new measures against two companies that transport Venezuelan crude oil to Cuba, as well as against the 34 ships that PDVSA uses for such a task, together with a possible naval blockade with the avowed objective of causing the “energy suffocation of Cuba. ”Through the amputation of the umbilical cord that unites Venezuela and Cuba with what the Island would be doomed to an energy suffocation of unpredictable results.

Given that the Trump Administration would have amortized Juan Guaidó and that Maduro plans to appoint a tailor-made National Electoral Council for the next legislative elections, the United States will move its pieces to force exile to Cuba from the Chavista leadership and the subsequent formation of a Transitional Government made up of consensus figures from both the opposition and Chavismo that must prepare new Legislative and Presidential Elections for 2021 on the post-mature stage, Cuba in passing getting the US to suspend the energy blockade on the Island.

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Introduction

The following article by Fernando Ravsberg appeared in the Salvadorian digital daily news site ContraPunto on June 24. The translation from the Spanish, which includes a few explanatory additions, is by The Bullet.

It is worth mentioning some of the significant developments that have occurred in the two weeks since Ravsberg’s article appeared.

• Cuba’s efforts against the virus continue to show remarkable results. July 7 marked the 11th consecutive day without a single death attributable to Covid-19. As of that date, the country had seen only 2,399 confirmed cases of infection by the virus, and of these, 2,242 of those infected have recovered. The death toll is only 86.
• Significantly, given the experience of wealthy countries in North America and Western Europe, not a single Cuban health worker, whether a doctor or a floor cleaner, has succumbed to the virus.
• The country is not lowering its guard. The goal is to prevent the virus from taking root anywhere in the country. The aggressive pursuit of the virus that Ravsberg describes continues. The difference is that now that the virus is in retreat, the strategy is even more effective. Nevertheless, the virus is proving to be most tenacious in the province of Havana, and particularly in the capital city. The province accounts for some 57 per cent of all confirmed cases on the island, and half of those killed by the virus lived in the capital city.
• Recovery of social and economic life is proceeding cautiously, through a three-stage process based on objective criteria. Provinces and localities advance through the stages according to their progress in fighting the epidemic. Thirteen of the 15 provinces officially entered the first phase of recovery on June 18, followed by Matanzas a few days later. On July 3 Havana entered phase one, and all the other provinces except Matanzas entered phase two.
• Interprovincial passenger transportation remains suspended, but public transportation within cities has been restored. Restoring urban transportation in the vast city of Havana, essential for economic activity and social life, is presenting some difficult challenges. Transport capacity is limited, so special efforts must be made to avoid overcrowding, to enforce social distancing and mask wearing on the buses and at bus stops, and, most of all, to convince people to behave responsibly.
• The country has begun to welcome international tourists, along the lines explained by Ravsberg.
• Cuba’s medical internationalism, demonstrated so powerfully during the pandemic, has gained a good deal of attention and admiration internationally. An international campaign to nominateCuba’s Henry Reeves brigades for the Nobel Peace Prize is now under way. Initial signatories of the petition include Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel; former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa; actors Danny Glover and Mark Ruffalo; writers Alice Walker, Noam Chomsky and Nancy Morejón; filmmakers Oliver Stone and Petra Costa; and Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez. Meanwhile, the fund appeal of the Canadian Network on Cuba has, to date, raised $45,000 to support the work of the Cuban international brigades fighting the pandemic.

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Cuba is only a few days away from ending its coronavirus quarantine. Except for Havana, all the other provinces are free of the contagion and have begun moving toward a new normality. The capital will have to wait a couple of weeks more because it still averages between one and ten new infections per day and has about a hundred people suffering from Covid-19.

The measures adopted by the Cuban government have been extremely successful. The archipelago is emerging from the crisis with a total of just 2,319 people who were infected with the virus, 2,130 of which have recovered, while 85 have died. [The remainder, approximately 100 people, are still undergoing treatment…eds.] The Cuban public health system was prepared for massive casualties, but the truth is that in the worst moments of the crisis less than 60 per cent of its hospital resources were needed.

Currently, local and interprovincial transport is moving again, except in Havana, and hotels have begun opening their doors to Cuban vacationers. International tourism is slated to begin on July 1, but only on the adjacent islands [the Cays], which have their own airports. All tourists who arrive at these resorts will be tested for Covid-19, as will the staff who work there. Tourists and hotel staff will not be allowed to leave the cays or come into contact with the neighbouring populations.

The Cuban Strategy

Cuba’s quarantine-based process to deal with the pandemic developed gradually. Initially, some Cubans criticized the delay in closing the country’s borders or suspending school. However, once the full lockdown went into effect, international travel ended completely. The only passenger planes that landed on the island during this period were those provided by countries that had requested emergency medical aid from Cuba. These flights carried Cuban medical teams back to those countries. More generally, the authorities established a deadline, after which no one was allowed to leave the country. Some 7,000 Cubans resident in other countries who were visiting the island at the time and about 5,000 foreigners chose to stay and ride out the pandemic in Cuba.

The government suspended all interprovincial and urban transportation. All vehicles were used exclusively to transport health workers or other essential services personnel. The police controlled the streets, enforcing the mandatory use of face masks, dispersing gatherings and maintaining the necessary distance between people lined up outside the stores. These lineups to buy food became one of the main health dangers. [Severe shortages of basic foodstuffs are common in Cuba, as are long lines once supplies do arrive in the shops…eds.]

The troops of the Armed Forces, prepared for chemical or bacteriological warfare, sprayed the streets with chlorine, using their tank trucks and motorized pumps. To prevent the spread of the virus, thousands of soldiers stopped people from leaving heavily infected areas. People coming from areas with very few positive cases were allowed only limited access to infected areas. [The local quarantines were adjusted frequently, in accordance with the severity of the outbreak in the area. They were lifted as the threat receded…eds.]

Payment of taxes, electricity, water, gas, telephone, and internet bills was postponed, as were the installments on bank loans. The state – owner of 90 per cent of the companies – covered the wages of those laid off because of the pandemic. Social workers brought food to the elderly who lived alone, so that they would not have to venture out into the street. Restaurants sold food for consumption at home.

Whenever the public health authorities identified an individual carrying the virus, they investigated who might have been the source of the infection, and who the infected person might have been in contact with after they were infected. All of the people identified in that way became suspects. Some were transferred to quarantine centers for special treatment; others were quarantined at home for 14 days, watched over by their neighbors. Doctors visited them every day. At the slightest symptom, they were transferred to the hospital and tested for the virus. Even today, some 2,000 tests are still being performed every day. This system allows many asymptomatic people, the most dangerous category, to be detected.

At the same time, a country-wide investigation was rolled out, going from house to house across the whole island. Doctors, nurses and students of medicine, nursing and stomatologists knocked on every door to inquire whether or not anyone in the family had any symptoms. [Stomatology is the branch of medicine or dentistry concerned with the structures, functions, and diseases of the mouth…eds.] This very morning a student stopped by my house to ask: “Is everyone all right, does anyone have a cough or fever?” The Minister of Health, Dr. José Ángel Portal, has explained the strategy this way: “It is to not wait for the virus to appear, but to go out and look for it.”

Paradoxically, information – one of the major deficiencies in this country – has been available like never before. Every morning at nine am, the chief of Public Health Epidemiology, Dr. Francisco Durán, presents a report on national TV to share the statistics of the previous day. Cubans then find out how many people remain under observation, how many tests were performed, how many infections have been detected, how many patients are in serious or critical condition, and how many have died during the previous 24 hours.

Crises Are in the Cuban DNA

In spite of Cuba’s small size and population, and its lack of material resources, it has been one of the most successful countries in the world in dealing with the pandemic.

One of Cuba’s secrets is that it has spent 60 years preparing and training for a US attack. Cubans are accustomed to living in a state of crisis. Three-quarters of them have lived their whole lives suffering the effects of the US economic blockade. The Cuban system includes mechanisms, such as a ration book, that enable it to distribute products equitably. The Cuban Civil Defense system can mobilize hundreds of thousands of people in a few hours.

In Cuba, both the rulers and the governed operate more quickly and efficiently in critical times, when centralized decisions must be taken and all the material and human resources of the country must be mobilized to overcome the crisis. The country goes on a war footing. No one questions the orders. Citizen controls are activated, and suspects are watched carefully. During the Covid crisis, additional health measures included tracking down the contacts of those found to be carrying the virus, quarantining towns or neighborhoods when necessary, mandatory treatment in special residential centers for some of the infected population, and overall vigilance of the health situation, block by block.

Above all, Cuba can count on a health system that serves all citizens without exception, with 85,000 nurses and 95,000 doctors for 11 million inhabitants, three times more physicians per capita than Spain. In total, the Cuban system employs more than half a million health professionals, including health technicians and stomatologists (since dental care is also free). The practice of private medicine is prohibited, so all hospitals, polyclinics, family doctors’ houses in the community, and all human and material medical resources belong to the government.

Well-Trained Doctors

Cuban doctors have a lot of experience in combating epidemics. Cuban international health brigades stationed on the island have faced all kinds of diseases in a variety of countries. Some of these medical missions, such as the ones sent to fight Ebola in Africa or the 8,000 doctors who worked in Brazil, coordinated their efforts with the World Health Organization (WHO), with which Cuba maintains close collaboration.

Weeks before the first infected persons were detected on the island, specialists from Cuba were already receiving training from the WHO on how to fight the coronavirus. In January, the first Cuban doctors arrived in China to study the situation. More than 20 Cuban health brigades, with some 2,500 members, have responded to requests for help from other countries. They are now active fighting Covid-19 in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Italy, and Andorra.

Cuba’s task has been made especially difficult because even during the pandemic the Trump Administration has increased pressure on companies to prevent them from trading with the island. The US has even prevented donations of health supplies and equipment from reaching Cuba. For example, Washington threatened to impose financial sanctions on the Colombian airline, Avianca, thereby forcing it to cancel its contract to transport medical equipment and face masks from China to Havana. The supplies had been donated by Chinese businessmen. Washington has also intervened to prevent companies from selling ventilators to Cuba.

The White House is working hard to dissuade countries from calling on Cuba for medical services. It is preparing new legislation that will allow it to impose sanctions on countries that do so. It understands that this is a strategic sector of the Cuban economy, since the sale of medical services represents 75 per cent of Cuba’s foreign exchange earnings. Despite the US pressure, Cuba’s health brigades are present in more than 60 nations, and that number continues to grow. For example, the United Arab Emirates has just requested permanent healthcare assistance from Cuba.

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The Tests: Covid-19 and the Benign Common Cold Coronavirus. Can They be Distinguished?

By Dr. Christian Drosten and Dr. Gary G. Kohls, July 15,

Some virologists are now saying that there are people who have become immune to Covid-19, and that this “unnoticed” immunity is attributable to the (comparatively harmless) coronavirus related to the common cold, which they have had in the past.

Warnings of Possible Cover-Up in Progress as Trump Orders Hospitals to Stop Sending Coronavirus Data to CDC

By Jake Johnson, July 15, 2020

Public health experts are warning that coronavirus statistics will soon be newly vulnerable to political manipulation after the Trump administration ordered hospitals to send Covid-19 patient data directly to a Department of Health and Human Services system rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which usually receives the information and releases it to the public.

US Sanctions Are Part of a Multi-front War on Syria, and Its Long-suffering Civilians Are the Main Target

By Eva Bartlett, July 15, 2020

On June 17, the US implemented the Caesar Act, America’s latest round of draconian sanctions against the Syrian people, to “protect” them, America claims. This, after years of bombing civilians and providing support to anti-government militants, leading to the proliferation of terrorists who kidnap, imprison, torture, maim, and murder the same Syrian civilians.

Profit Driven “Military Contracting” Camouflages Military Costs, Exacerbates Inequality

By Heidi Peltier, July 15, 2020

Military contracting was sold to the American people as a way to reduce the cost of military operations, yet the result has been quite the opposite. Recent research of mine has shown that rather than reduce costs, military contracting — or what I call the “Camo Economy” because it camouflages human and financial costs — has resulted in higher costs to taxpayers. It has also distorted labor markets and contributed to rising inequality, as military contractors earn excessive profits that enable them to pay their employees and particularly their top executives much more than their counterparts in the public sector and most other private sector jobs.

America, You’ve Been Blacklisted: McCarthyism Refashioned for a New Age

By John W. Whitehead, July 15, 2020

For those old enough to have lived through the McCarthy era, there is a whiff of something in the air that reeks of the heightened paranoia, finger-pointing, fear-mongering, totalitarian tactics that were hallmarks of the 1950s.

Back then, it was the government—spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee—working in tandem with private corporations and individuals to blacklist Americans suspected of being communist sympathizers.

US-Mexico Relations: The Outcome of the Trump-AMLO Meeting in Washington?

By Nino Pagliccia, July 14, 2020

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has ended his trip to Washington that was intended to celebrate with the signing of a joint declaration pertaining to the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that took effect last July 1. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was the only leader of the three who was absent.

Iran, Coronavirus and U.S. Sanctions

By Robert Fantina, July 14, 2020

In 2018, the United States, under the confused and confusing leadership of the bizarre Donald Trump, violated domestic and international law by withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This was an agreement made with Iran and China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and the European Union that regulated Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against that country. Among the provisions of the agreement were regular inspections of Iranian nuclear development sites by the United Nations, and the U.S. Congress had to certify to the president, every six months, that Iran was in compliance.  On January 16, 2016, the agreement went into effect, and sanctions against Iran were lifted.

Lockdowns: Essential to the Master Plan

By Renee Parsons, July 14, 2020

In early 2020, Neil Ferguson of the UK’s Imperial College used a scare tactic to predict that 80% of Americans would be infected and that there would be 2.2 million American deaths – neither of which materialized.   Yet Ferguson’s extremism accomplished its intended purpose in establishing the basis for draconian Lockdown requirements.  Ferguson later retracted his earlier prediction down to 20,000 fatalities.

Vaccine Choice Canada, a not-for-profit society founded by families who have suffered from vaccine reactions and injuries, is suing Trudeau’s Liberal Government along with Ford’s Government of Ontario to hold them “accountable” for their “overreach and the draconian and unjustifiable measures taken in response to COVID-19.”

“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 group stated in a press release.

“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.”

In a press release sent out Thursday, Vaccine Choice Canada (VCC) announced that they filed legal action in the Ontario Superior Court against “multiple parties” for their actions “with respect to COVID-19 measures.” The parities also include, among others, the Municipality of Toronto, various public health officers, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The VCC Statement of Claim lists the defendants as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Canada’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Theresa Tam, Transport Minister Marc Garneau, Ontario Ministers Christine Elliot (Health) and Stephen Lecce (Education), Toronto Mayor John Tory, and Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Williams.

The lawsuit also lists as defendants Toronto’s chief medical officer Dr. Eileen De Villa, the County of Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph and their chief medical officer, and Windsor Essex County and their chief medical officer, and the state-funded Canadian broadcaster, the CBC.

The VCC suit lists multiple plaintiffs which include nurses and citizens who argue that the COVID-19 lockdown measures have negatively affected them in both mental and physical health.

In addition to seeking to be paid for the cost of the lawsuit, the VCC is seeking that the defendants do not force any mandatory COVID-19 vaccine on Canadians as it would violate one’s rights under the Canadian constitution.

The VCC is also asking for a declaration that face masks not be mandated, that social distancing measures be retracted as they are “extreme,” and that the closures of churches, schools, and playgrounds were unwarranted and “scientifically” not valid.

The VCC is also seeking $1 million in general and $10 million in punitive damages from the CBC for spreading “misinformation” and “false news” about COVID-19.

In their Statement of Claim summary, the VCC claims that the entire COVID-19 was a “pre-planned” and “false pandemic” perpetrated by the World Health Organization, Bill Gates, and other “Billionaire Oligarchs,” to install a “New World (Economic) Order” with the aim of control and putting wealth in the hands of a few.

They are also claiming that Trudeau’s shutting down of parliament and Ford’s declaration of provincial emergencies was not warranted. The VCC states that the lockdown measures put in place have no basis in scientific fact and therefore, contravene sections of the charter.

In their press release, the VCC states that “during times of emergency,” Canadians’ Constitutional rights “do not stop being important” but rather “become even more important.”

The VCC press release says that Toronto lawyer, Rocco Galati, will serve as their legal counsel.

LifeSiteNews reached out to Ted Kuntz, president of VCC, to ask him about the lawsuit.

Kuntz responded by saying that although they recognize governments can enact laws that limit constitutional rights, it’s up to them to prove that the limits are needed.

“We recognize that governments may enact laws and pursue policies that limit Constitutional rights and freedoms, but the onus is on the government to prove that the limit is minimal, necessary, finite, and demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society,” Kuntz told LifeSiteNews.

VCC held a press conference Thursday at their legal counsel’s office in Toronto. Kuntz told LifeSiteNews that it is “telling that none of the mainstream media attended the press conference.”

In their news release, VCC says that they have made “numerous formal requests of the Government of Canada and various provincial governments” to provide them with evidence that justifies the COVID-19 measures taken, but they have gone unanswered

“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,” states the VCC news release.

The VCC says that there are many “recognized global health and research experts” who have given a 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,” states the VCC news release.

VCC has been a vocal opponent of government responses to the coronavirus crisis and has a page dedicated to the virus on their website

Recently, the VCC heavily opposed a controversial New Brunswick bill that would have mandated kids to be vaccinated to attend public schools.

The bill was defeated, as lawmakers rejected removing “non-medical” religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions from existing law.

In May, Kuntz told LifeSiteNews that any type of forced vaccination, including a COVID-19 vaccine, is “morally repugnant” and unconstitutional after being asked about Health Canada approving human trial testing of a coronavirus vaccine derived from an aborted fetal cell line.

“The decision by Health Canada to approve human trial testing for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine should concern us all,” Kuntz told LifeSiteNews.

“Bypassing standard and prudent safety protocols and rushing a vaccine to market not only increases the risk of producing a product that will cause more harm than good, it has the very real potential to severely undermine trust in our health professionals, our health agencies, and in the entire vaccine paradigm.”

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As I have told my friends for many years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is incapable of helping nations grow their economies. I do not believe the IMF can point to any success story, where its policies led to improving the standard of living of the population. Their macro-monetarist ideology fails to understand the essential driver of real (not monetary) growth. Following IMF prescriptions usually results in more suffering for the victim nation.  For a more in depth analysis read my article from last year: Africa Needs Real Economic Growth, Not IMF Accountants.

The report cited by the ActionAid and Public Service International highlights the failure of the IMF:  IMF Told Countries Facing Critical Health Worker Shortages to Cut Public Sector Wages. The statistics are revealing, but should not be shocking to those of us who study physical economics. Throughout its history we have seen the IMF insist on cuts to meet to macro-economic goal at the expense of the population. This report clearly pinpoints the effects of tying loans to cuts back in healthcare. Africa was suffering from an acute shortage of healthcare workers before the COVID-19 pandemic. Sub-Saharan Africa has the fewest physicians per 1,000 population and the lowest number of hospital beds per 1,000 population.

It was pointed out by Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, earlier this year, that payments of debt service equaled or surpassed the amount of money nations spent on healthcare. He wrote “In 2019, 64 countries, nearly half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, spent more on servicing external debt than on health. Ethiopia spends twice as much on paying off external debt as on health.

African nations, or any country for that matter, should not be subjected to this kind of treatment. Human life is real and precious. Debt is merely a financial accounting mechanism. There is no equivalence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the failure of the world globalized financial system, which has been become decoupled from the real economy. Genuine economic growth uses credit to promote human life. President Franklin Roosevelt’s Bretton Woods system, in its perverted form, came to an end on August 15, 1971. For the last fifty years, the City of London-Wall Street centered financial system has become more corrupt each decade, serving the interest of a tiny few. Now is the time to launch a New Bretton Woods, dedicated to improve the conditions of life for all people of all nations. I will be writing more on this subject in the future.

Below are excerpts from the cited report:

Read the full report: IMF Told Countries Facing Critical Health Worker Shortages to Cut Public Sector Wages

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Africa and the World.

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in the economic development policy of Africa for 30 years. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com

Featured image is from Africa and the World