Global Research

Israel-Palestine and the Acceleration of Eternal Wars. Israel’s “Long War… Working Towards Greater Israel”

By Peter Koenig, October 09, 2023

In the meantime, on the same day of Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, declared war on Palestine – apparently totally ignoring that the war has already been going on for the last 70 years, ever and gradually increasing on severity and intensity.

Germany Could Become Kiev’s Main Strategic Partner as Ukraine-Poland “Honeymoon” in Crisis

By Uriel Araujo, October 10, 2023

With Poland-Ukrainian relations deteriorating, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is speculating whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking a close alliance with Polish rival Germany, accusing him of being ungrateful to Poland.

History: Rivalry Between France and Germany

By Shane Quinn, October 10, 2023

In the immediate years after World War I, France seemed to have gained an impregnable position in mainland Europe. France’s old rival, Germany, was weakened and humiliated following the retreat of its armed forces across the frontlines in the autumn of 1918 against the French, British and American armies.

Solidarity with Ukraine, but Not Palestine? Welcome to the Great Hypocrisy

By John Wight, October 09, 2023

Mohammed Haitham al-Tamimi was just two years old when he was shot and killed by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank. Al-Tamimi goes down as yet another child victim of the murder machine that is the state of Israel when it comes to its ongoing barbarous and brutal occupation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and its siege and asphyxiation of Gaza.

No, the Hamas Invasion Was Not an Israeli ‘Intelligence Failure’

By Ben Bartee, October 09, 2023

One would have to be almost hopelessly naïve to buy the corporate state media line that the Hamas invasion yesterday morning was an Israeli “intelligence failure.” Mossad is one of, if not the, most powerful intelligence agencies on the planet. It routinely shares intelligence, furthermore, with the “Five Eyes” intelligence services.

Brain Cancer Glioblastoma: Large Tumors, Not Responding to Treatments, Recurrence that’s More Aggressive

By Dr. William Makis, October 09, 2023

Analucia Cabanillas Cespedes was diagnosed with a Grade 3 gemistocytic astrocytoma on June 15, 2021, and a 7.5cm tumor was surgically removed. She went on to pursue nursing school at University of Florida which mandated she take COVID-19 Vaccines.

The West’s Hypocrisy Towards Gaza’s Breakout Is Stomach-turning

By Jonathan Cook, October 09, 2023

The current outpouring of sympathy for Israel should make anyone with half a heart retch. Not because it is not awful that Israeli civilians are dying and suffering in such large numbers. But because Palestinian civilians in Gaza have faced repeated rampages from Israel decade after decade, producing far more suffering, but have never elicited a fraction of the concern currently being expressed by western politicians or publics.

War as an “Investment.” The Bizarre Business-Speak of Mass Killing

By Bill Astore, October 09, 2023

Did you know the Russia-Ukraine War is a great “investment” for the United States? A terrific opportunity to kill lots of Russians and to destroy lots of their military equipment at a relatively cheap cost to us? (Just don’t mention the price paid by Ukraine.) It gives new meaning to the expression “making a killing” on the “market.”

mRNA Detected in Breast Milk After COVID-19 Vaccination Can be Passed On to Infants: New Study

By Megan Redshaw, October 09, 2023

A new Lancet study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that the mRNA from COVID-19 vaccines does not remain at the injection site but “spreads systemically” throughout the body and can even end up in breast milk passed on to infants by their vaccinated mothers.

“Hamas Was Started by Israel”? Rep. Ron Paul

By daniel_g, October 09, 2023

In 2009, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said on the House floor that Israel ‘encouraged and started Hamas.’ Paul’s comments came during a speech about ‘blowback’ due to U.S. intervention in the Middle East.

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Former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has slammed the possibility of Ukraine joining the EU, lambasting the country as massively “corrupt.”

“Anyone who has had anything to do with Ukraine knows that this is a country that is corrupt at all levels of society. Despite its efforts, it is not ready for accession; it needs massive internal reform processes,” Juncker said during an interview with German outlet Augsburger Allgemeine published Thursday.

“Making false promises” to Ukrainians regarding EU accession “would be neither good for the EU nor for Ukraine,” added Juncker, who was boss at the Berlaymont in Brussels from 2014 to 2019.

“You shouldn’t make false promises to the people in Ukraine who are up to their necks in suffering,” Juncker said. “I am very angry about some voices in Europe who are telling Ukrainians that they can become members immediately.”

Kyiv has been fending off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion which began in February 2022.

EU membership for aspirant countries like Ukraine and Moldova must be connected to “internal reforms” and be backed by a “qualified majority,” Juncker argued. Ukraine has faced questions for years over its track record on fighting corruption.

Current European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and European Council boss Charles Michel are both much more bullish than Juncker on Ukraine’s accession to the bloc.

Click here to read the full article on POLITICO.

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With Poland-Ukrainian relations deteriorating, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is speculating whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking a close alliance with Polish rival Germany, accusing him of being ungrateful to Poland. During a political rally, Morawiecki said:

“I understand that it seems to [Zelensky] now that he will have a close alliance with Germany. Let me warn you, Germany will always want to cooperate with the Russians over the heads of Central European countries. It was Poland that welcomed a few million Ukrainians under our roofs, it was the Poles who welcomed the Ukrainians, it was we who helped the most at the time when the Germans wanted to send 5,000 helmets to besieged Kiev. It is worthwhile for you not to forget this, President Zelensky.”

This is yet another development of the growing German-Polish rivalry.

In September 2021, I wrote on how Polish authorities in Warsaw had been antagonizing Berlin with nasty WWII rhetoric and judicial campaigns, while trying to project Poland’s influence within the European bloc through a number of ways. In short, Poland made Ukraine a top priority in foreign policy (to the point of taking steps towards a Polish-Ukrainian confederacy), as the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict served Poland’s ambitions quite well: by 2020, during the “Defender Europe 2020” military drills, it had already become clear that Warsaw sought to become the main stronghold of the American  growing military presence in Eastern Europe.

Such Polish plans in turn suit Washington’s ones quite well too: since at least 2020, the US had been campaigning heavily against the (now gone) Nord Stream 2 Russian-German pipeline project – which in fact could have avoided the European energy crisis back then – and both Warsaw and Kiev echoed such a campaign. Moreover, in recent years, while relatively isolated within European, Poland kept paying court to the US-led West, encouraging Washington to back the Three Seas Initiative (3SI), for instance, as a Western “counterweight” to Chinese investments in “critical infrastructure” – as  Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau wrote in a June 2021 article which appeared in Francis Fukuyama’s “American Purpose”. Washington appears to have been keen to promote Poland’s aspirations towards regional hegemony as a means to counter Germany – the US having grown “fed up” with Berlin for a number of reasons, ranging from German “stubborn” insistence on advancing energy cooperation with Moscow to its more recent flirtation with the notion of “strategic autonomy”.

In fact, the aforementioned energy issue plus US President Joe Biden’s subsidy war against Europe might have been a kind of “wake up call” to many European leaders, thus having contributed to reboost talks about “strategic autonomy” more recently. Poland seemed to see things quite differently, however, as it counted on Washington for its ambitious plans to become an European gas hub.

While Warsaw, which historically is no stranger to Great Power machinations, has been pursuing regional hegemony and has largely become once again an important political actor in Europe, the fact still remains that, to a large degree, it is in fact being “played” by the American foreign policy goals as a proxy. Polish projects regarding Ukrainian-Polish confederacy, for one thing, have always been bound to face great challenges with regards to Ukraine’s own anti-Polish far-right nationalists and the complicated Ukrainian-Polish history itself, as I wrote before. Polish-Ukrainian “honeymoon” always contained within itself the potential to bring to light once again Polish-Ukrainian tensions amid a migration crisis and the European economic predicaments.

In any case, the decline of Polish-Ukraine relations and the escalation of tensions between the two partners marks an interesting chapter in the saga of Polish-German competition.

While Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki announced, on September 20, that his country is no longer sending arms to Kiev (amid grain row), German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on October 5, that Germany is to supply additional Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine. Berlin has also ordered hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to replenish Ukrainian stocks. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in turn met with Biden in Washington D.C. on October 6, urging the US to continue supporting Ukraine, after the American Congress passed a stopgap funding bill that did not include Ukraine aid. Moreover, Berlin is currently leading the European condemnation of Poland, Slovakia and Hungary’s curb on Ukrainian grain imports, which lies at the center of today’s Polish-Ukrainian crisis.

Morawiecki’s concerns actually make some sense: Germany could in fact end up replacing Poland as Ukraine’s main strategic partner in Europe. In doing so, Berlin would again be playing the role of a thorn in the US side, considering Washington’s bet on Warsaw. In other words, “countering” German’s hegemony within Europe is not a simple task, at least for now – even though there are signs Germany could be on its way to becoming once again the “sick man of Europe”. For Germany itself, however, enhancing bilateral ties with Ukraine to such a degree, would not be simple either.

In June, “traces of subsea explosives were found” in a yacht hired by a Ukrainian-owned company and the Washington Post reported that US President Joe Biden “knew of the Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream” three months before the pipeline sabotage. Far from being  mere  “conspiracy theory” speculations, the pressing issue of who in fact blew up Nord Stream pipelines is not just a police matter, but rather a hot political problem, with geoeconomic and geopolitical implications. It remains to be seen how German “strategic autonomy” will play out as Berlin keeps aiding the American proxy attrition war in Ukraine, while German authorities and opposition leaders demand that the Nord Stream criminal explosion be investigated – the US and Ukraine itself being the main suspects.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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In the immediate years after World War I, France seemed to have gained an impregnable position in mainland Europe. France’s old rival, Germany, was weakened and humiliated following the retreat of its armed forces across the frontlines in the autumn of 1918 against the French, British and American armies.

During the 1920s the French would secure alliances with states such as Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland, along with some of the emerging Balkan nations. France at this time also possessed one of the biggest armies in the world, whereas the German Army had been greatly reduced in size. These apparent shows of strength concealed real frailties, however.

The weaker European countries that aligned themselves to France proved to be liabilities rather than assets. After 1918 the French willingly severed ties with its former ally, Russia, in part because of ideological biases towards the Bolshevik government.

Poland was continually encouraging the rise in anti-Russian feelings within France. The Poles, sometimes in the most opportunistic manner, were keen to take advantage of political or military situations which might prove detrimental to the Russian state.

Successive French governments were hostile towards Soviet Russia, which had met firm favour in Warsaw. These self-defeating actions would cost both France and Poland dear when a second global war loomed in the late 1930s. Paris had claimed that the Soviets refused to honour the debts that Tsar Nicholas II previously contracted with France.

Relations between France and Britain also deteriorated after the fighting ended in November 1918. There were disagreements in Paris and London over issues such as war debt payments, reparations and disarmament.

A feeling persisted in England, which was hardly ever publicly expressed, that they had been tricked into fighting a continental war for French interests, by helping the latter to reclaim its supremacy over Germany and the region of Alsace-Lorraine. The British gained nothing from the First World War except a huge casualty list among its soldiers and the further decline of its hegemony.

France may not have been defeated in World War I, but they were assisted a great deal in this by Britain, Russia and during the final year of the conflict, America. With the war over, at the root of French weakness was the loss of her wartime allies, particularly Russia with its vast pool of manpower and resources. The Russians have possessed enough strength to take care of themselves but France was weaker and especially needed alliances with powerful states.

On their own the French had not won a major conflict in Europe since the early 19th century under Napoleon. One of Britain’s leading commanders of the First World War, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, wrote in late May 1917 “our French allies had already shown that they lacked both the moral qualities and the means of gaining victory”.

French poilus (soldiers) posing in a trench, 16 June 1917. Note the Adrian helmets. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

There was truth to Haig’s criticisms and, to his dismay, in the spring and summer of 1917 the French Army was in the process of disintegration having been unable to cope with the rigours of a large-scale war. After weeks of upheaval by 9 June 1917 insurrections and rebellions had spread to 54 divisions throughout the French Army, amounting to hundreds of thousands of men.

In addition even in those units where no insurrection took place, more than half of French soldiers returning from leave were arriving back in a state of drunkenness. The French military command, under pressure, later acknowledged that 170 acts of rebellion had occurred across the army’s ranks between April to June 1917, though the real number was probably higher than that.

A total collapse of the French Army did not unfold but it came close to happening; as punishment for the ringleaders of the many rebellions, the military leadership resorted to extreme measures like executions by firing squad and extensive periods of penal servitude.

Increasing numbers of British and American troops were reinforcing the Allied frontlines through 1917, which was vital in restoring some of the French morale, temporarily at least. The widespread unrest in the French Army was thereafter not adequately addressed or cured. France had suffered a very high loss of life during the war. Almost half of the soldiers available to the French Army in 1914 would either be killed or wounded over the next four years.

The casualty rate led to permanent psychological damage within the army. Numerous French troops came to believe the price of victory was no longer worth paying. This feeling was passed on unchanged to the next generation of French soldiers. Most of the fighting on the Western front during World War I had taken place in France, not Germany. Subsequently, French military thinking became wholly negative and based on outmoded First World War doctrines.

Poor discipline and fighting spirit among French troops indeed persisted in the interwar years. The complete capitulation came in 1940 when the French Army was faced with a strong and motivated Wehrmacht.

The warning signs had been on display for British officers to see like Lieutenant-General Alan Brooke, who would become the head of the British Army in December 1941. A few weeks after the fall of Poland in September 1939, General Brooke attended a ceremonial parade of the French 9th Army, commanded by General André Corap.

General Brooke was disturbed to see that many of the French soldiers had “insubordinate” and sulky expressions on their faces. He noticed too their uniforms and equipment were often untidy and not properly cared for, and they did not march in unison but slouched past out of line. A few months later Brooke was not terribly surprised to learn that the French 9th Army fell to pieces, following Nazi Germany’s western invasion in May 1940.

A generation prior to that, a partial collapse in the morale of the Austro-Hungarian Army had taken place in the summer of 1916, two years into the First World War, when they were faced with a major Russian offensive overseen by General Aleksei Brusilov. Austro-Hungarian divisions, in particular Bohemian troops, deserted from the battlefield in considerable numbers, unable to cope with determined and well-trained Russian soldiers. After two years of fighting against the Russian Army, the Austro-Hungarian forces were depleted and in disarray.

Growing discontent was on display, for example, in the Wehrmacht when its invasion of Russia was faltering in the autumn of 1941. Tensions and open acrimony developed between the German army high command, field commanders, and ordinary frontline troops, though nothing like on the scale of the French in 1917.

That Germany by this point had already gained its revenge over the Franco-British forces in the summer of 1940 was not altogether unexpected. At the end of World War I the Germans were treated shabbily enough by the Allied powers, but the potential remained within Germany for the country to recover its influence and become one of Europe’s strongest nations again.

Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli said centuries before that an enemy should either be killed or ruined beyond any possibility of recovery, or he should be treated leniently, depending on the circumstances. With the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, the Western Allies neither dismantled Germany nor treated the country generously. The Germans were instead wounded and a wounded animal is a dangerous one. Before long he will recover from his wounds and seek retaliation.

French political and military leaders like Georges Clemenceau and Ferdinand Foch, both staunch anti-Germans, knew this very well. Clemenceau wanted to forever remove the German threat to France by dismembering Germany. In not doing so he feared that in a future conflict the odds would be heavily in Germany’s favour, and that France might not have the same allies to call upon in the next war.

Clemenceau knew as well the German population remained quite larger than that of France. In 1920 there were 62 million Germans and just 39 million French people. German industrial potential continued to be greater than France too. When the French war hero Marshal Foch saw the terms laid down by the Versailles Treaty he had said, “This is not peace. It’s an armistice for 20 years”. As with Clemenceau, Foch desired the breaking up of Germany into different states.

It could be argued as a result that the First World War’s outcome was inconclusive, a view which Clemenceau and Foch may well have agreed with. The territories of the nations that failed to secure victory were not occupied for long periods by foreign armies. The Second World War had been a direct consequence of the First World War, with an uneasy 20-year armistice in between as Marshal Foch predicted.

In the two world wars Russia, Britain, France and America had fought against Germany and various allies of the Germans. A clear result was reached in 1945 with the Axis powers’ unconditional surrender. Yet World War II, unlike its predecessor, was a necessary war in that the fascist states, above all Nazi Germany, had to be soundly defeated and demilitarised.

At the conclusion of World War I the British had wanted Germany to survive as a nation, in the main because they believed that Germany’s continued existence would help to prevent the spread of communism. Winston Churchill, the Secretary of State for War and Air, did not want the disbanding of the German Army in 1919, as he felt it might be needed to assist in thwarting the perceived threat posed by Soviet Russia.

Churchill disagreed with the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty aimed at Germany, and he feared it would lead to another continental war. Churchill wanted Britain to be as he said “the ally of France and the friend of Germany”.

In comparison Churchill’s attitude towards the Bolshevik government in Russia was belligerent and unhelpful, at least in part because of his entrenched anti-communism. Churchill supported the unprovoked Allied invasion of Russia in 1918 and British military involvement in the conflict against the Red Army.

Churchill had not relished the prospect of France gaining an unassailable position in mainland Europe after 1918, which was part of the reason he wanted the Germans to be treated leniently. Most British politicians hoped that Germany would gradually recover but not to again threaten British interests. London simply wanted a counterbalance to the French in central Europe.

Economic policies in Europe during the 1920s came as a reaction to World War I, along with growing domestic unrest. In Britain in 1926 a general strike, the biggest in the country’s history, was eventually broken by the Conservative government as a restless industrial peace then settled over the United Kingdom.

Communist propaganda was blamed for the revolts in Britain’s overseas possessions such as India, but the instability brought on by World War I was actually the cause of the uprisings. Between 1914 and 1918, the inhabitants of Britain’s colonial empire realised for the first time that Britain was not the world’s dominant state after all, but was in fact one of several great powers.

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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.

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

Sources

“1917, Georges Clemenceau named French prime minister”, History.com, 16 November 2009

Timothy C. Dowling, The Brusilov Offensive (Indiana University Press, 18 June 2008)

J. P. Harris, “Douglas Haig”, Oxford Bibliographies, 29 November 2022

Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: World in Torment, 1916-1922 (Hillsdale College Press, 1 January 2008)

Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 (Hodder Arnold, 23 February 2007)

Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985)

Featured image is from Geopolitica.RU

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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There are quite a few strange things happening in the war in Ukraine. Since World War II, the world has witnessed a Western-backed president who happens to be Jewish in command of a military which has a significant number of neo-Nazis fighting Russian forces. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has managed the war like a modern-day, far-left liberal democrat from the US in a mostly conservative country.

Zelensky is a modern political puppet of the West who is following a playbook to destroy Russia and turn it into another Iraq or Libya. Zelensky’s actions speak louder than words, in fact, some of his actions are quite strange to say the least including his support for neo-Nazi extremism in his military ranks.

Who would have thought that in 2023, a Jewish President of an Eastern European country would support an army full of neo-Nazis. However, there are other decisions Zelensky has made that are just as strange and bizarre which I will discuss further in detail shortly.

Zelensky is not the first Ukrainian leader to support neo-Nazi ideology because it has been prevalent in Ukraine since 1917. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022 which was provoked by Kiev who continuously bombed pro-Russian areas in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk since the US-backed Maidan protests in 2014 began, so for more than 8 years, Kiev’s forces killed thousands of people in the process.

That’s when a new division for Ukraine’s military was formed called the Azov battalion which is strictly a neo-Nazi-led battalion. That’s when Ukraine showed its true colors to the world, the rise of neo-Nazis has become evident. It is now clear that Nazi ideology has sadly become part of Ukraine’s culture.

However, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the CIA took part in training Ukrainian “paramilitaries” as Yahoo News reported that it was a covert program established by Obama and was supported by every US regime since then:

While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for the CIA’s Ground Branch — now officially known as Ground Department — was established by the Obama administration after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has further augmented it, said a former senior intelligence official in touch with colleagues in government

An unnamed source said that “If the Russians invade, those [graduates of the CIA programs] are going to be your militia, your insurgent leaders” and that “we’ve been training these guys now for eight years. They’re really good fighters. That’s where the agency’s program could have a serious impact.”  

In 2018, one of the most important commentaries published by Reuters which can also be considered a warning to the world, ‘Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem’ about how Ukrainian neo-Nazis were joining the ranks of its national militias, “a January 28 demonstration, in Kiev, by 600 members of the so-called “National Militia,” a newly-formed ultranationalist group that vows “to use force to establish order,” illustrates this threat.”  

Ukraine’s main problem with these neo-Nazis is that they have already infiltrated its armed forces, “a recent article in Foreign Affairs downplayed any risks the group might pose, pointing out that, like other volunteer militias, Azov has been “reined in” through its integration into Ukraine’s armed forces. While it’s true that private militias no longer rule the battlefront, it’s the home front that Kiev needs to worry about now.”

It’s been known for some time that Ukraine is a bastion of Nazi ideology, including the Neo-Nazi Summer camps for children who are literally brainwashed to become future Nazis and then then once they are around 15 years-old, they are recruited or in some cases, forced to join Ukraine’s military units such as the Azov Battalion.

We can even go back to the World War II when the US and its CIA operatives have been arming and training Ukrainian neo-Nazis since 1946.  The CIA collaborated with what was called at the time “the OUN-B” which was a neo-Nazi Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists based in Eastern Europe and other areas close to the Soviet Union to assist other Ukrainian nationalists in efforts to destabilize Soviet Ukraine through assassination programs and other acts of terrorism against the Soviet Union.

It’s completely ironic with the history of Nazism in Ukraine, a Jewish performer was selected to become Ukraine’s President.  However, it’s not all just about Zelensky betraying the Jewish people, the so-called “Jewish” state of Israel also supports Ukraine’s war against Russia which is another irony that’s hard to ignore.  Millions of Russians died fighting the Nazis until the end and were victorious. Overall, Zelensky’s support of neo-Nazis is not only ironic, but also an insult to the Jewish people.

Perhaps Ukraine’s Former Spokeswoman was Zelensky’s way of showing the LGBTQI+ community in the West that he believes in gender equality. Sarah Ashton-Cirillo ‘aka’ Michael John Cirillo, a transgender woman was appointed as the spokeswoman for Ukraine. Zelensky is obviously pandering to the Democrats in the US, but this sort of high-level position needs to be taken seriously because Cirillo borders on insanity. The way she describes the Russian people is outrages to say the least.

In one of her videos, Cirillo threatened Russian journalists and others who have criticized Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia:

Russia hates the truth that their obsessive focus on a Ukrainian volunteer is simply allowing the light of the Ukrainian nation’s honesty to shine brightly.  Next week, the teeth of the Russian will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam an uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes.  And this puppet of Putin is only the first.  Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty, and complete liberation

In a prank played by Russians exposed Cirillo for her deep hatred of Russia by saying that the Russian people “want to be slaves” and that they are “non-human” which is an incredibly racist comment anyone can say about a specific group of people.  It’s completely absurd.

One thing is certain, history will remember Zelensky’s appointment of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo as an embarrassment to Ukraine’s government and its supporters.

Zelensky to Appoint a Satanic Performance Artist, Marina Abramovic as Ambassador of Ukraine to rebuild schools for Children?

There are quite of few bizarre decisions that Zelensky has made including how to rebuild Ukraine once the war is over, but one of the decisions that concerns the future for Ukraine’s children seems to be heading towards a very dark place because Zelensky has asked a performance artist by the name of Marina Abramovic to oversee the rebuilding of Ukrainian schools. 

Who is Abramovic? for starters, she is Serbian and an anti-Putin activist who has criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  It is also known that Abramovic has supported the radical feminist group, Pussy Riot, a group of petty criminals who are well-known anti-Putin activists based in Russia.

Abramovic also helped build an interactive installation for the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial, The Crystal Wall of Crying in 2021.  She was interviewed by the Jerusalem Post and made it clear that she supports Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia:

I was the first artist to support the Ukraine War against Russia and to give my voice. It is definitely a repetition of history. I have been invited by Zelensky to be an ambassador of Ukraine, to help the children affected by rebuilding schools and such. I have also been invited to be a board member of the Babyn Yar organization to continue to protect the memorial. Making the Crystal Wall of Crying was just the first step in dealing with new history and figuring out how to help heal our increasingly divided world 

Abramovic has made friends with Western political elites over the years including Hillary Clinton.  Clinton’s campaign chairman, Tony Podesta, and the brother of John Podesta who has worked for various Democratic presidents including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, most likely attended the “Spirit Cooking” dinner party several years ago.  Wikileaks exposed the email that was originally sent to Tony Podesta:

Here is Abramovic painting a wall with pig blood and wrote in capital letters,

“WITH A SHARP KNIFE CUT DEEPLY INTO THE MIDDLE FINGER OF YOUR LEFT HAND EAT THE PAIN”

then she wrote another message that said,

“FRESH MORNING URINE SPRINKLE OVER NIGHTMARE DREAMS.” 

Then she throws pig blood over a small statue then wrote, “SPIRIT COOKING” then performed a ceremony then wrote another bizarre message on the wall that read

“MIX FRESH BREAST MILK WITH FRESH SPERM MILK DRINK ON EARTHQUAKE NIGHTS.” 

To be honest, I don’t know what most of these messages mean, the only one that I can only guess is the one that says “Fresh morning urine sprinkle over nightmare dreams”which most likely means that you get urinated on while experiencing a bad nightmare.

If people want to call this art, so be it, but if this new appointment does happen, it will not be in any way, an inspiring choice for any child’s future. 

There are other extremely controversial art pieces and photos that includes Abramovic with Satan’s horns:

Here is a photo with Abramovic standing with a naked boy covering his eyes: 

I just can’t even imagine what went on in that Spirit Cooking party if of course, any of them attended including the Podestas’ or the Clintons, in fact, I don’t even want to know.  It reminds me of Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ with Tom Cruise going to that weird Masked Ball Ritual. 

So now this so called “artist” might be the new ambassador of Ukraine who will take the lead in rebuilding schools.  Just that thought alone should be of concern for all Ukrainian parents who want a good education that will benefit their children in the future. So far, that future is leading to a very dark place.

Zelensky Promotes Climate Change at UNGA

Zelensky is obviously taking orders from his Globalist handlers including those at the World Economic Forum as he somehow equated Climate Change with the Russian invasion in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA):

Thank God, people have not learned to use climate as a weapon, even though humanity is failing on its climate policy objectives, this means that extreme weather will still impact the normal global life and some evil state will also weaponize its outcomes.  And when people in the streets of New York and other cities in the world went out on climate protests-we all have seen them…

and when people in Morocco and Libya and other countries die as a result of natural disasters and when islands and countries disappear under water and when tornadoes and desserts are spreading into new territories…and when all of this is happening, one unnatural disaster in Moscow decided to launch a big war and kill tens of thousands of people

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has a goal set for the year 2050 and that is to reach “net Zero Carbon.” The reality is that Climate Change is a Globalist power grab that will bankrupt any country who goes along with the scam because it will demand extreme rules and regulations that will require the complete elimination of oil, gas, coal, and other traditional forms of hydrocarbons that has been used for various industries and for the people’s energy needs for quite some time. 

It will no doubt lead to deindustrialization and high unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression.  They want to reduce CO2 emissions which is a form of greenhouse gases to avoid it from reaching the atmosphere because according to Climate Change alarmists, CO2 emissions can form a blanket above us while warming the entire planet below. 

This allows Climate Change alarmists to say that polar ice caps are melting, or extreme weather conditions are occurring because of how humanity has used these traditional sources of energy, but it is all a lie.    

Unfortunately, Zelensky will make whatever is left of Ukraine’s living conditions even worse since Ukraine’s energy sources will eventually consist of alternative forms of energy such as solar panels and wind power which will make members of the WEF and others including Climate Change profiteers and activists quite happy.      

Zelensky Openly Threatened Europe Indirectly with Terrorism If they Did not Support Ukraine

Never bite the hand that feeds you.  Members of NATO are on board supporting Ukraine’s war efforts with financial and military aid from the start, but Zelensky made a threatening statement against Europe in general with threats of terrorism by Ukrainians who cross their borders if they don’t keep up with their financial and military obligations.  If that’s not the most idiotic thing a leader of a country at war has said, I don’t know what is:

I see that he or she is not here, not with us contrary to spoken assurances, Failure to support Ukraine amounts to siding with Russia in the conflict” he continued “If partners do not help us, it means they will help Russia to win, Western voters will not forgive their leaders if they lose Ukraine, further trouble may also come from the millions of Ukrainian refugees now residing across Western Europe, they have generally behaved well, but if their hosts drive these people into a corner, the end result will not be a good story.

That sounded like a threat to me, but of course, European leaders stay silent, no comments whatsoever.  Members of NATO are now in a bind because what if neo-Nazi terrorists from Ukraine decide to create a false flag operation and detonate an explosive device in a European institution or some other place that will kill and injure civilians and blame it on the Russians?

They should remember that a 29-year-old TV commentator in Russia, Daria Dugina who was killed in a car bomb explosion in the outskirts of Moscow.  Daria Dugina happened to be the daughter of an influential Russian political theorist, Alexander Dugin who is a supporter of President Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so we don’t have to guess who was behind this terrorist attack.   

Zelensky will continue to ask the US and EU for economic and military aid even though Ukraine has no chance of winning this war with close to over 500,000 of their troops killed or injured. 

Even though Zelensky is one of the most neo-liberal and bizarre leaders in recent history who should negotiate a peace agreement with Russia and end this war before Ukraine is completely destroyed.  Zelensky is just another western-backed puppet like Saddam Hussein who happened to be Washington’s favorite dictator at the time and in his last days, look what happened to him. 

If Zelensky makes a peace deal with Russia and have Ukraine stay neutral and abandon its agenda of becoming a member of NATO, then maybe he can survive this war and return to show business and make more music videos dancing in his stilettos, and why not? he’s actually good at it.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCN

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***

Mohammed Haitham al-Tamimi was just two years old when he was shot and killed by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank. Al-Tamimi goes down as yet another child victim of the murder machine that is the state of Israel when it comes to its ongoing barbarous and brutal occupation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and its siege and asphyxiation of Gaza.

The West has never been more united in its support for Ukrainian resistance to Russian occupation, nor has it ever wavered in its defence of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. The hypocrisy underpinning this sordid dynamic is so rancid it can only make you retch, such is the level of disgust engendered.

This, dear reader, is the world that our governments, mainstream media, and propagandists in the West are never done telling us, is the best of all possible worlds. It leads us to ask as to the whereabouts of the reset button, so we can start human affairs again — from the beginning.

The cause of the Palestinian people is the cause of humanity in our time. For from it flows all the ills of Western so-called civilisation, chief among which is “might is right.”

Israel in its current form is a proto-fascist state, impervious to any constraints when it comes to its systemic and structural oppression of the Palestinian people in the name not of security, as its apologists tirelessly claim, but in the name of ethno-nationalism and white supremacy in a zionist variant.

The timid language used by mainstream commentators when reporting on the apartheid state of Israel, and its ceaseless attacks on the Palestinian people, is a tribute to the success of the pro-Israel lobby in the West when it comes to policing how this issue is reported and narrated.

Indeed, for those who’ve just arrived on Earth from another dimension, you could be forgiven for believing that it is the Israelis that are being oppressed and occupied by the Palestinians, rather than the other way round.

Talk of “clashes” in the West Bank are all the rage for the “ink slingers of the jingo press,” as James Connolly described them, Establishment scribes in whose addled minds the Palestinians occupy a much lower rung on the ladder of human worth than their Israeli counterparts.

As for Israeli settlers, such people are so execrable in their extremist and fanatical belief in religious supremacy and all its works, you are left to ponder where humanity went wrong.

With the relentless theft of Palestinian land, the routine eviction of Palestinians from their homes, and regular acts of murder and violence, such people in a world underpinned by justice would be mercilessly calumniated and chastised.

Alas, we today do not live in such a world, and as such injustice has become so normalised when it comes to the lived experiences of the Palestinians that one can only marvel at their tenacity and courage in the face of it.

Israel is not a democracy, it is a settler-colonial state masquerading as one. In his outstanding work, The Hundred Years War On Palestine, author Rashid Khalidi quotes the sentiments of one Zeev Jabotinsky from as far back as 1923.

Jabotinsky was the founder and father of the Zionist Revisionist Movement, his ideology embraced by such Israeli prime ministers as Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon and current incumbent, Benjamin Netanyahu. Jabotinsky wrote:

“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope they will be able to prevent the transformation of ‘Palestine’ into the ‘Land of Israel.’”

Returning to the central theme of the piece, the similarities that now exist between Ukraine and Israel are striking. Though Ukraine is not a settler-colonial project, the mistreatment of its ethnic and Russian-speaking minority in southern and eastern Ukraine since 2014 has been as brutal and murderous as that meted out to the Palestinians by Israel.

Both countries are drowning in the poison of ethno-nationalism, and both are US vassal states, dependent on Washington’s support and economic largesse.

What the Palestinians of course lack is a sponsor like Russia. What they do have is growing and expanding support and solidarity across the globe as more and more people’s eyes are opened to their pristine oppression under the iron heel of apartheid.

The murder of al-Tamimi at the hands of soldiers of the apartheid state of Israel marks a withering indictment of the status quo in the collective West. Riding shotgun for such barbarism can be described as many things — decency is not one of them.

The right of the Palestinians to resist their oppression and occupation is enshrined in international law. The right of the Israelis to oppress and occupy them is not. No amount of Hasbara or obfuscation can alter that which is unalterable.

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Featured image: Palestinian Marwa al-Tamimi, 32 carries the body of her 2-year-old son Mohammed al-Tamimi during his funeral at the West Bank village of Nebi Saleh, northwest of Ramallah, June 6, 2023 (Copyright AP)

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*** 

 

 

 

One would have to be almost hopelessly naïve to buy the corporate state media line that the Hamas invasion yesterday morning was an Israeli “intelligence failure.”

Mossad is one of, if not the, most powerful intelligence agencies on the planet. It routinely shares intelligence, furthermore, with the “Five Eyes” intelligence services.

It has its tentacles deep inside of every ally and foe of import.

Its spies are littered across the Gaza Strip, which is an effective open-air prison into which goods do not flow but for the blessing of the Israeli state. The Gaza Strip is arguably the most heavily surveilled geographic area on Earth.

The Hamas invasion of Southern Israel yesterday was an operation involving tens of thousands of operatives, at least, across land, sea, and air, using all manner of equipment and weaponry – drones, thousands of rockets, countless firearms, and even bulldozers that were positioned to knock down Israeli fencing.

And MSNBC and CNN would have you believe this was all a big “intelligence failure” by Mossad.

Bibi Netanyahu was in real political trouble before this conveniently timed invasion.

Now, or at least this is the hope, Israelis will rally around the flag for some patriotic Palestinian ass-kicking and their Prime Minister’s imminently obvious corruption will be, at least temporarily, forgotten, if not forgiven.

Meanwhile, Israeli intelligence, rather than being punished for its “failure,” will use its “failure” as a pretext to garner more funding and more authorities for itself so as to prevent another such “failure.”

The Hamas invasion was only a “failure” if one believes the goal of Mossad is to protect Israeli civilians rather than accrue more power for itself.

At a bare minimum, Mossad knew of the attack beforehand and let it happen for political convenience. More likely, in my view, is that it actively facilitated the attack.

The kind of person who would believe this was a big intelligence whoopsie are the same kind of people who would buy that a handful of semi-literate cave-dwellers halfway around the world singlehandedly pulled off the greatest terror attack in world history with no assistance from spooks and that buildings with structure fires at the top of them collapse at freefall speed neatly into their own footprints.

If you’re one of those – and I assume you’re not if you’re reading this – I don’t know what to tell you. Read a book or something.

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This article was originally published on the author’s substack, Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

Featured image is from the Public Domain

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*** 

June 6, 2023 (below) – Analucia Cabanillas Cespedes was diagnosed with a Grade 3 gemistocytic astrocytoma on June 15, 2021, and a 7.5cm tumor was surgically removed. She went on to pursue nursing school at University of Florida which mandated she take COVID-19 Vaccines.

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*** 

The current outpouring of sympathy for Israel should make anyone with half a heart retch.

Not because it is not awful that Israeli civilians are dying and suffering in such large numbers. But because Palestinian civilians in Gaza have faced repeated rampages from Israel decade after decade, producing far more suffering, but have never elicited a fraction of the concern currently being expressed by western politicians or publics.

The West’s hypocrisy over Palestinian fighters killing and wounding hundreds of Israelis and holding dozens more hostage in communities surrounding and inside besieged Gaza is stark indeed.

This is the first time Palestinians, caged in the coastal enclave, have managed to inflict a significant strike against Israel vaguely comparable to the savagery Palestinians in Gaza have faced repeatedly since they were entombed in a cage more than 15 years ago, when Israel began its blockade by land, sea and air in 2007.

Western media are calling the jailbreak and attack by Palestinians from Gaza “unprecedented” – and the most dismal intelligence failing by Israel since it was caught off-guard during the Yom Kippur War exactly 50 years ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Hamas, which nominally runs the open-air prison of Gaza, of starting “a cruel and evil war”. But the truth is that the Palestinians have “started” nothing. They have managed, after so much struggle, to find a way to hurt their tormentor.

Inevitably for the Palestinians, as Netanyahu also observed, “the price will be heavy” – especially for civilians. Israel will inflict on the prisoners the severest punishment for their impudence.

Watch how little sympathy and concern there will be from the West for the many Palestinian men, women and children who are killed once again by Israel. Their immense suffering will be obscured, and justified, by the term “Israeli retaliation”.

The Real Lessons

All the current analysis focusing on Israel’s intelligence “blunders” distracts from the real lesson of these rapidly evolving events.

No one really cared while Gaza’s Palestinans were subjected to a blockade imposed by Israel that denied them the essentials of life. The few dozen Israelis being held hostage by Hamas fighters pale in comparison with the two million Palestinians held hostage by Israel in an open-air prison for nearly two decades.

No one really cared when it emerged that Gaza’s Palestinians had been put on a “starvation diet” by Israel – only limited food was allowed in, calculated to keep the population barely fed.

No one really cared when Israel bombed the coastal enclave every few years, killing many hundreds of Palestinian civilians each time. Israel simply called it “mowing the lawn”. The destruction of vast areas of Gaza, what Israeli generals boasted of as returning the enclave to the Stone Age, was formalised as a military strategy known as the “Dahiya doctrine“.

No one really cared when Israeli snipers targeted nurses, youngsters and people in wheelchairs who came out to protest against their imprisonment by Israel. Many thousands were left as amputees after those snipers received orders to shoot the protesters indiscriminately in the legs or ankles.

Western concern at the deaths of Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian fighters is hard to stomach. Have not many hundreds of Palestinian children died over the past 15 years in Israel’s repeated bombing campaigns on Gaza? Did their lives not count as much as Israeli lives – and if not, why not?

After so much indifference for so long, it is difficult to hear the sudden horror from western governments and media because Palestinians have finally found a way – mirroring Israel’s inhumane, decades-long policy – to fight back effectively. 

This moment rips off the mask and lays bare the undisguised racism that masquerades as moral concern in western capitals.

Hypocrisy Distilled

Distilling that hypocrisy is Volodymr Zelenskiy, Ukraine‘s president. At the weekend, he issued a lengthy tweet condemning Palestinians as “terrorists” and offering Israel his unwavering support. 

Horrible news from Israel. My condolences go out to everyone who lost relatives or close ones in the terrorist attack. We have faith that order will be restored and terrorists will be defeated.

Terror should have no place in the world, because it is always a crime, not just…

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 7, 2023

He averred that

“Israel’s right to self-defense is unquestionable”, adding: “The world must stand united and in solidarity so that terror does not attempt to break or subjugate life anywhere and at any moment.” 

The inversion of reality is breath-taking. The Palestinians cannot “subjugate life” in Israel. They have no such power, even if a few briefly managed to break out of their cage. It is Israel that has been subjugating Palestinian life for decades.

Not all forms of “terrorism”, it seems, are equal in the eyes of Zelenskiy, or his patrons in western capitals. Certainly, not the state terrorism of Israel that has made Palestinian lives a misery for decades. 

How does Israel have an “unquestionable right” to “defend itself” from the Palestinians whose territory it occupies and controls? How does Russia then not have an equal claim to be “defending itself” when it hits Ukrainian cities in “retaliation” for Ukrainian strikes intended to liberate its territory from Russian occupation? 

Israel, the much stronger, belligerent party, is now laying waste to Gaza “in retaliation”, as the BBC puts it, for the latest Palestinian attack. 

So on what grounds will Zelenskiy or his officials be able to condemn Moscow when it fires missiles “in retaliation” for Ukraine’s strikes on Russian territory? How, if Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation of Gaza is terrorism, as Zelenskiy asserts, is Ukrainain resistance to Russian occupation not equally terrorism?

No Hiding Place

By indulging Israel in its deceptions, Israel’s allies have allowed it to perpetrate ever more outrageous lies. At the weekend, Netanyahu warned Palestinians in Gaza to “leave now” because Israeli forces were preparing to “act with all force”. 

But Netanyahu knows, as do his western enablers, that Gaza’s population has nowhere to flee. There is no hiding place. Palestinians have been sealed into Gaza since Israel besieged it by land, sea and air. 

The only Palestinians able to “leave Gaza” are the armed factions who broke out of their Israeli-imposed jail and are being denounced as “terrorists” by western politicians and media.

Western governments so horrified by the Palestinian attack on Israel are also the governments that are remaining silent as Israel turns off the electricity to the prison that is Gaza – again in supposed “retaliation”. 

The collective punishment of two million Palestinians in Gaza, dependent on Israel for power because Israel surrounds and controls every aspect of their lives in the enclave, is a war crime. 

Strangely, western officials understand it is a war crime when Russia bombs power stations in Ukraine, turning off the lights. They scream for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be dragged to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. So why is it so difficult for them to understand the parallels of what Israel is doing to Gaza? 

Daring Escape

There are two immediate, and contrasting, lessons to be learnt from what has happened this weekend. 

The first is that the human spirit cannot be caged indefinitely. Palestinians in Gaza have been constantly devising new ways to break free from their chains. 

They have built a network of tunnels, most of which Israel has located and destroyed. They have fired rockets that are invariably shot down by ever more sophisticated interception systems. They have protested en masse at the heavily fortified fences, topped by guntowers, Israel surrounded them with – only to be shot by snipers.

Now they have staged a daring escape. Israel will batter the enclave back into submission with massive bombardments, but only “in retaliation”, of course. The Palestinians’ craving for freedom and dignity will not be diminished. Another form of resistance, doubtless more brutal still, will emerge. 

And the parties most responsible for that brutality will be Israel and the West that supports it so slavishly, because Israel refuses to stop brutalising the Palestinians it forces to live under its rule.

The second lesson is that Israel, endlessly indulged by its western patrons, still has no incentive to internalise the fundamental truth above. The rhetoric of its current government of fascists and Jewish supremacists may be particularly ugly, but there is a broad consensus among Israelis of all political stripes that the Palestinians must continue to be oppressed. 

Which is why the so-called opposition will not hesitate to support the military pounding of the long besieged enclave of Gaza, killing yet more Palestinian civilians to “teach them a lesson”, a lesson no one in Israel can articulate beyond asserting that Palestinians must accept their permanent inferiority and imprisonment. 

Already, the “good Israelis” – opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz – are in discussions with Neyanyahu to join him in an “emergency unity government”. 

What “emergency”? The emergency of Palestinians demanding the right not to live as prisoners in their own homeland.

Israelis and westerners can continue their mental gymnastics to justify the Palestinians’ oppression and refuse them any right to resist. But their hypocrisy and self-deceptions stand exposed for the rest of the world to see.

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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

Featured image is from Jewish Voice for Labour

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*** 

In the early morning hours of Saturday, 7 October 2023, Hamas launched —like never before— a surprise military attack on Israel, called Operation Al-Aqsa Storm. Hamas is the Islamist political and military branch that rules Palestine.

Israel immediately retaliated, as they usually do. Though, in most cases, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are the initiators of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities. Indeed, it is usually the IDF launching intimidating provocations, waiting for the Palestinian response and then the IDF attacks Palestine, mostly the Gaza strip, “full power” – no regard for whom they are killing, children, women, no matter, no remorse. Ever.

This time seems to be different.  According to mainstream media and most non-mainstream media, this was the first time, Hamas surprised the Israeli army and security forces, the Israeli Mossad, so to speak, with a massive attack out of nowhere, with tanks and missiles, deep into Israel, causing severe damage – and as of the time of this writing – Hamas aggressions have caused hundreds of deaths – maybe thousands? — on each side and thousands of inured.

Really, a surprise?

Normally, after a devastating Israeli counterattack – or often the primary assault – the fight is over. For a while.

Will this time the Lebanon-based Hezbollah also get involved in the conflict in favor of Palestine? Washington has already sent out their warnings to third parties, singling out Hezbollah.

Reporters from most media are astonished at these developments. Nevertheless, most of them report without questioning.

“Israel is ‘at war’ as Hamas launches a major surprise attack, with hundreds of rockets from the Gaza strip hitting deep into Israel. Dozens of armed Palestine fighters crossed the heavily protected border into Israel. In the meantime, thousands of bombs are raining down of Gaza – a land strip of a mere 45 square km, a massively overpopulated open-air prison, the largest in the world, with 2 million inhabitants.”

“A coordinated and unexpected attack, a breach in Israel’s national security. An astonishing new image that turns this decade-old image around”, so says Channel 4 News. See video below.

Syriana Analysis comes to similar conclusions – a “surprise attack” on Israel, like never before.

Here the analyst adds his strong suspicion that Hamas was and is being helped by Iran. But do we really know? He leaves many questions open, but also refers to a landmark, unexpected assault on Israel by Hamas the first in decades. See video below.

Aljazeera reasons likewise. Hamas caught Israel and her all-so powerful IDF off-guard. How come? See video below.

In the meantime, on the same day of Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, declared war on Palestine – apparently totally ignoring that the war has already been going on for the last 70 years, ever and gradually increasing on severity and intensity.

Netanyahu also gave “green light” to IDF to shoot Palestinians point blank – as if this was different from what the IDF has been doing before.

Also, remarkably, Netanyahu said that this was going to be a long war. Again, ignoring that Israel has been at war with Palestine almost from day one of Israel’s creation. The only difference maybe that now the war was officially declared. Before, it was a war of attrition – slow destruction of Palestine’s resistance and moral.

A war of oppression and murder – a war against 2 million people held in the world’s largest open-air prison, called Gaza, from where nobody could escape.

The world was silent, watched, no protests directed at Israel. On the contrary, the Occident, the so-called West, was and still is taking strong side for Israel – which is now actively “working” towards a “Greater Israel,” establishing boundaries with largesse for the “Chosen People”.

Will We, the People of the world, let them be the Chosen People?

Now, as Israel is made to believe being seriously attacked, the hypocrites of this globe, mostly Western nations, call for mediation. The same losers who also called for mediation in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Egypt and the European Union have “offered” their good offices as “peace makers.”

Ridiculous. Why didn’t they come forward in the past 70 years?

The UN Security Council (UNSC) has also condemned Hamas, though, apparently not all UNSC members have voted in favor of Israel.

Maybe because they have zero interest in peace. Maybe their interest is in seeing the world being aflame with conflicts of all sorts, killing between warrying countries and parties, arguing about, and keeping up weather geoengineering as “climate change” – launching new plandemics to justify new coerced vax campaigns, lockdowns, 15-minute cities, and much more, while the world and humanity is being laid open for full digitization and universal QR code control.

A bloody agenda within the UN Agenda 2030 cum Great Reset – and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab’s – CEO of WEF – dream for the future of humanity. Enslavement by digitization.

Looks like this Israeli-Palestine battle is the final straw of a fight towards a new eternal war – à la Afghanistan, Ukraine, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq – and you name them. One more, along with other raging wars around the world. One bloody combat more disturbing the world’s equilibrium, creating more confusion, instability, poverty, misery, death – and fear. FEAR, the weapon of choice.

And all is effectively contributing towards the cabal’s ultimate goals – massive reduction of world population, and a gigantic transfer of assets and resources from the bottom and the center to the top and control over the world’s natural resources.

Now, anybody who believes that this Hamas Al-Aqsa assault on Israel was a surprise, totally unexpected for Israel, may be a fool, or has not yet understood how the dots connect and who pulls the strings.

Imagine, Israel, with a national security apparatus as powerful or even more commanding than the CIA, and all the UK and US security forces together, has – oh wonder – not had any previous knowledge of this Hamas attack? Hard to believe, isn’t it?

So, would such prior knowledge – and the current escalation of the conflict – point to a planned war? Another endless war – sacrificing eventually thousands and thousands of lives on both sides the sake of the “Agenda”?

What else is new? Just that this conflict has an agenda of its own, creating Greater Israel – a huge enclave in the northern Middle East for the Chosen People.

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

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

Featured image is from PressTV

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*** 

Did you know the Russia-Ukraine War is a great “investment” for the United States? A terrific opportunity to kill lots of Russians and to destroy lots of their military equipment at a relatively cheap cost to us? (Just don’t mention the price paid by Ukraine.) It gives new meaning to the expression “making a killing” on the “market.”

To Gordon Gekko’s infamous “greed is good” speech we must now add “war is good.” That war is “right.” That it “works”—at least for America, allegedly.

War as an “investment” truly symbolizes the moral bankruptcy of conventional discourse in the U.S. political mainstream. Instead of war being a calamity, a catastrophe, a realm of death and destruction, dare I say even a mortal sin of grievous evil, we’re told that instead it’s an investment that’s paying dividends, especially in that growth stock known as Ukraine.

We can’t let MAGA Republicans stop the Ukraine “investment,” can we? Not when it’s paying such great dividends

Even body counts and truck counts from the Vietnam War era are being brought back to show what a great “investment” the Ukraine War has been for the U.S. In her latest, Caitlin Johnstone cites war-lover Max Boot for his advocacy of the Russia-Ukraine War as a continuing investment opportunity for the U.S., including the use of body and truck counts as a measure of progress:

“Russia has lost an estimated 120,000 soldiers and 170,000 to 180,000 have been injured,” [Max] Boot writes [in a Washington Post op-ed]. “Russia has also lost an estimated 2,329 tanks, 2,817 infantry fighting vehicles, 2,868 trucks and jeeps, 354 armored personnel carriers, 538 self-propelled artillery vehicles, 310 towed artillery pieces, 92 fixed-wing aircraft and 106 helicopters.”

“The Russian armed forces have been devastated, thereby reducing the risk to front-line NATO states such as Poland and the Baltic republics that the United States is treaty-bound to protect,” Boot continues. “And all of that has been accomplished without having to put a single U.S. soldier at risk on the front lines.”

“That’s an incredible investment,” gloats Boot.

At no time in his masturbatory gushing about how many Russians this war has helped kill does Boot make any mention of the immense toll this deliberately provoked and completely unnecessary war has taken on Ukrainian lives. Their deaths and dismemberments and displacement are the largest price being paid into this “investment” by far, but Boot doesn’t deem them worthy of even a footnote.

We’ve been seeing this “investment” line being promoted with increasing frequency by US empire managers and their apologists. In an article published in the Connecticut Post last month, Senator Richard Blumenthal assured Americans that “we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment.” A few days prior to that Senator Mitt Romney had described the proxy war as “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done,” because “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money… a weakened Russia is a good thing.” In December Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that funding the proxy war is “a direct investment in reducing Vladimir Putin’s future capabilities to menace America, threaten our allies and contest our core interests.” Last November the imperial war machine-funded think tank Center for European Policy Analysis published a report arguing that “US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment.”

Imagine the vacuity, the bankruptcy, the venality, the sinfulness of writing about war and killing as “an absolutely incredible investment.” And what is our ROI, our return on investment? A lot of dead and wounded Russians and Ukrainians, a devastated and poisoned landscape, millions of war refugees, and an increasing likelihood of a wider war that could possibly go nuclear. ROI, indeed.

War is many things, but it is not an “investment.” People who talk and write like this have no moral center. They are soulless. They are automatons of war.

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In 2009, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said on the House floor that Israel ‘encouraged and started Hamas.’

Paul’s comments came during a speech about ‘blowback’ due to U.S. intervention in the Middle East.

“What’s happening in the Middle East, in particular with Gaza right now, we have some moral responsibility for both sides in a way because we provide help and funding for both Arab nations and Israel,” Paul said.

“We have a moral responsibility, especially now today the weapons being used to kill so many Palestinians are American weapons and American funds are being used for this,” he added.

“But there’s a political liability, which I think is something we fail to look at because too often there’s so much blowback from our intervention in areas that we shouldn’t be involved in,” he continued.

“You know Hamas, if you look at the history, you’ll find out that Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat,” Paul commented.

“You say, Well, yeah, it was better then and served its purpose, but we didn’t want Hamas to do this. So then we, as Americans, say, Well, we have such a good system; we’re going to impose this on the world. We’re going to invade Iraq and teach people how to be democrats. We want free elections. So we encouraged the Palestinians to have a free election. They do, and they elect Hamas,” Paul continued.

“So we first, indirectly and directly through Israel, helped establish Hamas. Then we have an election where Hamas becomes dominant, then we have to kill them. It just doesn’t make sense. During the 80s, we were allied with Osama bin Laden and we were contending with the Soviets. It was at that time our CIA thought it was good if we radicalize the Muslim world. So we finance the Madrassas school to radicalize the Muslims in order to compete with the Soviets. There is too much blowback,” he said.

“There are a lot of reasons why we should oppose this resolution. It’s not in the interest of the United States, it is not in the interest of Israel either,” he added.

WATCH:

Ron Paul on the creation of Hamas and the affects of intervention in the region. pic.twitter.com/CjM5RqmvGL

— AnarchoChristian (@AnarchoXP) October 8, 2023

Longer clip via YouTube:

Newsmax reported on Ron Paul’s comments in 2011 when he ran for president:

As the debate swirls over Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s positions on Israel, a 2009 speech on the House floor comes back to haunt.

The Texas congressman advanced the argument that Israel actually created Hamas, as well as blamed the CIA for radicalizing Muslims and the United States for supplying weapons and money that “kill Palestinians,” as reported at hotair.com.

Paul’s 2009 comments came as he rose in opposition to House Resolution 34, “Recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

An archived 2009 article from The Wall Street Journal stated: “How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas.”

Per The Wall Street Journal:

Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor’s bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile’s trajectory back to an “enormous, stupid mistake” made 30 years ago.

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with “Yassins,” primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.

Last Saturday, after 22 days of war, Israel announced a halt to the offensive. The assault was aimed at stopping Hamas rockets from falling on Israel. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hailed a “determined and successful military operation.” More than 1,200 Palestinians had died. Thirteen Israelis were also killed.

Hamas responded the next day by lobbing five rockets towards the Israeli town of Sderot, a few miles down the road from Moshav Tekuma, the farming village where Mr. Cohen lives. Hamas then announced its own cease-fire.

Since then, Hamas leaders have emerged from hiding and reasserted their control over Gaza. Egyptian-mediated talks aimed at a more durable truce are expected to start this weekend. President Barack Obama said this week that lasting calm “requires more than a long cease-fire” and depends on Israel and a future Palestinian state “living side by side in peace and security.”

The Intercept cited The Wall Street Journal piece in 2018.

Via The Intercept:

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)

“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote.

They didn’t listen to him. And Hamas, as I explain in the fifth installment of my short film series for The Intercept on blowback, was the result. To be clear: First, the Israelis helped build up a militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors; then, the Israelis switched tack and tried to bomb, besiege, and blockade it out of existence.

In the past decade alone, Israel has gone to war with Hamas three times — in 2009, 2012, and 2014 — killing around 2,500 Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the process. Meanwhile, Hamas has killed far more Israeli civilians than any secular Palestinian militant group. This is the human cost of blowback.

“When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake,” David Hacham, a former Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military who was based in Gaza in the 1980s, later remarked. “But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results.”

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Researchers collected breast milk samples from 13 healthy postpartum, lactating women before vaccination and at least twice daily for five days after vaccination. Seven mothers provided breast milk samples after receiving their first and second vaccine doses, resulting in 20 total vaccine exposures and 154 breast milk samples.

Vaccine mRNA was then examined in whole breast milk and breast milk extracellular vesicles. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are small delivery vehicles released by cells that carry biomolecules such as protein, lipids, noncoding RNA, microRNA, messenger RNA, and DNA. Breast milk contains large amounts of EVs that regulate gene expression, immune function, development, and infant growth.

Of the 13 lactating women who received either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, trace mRNA amounts were detected in 10 of 20 exposures up to 45 hours following vaccination. According to the study, the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was not expressed.

Before breast milk collections, all participants tested negative for COVID-19, and prevaccination samples were negative for COVID-19 vaccine mRNA. Although all women were instructed to provide samples of 5 milliliters or greater, actual amounts were often below the threshold, hindering the experiment.

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Thirty organizations on Tuesday joined the France-based Phonegate Alert to demand that French and European authorities permanently withdraw Apple’s iPhone 12 from all European markets.

The demand came after France lifted a temporary sales ban on the phone. The ban was first imposed when Apple’s iPhone 12 failed radiation safety test.

The organizations also threatened legal action against Apple if the company does not compensate current iPhone 12 owners for subjecting them to illegally high levels of radiofrequency (RF) radiation.

Phonegate and its fellow signatories, including the European Cancer and Environmental Research Institute and the California Brain Tumor Association, in an Oct. 3 press release alleged that Apple for over three years has “knowingly deceived” owners of the iPhone 12 (model A2403) regarding the “true levels” of RF radiation exposure and the “possible health risks incurred” when the device is in close contact with the body.

The roughly 90 million European users of the iPhone 12 are considering a class action lawsuit against Apple, according to Phonegate and its fellow signatories.

Dr. Marc Arazi, Phonegate’s founder and president, said in the press release:

“This will also be an opportunity to take action against the manufacturers of the 42 other mobile phone models … that have been implicated since 2018, including Samsung, Nokia, Xiaomi, Huawei, Motorola, Sony, Orange, etc.”

The iPhone 12 is one of 43 cellphone models that have either been withdrawn from the French market for posing health risks to users or had their Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) updated by software to reduce the amount of RF radiation emitted by the phone.

SAR is a measure of the rate of radiofrequency energy absorbed by the body from an electronic device.

Commenting on the possibility of a class action lawsuit brought by iPhone 12 users, Arazi told The Defender:

“Now we can prove it legally: The regulations governing mobile telephony were not put in place to protect human health, but first and foremost to enable manufacturers … to deliver the most efficient commercial service.

“There’s no doubt that manufacturers will have to answer for this worldwide deception and scandal, which has a name: Phonegate.”

Arazi is the author of “Phonegate: Overexposed and deceived — What the cell phone industry doesn’t want you to know,” published in May 2022.

He pointed out that cellphone users in the U.S. and Canada have already brought class action suits against Apple and Samsung for exceeding RF radiation safety limits.

France Lifts iPhone 12 Sales Ban After Apple Provides ‘Minimalist’ Software Update

On Sept. 12, France temporarily banned sales of the iPhone 12 because the device exceeded the regulatory SAR limit.

France’s regulatory authority for RF radiation, the Agence Nationale des Fréquences (ANFR), looked at two radiation tests: one that measured a phone in close contact with a person’s body — such as when it is held or placed in a pants pocket — and another done at a slightly longer distance to simulate a phone being kept in a jacket pocket or a bag.

The iPhone 12 passed the second test. However, it exceeded European Union (EU) regulatory levels for the first test, which measures the phone at a distance of 0 millimeters (mm) from the skin, the ANFR said.

The agency said:

“The ANFR expects Apple to deploy all available means to put an end to the non-compliance. Failure to act will result in the recall of equipment that has already been made available to consumers.”

Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s junior minister for the digital economy, said in a Sept. 12 interview with the daily Le Parisien that a software update would be sufficient to fix the radiation issues linked to the phone, Reuters reported.

Barrot also said ANFR was passing along its findings to regulators in other EU member states, which “could have a snowball effect.”

“Apple is expected to respond within two weeks,” Barrot said. “If they fail to do so, I am prepared to order a recall of all iPhones 12 in circulation. The rule is the same for everyone, including the digital giants.”

The next day, Apple denied France’s allegations, saying it would fight the sales ban. But on Sept. 15, the company said it would address the issue with an update.

Just under the two-week deadline, Apple submitted the update to the French government for analysis.

ANFR on Sept. 29 approved Apple’s software update, signaling that the sales ban will be lifted.

Phonegate and its fellow signatories criticized the French authorities for lifting the ban, saying they gave a “huge gift to the Californian giant.”

The groups said the approved update is “very minimalist” and means a downgrade in connectivity. “Owners of an iPhone 12 will be forced to buy another mobile phone, or keep an iPhone 12 with less connectivity,” they said.

The groups said Apple must provide fair compensation for the damage suffered by the millions of iPhone 12 users, including the free replacement of their iPhone 12 with a newer model that complies with ANFR’s standards or an equivalent cash compensation for the failed iPhone 12.

Cellphone Safety Testing Procedures ‘Very Misleading’

Arazi said he believes worldwide regulatory testing procedures are deceptive and must change to adequately protect users from dangerous levels of RF radiation.

“Before our action in 2016, the European testing standard was roughly 15 to 25 mm — nearly the same as in the U.S.,” he told The Defender. Now European standards include premarket cellphone testing at a distance of 5 mm from the skin — but most countries, including the U.S., still only test phones at greater distances from the body.

Arazi pointed out that French authorities in 2019 called on the European Commission to strengthen cellphone safety requirements by ensuring that SAR tests be done at 0 mm from the body to more accurately measure people’s actual exposure since many people hold their devices against their skin, but so far the European standards remain set at 5 mm from the skin.

Each millimeter makes a big difference when estimating RF radiation exposure levels, according to Devra Davis, Ph.D., president of the scientific research and education nonprofit Environmental Health Trust.

Davis — a toxicologist, epidemiologist and founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences— has written about the corruption surrounding cellphone safety regulation for over a decade.

“It’s very misleading,” she told The Defender. “Every millimeter away from the body that a phone is tested results in 15% less exposure. By giving a 10-mm spacer for the ear, that’s 150% less exposure.”

Davis pointed out that cellphones in the U.S. are tested via “an antiquated method using a large plastic bowling-ball-sized head of a male dummy, named Standard Anthropomorphic Mannequin (or SAM for short) — nearly double the size of the head of a toddler and larger than 97% of all people.”

“Typically,” Davis wrote, “manufacturers select a single device that is tested to make sure the syrupy liquid inside the dummy’s thick skull doesn’t heat up. A big guy with a thick skull, SAM is not very talkative as his average test call lasts 6 minutes.”

The safety of a cellphone is confirmed if the liquid does not show a 1-degree Celsius increase in temperature, she explained.

“This test has no relevance to actual use or to actual biological effects,” Davis said, “so the whole test system is rigged.”

Environmental Health Trust and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) are part of an international campaign, “We Are Not Sam,” that educates the public about this irrelevant “safety test.”

Arazi said the regulatory standards for what amount of tissue is examined also can be deceptive.

“In Europe, we test the phone on 10 grams of tissue, whereas the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. tests on 1 gram of tissue. This triples the SAR level for European users,” he said.

Phonegate to Launch Free ‘SAR Calculator’ 

Arazi told viewers of the Oct. 2 episode of CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD” that “there was a tsunami of media all over the world” in response to France’s ban on the iPhone 12 and that “people are going to be much more aware about this scandal.”

He said:

“The regulation for putting cellphones on the market — French market, European market or U.S. market — are unsafe. …They [the cellphone companies] do not care about us as users. … They overexposed billions of users now [to potentially harmful levels of RF radiation].”

Arazi also told viewers in the coming weeks Phonegate will launch a free “SAR calculator” algorithm on its website that all Europeans, Americans and Canadians can use to measure the actual level of RF radiation their phone emits.

Commenting on the SAR calculator, Arazi told The Defender, “It became clear that we needed a calculator that could indicate the real SAR level of our exposure to cell phones. It’s the fruit of five years’ work … and it’s designed to be easy to use.”

Watch here:

Click here to view the video

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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

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*** 

Hunter Biden withdrew his daughter’s college savings to help fund a months-long drug and hooker binge – and still hasn’t paid the taxes on it, documents unearthed exclusively by DailyMail.com reveal.

The First Son’s profligacy was cast in sharp relief in papers from an IRS whistleblower who investigated him for tax crimes, released by Congress last month.

In late 2018 Hunter was in his ‘penultimate odyssey through full blown addiction’, according to his memoir, skulking in Connecticut motels and frittering away thousands on prostitutes and crack cocaine.

His private bankers at Wells Fargo sent him an email on December 17, 2018 warning that he had just 44 cents left in his account, according to records obtained by DailyMail.com from his abandoned laptop.

Hunter responded with a jumbled reply, ordering them to transfer $20,000 from his daughter Maisy’s educational savings account.

He told the wealth managers: ‘liquidate what you can’ and ‘Live [love] you both’.

Click here to read the full article on Daily Mail Online.

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Featured image: This caricature of Hunter Biden was adapted from in the public domain from the US Congress (PDF). The body was adapted from in the public domain from The White House’s Flickr photostream.

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*** 

 

2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to announce he will run as an independent on October 9 in Pennsylvania, Mediaite has learned.

Kennedy’s campaign machine is now planning “attack ads” against the Democratic National Committee in order to “pave the way” for his announcement in Philadelphia about running as an independent, according to a text reviewed by Mediaite.

“Bobby feels that the DNC is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” a Kennedy campaign insider told Mediaite.

Kennedy, a notorious anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist challenging incumbent President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, has been flirting with a third party run in recent weeks. The New York Times reported last week that he met with the chair of the Libertarian Party, raising the prospect of a departure from the party that decades ago became synonymous with his family name.

Kennedy remains far behind Biden in the polls. Yet while the Times reported “Democrats worry that a third-party run by Mr. Kennedy could draw votes away from Mr. Biden and help elect former President Donald J. Trump,” it’s unclear whether such a run would hurt the current president more than the Republican nominee.

Indeed, polls show Republicans have a far more favorable view of Kennedy than Democrats. As the National Review’s Jim Geraghty pointed out in July, when a survey asked New Hampshire Democrats to describe Kennedy in one word, the top responses were “crazy,” “dangerous,” “insane,” “conspiracy,” and “unknown.”

Conservative media has been far more supportive of Kennedy’s campaign as well. Fox News host Greg Gutfeld proposed that the political scion run as third party in July.

“I think he should run as a third party candidate because I do think he should, he would win, is because his party’s radical elements, what we call the woke, have embraced this fascist clampdown on language,” Gutfeld said.

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[This article was originally published by Mark Taliano in November 2014]

*** 

The state of Israel brands itself as a peaceful, democratic, civilized oasis, steadfast in the midst of a hostile desert, surrounded by barbarity and threats to its very existence.

None of it is true.

Greater Israel is increasingly a rampaging Zionist project that has lost its sense of Judaism, and its democratic, civilized ideals.

It is a militarized, racist, apartheid country that denies and negates the rule of international law at every convenience as it deludes itself and its allies by manipulating the memory of one of history’s most hideous moments: the holocaust.

Memories of the obscenity of the holocaust should teach values of cultural pluralism, empathy and acceptance of the “other”, tolerance and respect for the downtrodden.

Instead, it is being exploited to serve the darker agenda of an ethnocentric, imperial, settler/colonial polity.

Renowned author Ilan Pappe explains these subterranean manipulations in The Idea Of Israel:

“From vindication of the brutal killing of Palestinians in 1948 and subsequently, in the war against Palestinian infiltrations, through the instigation of public panic on the eve of the 1967 war, to the justification of intransigent official positions on peace following the war, to the present oppressive policies against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, — Holocaust memory has been a supremely useful and accessible means of silencing criticism and pushing a policy of belligerence.”

A snap-shot of the “policy of belligerence” embraced by modern-day Israel looks like this:

Palestinian Israelis are second-class citizens. The Admissions Committee Law, for example — which was recently upheld by the Israeli Supreme Court — legalizes racial segregation. According to this law, 43% of Israeli residential areas are legally entitled to deny entrance to Palestinian Arab citizens of the Israeli state. Most of this land, to which the Palestinians are not welcome, was originally confiscated from Palestinian refugees. Clearly, legal segregation laws are not compatible with “democracy” or “moral governance”.

Israel’s segregationist policies extend outwards as well. Israel engages in serial denial and negation of international law by constructing and maintaining rather than dismantling its Separation/Apartheid walls.

The International Criminal Court (ICJ) ruled in 2004 that the West Bank wall was “illegal in its entirety,” and that compensation should be paid to those affected. Additionally, the U.N General Assembly passed a resolution supporting the ICJ’s call to dismantle the wall.

Not surprisingly, construction and maintenance of the Gaza “security fence” as well as the West Bank Apartheid wall, continues to this day.

Furthermore, the blockage of Gaza — a strip of land on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, has essentially reduced Gaza to the status of a “concentration camp”. Professor Richard Falk — world-renowned professor of international law and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied territories – characterizes the blockade of Gaza as collective punishment, and therefore a violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.

The notion that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is “moral” or “righteous” also rings hollow: during the recent invasion of Gaza, known euphemistically as Operation Protective Edge, Israeli’s military murdered 501 children, and 1,473 civilians, plus 157 combatants.

Palestinian combatants killed 71 Israelis: 66 soldiers, one security coordinator, four civilians, and a foreign national.

In what appears to be yet another operation of ethnic cleansing, Israel also targeted schools, hospitals, and the sole power station.

Operation Protective Edge seemingly satisfies the definition of “genocide”, as defined by Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide:

“Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;

(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

(d) Attempt to commit genocide;

(e) Complicity in genocide. “

In an earlier article, I referenced the slaughter of North America’s indigenous peoples starting in 1492, and I remarked that the genocidal cycles are repeating themselves time and again.

If humanity were to internalize the real lessons of the holocaust, we could break these toxic cycles and avert further disasters. The on-going tragedies in Palestine (and elsewhere), however, indicate that we have failed to learn our lessons.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.

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In the early morning of October 3, the homes of over 100 journalists, contractors, and former employees associated with the progressive news outlets NewsClick and Peoples Dispatch, as well as Tricontinental Research Service, were raided by Indian authorities.

Zoe Alexandra the co-editor of Peoples Dispatch, discusses the sweeping crackdown on press freedom in India, which was instigated by an August New York Times article.

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On Saturday morning, Israel announced a “state of preparedness for conflict” in response to a massive barrage of rockets from the Gaza Strip and an intrusion into its southern region. This resulted in the death of at least one person and injuries to 16 others so far.

The Israeli military says it is striking targets in the Gaza Strip as air raid sirens were sounded in Jerusalem after the Hamas militant group announced a new operation against Israel. The sounds of at least three explosions could be heard as Israel deployed anti-rocket defences. The attack on Jerusalem is considered a major escalation by Israel. 

The elusive leader of Hamas’ military wing says the armed group has launched a new military operation against Israel. In a rare public statement, Mohammed Deif said that 5,000 rockets had been fired into Israel early Saturday to begin “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.” 

“We’ve decided to say enough is enough,” Deif said as he urged all Palestinians to confront Israel. Deif, who has survived multiple Israeli assassination attempts, does not make public appearances. His message was delivered in a recording. 

The Israel military had ordered residents along the border area to remain indoors.

Israel’s Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, following an operational situation assessment Saturday morning warned that “the Hamas [terrorist organisation] has made a grave mistake this morning and launched a war against the State of Israel”.

“IDF troops are fighting against the enemy at every location. I call on all of Israel’s citizens to follow security instructions”, he added.

“The State of Israel will win this war”, he asserted.

In a statement, the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) said that Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi is holding an assessment and approving plans of action.

“The IDF declares a state of readiness for war. Hamas… which is behind this attack, will bear the results and responsibility for the events,” the statement from the Israeli army said.

Rescue and relief services, Magen David Adom, said that one person has been killed and another 16 are wounded in the rocket attacks on southern and central Israel this morning.

A woman in her 60s was killed in a direct rocket hit in the southern Gderot area.

Another two people are said to be seriously wounded, six moderately and seven with minor injuries, the medics of the rescue services said.

IDF warned that “the Hamas terror group will pay a very heavy price” for its surprise attack this morning.

“Hamas carried out a combined operation that included firing rockets and a terrorist infiltration into the territory of the State of Israel,” the Israeli army said.

“The IDF will protect the residents of the State of Israel, the Hamas terror organisation will pay a very heavy price”, it added.

The Head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, in a statement, said

“We warned the enemy not to continue its aggression against the Al-Aqsa Mosque”, Ha’aretz online reported.

“This is only the first stage” of Hamas’ renewed efforts against Israel, he said.

Deif urged Arabs in Jerusalem and inside Israel, in the Negev, the Galilee and northern Israel to join the “revolution” and “set the earth on fire under the feet of the occupiers”.

Deif also called upon the “Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon” to “merge their resistance with that of the Palestinians” and “start marching towards Palestine now”.

Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas, who is considered to be its leader in the West Bank, issued a similar statement calling on the Arab and Islamic nations to join “Operation al-Aqsa Flood”.

The Israeli military has issued instructions to the residents of towns near the Gaza Strip to remain in their homes, and the rest of the public to remain near bomb shelters.

“Unverified footage from the Gaza Strip purports to show Hamas terrorists with the body of an IDF soldier taken from Israel during the attack this morning,” the Times of Israel newspaper reported.

“The graphic videos show the body being taken out of a truck, as a crowd swarms around it”, it reported.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on his way to the Defence Ministry Headquarters in order to conduct a security assessment with the participation of all of the heads of the security establishment, a statement from the PMO said.

*

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Featured image: Hamas’ military wing (Photo: AP/Fatima Shbair)

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We are on the verge of nuclear annihilation. Every agreement made during the 20th century to reduce the risk of nuclear war has been abandoned by Washington. 

Why worry, some ask, mutual assured destruction means neither the US nor Russia would initiate a nuclear attack. Perhaps not, but the greatest danger of nuclear armageddon comes from false alarms from warning systems. During the Cold War there were many such alarms. The false alarms did not result in mutual destruction because both governments were working to defuse, not exacerbate, the situation, and there was time for the validity of the alarm to be verified before a fatal pushing of the button.  

Today the situation is entirely different. Washington and the NATO puppets have a policy of provoking Russia, with the 2014 coup in Ukraine and its consequences being the worst to date. Moreover, the hypersonic speeds of the Russian missiles and the closeness of US missiles to Russia’s border cuts time before impact to 5 or 10 minutes, which means no time to verify or confer.  

The extraordinary insulting hostility shown toward Russia by the US, NATO and the Western media has convinced  the Kremlin that the West intends Russia’s destruction. 

Russia’s President Putin has stated  many times that the West has led him to this conclusion. A couple of days ago at the Valdai Discussion Club Putin expressed concern that the West’s belligerence toward Russia could end in nuclear war.

If President Biden were a responsible leader, he would have said that the Russian president is right, and we must stop the escalation of threats. Instead, Biden sent B-2 stealth bombers, aircraft specifically designed for a nuclear first-strike, to European bases, thus escalating the threat, a mindless and irresponsible response to President Putin.    

In the US the constant propaganda against Russia (and now China) has convinced many Americans that they face the danger of  nuclear attack. This is not a situation in which a false alarm is likely to be recognized. The risk of not believing the alarm is much higher in the environment created by the American neoconservatives, who have controlled US foreign policy in the 21st century.

In US foreign policy and military ranks there are some, especially among the military/security-funded think tanks, who believe, automatically it seems with no evidence required, that the US, being the greatest and most powerful country ever, would win a nuclear war. This belief exists despite the total absence of any US preparation for surviving a nuclear war, assuming such a war is survivable. The most likely outcome would be nuclear winter, a situation in which dust from the massive explosions block the sunlight and the entire world starves to death.

Ask yourself, just how insane, how Satanic do neoconservatives have to be to think that their totally unrealistic pursuit of US global hegemony is worth such a risk?  

The minute the Soviet Union collapsed politically when hardline communists arrested President Gorbachev, the neoconservatives penned the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which states that the principle goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any power that could constrain American hegemony. It is this absurdly unrealistic neoconservative doctrine, not Russian or Chinese behavior, that has resurrected the threat of nuclear Armageddon.  

The threat is very real. Those who dismiss it are utter and total fools. They are psychopaths. They are insane. They risk the life of the planet.

It is the neoconservatives who are the worst danger to life the world has ever faced. 

Why does Congress put up with them? 

Why does the Senate confirm them in office? Why is the American media their propagandist? Why do the UK, European, and Japanese governments tolerate such enormous risks imposed by a handful of insane psychopaths?

This is the ultimate insouciance.

For those who think nuclear war can’t happen: see this, this and this.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute  

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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*** 

Papers reviewed: 

• 2023 Sep – Putta et al – Melatonin: Avenues in cancer therapy and its nanotechnological advancements
• 2023 Jun – Megerian et al – Melatonin and Prostate Cancer: Anti-tumor Roles and Therapeutic Application
• 2022 Sep – Davoodvandi et al – Melatonin and cancer suppression: insights into its effects on DNA methylation
• 2022 Aug – Florido et al – Understanding the Mechanism of Action of Melatonin, Which Induces ROS Production in Cancer Cells
• 2022 May – Monayo et al – The Prospective Application of Melatonin in Treating Epigenetic Dysfunctional Diseases
• 2022 Mar – Leilei Wang et al – Use of Melatonin in Cancer Treatment: Where Are We?
• 2021 Jul – Gonzalez et al – Melatonin as an Adjuvant to Antiangiogenic Cancer Treatments
• 2021 Apr – Talib et al – Melatonin in Cancer Treatment: Current Knowledge and Future Opportunities

Image Source: (2021 Apr – Talib et al)

2023 Sep – Putta et al – Melatonin: Avenues in cancer therapy and its nanotechnological advancements 

• “According to clinical investigations, melatonin has the potential to prevent and cure cancer”
• Melatonin is crucial for tumor development. Low levels of Melatonin accelerate tumor development
• At normal dose levels ranging from 10 to 50 mg/day, it can treat a variety of cancers in vivo (breast, lung, colon, liver, gastric, glioblastoma, ovarian, cervical, prostate, skin)
• There is strong proof that it reduces adverse effects while improving the therapeutic benefits of chemotherapy and radiation
• Due to its chemical characteristics, Melatonin has a restricted ability to penetrate mucosal and dermal barriers, has a shorter half-life, and is rapidly eliminated from blood circulation
• the use of Melatonin is currently limited due to its unfavourable pharmacokinetic properties.
• Nanoparticles are being developed to deliver Melatonin and potentially increase its use in cancer treatment.

2023 Jun – Megerian et al – Melatonin and Prostate Cancer: Anti-tumor Roles and Therapeutic Application

• Prostate cancer risk has been associated with exogenous factors that interfere with normal pineal secretory activity, including aging, poor sleep, and artificial light at night.
• melatonin secretion becomes circadian between the age of one to three years and gradually diminishes by 10-15% per decade
• Diminished lifetime secretion of melatonin has been suggested to be a catalyst for not only aging (dubbed “Age Clock”), but also age-related conditions like cancer
• Disruption of the circadian rhythm can increase the risk of cancer
• relationship between light exposure at night and the risk of prostate cancer
• Several reports have correlated non-standard shift work and shift work sleep disorder with poor health consequences notably on men’s urologic health such as infertility, lower urinary tract symptoms, and prostate cancer
• significant increase in the risk of prostate cancer in rotating shift workers who alternate between a day and/or afternoon shift and a night shift
• Melatonin action on prostate cancer cells:
  • Melatonin prevents carcinogenesis by reducing genomic instability
  • Melatonin inhibits glucose metabolism of cancer cells
  • Melatonin inhibits DNA replication in cancer cells and cell proliferation
  • Melatonin downregulates NF-kB activities leading to promote apoptosis and inhibit cell proliferation.
  • Melatonin inhibits angiogenic processes
  • Melatonin attenuates androgen receptor activity
  • Melatonin inhibits metastasis by inhibiting enzymes that help cancer cells metastasize (Matrix metalloproteinases)
  • Melatonin inhibits initiation and progression of cancers by modulating mitochondrial activity and function (melatonin improves mitochondrial function by inhibitory effect on Akt/mTOR path)
  • melatonin has anti-inflammatory effects on inflammatory cytokines like IL-17 that promote cancer
  • melatonin has anti-cancer effects by resynchronizing the circadian rhythm
• In previous clinical trials that investigated the anti-tumor effects of melatonin, the maintenance dose was mostly 20 mg per day and the duration varied from several weeks to some years (Gonzalez et al).
• “Considering that there were no major side effects related to melatonin except for minor psychological or neurocognitive problems (Foley et al), we recommend a higher dosage for a definite anti-tumor activity.”

2022 Sep – Davoodvandi et al – Melatonin and cancer suppression: insights into its effects on DNA methylation 

• Melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxy-tryptamine) is an endogenous hormone was discovered in bovine pineal tissue of bovine by Lerner and colleagues in 1958
• biosynthesis of melatonin also occurs in bone marrow and lymphocytes, gastrointestinal (GI) tract, and eyes, etc., and perhaps in every cell.
• Melatonin biosynthesis take places in the mitochondria of eukaryotic cells
• There is a substantial association between aberrant methylation of DNA and cancer incidence
  • epigenetic alterations over large chromatin regions in cancer diseases results in epigenetic instability, and subsequent gene expression alterations
  • disrupted epigenetic alterations such as aberrant DNA methylation in cancer cells can lead to heterogeneity of tumor cells, and subsequent poor prognosis
• Epigenetic modifications of cancers are categorized into three major processes including non-coding RNAs, histone modification, and DNA methylation.
• Results: melatonin significantly modified the status of DNA methylation, especially in breast cancer tissue.
  • Consequently, the changes in DNA methylation led to an inhibition of cancer cell proliferation, progression and metastasis
  • melatonin reversed chemo-resistance to current drug regimens

2022 Aug – Florido et al – Understanding the Mechanism of Action of Melatonin, Which Induces ROS Production in Cancer Cells

• Melatonin is synthesized by the pineal gland and several tissues (skin, gastrointestinal system, bone marrow, and also lymphocytes).
• Melatonin is produced by mitochondria at higher concentrations than other cellular compartments
• Melatonin is involved in multiple cellular processes, is a potent free radical scavenger and broad-spectrum antioxidant
• “Melatonin is of particular importance in the development of innovative cancer treatments due to its oncostatic impact and lack of adverse effects”
• Anti-Cancer effects:
  • Melatonin induces ROS (Reactive Oxygen Species) production in cancer cells through various pathways, which leads to apoptosis of cancer cells.
  • Melatonin stimulates antioxidant enzyme activity by regulating gene expression
  • Melatonin regulates mitochondrial homeostasis
• Melatonin works in the 3 different stages of tumorigenesis: cancer initiation, progression and metastasis
  • cancer initiation – Melatonin prevents DNA mutations (by free radical scavenging, inhibiting metal induced DNA damage, stimulating antioxidant enzymes, enhancing DNA repair, suppressing pro-oxidative enzymes)
  • cancer progression – Melatonin impairs proliferation, impairs angiogenesis
  • metastases – Melatonin impairs hypoxia-induced cancer cell migration

2022 May – Monayo et al – The Prospective Application of Melatonin in Treating Epigenetic Dysfunctional Diseases

• Due to melatonin’s broad spectrum of action, epigenetic modification has been one of the fundamental tools used to unravel the possible mechanisms involved by this drug in numerous cancer types
• Melatonin decreases the activation of NF-ĸB by phosphorylation which decreases tumor growth and prevents metastasis

Non-coding RNA (microRNAs): 

• Melatonin elevates levels of certain tumor suppressing microRNAs
  • melatonin increased levels of miR-152-3p which causes decline in cell proliferation, angiogenesis and inhibit cancer cell invasion (shown in glioblastoma cells)
  • Melatonin increased levels of miR-152-3p in breast cancer cells
  • Melatonin also increased levels of miR-16-5p which suppresses gastric cancer & breast, ovarian, cervical, hepatic, prostate, bone, lymphatic.
• Melatonin inhibits oncogenic microRNA miR-483 which is implicated in thyroid cancer, breast cancer, ovarian, colorectal, hepatocellular and pancreatic
• Melatonin inhibits oncogenic microRNA miR-155 which inhibits glioblastoma cells

Artificial Light:

• Modern artificial lights especially those with blue light emissions have been reported to cause a litany of health problems with cancer being among them
• environmental factors such as artificial light can cause circadian disruptions by causing desynchronization of the circadian pacemaker (SCN), resulting in decreased levels of melatonin secretions from the pineal gland
• effects of the artificial light at night associated with hormonal imbalances (decreased melatonin) and impaired circadian rhythms can cause cancer
• melatonin attenuates the effects of breast, prostate, liver, and skin cancers associated with ill-timed light exposures (early morning, late evening, night)
• melatonin resynchronizes dysregulated circadian rhythm

2022 Mar – Leilei Wang et al – Use of Melatonin in Cancer Treatment: Where Are We?

• Melatonin exerts effects on tumor initiation, promotion, and progression by acting on many signaling pathways
• Melatonin inhibits oncogenic miRNAs and enhances tumor suppressor miRNAs
• Melatonin can suppress cancer stem cells that can cause relapse and metastasis
• Melatonin affects the tumor microenvironment – and shifts immune system response towards the cytotoxic side by stimulating production of cytotoxic T-cells like CD8 cells or NK cells, and inhibiting T regulatory cells (Tregs) and cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) that facilitate immune escape of cancer cells.
• Melatonin enhances effects of chemotherapy and reduces chemo side effects
• Melatonin sensitizes cancer cells to chemo by promoting apoptosis
• Melatonin can also enhance the effect of radiation therapy

Problems with Using Melatonin as an Anti-cancer Drug

• short half-life of 45 minutes with low oral bioavailability of 9-33%
• Melatonin is widely used clinically for the short-term management of sleep disorders, such as insomnia due to jet lag or shift work. It is typically taken orally at a dose ranging from 3 mg to 10 mg daily;
• for cancer treatment, the dosage of melatonin would be much higher
• In order to use melatonin for cancer treatment, the drug form has to be stable with a reasonable length of shelf life so as to ensure reliable drug delivery. However, melatonin has low water solubility and high permeability.
• Since melatonin has low water solubility and poor chemical stability in an organic solvent, novel, biocompatible vehicles need to be developed to improve the bioavailability and solubility of melatonin.
• Nanosized carriers have aroused great interest for their unique properties including increased therapeutic efficacy, reduced side effects, and improved life quality of patients.
• Nanoparticles have been used to load melatonin for cancer treatment.
• melatonin was loaded in 3D-printed magnesium-polycaprolactone to treat osteosarcoma (OS), with a high efficiency in inhibiting OS cells’ proliferation, invasion, and metastasis both in vitro and in vivo (Zhang et al 2021)

Safety and Dosing

• Researchers have yet to determine the optimal dosage of melatonin for adjuvant cancer therapy or cancer prevention.
• A systematic review compared 50 studies with melatonin administration ranging from 0.3 mg–1600 mg daily for 4 weeks to 3.5 years (15 ± months, average). Twenty-six studies reported no adverse events (Foley et al 2018)
• The reported adverse events were mostly related to psychomotor and neurocognitive dysfunctions, fatigue, and excessive sleepiness, which could be avoided by taking melatonin at night and using the proper dosage with short-term administration. (Foley et al 2018)
• However, when applied for cancer treatment, relatively high doses both in vitro (0.1–10 mM) and in vivo (5 mg–200 mg/d) and long-term duration are needed, which may cause severe side effects.

2021 Jul – Gonzalez et al – Melatonin as an Adjuvant to Antiangiogenic Cancer Treatments

• Melatonin shows antiangiogenic effects in several types of tumors.
• Combination of melatonin and chemotherapeutic agents have a synergistic effect inhibiting angiogenesis.
• in breast cancer, antiangiogenic action of melatonin might be explained at least in part through regulation of pro- and anti-angiogenic miRNAs
• melatonin’s antiangiogenic actions also found in ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, gastric cancer, pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, colon cancer.
• melatonin exerts anti-metastatic and anti-angiogenic effects in renal carcinoma
• In vitro and in vivo results suggest that combinations of melatonin with different antitumor drugs and chemotherapeutics result in improved efficacy of treatment
• Melatonin alone has been extensively documented as an effective inhibitor of proliferation, migration, and invasion.
• Many studies have linked melatonin to inhibition of VEGF and inactivation of HIF-1α meaning that melatonin neutralizes pro-angiogenic and potentiates antiangiogenic effects induced by chemotherapeutic agents or radiation, enhancing their antitumor effectiveness.
• Conclusion: “efficacy of melatonin to sensitize cancer cells to chemotherapeutic agents or ionizing radiation makes it a molecule that can be effective as an adjuvant to these cancer treatments”

2021 Apr – Talib et al – Melatonin in Cancer Treatment: Current Knowledge and Future Opportunities

• Currently, melatonin is considered as a cell protector and not only a hormone. Studies reported essential effects of melatonin in many pathways, including oxidative stress, immune modulation, and hematopoiesis
• Suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus is the biological clock that regulates melatonin synthesis and secretion over 24 h.
• At night, melatonin levels increase, then start to decrease in the early morning and throughout the day.
• Elevated levels of melatonin at night stimulate target organs to enter into suitable homeostatic metabolic rhythms which help to protect the body from the development of different diseases. Therefore, exposing the body to light at night may result in disruption of melatonin production and the circadian rhythm.

Melatonin Effects on Cancer Cells 

• Melatonin preserves genomic stability – scavenges free radicals, inhibits metal induced DNA damage, stimulates antioxidant enzymes, enhances DNA repair, inhibits pro-oxidative enzymes
• Melatonin inhibits cancer cell proliferation (most critical and controlling pathways are hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), NF-κB s, PI3K/Akt, insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF-1R), cyclin-dependent kinases (CDK), and estrogen receptor signaling)
• Melatonin promotes apoptosis of cancer cells (melatonin increases expression of pro-apoptotic mediators such as BAX/BAK, Apaf-1, caspases, and p53, p38, p-JNK)
• Melatonin inhibits angiogenesis
• Melatonin counteracts cancer cell immune evasion – melatonin can increase production of T-cells and NK cells, modulate the immune system
• Melatonin decreases pro-tumor inflammation
• Melatonin inhibits glucose metabolism of cancer cells
• Melatonin inhibits cancer cell metastasis by several mechanisms

Melatonin Can Treat These Cancers:

• gastric cancer – numerous pathways
• glioblastoma – Melatonin showed an anticancer effect against glioblastoma, and it was also reported to overcome the multi-drug resistance in glioblastoma
• prostate cancer – melatonin suppressed growth and metastasis
• lung cancer (NSCLC) – Melatonin administration remarkably enhanced apoptosis, in addition to inhibition of proliferation, invasion, and metastasis
• ovarian cancer (TLR-4 signaling pathway involved)
• colorectal cancer – inhibited proliferation and promoted apoptosis
• liver cancer – melatonin promoted autophagy and apoptosis
• renal cell cancer – melatonin promoted apoptosis and inhibited metastasis
• oral cancer

Melatonin as Adjuvant Treatment to Chemo and Radiation

• melatonin used alongside radiotherapy is able to augment the impact of ionizing radiation on tumors and can also prevent radiation’s toxic effects on normal cells
• efficiency of chemotherapy can be enhanced by the concomitant prescription of melatonin; side effects of the former are also ameliorated.
• Data also indicate that melatonin increases survival and improves quality of life
• It is thought that the capacity of melatonin to scavenge free radicals together with its antioxidant characteristics, are responsible for the improved outcomes

Melatonin Safety Profile and Dosing 

• Based on human trials and reported use, melatonin seems to have a high safety profile especially when used in appropriate doses and short term.
• Although the doses used in the published studies are 10–50 mg/day higher than those used for other indications (0.5–5.0 mg/d), none of the studies found any severe adverse effects linked to melatonin;
• The most common side effects are excess sedation and somnolence.
• half-life time of oral melatonin was approximately 45 min (28–126 min)
• melatonin appears safe, since no side effects have been reported, even with doses up to 100 mg/kg administered in 72 h (Gitto et al), or when a dose of 10 mg/kg was administered once daily for 5 days (Aly et al)
• Melatonin has short plasma half-life, variable oral absorption, and low variable bioavailability in addition to its poor solubility and stability.
• Therefore, conventional oral dosage forms (immediate release) are unsuitable candidates for melatonin delivery.
• To overcome these limitations, many pharmaceutical formulations have been developed using different approaches

Source: 2017 – Ya Li et al – Melatonin for the prevention and treatment of Cancer)

My Take… 

I have recently covered high dose Ivermectin and Fenbendazole for the possible treatment of very aggressive COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Turbo Cancers, as these patients are not being given any options by their Oncologists and Turbo Cancers are resistant to conventional chemo and radiation.

Melatonin has extensive anti-cancer properties.  

Where I find Melatonin particularly incredible, is its ability to regulate numerous cancer related micro RNAs, specifically by enhancing tumor suppressor miRNAs and inhibiting oncogenic miRNAs.

COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines may be generating oncogenic miRNAs that are causing Turbo Cancers (!

After all, it’s in the name of Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine:

It’s posts like this that keep me up at night:

At least these are more fun:

Oncogenic miRNAs (ONCOMIR)

Oncogenic miRNAs or ONCOMIRS are overexpressed in a variety of cancer types and act through a variety of downstream targets. Multiple oncomirs are consistently overexpressed in a variety of cancer types such as miR-21, miR-31, miR-135, miR-155, and miR-17-92 family of oncomirs.

These act in a variety of manners to downregulate tumor suppressor pathways, upregulate oncogenic pathways, and even alter epigenetic machinery.

In other words: THEY PROMOTE CANCER.

What to do with Melatonin? 

So Melatonin has been proven to regulate oncogenic miRNAs in a number of cancers, but can it regulate Pfizer’s or Co-miRNA-ty’s oncogenic miRNAs?

MAYBE. No one has asked. Well, I’m asking but I don’t know the answer.

Melatonin has been shown to treat breast, colon, lung, hepatobiliary, ovarian and prostate cancers – which just happen to also be the same cancers that show up after Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination but in Stage 4 Turbo Variety!

For Cancer treatment the dosing starts at a minimum of 20mg / day but all the studies admit that the dose must be much higher. But how high?

Some people are taking 60mg to 720mg per day, presumably safely:

• see article by William Faloon – A Case for Higher Dose Melatonin
• Integrative Medicine Center of Western Colorado uses 180mg to 720mg per day

Melatonin can improve the immune system, it can prevent cancer and it can treat cancer. Perhaps it can treat mRNA Vaccine Turbo Cancer also. 

But what are the optimal doses for each of these indications? 

I honestly don’t know.

*

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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*** 

CODEPINK strongly opposes Secretary ’s just-announced plan to send troops to the Eastern Mediterranean – including U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and defense munitions. Escalating the violence in Palestine is not the path to peace, it’s the path to destroying any chance the Palestinians have for peace, justice and freedom from Israeli Apartheid.   

Our hearts break witnessing both the loss of life and the threats coming from Secretary Austin and Prime Minister Netanyahu. With the assistance of the U.S., Prime Minister Netanyahu has established and enforced an open-air prison for over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, making it the most densely populated region on Earth. They are being denied basic rights, a situation that the United Nations and virtually all its member nations, with the exception of the United States and the European Union, have unequivocally condemned.

Little has been done for the Palestinian people, with the U.S. supplying over $150 billion in weapons to Israel over the past two decades to perpetuate the occupation. We find ourselves dismayed by today’s announcement from Secretary Lloyd J. Austin, which reveals plans to provide additional munitions and support to Israel.

We cannot pretend to be shocked by the resistance of the Palestinians, which follows 20 years of non-violent activism that has fallen on the deaf ears of those in power. CODEPINK has been a part of that non-violent resistance to educate the world and help them recognize that Israel is engaged in crimes against humanity and that the Palestinians are living in Apartheid. When President Carter mentioned Israeli Apartheid sixteen years ago, he was condemned; it is now a common understanding. Yet the violence against the people of Palestine has been steadily increasing. 

Resistance is named as a human right in international humanitarian law and UN declaration 2625, yet an exception is consistently made for Palestinians. President Biden continues to normalize Israeli oppression by saying Israel has a right to defend itself, but the decades-long occupation of Palestine is indefensible. The human reaction to being oppressed is to resist and Palestinians deserve that right just as much as everyone else on the planet. They have held the peace for 20 years and their situation continues to deteriorate and life under occupation is untenable. 

Occupation, Colonization, and Apartheid are all violence against a people; the world knows and agrees with this but the US continues to support it, while touting itself as the world leader of democracy. Sending troops and munitions to the defense of Israel will not engender peace but rather perpetuate the oppression that fuels the need for more resistance. It is so important that this momentum is used to propel us towards peace. 

We call on the United States to do its part to end this violence immediately. We demand the U.S. withdraw all support for Israel and block any additional aid to the apartheid state. Palestinians are confronting the world with their truth, and it is one that should be supported and respected.

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Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”? They Let It Happen? Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?

By Philip Giraldi, October 08, 2023

As a former intelligence officer, I find it impossible to believe that Israel did not have multiple informants inside Gaza as well as electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles.

Death Wish 2023: The Globalists’ “Invincible Self-righteousness” Regarding the War in Ukraine: Craig Murray

By Craig Murray, October 09, 2023

There can be few safer indicators of the views of the globalist “liberal” Establishment than reports of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which prefers to be known as Chatham House. Chatham House has released a report which “makes the case for dramatically increased Western military assistance to Ukraine, and argues against concessions to Russia”.

“Freedom of The Press”: Mass Raids and Arrest of Indian Journalists.

By Peoples Dispatch, October 09, 2023

In the hours following the raids of over 100 journalists affiliated with Indian leftist outlet Newsclick, international outlet Peoples Dispatch, and Tricontinental Research Services, and the detention of around 50, leading academics and journalists from across the world have expressed solidarity and outrage.

The EU at War with the “European Instrument for Peace”: Manlio Dinucci

By Manlio Dinucci, October 09, 2023

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said that the first joint meeting of Foreign Ministers outside the borders of the European Union, which took place in Kyiv, demonstrated the  27 EU countries’ support for Ukraine is “unwavering”.

Beware: Israel the Eager Provocateur. Is Hamas Israel’s Creation? WSJ

By Tony Cartalucci, October 09, 2023

With hostilities once again erupting between Israeli forces and Palestine, onlookers must keep in mind the greater agenda in which the current violence is playing out and the stated agenda of achieving hegemony over the Middle East in which Israel plays a pivotal role – as the “unilateral aggressor.”

The Balkans Geopolitics: Between a Bridge and the Battlefield

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, October 08, 2023

The peculiar geostrategic position of the Balkan Peninsula gives us an answer to the question of why it has been throughout history both a bridge and the battlefield of different civilizations and cultures.

91 Dead, 277 Injured by a Uyghur Terrorist Attack in Homs, Syria

By Steven Sahiounie, October 08, 2023

The Syrian Arab Army has shot down drones targeting the Syrian Military Hospital at Homs today, where terrorists had planned to kill the hospitalized survivors of the massive drone attack the Uyghurs had carried out yesterday, as well as target the flag-draped coffins being dispersed to funerals this morning.

“Economic Miracle” or Mass Poverty in Greece? “A Strong Economy means Neoliberalism”

By Dimitris Eleas, October 08, 2023

The article informs us that Greece was hit by an economic crisis a decade ago. It had, then, a load of debt – (doesn’t it now?) – which it could not repay and almost left the eurozone. So far so good. The newspaper informs that today it is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe. Again, so far so good.

Nuclear-Powered Fixations: The Trump-Pratt Disclosures, Nuclear Warheads on U.S. Submarines for Sale to Australia?

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 08, 2023

The speed with which AUKUS was entered into by the Scott Morrison government in September 2021, an agreement which also brought no demurral or any murmurs of dissent from the then Labour opposition of Anthony Albanese, had a rank smell to it. For one thing, it has seen Australia further trapped in an insidious game of military competition being waged against China at the behest of US interests, militarising the country and mortgaging the budget to the tune of $368 billion over the course of two decades.

Pericarditis Is Up 700% in 2022. Pfizer Executives Don’t Understand How Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Cause Pericarditis

By Dr. William Makis, October 08, 2023

The scientific literature on COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine induced Pericarditis is absolute garbage & a complete fraud. UK government disability data shows a 700% increase in disabilities due to Pericarditis in 2022 compared to the baseline. This is COVID-19 Vaccine damage.

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While reading the latest news of the war in Ukraine today, I was reminded of a song by Emma’s Revolution. The name of the song is Who Lies? It asks four fundamental questions that can be applied to just about any war:

“Who Lies? Who Dies? Who Pays? Who Profits?”

Veterans For Peace certainly knows who lies. Our members have been lied into multiple wars, from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.  Who lied?  The President lied.  Our political leaders lied.  The newspapers and television lied.  Even religious, academic and municipal leaders encouraged us to fight and die in a war based on lies.

And we most definitely know who died. 58,000 US soldiers – mostly poor and working class – died for lies in Vietnam, while we killed over 3 million Vietnamese men, women and children – mostly poor peasants. Thousands of US soldiers were killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis died.

Our soldiers continue to die.  PTSD and Moral Injury have led to more soldiers taking their own lives than those who died on the battlefield.

Who Pays?  We all pay – our precious tax dollars, which are intended to provide essential public services like healthcare and housing – are stolen from us to pay for war.

Just one-third of what we are wasting on death in Ukraine could end homelessness in the US, or even end world hunger. But that is not where our money is going.

And now the final question, Who Profits? The weapons manufacturers like Boeing and Raytheon reap obscene profits.  As do banks and huge financial institutions like Blackrock and Vanguard, which are heavily invested in the military, in high tech, and in media.

BlackRock and Vanguard are the two largest shareholders in the six major media companies that control more than 90% of the U.S. media. So while they reap huge profits for the 1% off of war-related industries, they are simultaneously shaping the media narrative that supports war.

In Ukraine right now, we have a stalemated war of attrition, where as Caitlin Johnstone writes, “soldiers are being killed and maimed in a battle for inches.  At least tens of thousands have died in this war with hundreds of thousands wounded, all for those teeny, tiny little blips on the map. Ukraine is now freckled with more landmines than anywhere else on earth, which experts say will take decades to clear. This giant deathtrap is exacerbated by the cluster munitions that are covering the land with greater and greater frequency, which will go on to detonate and kill civilians (mostly children) for years to come. The mines and artillery fire on the frontline of this war are reportedly creating tens of thousands of amputees, numbers comparable to what was seen in World War I.”

And now Depleted Uranium weapons, known to cause cancers, birth defects, and genetic damage, are being added to the lethal mix.

It is no surprise then that military-aged Ukrainian men have been fleeing and attempting to flee the nation in droves to avoid conscription.

Veterans For Peace supports those draft resisters. We support the right to Conscientiously Object to participation in killing and war.  We support war resisters and the right of peace activists to speak out against war without persecution, in both Ukraine and Russia.

We call on our own U.S. soldiers to thoughtfully consider whether they will obey orders to fight in illegal, immoral wars, or participate in training and arming this US proxy war against Russia.

Veterans For Peace joins with peace-loving people throughout the US and around the globe who are calling for URGENT Negotiations to End the War in Ukraine, Not More Weapons to Prolong and Escalate It.  See official Veterans For Peace statement, here.

Even a civilization-ending nuclear war is all too possible if the war in Ukraine is not ended soon, along with insane Neocon push for war against China.

So please keep in mind the four questions posed by Emma’s Revolution – Who Lies? Who Dies? Who Pays? Who Profits?

War is NOT the Answer! Keep on Waging Peace!  

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Gerry Condon serves on the Veterans For Peace (VFP) board of directors and represents VFP on the steering committee of the Peace In Ukraine Coalition.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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There can be few safer indicators of the views of the globalist “liberal” Establishment than reports of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which prefers to be known as Chatham House.

Chatham House’s principal funding comes from the UK, US, Canadian, German, Swiss, Japanese, Swedish and Norwegian governments, the World Bank and the EU, and from corporate “philanthropists” including IKEA, Bill Gates, George Soros, Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation, BP, Chevron, Shell, and ExxonMobil. I could go on.

In other words, Chatham House is absolutely rolling in the dosh controlled by states and the super wealthy. It is headquartered in the palatial residence of the imperial expansionist Prime Minister William Pitt, and has expanded out over time into two great adjoining mansions.

(In 2022 it also, despite all the petroleum bungs, received its largest grant from the MAVA Foundation, a Swiss environmental charity, which was that year closing down and disbursing all its funds).

So Chatham House is a pretty infallible guide as to what those who control western “democracies” are thinking. And when it comes to Ukraine, what they are thinking is terrifying.

Chatham House has released a report which “makes the case for dramatically increased Western military assistance to Ukraine, and argues against concessions to Russia”.

The report is organised as a list of nine “fallacies” which the authors are concerned that Russian propagandists have successfully insinuated into Western thinking, and sets out to refute each of them.

This is rather a high risk approach as, taken together, the nine “fallacies” on the face of it make a cogent and convincing argument against the escalation of the war.

But, convinced of the protection of their amulets of invincible self-righteousness, the authors plunge right in to their refutations.

I do not intend to go through them all. I merely seek to illustrate the intellectual paucity of this lavishly funded enterprise.

The task of debunking the first “fallacy”, that all wars end in negotiation, is given to James Sherr OBE, an American careerist Russophobe who is currently Head of Vilification at the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute (I definitely got the Institute right but I may have mistranslated his title a bit).

Estonia has of course much in common with Ukraine. It gained its national freedom on the collapse of the Soviet Union and it has subsequently put state resources into honouring Nazi Holocaust participants.

Two of the three Estonian Waffen SS officers in this photo have had official plaques to them unveiled in modern Estonia, reported with approval and no sense of controversy in the state media.

I thought I might mention this in case anyone thinks it unfair that Ukrainian Nazis were spotlighted by another Waffen SS member being given a standing ovation by the Canadian parliament. It is only fair to point out that a lot of Ukraine’s closest supporters are riddled with Nazi sympathy also.

Anyway, what does Estonian state employee and US citizen Dr James Sherr, Officer of the Order of the British Empire, former Fellow of the UK Defence Academy, have to tell us about the “fallacy” that all wars end in negotiation?

The first problem is that they don’t. It is true that the majority of wars do not end in absolute victory. Ceasefire, armistice and stalemate terminate most conflicts, even if the ‘peace’ is infirm or short-lived. But where the stakes are absolute, as they were in the Napoleonic wars, the US Civil War and the Second World War, armed conflict usually ends in the victory of one side and the defeat of the other. Negotiation, compromise and reconciliation are undertaken with new regimes only after old regimes are defeated and removed. The Franco-German reconciliation invoked by Emmanuel Macron would have been inconceivable had the Nazis remained in power.

Sherr goes on to argue that the stakes in this war are absolute. It is an existential war for Ukraine because Russia seeks to destroy it entirely, and it is an existential war for Russia because, he argues, Putin believes that Kiev is the cradle of the Russian soul.

Having defined it as an existential war, he says that it follows that it must be escalated up to total war and total victory.

It is very plainly an argument to escalate the war to achieve regime change in Russia:

Negotiation, compromise and reconciliation are undertaken with new regimes only after old regimes are defeated and removed.

Sherr is perfectly happy to contemplate millions of deaths. Look at his comparisons; the Napoleonic Wars entailed 3 million combat deaths, the US civil war about 700,000 combat deaths and the Second World War about 15 million. In each case you can probably more than double that for total civilian deaths caused by those wars.

Let me be absolutely plain: Sherr is saying this is the kind of total war he wants against Russia, rather than a more limited one.

Strangely enough Sherr does not reference those more recent great western wars for regime change, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, which also resulted in the deaths of millions. Possibly even he realises the end results have not been entirely desirable.

But is this war really existential for either Ukraine or Russia? The truth is that ever since Ukraine became independent in 1991 it has been unstable, deeply divided over whether to look west to the EU or look east to Russia. The political and linguistic division broadly at the Dnieper runs deep into history.

Modern Ukraine is a failed state that collapsed into civil war in 2014 after twenty years of political tension between openly pro-Western and pro-Russian political forces which were remarkably evenly balanced.

Up to and including 2014, both the Western powers and Russia engaged in all forms of political interference, espionage and chicanery to try to win Ukraine. Back in 1996 when I was First Secretary in the British Embassy in Warsaw, I helped author a paper for the Cabinet Office which said that Poland was now secured to the West, but the hinge of history would be the Ukraine. I discussed it with George Soros in person (he bought me a pizza).

I cannot share the outrage of many on the left at the “colour revolution” of 2014. Both Russia and the West had been playing a dirty game. Yanukovych was more or less kidnapped by Moscow to disavow the EU Association agreement. The ensuing 2014 coup was just the US being more adept at winning the dirty game, of which I as a former player well know the rules, or lack of them.

The subsequent annexation of Crimea and reinforcement of the Donbass was the Russian counter-move. That ended the hope that a united Ukraine would ever be pro-Russian. The civil war rumbled on ever since until the larger Russian invasion. The extreme discriminatory measures against the Russian speaking population post-2014 ended the hope that a united Ukraine would ever be possible.

Chatham House itself illustrates that Ukraine was nothing but this East/West conflict playground. In 2023 the “Chatham House Prize” for international relations was awarded to Ukrainian President Zelensky. In 2005 the inaugural “Chatham House Prize” had been awarded to President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine, openly for turning Ukraine from a pro-Russian to a pro-EU foreign policy.

A country where it is a prize-winning achievement to win a narrow majority for pro-western policies, against the wishes of the other half of the country which wants a pro-Russian foreign policy, is not a viable long term political entity.

At no stage in this post-Soviet story did Ukraine ever become a viable state. It was a poor, undeveloped and undeveloping, east-west power game venue.  Both sides were rigging elections and the oligarchs and their pet politicians oversaw massive corruption, on a mind boggling scale.

Which corruption has no way lessened, and has battened on vast flows of “assistance” from the west.

There has never been a Ukraine under the rule of law and proper democratic government, to which to now return. What does Sherr think will be the attitude of the Russian speaking half of the Ukrainian population if his massive, blood-drenched, total war does bring about the total defeat of Russia?

Ukraine has now banned Russian as an official language, banned all Russian speaking newspapers, banned the pro-Russian political parties, banned teaching in Russian in schools, banned Russian books in libraries and banned the Russian Orthodox Church. Yet Russian is the first language of about 40% of the population.

Is the plan that the total war will result in such genocide that Russian speakers in Ukraine will be no more? Will they all be ethnically cleansed? Or after so much death and destruction, will they just quietly live as second class citizens, and abandon resistance? Is that the plan?

In truth, the best opportunity for a functioning and more efficient Ukrainian state is, now we are in this hot war, for it to lose the Russia-leaning areas and become a more homogeneous and unified entity, with a much greater chance of being at peace with itself and of sorting out its colossal governance problems.

A smaller, better, Ukraine that quickly finds its way into the EU would benefit the great majority of pro-Ukrainians and provide a more stable future for Eastern Europe. In time, it would come to be seen as a blessing.

A negotiated land-for-peace deal, with genuinely free referenda conducted under UN supervision to determine borders, has always been possible and is now essential.

That is what diplomacy is. Yes, mankind can conduct its affairs through total war, inflicting death, maiming, rape, hunger, disease and long term poverty on a massive scale. Or compromise can be reached. That there are those who argue for the former over Eastern Ukraine is sickening to me.

The other problem with a total war is of course that it might be your side which loses. If Sherr wants total war and no negotiation, he is of course accepting the possibility that Russia will conquer all of Ukraine – and would have no right at all to complain of that outcome.

In which case what would become of the Ukrainians? One thing is for certain, a massive wave of refugees would be launched right across Europe.

The practical problem with Sherr’s call for total war is that Ukraine really does not have the population numbers to sustain to victory a total war against Russia. It is just going to run out of people, as indeed the much trumpeted counteroffensive appears to have done.

The extreme escalation of western weaponry which Chatham House proposes, might indeed get round the population problem and tip the balance by inflicting simply massive casualties on Russia, but it is an incredible gamble to believe that so much hurt could be inflicted on Russia without risking nuclear annihilation.

It is improbable that China will permit these lunatic western warhawks to risk the entire future of humankind. Sherr is not of course alone – each section of the report has a different author, and some of them are even more unhinged. Please feel free to discuss further in the comments.

A diplomatic settlement to the Ukraine war terrifies western power structures because it will underline the decline of western hegemony and the increasing influence of BRICS and other non-western voices.

The actual destruction of Russia as an independent power has become essential to the apostles of empire, as a means of maintaining a psychological ascendancy for a few more years. They really do not care how many die for that. Do we really want to follow Dr Sherrangelove and his fellow Chatham House ideologues down this path?

Remember that list above of who pays for Chatham House and who wants all this death. I can see how it benefits them. But, dear reader, how does it benefit you?

An independent Ukraine, shorn of the Eastern provinces that have never wished to look westward, is in the long term much more feasible and viable than some kind of military Valhalla created by an epic war of conquest.

A negotiated and equitable end to this conflict is perfectly viable. It always has been so. The people of Europe have to reject the military industrial complex, the war profiteers and the blazing-eyed ideologues – and look for a fair peace.

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*** 

In the hours following the raids of over 100 journalists affiliated with Indian leftist outlet Newsclick, international outlet Peoples Dispatch, and Tricontinental Research Services, and the detention of around 50, leading academics and journalists from across the world have expressed solidarity and outrage.

The coordinated repressive action was carried out as part of an investigation under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, a draconian law which has been widely criticized by human rights organizations in India and internationally as it undermines civil liberties and rights. Newsclick editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha and administrator Amit Chakraborty were arrested during the raid under the draconian anti-terror law and remain in police custody.

On October 3, after news broke about the raids, the Press Club of India held an emergency meeting in New Delhi, wherein journalists and media activists resolved to continue fighting for media freedom in India.

On October 4, journalists and writers, including novelist Arundhati Roy, staged a protest at the Press Club of India, while hundreds of young activists gathered at Jantar Mantar area in Delhi to reject the attacks on press freedom.

Several journalist bodies, students', youth and civil society organisations held protests at Press Club of India and Jantar Mantar on October 4th against recent witch hunt of employees of #NewsClick, and especially the arrest of #PrabirPurkayastha and #AmitChakravarty pic.twitter.com/Qjtd7OHzwt

— CPI (M) (@cpimspeak) October 4, 2023

Roy spoke to the BBC, denouncing the charges against the journalists under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. “They have confiscated the phones, the computers, they have charged them under this anti-terrorism act, collapsing the difference between terrorists and journalists,” she said.

Media persons turned up in large number at the Press Club of India to protest against multiple raids on a number of journalists associated with #Newsclick #FreeThePress pic.twitter.com/8KFrTB8tYO

— Press Club of India (@PCITweets) October 4, 2023

#NewsClick Delhi citizens came out in hundreds to mark the protest against attack on freedom of press and expression. While Jantar Mantar saw over 500 young students and activists Press Club of India was jam packed with journalists .

First three photos from Jantar Mantar ,… pic.twitter.com/z3K2OiyWz9

— Shabnam Hashmi (@ShabnamHashmi) October 4, 2023

In New York City, activists and journalists picketed on October 3 outside of the New York Times building in Midtown Manhattan. Much of the blame for the latest unjust targeting of these Indian journalists lies at the hands of the New York Times. The Indian government has been viciously targeting Newsclick for many years, following their first raid of the outlet in 2021 following Newsclick’s faithful reporting of the farmers’ protests in the country. A recent article by the New York Times, claiming that Newsclick-affiliated journalists are part of a Chinese propaganda network, was used by Modi’s government to justify further repression.

“A Government that has not been able to substantiate any charges against Newsclick despite being in possession of all its information, documentation and communications, needed a motivated and bogus article published in the New York Times to invoke the draconian UAPA and attempt to shut down and stifle independent and fearless voices that portray the story of the real India,” said Newsclick in a recent statement. “Of peasants, of laborers, of farmers, and other oft-ignored sections of society.

The New York Times’ recent article is merely a part of the West’s Cold War against China, activists claimed. Ben Becker, editor-in-chief of BreakThrough News, said at the picket that the piece is a way to accuse “anyone who opposes US foreign policy of being an agent of China.”

“What this article did is to lay the groundwork for an attack on the anti-war movement or anyone who’s critical of US foreign policy against China,” he said.

It is Newsclick’s steadfast reporting of working class struggles in India that has landed them in hot water with the Modi government, said Zoe Alexandra, co-editor of Peoples Dispatch, outside of the 52-story New York Timesbuilding.

“[Newsclick] dared to cover the incredibly powerful and courageous uprising of farmers in India. They were talking to farmers when they were committing suicide in the dozens and in the hundreds,” said Alexandra. “It’s Newsclick that covered the largest strike in human history. A quarter billion people on the streets.”

Hands off NewsClick!

A recent New York Times hit piece smeared leading Indian progressive outlet @newsclickin as part of a "Chinese propaganda network". This week the Modi gov’t cited this pretext for mass raids & arrest of journalists — we protested outside the NYT in response! pic.twitter.com/BsOyWJzagJ

— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) October 4, 2023

A coalition of 18 media organizations in India have penned a letter, published on October 14, to Chief Justice of India (CJI) Y V Chandrachud, expressing concern over the state’s repression. “The invocation of UAPA is especially chilling. Journalism cannot be prosecuted as ‘terrorism’. Enough instances in history abound to tell us where that eventually goes,” reads the letter. Signatories include Digipub News India Foundation, the Indian Women’s Press Corps, the Press Club of India, and the Foundation for Media Professionals.

In Taliparamba municipality in Kerala, India, dozens in the Democratic Youth Federation of India marched in solidarity with Newsclick.

The International People’s’ Assembly (IPA), a platform of over 200 trade unions, people’s movements, and left parties, declared in a statement on October 3 following the raids: “Today’s raids constitute a dangerous attack on press freedom in India and concerns all the democratic and progressive people around the world. The International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA) demands an end to persecution and press suppression in India.”

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Featured image: Protests in New Delhi and New York City decrying the raid and detention of journalists in India. (Licensed under PD)

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*** 

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said that the first joint meeting of Foreign Ministers outside the borders of the European Union, which took place in Kyiv, demonstrated the  27 EU countries’ support for Ukraine is “unwavering”. He, therefore, proposed granting Ukraine a new allocation of 5 billion euros from the “European Peace Facility”. This is an “off-budget” instrument, established in March 2021, to finance the military operations of the EU and its allies, especially Ukraine. Its financial endowment was increased by 4 billion, bringing it to over 12 billion euros, always paid by European citizens.

One of the Ukrainian military activities, also financed by the EU with the “European Peace Facility”, is the transformation of civilian drones (remotely piloted aircraft used in sporting, recreational or cinematographic activities) into killer drones equipped with powerful explosives. They are flown over Russian territory to strike not only military targets but often also civilian targets. As Ukrainian soldiers use around 30,000 explosive drones every month, Kyiv plans to purchase over 100,000 civilian drones from foreign companies over the next three months to transform them into killer drones.

The “European Peace Instrument” extra budget of 12 billion is added to over 30 billion euros allocated by the European Union, and around 40 billion allocated overall by individual European countries to arm Ukraine against Russia. However, they are not considered sufficient by the United States, which has so far allocated 113 billion dollars to Ukraine. It is therefore pressuring Europe to take on a greater burden in financing the war against Russia. To this end, Washington spreads fear among the Allies suggesting the United States will not be able to continue maintaining this effort. The Pentagon announced that “US aid to Ukraine will not last much longer.”

In this way the United States – which dictates the European Union’s foreign and military policy, given that 23 over 27 EU countries belong to NATO under US command – places the growing costs of the war on Europe, the real aim of the USA is not only to attack Russia but to divide Europe in order to dominate it better. The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, is a faithful executor of this plan.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Originally published in French by L’Humanité, translated by Global Research, this article originally appeared  in Global Outlook, No 2, Summer 2002.

Thanks to the Mossad, Israel’s “Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks”, the Hamas was allowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Arafat’s Fatah Movement for National Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression and intimidation

Let us not forget that it was Israel, which in fact created Hamas. According to Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)”.

Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Islamist movement in Palestine, returning from Cairo in the seventies, established an Islamic charity association.

Prime Minister Golda Meir, saw this as a an opportunity to counterbalance the rise of Arafat’s Fatah movement. .According to the Israeli weekly Koteret Rashit (October 1987), “The Islamic associations as well as the university had been supported and encouraged by the Israeli military authority” in charge of the (civilian) administration of the West Bank and Gaza. “They [the Islamic associations and the university] were authorized to receive money payments from abroad.”

The Islamists set up orphanages and health clinics, as well as a network of schools, workshops which created employment for women as well as system of financial aid to the poor.

And in 1978, they created an “Islamic University” in Gaza. “The military authority was convinced that these activities would weaken both the PLO and the leftist organizations in Gaza.” At the end of 1992, there were six hundred mosques in Gaza. Thanks to Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad (Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks) , the Islamists were allowed to reinforce their presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, the members of Fatah (Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine) and the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression.

In 1984, Ahmed Yassin was arrested and condemned to twelve years in prison, after the discovery of a hidden arms cache. But one year later, he was set free and resumed his activities.

And when the Intifada (‘uprising’) began, in October 1987, which took the Islamists by surprise, Sheik Yassin responded by creating the Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement): “God is our beginning, the prophet our model, the Koran our constitution”, proclaims article 7 of the charter of the organization.

Ahmed Yassin was in prison when, the Oslo accords (Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government) were signed in September 1993. The Hamas had rejected Oslo outright. But at that time, 70% of Palestinians had condemned the attacks on Israeli civilians. Yassin did everything in his power to undermine the Oslo accords. Even prior to Prime Minister Rabin’s death, he had the support of the Israeli government. The latter was very reluctant to implement the peace agreement.

The Hamas then launched a carefully timed campaign of attacks against civilians, one day before the meeting between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, regarding the formal recognition of Israel by the National Palestinian Council. These events were largely instrumental in the formation of a Right wing Israeli government following the May 1996 elections.

Quite unexpectedly, Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered Sheik Ahmed Yassin to be released from prison (“on humanitarian grounds”) where he was serving a life sentence. Meanwhile, Netanyahu, together with President Bill Clinton, was putting pressure on Arafat to control the Hamas. In fact, Netanyahu knew that he could rely, once more, on the Islamists to sabotage the Oslo accords. Worse still: after having expelled Yassin to Jordan, Prime Minister Netanyahu allowed him to return to Gaza, where he was welcomed triumphantly as a hero in October 1997.

Arafat was helpless in the face of these events. Moreover, because he had supported Saddam Hussein during the1991 Gulf war, (while the Hamas had cautiously abstained from taking sides), the Gulf states decided to cut off their financing of the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, between February and April 1998, Sheik Ahmad Yassin was able to raise several hundred million dollars, from those same countries. The budget of The Hamas was said to be greater than that of the Palestinian Authority. These new sources of funding enabled the Islamists to effectively pursue their various charitable activities. It is estimated that one Palestinian out of three is the recipient of financial aid from the Hamas. And in this regard, Israel has done nothing to curb the inflow of money into the occupied territories.

The Hamas had built its strength through its various acts of sabotage of the peace process, in a way which was compatible with the interests of the Israeli government.

In turn, the latter sought in a number of ways, to prevent the application of the Oslo accords. In other words, Hamas was fulfilling the functions for which it was originally created: to prevent the creation of a Palestinian State. And in this regard, Hamas and Ariel Sharon, see eye to eye; they are exactly on the same wave length.

First published by Global research on August 8, 2014

With hostilities once again erupting between Israeli forces and Palestine, onlookers must keep in mind the greater agenda in which the current violence is playing out and the stated agenda of achieving hegemony over the Middle East in which Israel plays a pivotal role – as the “unilateral aggressor.”

F.O.B Israel 

Of course, Israel does nothing unilaterally. It is a stunted, militaristic faux-state that depends entirely on the West for its continued existence. From the funds it builds its military with, to the very hardware it buys and maintains, starting from the day the modern state of Israel was founded up to and including today, Israel is in reality a state-sized forward operating base (FOB). Wikipedia defines a FOB as follows:

“The base may be used for an extended period of time. FOBs are traditionally supported by Main Operating Bases that are required to provide backup support to them.[citation needed] An FOB also improves reaction time to local areas as opposed to having all troops on the main operating base.”

As such, Israel’s constant and otherwise irrational belligerence makes perfect sense. An FOB’s priorities are not prosperity and peace as would a nation’s, but rather to engage forward into enemy territory. The trick over the years has been to portray Israel as a nation, while propping up its constant belligerence and aggression as “self-defense.” To keep this illusion in motion, Israel and its regional and Western collaborators have even created full-time enemies, including Hamas itself – a creation of Israeli intelligence and to this day primarily propped up by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of which are defacto regional partners with the West and of course Israel itself.

The Wall Street Journal reported in their article, “How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas,” that (emphasis added):

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. 

Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with “Yassins,” primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.

This is in fact exactly what Hamas is still being used today for – to counter real opposition movements by dividing against each other different factions of Muslims and secular organizations alike, in confusion and armed combat, preventing a greater, unified front against Western expansion and exploitation throughout the region. Extremist groups closely aligned to Hamas, including Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, would flood into Iraq during the US occupation to “serendipitously” disrupt united Sunni-Shia’a resistance, and create bloody infighting that broke the back of meaningful opposition against foreign occupation. The same method is being used again in Syria, and with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) incursion into Iraq weeks ago, yet again against Baghdad.

Divided and in perpetual conflict, the Arab World across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has not been able to create strong, secular, nationalist nations to protect Arab socioeconomic and political interests. In the process, the West has been able to exploit, divide, and conquer regions of MENA over and over again. Israel’s role as the ultimate casus belli, instigator, and aggressor, has been instrumental in keeping this hegemonic enterprise alive and well with the region kept in a perpetual and crippling defensive posture.

Israel’s Role as “Unilateral Aggressor” is Stated US Policy

Logistically, it is obvious Israel does not exist without Western support, and therefore does not act without Western approval. The illusion of its unilateral aggression is designed specifically to lend the West plausible deniability for brutality and unprovoked aggression it believes it cannot afford to be associated with directly. This is stated across years of US policy papers, including the most definitive report on the subject, Brooking Institution’s 2009 report “Which Path to Persia?“

The report itself conspires to use covert provocations to trigger a war with Iran, to undermine it politically through foreign-sponsored “protests” augmented by covert armed groups, the direct funding, arming, and use of listed terrorist organizations against the Iranian people, and specifically the use of Israel to attack Iran with covert Western backing to make it appear as if Tel Aviv took the steps unilaterally. It specifically states:

“An Israeli air campaign against Iran would have a number of very important differences from an American campaign. First, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has the problem of overflight transit from Israel to Iran. Israel has no aircraft carriers, so its planes must take off from Israeli air bases. It also does not possess long-range bombers like the B-1 or B-2, or huge fleets of refueling tankers, all of which means that unlike the United States, Israel cannot avoid flying through someone’s air space. The most direct route from Israel to Iran’s Natanz facility is roughly 1,750 kilometers across Jordan and Iraq. As the occupying power in Iraq, the United States is responsible for defending Iraqi airspace. “Which Path to Persia?-page 105 (.pdf)

“From the American perspective, this negates the whole point of the option—distancing the United States from culpability—and it could jeopardize American efforts in Iraq, thus making it a possible nonstarter for Washington. Finally, Israeli violation of Jordanian airspace would likely create political problems for King Abdullah of Jordan, one of America’s (and Israel’s) closest Arab friends in the region. Thus it is exceedingly unlikely that the United States would allow Israel to overfly Iraq, and because of the problems it would create for Washington and Amman, it is unlikely that Israel would try to fly over Jordan.” Which Path to Perisa?-page 106 (.pdf)

“An Israeli attack on Iran would directly affect key American strategic interests. If Israel were to overfly iraq, both the Iranians and the vast majority of people around the world would see the strike as abetted, if not authorized, by the United States. Even if Israel were to use another route, many Iranians would still see the attack as American supported or even American orchestrated. After all, the aircraft in any strike would be American produced, supplied, and funded F-15s and F-16s, and much of the ordnance would be American made. In fact, $3 billion dollars in U.S. assistance annually sustains the IDF’s conventional superiority in the region.” Which Path to Persia-page 106 (.pdf)

“…the Israelis may want to hold off until they have a peace deal with Syria in hand (assuming that Jerusalem believes that one is within reach), which would help them mitigate blowback from Hizballah and potentially Hamas. Consequently, they might want Washington to push hard in mediating between Jerusalem and Damascus.” -page 109 (.pdf) 

With the US fully withdrawn from Iraq and Damascus significantly weakened, many of these problems have been adequately addressed, and with the US’ perceived “failure” in and “withdrawal” from the region being eagerly reported by the Western press itself, the stage is set for the ultimate staged “unilateral” attack by Israel, not only against its own Hamas provocateurs, but through a series of dubious associations, Hezbollah, Damascus, and even Iran itself.

Of course, another possibility exists. As seen before, Israeli belligerence and intentional role as regional arch-villain has been used to undermine targets throughout the region as well as boost others up. That Hamas’ current and most public supporters are Israel’s own regional collaborators, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, a quick and humiliating stalemate for Israel would help boost the credibility of Riyadh and Doha across the region ahead of renewed pushes against both Damascus and Baghdad.

Whichever route Israel takes, it will be apparent soon enough. Should the conflict expand rapidly and involve Hezbollah, the final battle may be underway. If the conflict remains limited to Hamas, the possibility that the Israel is trying to lend Hamas’ public sponsors in Riyadh and Doha credibility and momentum throughout the region will be greater.

Israel: The Bottom Line

What Israel is doing across the region is both criminal and demands condemnation. However, it must be condemned in the context of a belligerent client regime acting not in the best interests of the Israeli people or toward peace, prosperity, and coexistence with its neighbors, but rather for foreign interests that see the nation instead as a massive forward operating base. Protesting Israel alone is not enough. Boycotting Israeli businesses and industries is also fruitless and even helps play into the engineered strategy of tension constructed by Israel’s sponsors. Israel does not fund its military might by local cottage or even national industry, it does so via immense foreign aid.

Instead, to protest and undermine Israel’s role as regional provocateur, target the corporate-financier interests that feed it billions of dollars annually. Separate, isolate, and protest Israel’s political leadership rather than Israel’s existence and population. Reach out to Israelis who oppose their government’s current posture of perpetual provocations, and those in the middle who may be swayed one way or another.

By throwing rocks at Israel as a whole, one plays into the besieged mentality the government invests immense resources in perpetuating among common Israelis. Those who might otherwise see their government as the villain will seek its protection against irrational external hatred directed at the entire nation rather than at those responsible for its criminal extraterritorial brutality – whether it is in the occupied territories of Palestine, or across the borders of its neighbors in Syria, Iraq, Iran, or beyond.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Tony Cartalucci is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

This article by the late Professor Tanya Reinart was first published by Global Research in 2002 under the title The Penal Colonies.

Our thoughts are with Tanya Reinart. Her legacy will live. 

***

The Netanyahu government is no longer contemplating “Separation” or “Apartheid”. There is no longer a “Two State Solution”.

The October 7, 2023 Declaration of War against Palestine consists in invading and annexing Gaza and the West Bank, while excluding Palestinians from their homeland. It’s a crime against humanity. 

**

The Gaza strip is a perfect realization of the Israeli vision of “separation”. Surrounded with electric fences and army posts, completely sealed off the outside world, Gaza has become a huge prison.

About one third of its land was confiscated for the 7,000 Israeli settlers living there (and their defense array), while over a million Palestinians are crowded in the remaining areas of the prison.

With no work or sources of income, about 80% of its residents depend, for their living, on UNRWA, or contributions from Arab states and charity organizations. Now Israel is considering the imprisonment there of families of suicide bombers from the West Bank (1). As a senior Israeli analyst stated, Gaza can now serve as “the penal colony” of Israel its “devils island, Alcatraz”. (Nahum Barnea, Yediot Aharonot June 21, 2002).

This is the future that Sharon and the Israeli army designate for the West Bank as well. While the external fence is presently being built, Israel’s current military operation is set to be the final step in the implementation the IDF plans for reestablishing full military rule (which was abolished in large parts of the West Bank during the Oslo process).

Though Israel describes everything it does as a spontaneous reaction to terror, the plan was fully spelled out in the Israeli media already back in March 2001, soon after Sharon entered office. Alex Fishman, military and strategic analyst of Yediot Aharonot, explained at the time that since Oslo, “the IDF regarded the occupied territories as if they were one territorial cell”, and this placed some constraints on the IDF and enabled a certain amount of freedom for the PA and the Palestinian population. The new plan is a return to the concept of the military administration during the preOslo years: the occupied territories will be divided into tens of isolated “territorial cells”, each of which will be assigned a special military force, “and the local commander will have freedom to use his discretion” as to when and who to shoot. (Yediot Ahronot weekend supplement, March 9.2001).

The first stage of this plan the destruction of the institutions of the Palestinian Authority was completed in the previous ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ in April of this year [2002]. In practice, from that time on, the towns and villages of the West Bank have been completely sealed. Even exit by foot, which was possible up to that point, became blocked, and movement between the “territorial cells” now requires formal permits from the Israeli military authorities. Soldiers and snipers prevent any “unauthorized” walking to agricultural fields, to places of work and study, or for medical treatment.

However, unlike the pre Oslo period of Israeli military rule, the army makes it clear that there is no intention to construct any civil administration that will take care of the basic daily needs of the two million Palestinians, such as food supplies, health services, garbage and sewage. For these tasks, some form of a Palestinian Authority will be maintained, though in practice it will not be allowed to function.

As a ‘military source’ told Ha’aretz,

“Internal conclusions of the security echelons, following operation ‘Defensive Shield’, assessed that the functioning of the civil branches of the Palestinian Authority had reached an unprecedented nadir, mainly due to the destruction the IDF operation left behind in Ramallah (including the systematic destruction of computers and databases)… Combined with the severe restrictions on movement, the Palestinian population is becoming, as the military source defined it, ‘poor, dependent, unemployed, rather hungry, and extreme’… The financial reserves of the Palestinian authority are reaching the bottom… In a future not far off, the majority of Palestinians will only be able to maintain a reasonable life through the help of international aid.” (Ha’aretz Hebrew edition, June 23, 2002, Amos Har’el). Thus, the West Bank is being driven to the level of poverty of the Gaza strip.

Nevertheless, at the same time that Israel deprives the Palestinians of their means of income, it also makes a substantial effort to diminish or block international aid, under the pretext that the aid is used to support terrorists or their families. At the outset of its new ‘operation’, Israel “decided to stop the flow of foodaid and medicine from Iran and Iraq to Palestinians in the territories” (Ha’aretz, June 24, 2002, Amos Har’el). Iranian and Iraqi aid is an easy target for Israel, as these countries belong to the “Axis of Evil”. However, Israel started launching a more ambitious campaign: The EU the largest PA donor is under constant pressure from Israel to cut its aid, which is used, inter alia to pay the salaries of teachers and health workers. The tactics are always the same: Israel provides some documents presumably linking the PA to terror. Any aid to the PA is, therefore, aid to terror (2).

UNRWA’s aid is the next target. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East (UNRWA) has become a major source of food for Palestinians in the besieged territories. Its food supplies are now delivered not only to the refugee camps, but also in towns and villages. The amount of food UNRWA supplies has increased fourfold in two years (3). Recently,

“Israel has begun a campaign in the United States and the United Nations to urge a reconsideration of the way the UN Relief and Works Agency, which runs the Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, operates. Israel charges that UNRWA workers simply ignored the fact that Palestinian organizations were turning the camps into terrorist bases and it is demanding the agency start reporting all military or terrorist actions within the camps to the UN…. Meanwhile, Jewish and proIsraeli lobbyists in the U.S. are waging a parallel campaign … American Jewish lobbyists are basing their efforts on the fact that the U.S. currently contributes some 30 percent of UNRWA’s $400 million a year budget, and is therefore in a position to influence the agency: A congressional refusal to approve UNRWA’s funding could seriously disrupt its operations. (Ha’aretz June 29, 2002, Nathan Guttman). The campaign is not yet demanding cutting UNRWA’s aid and presence altogether, but raising the impossible demand that UNRWA should serve as an active force in “the war against terror” (“reporting military or terrorist actions”) is the first step towards such a demand.(4)

Since September 11,[2002] Sharon has been constructing an analogy between the occupied territories and Afghanistan (with the PA as Al Qaeda). He keeps declaring that the solution to Palestinian terror, and the required ‘reforms’, should be along the lines set in Afghanistan. The analogy is frighteningly revealing: As it established the ‘reforms’ in Afghanistan, the US forced starvation upon millions of people. This is how Noam Chomsky described it:

“On Sept. 16, the New York Times reported that ‘Washington has also demanded [from Pakistan] a cutoff of fuel supplies…and the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan’s civilian population.’ Astonishingly, that report elicited no detectable reaction in the West, a grim reminder of the nature of the Western civilization that leaders and elite commentators claim to uphold. In the following days, those demands were implemented… ‘The country was on a lifeline,’ one evacuated aid worker reports, ‘and we just cut the line’ (NY times Magazine, September 30). According to the world’s leading newspaper, then, Washington demanded that Pakistan ensures the death of enormous numbers of Afghans, millions of them already on the brink of starvation, by cutting off the limited sustenance that was keeping them alive.” (Interview with Michael Albert, reprinted in Noam Chomsky, 911, Seven Stories, 2002). Arundhati Roy, summarized this at the time: “Witness the infinite justice of the new century. Civilians starving to death while they’re waiting to be killed” (Guardian, Sept. 29).

The new stage of Israel’s ‘separation’ can no longer be compared to the Apartheid of South Africa. As Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa’s Minister of Water Affairs, said in an Interview with Al Ahram Weekly, “the South African apartheid regime never engaged in the sort of repression Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians” (Issue of March 28 April 3, 2002). We are witnessing the daily invisible killing of the sick and wounded being deprived of medical care, the weak who cannot survive in the new poverty conditions, and those who are bound to reach starvation.

Nevertheless, the public debate in Israel revolves around questions of efficiency: Is it possible to stop terror in such methods. Let us suppose even that it is. Is it allowed? Is this what we (Israelis) want to be?

One people stole the ‘Lamb of its poor neighbor'(5): Gaza and the West Bank are 22% of the land of Israel Palestine, where the Palestinians lived in the past. On this small piece of land, three million people live, with hopes, needs and dreams, just like ours.

Since Oslo, they have been lured with promises that we are about to evacuate the settlements and give them back their land, at the very same time that we have been imprisoning them in Gaza, stealing more of their land in the West Bank, and leaving them no hope whatsoever. The Palestinian people are fighting for their freedom. The crimes of Palestinian terror do not remove our culpability for our own crimes.

Before Oslo, as well, there was a wave of horrible terror attacks. But at that time, after each such attack, the call was heard get out of the territories! Then it was still understood that when you leave people no hope, there is no way to stop the madness of suicide bombing. It is not too late to get out of the territories.

Notes

(1) In its meeting on Friday, June 21, 2002, the Israeli cabinet “decided in principle in favor both of the expulsion of families of suicide strikers from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip… The implementation of this expulsion policy depends upon the outcome of a legal review.” (‘IDF set to expel bombers’ families’ By Aluf Benn, Amos Harel and Gideon Alon, Ha’aretz June 23, 2002).

(2) Here is one example of the pressure on the EU: “The documents seized from PA offices in recent months, some of which were included in the document compiled by minister without portfolio 

Dan Naveh following Operation Defensive Shield, were presented last week to the EC delegation in Israel and representatives of the International Monetary Fund at a meeting with IDF intelligence officers. Naveh claims the documents prove European financial aid has been used to finance terrorism and incitement, and has also found its way into the pockets of senior PA officials.

The head of the EC’s delegation to Israel, Giancarlo Chevallard, told Ha’aretz that at the meeting, the delegation saw evidence that Arafat is financing terrorism, but added Israel had not provided evidence that European financial aid which is designated to pay the salaries of PA employees is being used to finance terrorist attacks. Another senior delegation official said he was extremely skeptical Israel had evidence to prove European aid is being used by the PA to finance terrorism…

Meanwhile, in the shadow of the Israeli accusations, the European Parliament’s budgetary committee last week delayed the transfer of 18.7 million euros in financial aid to the PA until the EC reports how the money is to be distributed…” (Ha’aretz, June 6, 2002, Yair Ettinger) This specific frozen amount was released in the meanwhile, however Israel’s pressure continues.

(3) Amos Har’el, ‘The IDF neutralizes the Palestinian Authority, and humanitarian organizations try to replace it’, Ha’aretz Hebrew edition, June 23, 2002. (Quoted before).

(4). The campaign against UNRWA started earlier: “In letters written to Annan in May, Republican U.S. Senator Arlen Specter and Democratic U.S. Representative Tom Lantos accused the U.N. agency of allowing and promoting terrorist activity in the camps. Specter said UNRWA schools promoted antiIsraeli and anti Semitic sentiments and Lantos said the agency allowed terrorists to organize in the camps.”(Inter Press Service, June 24, 2002)

(5) Bible, Samuel II, 12:11: “12:1The LORD sent Natan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. 12:2The rich man had very many flocks and herds, 12:3but the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and raised. It grew up together with him, and with his children. It ate of his own food, drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was to him like a daughter. 12:4A traveler came to the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man who had come to him, but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man who had come to him.” (http://ebible.org/bible/hnv/2Sam.htm)

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The Balkans and Geopolitics

The peculiar geostrategic position of the Balkan Peninsula gives us an answer to the question of why it has been throughout history both a bridge and the battlefield of different civilizations and cultures.

Thus, the history of the region was to a great extent determined by the location of the Balkans. Situated at the meeting point of Europe, Africa, and Asia both the Balkans experienced alternate imperial drives, competing ideologies together with conflicting social, political, and economic systems.[1] For the local people in the region, to live in the area of high international tensions meant primarily to find a way out from permanent pressure from abroad. It led to their resistance to any foreign realm and outside attempts to annex or dominate the region. Accordingly, it was exactly this part of the Old Continent to deserve the label of “Europe’s worst trouble spot”.[2] At the same time, Southeast European societies accepted many foreign institutions, customs, rules, or habits which were in many cases reshaped according to the local traditions and necessities.[3]

The thoroughly high degree of international interest in the Balkans for the whole time of mankind’s history comes in first place for the reason of its geopolitical and geostrategic value.[4] The Balkans was during the entire 19^th and 20^th centuries a real “laboratory” for the expression and investigation of different attributes of geopolitics.[5]

The region of the Balkan Peninsula in geographical terms is straitened between the Mediterranean basin and the Danube watershed which, basically, means that one great long-time state-body could not be established. Moreover, for the reason of the mountain face of the region, broken and interlaced with many smaller and bigger rivers, the local population was “destined” to live within smaller state organizations.

The ancient Greek city-state (пoλιξ) was a typical product of the geographical conditions of the area.[6] When the borders of a newly independent state of Albania were drawn in 1913, they followed to a great extent the geographical shape of the area living many ethnic Albanians outside the motherland, a majority of them in Serbia’s province of Kosovo-Metochia as well as in West Macedonia, South-West Greece, and East Montenegro.

In other words, the regional geographical conditions became one of the most decisive hindrances for the Balkan people to realize their maximized territorial aims and requirements. Besides this factor, the long-time intermixture of different ethnic, religious, and cultural groups became the second obstacle which did not allow Southeast European nations to effectuate their dreams of national unification within a single national statehood without the conflict with their neighbors or co-dwellers who had similar national visions.

South-East European nationalism led by the basic idea that each ethnos has to live in one national state was an essential ideological framework for the constant inter-ethnic collisions.[7] The creation of a single national state body, composed of all ethnographic and historic “national” lands, was in the eyes of the leading Balkan politicians a final stage of national awakening, revival, and liberation which started at the turn of the 19^th century at the ideological basis of the German romanticist nationalism expressed in a formula: “One Language-One Nation-One State”.

The struggle upon the same “national” territories which belonged to “everybody” following historic, ethnic, military, or geostrategic principles and reasons resulted in the certitude that in this part of the world, there was more blood than land. In other words, there were not enough territories to satisfy all national aspirations. Thus, for example, Serbian, Greek, Ottoman, Montenegrin, and Albanian dispute over the destiny and fixed borders of the independent Albania in 1912–1913, or the Yugoslav civil war in 1991–1995 followed by the Yugoslav-Albanian struggle over Kosovo-Metochia’s province in 1998–1999 are only the episodes of the local nationalism but certainly not an exemption.[8]

The most important feature of the Balkan geopolitics is the peninsula’s geographical, historical, political, military-strategic, and economic connections with the Mediterranean Sea and basin. The most convenient geographical definition of the Balkans is a “Peninsula of the Mediterranean”.

Almost all Balkan states are the Mediterranean ones. The seas which belong to them are parts of the greater Mediterranean Sea. For instance, since the Adriatic and the Ionian seacoasts are integral parts of the Mediterranean shore, located near Italy, their strategic importance often attracted in history many foreign powers to occupy and possess them like the Ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Normans, the Hungarians, the Venetians, the Serbs, the Ottomans or modern Italians. 

Historically, the notion of the Balkans was in conjunction with the Oriental Ottoman Turks who gradually spread their lordship over the peninsula from 1354 keeping it under their sway till 1913.

However, certain European Great Powers saw the Balkan seaside either as their legitimate historic possession or the sphere of influence, endeavoring to keep back the Ottoman Empire from the Balkan littoral. From the cause of historic-cultural factors, the continental parts of the Balkans were related to the Orient, while the littoral parts of the Balkans were cognate to the Occident.

The crucial reason for the Russian interest in the Balkans was an aspiration to possess the exit to the “warm seas”. For the German Second Reich’s diplomats (1871–1918) and the Nazi politicians (1933–1945), South-East Europe became attractive as the “transversal corridor” which was connecting the Middle East and Asia with the German European possessions; in other words, a corridor very suitably located for Berlin’s policy of Drang nach Osten.[9]

In the eyes of Austro-Hungarian foreign policy creators, the region was of pivotal prominence as the only overland way to Vienna’s final goal – to have control over the Aegean seaport of Salonika (Thessaloniki) in Aegean Macedonia. A special point of interest in the Balkans by the European Great Powers at the turn of the 20^th century became the entrance (gate) to the Adriatic Sea bordered by Italy’s and Albania’s littorals. From this point of view, for Viennese politicians, Albania’s territory, especially its seacoast, should play a role of the pivotal obstacle against the Italian penetration in the Balkans, especially towards the Salonika seaport which should be transformed into the principal Austro-Hungarian commercial export-import point in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Adriatic and the Ionian littorals became from the 1860s extremely attractive for the Kingdom of Serbia as one of the possible strips of the Balkan territory where Serbia could find the exit to the sea for commercial reasons. The Montenegrin Principality (from 1910 the Kingdom of Montenegro) was infatuated only by the ultimate north-western portion of present-day Albania – the area around the city of Scodra for historical reasons as Scodra was the capital of Montenegro in the early Middle Ages. The Kingdom of Bulgaria from its de iure acquainted independence in 1878 expressed its thirstiness for the Aegean littoral as well.

The Greek pretensions for the same territory led finally Sofia and Athens to the war in 1913 (the Second Balkan War). In the Balkan politics of Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria at the turn of the 20^th century, the Albanians and Albania were the wedges against the others. For instance, for Bulgaria, the Bulgarian-Albanian axis was imagined as the best impediment against the Serbian-Greek teamwork and joint political actions. Finally, the Ottoman Empire had its political-economic interest in keeping the Ionian littoral as its possession. For this purpose, for Istanbul’s diplomats, the eastern entrance to the Adriatic Sea (Albania) should be under Ottoman control. 

The Ionian littoral with its hinterland played a significant role for the Ottoman sultans at the time of the Ottoman wars for South-East Europe. For instance, Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (1451–1481) established on the hinterland of the Ionian seacoast two of the most important Ottoman footholds at the Balkans for further intended military actions across the Adriatic Sea. These two military fortresses were built at Akçahisar (Kruja) and Avlonya (Valona). The Ottoman commanders (beys) on the north-east Ionian littoral were allowed by the sultan to increase their raiding expeditions into Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Dalmatia, respectively.[10]

The Military-strategic Factors of the Balkan Geopolitics

In the 19^th and the 20^th centuries the eastern portion of Southeast Europe was under the Russian sphere of influence because it was closer to the main Russian objects of acquisition – Constantinople (Istanbul), the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, and the Dardanelles. Beginning with the time of the Empress Catherine the Great (1762–1796) the conquering of Constantinople was put on the pedestal of the Russian Balkan policy.[11] On the other hand, the western piece of Southeast Europe was considered the Austro-Hungarian (the Habsburg) sphere of influence. Consequently, the Russian-Austro-Hungarian spheres of influence overlapped on the territories of Serbia and Montenegro[12], while the territory of Albania experienced similar overlapping of the Italian-Austro-Hungarian spheres of influence. Taking this in mind, it was quite natural that the members of the European Great Powers supported different Balkan states during the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913 and the First World War in 1914–1918. 

The military-strategic factors of Southeast Europe have five delicate points: 

1. The “Ljubljana Door” adjoins Central Europe and North Adriatic.
2. The Morava-Vardar valley bounds Central Europe with the North Aegean Sea.
3. The Pannonian Plain is in the confines of the southern part of Central Europe and North Balkans.
4. The River Danube is the main bridge of Southeast Europe with Central and West Europe.
5. The Black Sea’s seashore.[13]

Many invaders throughout history used these five points as roads to cross from Central Europe to the Balkans or vice versa (for example, the Crusaders and the Ottomans).[14] The Sub-Danubian region of Southeast Europe played a significant role in the German-Austrian foreign policy course of Drang nach Osten in the years from 1871 to 1918. Under this course should be grasped the German military-political-economic penetration into Asia Minor and when the Suez Canal was opened further into India (the German plans concerning the Baghdad and Anatolian railways). The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary became the locomotive of this course after the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, interested in the first place to drive towards the Aegean Sea through the Sanjak of Novi Pazar (after 1913 divided between Serbia and Montenegro)[15] and the valley of the River Vardar. At the time of the Austrian-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef I (1848–1916), a synonym for his country was a “Sub-Danubian Monarchy” referring to the importance of the River Danube for the very existence of Austria-Hungary which was composed by the Balkan and Central-European provinces. [16]

The Black Sea’s seashore became the principal battlefield area between imperial Russia and the Ottoman Empire from the time of the Russian Empress Catherine II (1762−1796) throughout the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century. Both belligerent sides tried to increase their political influence in Southeast Europe to provide their hegemony in the area of the Black Sea’s maritime.

Nevertheless, the other European Great Powers had as well as their particular interests in the sector of the European part of the Black Sea’s shore and its waters like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and even Italy. The struggle of the European Great Powers upon mastering the Black Sea’s trade and military directly or indirectly affected the domestic affairs of Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Greece.

It was true particularly from the time of the Crimean War (1854–1856) to the time of the Great War (1914–1918) when the fight of the small Balkan nations for their national liberation and unification depended to a large extent on the result of the Russian-Ottoman wars and the Russian diplomatic support for the Balkan Christian Orthodox states. For instance, after the Russian military and diplomatic defeat during the Crimean War and the Paris Peace Conference in 1856, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece could not expect any territorial achievement until the next Russian-Ottoman War of 1877–1878 in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated. Therefore, due to the Russian victory and the San Stefano Peace Treaty in 1878, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia became independent states according to the Berlin Congress’ decisions in July 1878 and at the same time enlarged their state’s territories at the expense of the Ottoman Empire.[17] At that time, the Russian principal protégé in the Balkans was Bulgaria which was the prime reason for Serbia to turn her eyes towards Vienna and Pest after 1878. The Russian pro-Bulgarian Balkan policy during the war against the Ottoman Empire in 1877–1878 had its foundations in the Russian efforts to establish a firm foothold on the Black Sea’s littoral to easily acquire control over Istanbul and the Straits. For that purpose, Bulgaria was the most appropriate Balkan state as being a vanguard of the Russian Euro-Balkan policy and the main forerunner of St. Petersburg’s interests in the region.

Possible and Real Political Axis-alliances in Southeast Europe

Southeast European geostrategic importance can be sublimated in the next three points: 

1. The region is a significant overland tie between Europe and the Middle East.
2. The region has important reserves of natural wealth in raw materials, energy, etc.
3. The region located between Central Europe, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea was and is an important point of the European and even global system of security and strategy of imperialistic powers.[18]

Southeast Europe had its highest geostrategic importance in international relations at the beginning of the 20^th century when the region became a notable link in the chain of the European system of balancing powers. For that reason, both the Central Powers and the Entente made considerable efforts to obtain better military, strategic, political, and economic positions in the region before the outbreak of the First World War. 

Taking into account historical, cultural, national, and religious aspects of the development of the Balkan civilization, there were and are three possible main political axis alliances to function in this European region: 

1. An Islamic axis: The Turks, the Muslims from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sanjak, Albania, West Macedonia, East Montenegro, East Bulgaria, and Kosovo-Metochia.
2. The Orthodox alliance: Russia, Serbia, the Serbian portion of Montenegro, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbs from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo-Metochia, and the eastern regions of the Republic of North Macedonia.
3. The Roman Catholic bloc: Croats, Slovenians, Central European German Catholics, Hungarians, Vatican, and Bosnian-Herzegovinian Roman Catholics).[19]

During WWII, Southeast Europe became the battlefield of three opposite political-ideological forces: 1) the Nazis and Fascists; 2) the Communists; and 3) the Parliamentary Democrats. After 1945 the region was sharply divided between the members of the NATO Pact (est. 1949) and the Warsaw Pact (est. 1955) while Socialist Yugoslavia as a member of the Non-Alignment Movement was to a certain extent a Balkan political mediator. Finally, the Balkans became once again in the 20^th century the very focus of the world’s attention during the process of bloody disintegration and destruction of Yugoslavia (1991–1995)[20] and the Kosovo War (1998−1999) followed by NATO’s military intervention (in fact, aggression) in the Balkans (against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) in 1999 (March−June).[21]

Conclusion

In conclusion, Southeast Europe is a geopolitical term that connotes peoples, cultures, and states that make up a region between the Black, Adriatic, Aegean, and Mediterranean Seas. There are three crucial points of the regional significance in the geostrategic point of view: 

1. The territory of South-East Europe is an extremely important connection between West and Central Europe and the Near and Middle East.
2. A wealthy region’s natural resources.
3. The region is a very important part of the Great Powers’ political-military-economic strategy. 

Located on the crossroads of different civilizations, Southeast Europe during its 3,000 years of historical and cultural development preserved many material remains from different civilizations and was under strong spiritual influence from West European, East European, Central European, Mediterranean, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and many other cultures. If some part of Europe deserved the name of “melting pot of civilizations” it is the case with its south-eastern part for sure. 

Personal disclaimer: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution. 

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

Notes

1 Jelavich B., History of the Balkans. Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, ix–xi. 

2 Berend I., T., Ránki G., East Central Europe in the 19^th and 20 centuries, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1977, 41.

3 Among selected bibliography of South-East European cultural, political, historical and social developments the following works deserve to be mentioned [Cvijić J., Balkansko Poluostrvo i južnoslovenske zemlje. Osnove antropogeografije, I, Zagreb, 1922; Stavrianos, L. S., The Balkans, 1815–1914, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963; Jelavich B. and Ch., The Balkans, Prentice-Hall: New Jersey, 1965;   Stoianovich T., A Study in Balkan Civilization, New York: Knopf, 1967; Jelavich Ch., (ed.), Language and Area Studies: East Central and Southeastern Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969; Edgar H., The Balkans: A Short History from Greek Times to the Present Day, New York: Crane, Russak, 1972; Jelavich B. and Ch., The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977; Sugar P. E., Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1804, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977; Castellan G., History of the Balkans: From Mohammed the Conqueror to Stalin, New York: Columbia University Press, East European Monographs, Boulder, 1992; Stojanović T., Balkanski svetovi. Prva i poslednja Evropa, Beograd: Equilibrium, 1997; Bideleux R., Jeffries I., A History of Eastern Europe. Crisis and Change, London−New York: Routledge, 1999; Mazower M., The Balkans. A Short History, Random House, Inc., 2002; Kaplan D. R., Balkan Ghosts. A Journey Through History, New York: Picador, St. Martin’s Press, 2005; Wachtel B. A., The Balkans in World History, Oxford−New York: Oxford University Press, 2008; Gleny M., The Balkans. Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804–2012, Granta Books, 2012]. One of the most useful guides of selected bibliography of our interest up to the 1970s is [Horecky, P. L., (ed.), Southeastern Europe: A Guide to Basic Publications, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969].   

4 Even today, there are suspicious scientists and researchers who are following before 19^th-century attitude towards geopolitics as not scientific area or simply as the pseudo-science. It should be said that from the time of the mid-19^th century the geopolitics was accepted more and more like a field to be equal with other academic disciplines primarily due to the works of the American Admiral Mahan A. T. (1840–1914) connected with the role of the navy in the ruling the world, then the works of the German geographer Ratzel F. (1844–1904) concerning the relations between geography and the living space (Lebensraum), the Swedish university professor of the political sciences Kjellén J. R. (1864–1922) about the state as an organism and the superiority of the German race, the British scientist Mac Kinder Halford John (1861–1947) with regard to the importance of the heartland and finally but at the same time mostly due to the German General and geographer Haushofer K. (1869–1946) who was writing primarily upon the geopolitical reasons of Hitler’s wars of territorial expansion of the Third Reich. However, a Greek historian Herodotus (B.C. 484–424), a “father of history” and the author of the famous History of the Greek-Persian Wars, should be considered as one of the early founders of the geopolitics as the science. In sum, the geopolitics was primarily discredited as an academic field of research and investigation since it was seen only as a justification and projection of the German expansionism in the 19^th and the 20^th centuries. Subsequently, the negative synonyms for the geopolitics were the doctrines of the “Blood and Soil” (Blut und Boden), the “Living Space” (Lebensraum), the “Will for Power” (Wile zum Macht) and the “Lord-Nation” (Herren Volk). On geopolitics, see in [Dodds K., Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford−New York: Oxford University Press, 2007; Black J., Geopolitics, London: The Social Affairs Unit, 2009; Cohen B. S., Geopolitics: The Geography of International Relations, Lanham, Maryland: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2009; Walberg E., Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games, Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2011; Flint C., Introduction to Geopolitics, New York: Routledge, 2012; Starr H., On Geopolitics: Space, Place, and International Relations, Paradigm Publishers, 2014].       

5 Петковић Р., XX век на Балкану. Версај, Јалта, Дејтон, Службени лист СРЈ, Београд, 10. On the „Balkan geopolitics of nightmare“, see in [Славољуб Б. Шушић, Геополитички кошмар Балкана, Београд: Војноиздавачки завод, 2004].

6 On ancient Greek city-state, see in [Adkins H. W., White P., University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, 1 The Greek Polis, Chicago−London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986; Hansen H. M., Polis. An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State, New York−Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006]. 

7 The pivotal nationality principle in Europe is: A nation is a people in possession of or striving for its own state. The relationship between state and nation in Europe was gradually transformed from the model of the Augsburg religious peace settlement of 1555 – “Cuius regio, eius religio” to the modern model of Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec or Bosnia-Herzegovina – “Cuius regio, eius lingua”. On ethnicity, national identity and nationalism, see in [Smith A., The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Oxford, 1986; Gellner E., Nations and Nationalism, Paris, 1989; Miller D., On Nationality, Oxford, 1995; Guibernau M., Rex J. (eds.), The Ethnicity: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Migration. Reader, Cornwall: Polity Press, 1997; Jenkins R., Rethinking Ethnicity, SAGE Publications Ltd, 2008].

8 The cult of war is present in every Balkan nationalism. For example, Serbian Orthodox Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović stated on the day of the proclamation of the beginning of the First Balkan War in 1912 in his oration about “Young Serbia” that the “Lord is a great warrior” [Велимировић Н., Изнад греха и смрти. Беседе и мисли, Београд, 1914, 12]. On the Kosovo War in 1998−1999, see in [Hadjimichalis C., “Kosovo, 82 Days of an Undeclared and Unjust War: A Geopolitical Comment”, European Urban and Regional Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2000, 175−180; Henrikson D., NATO’s Gamble: Combining Diplomacy and Airpower in the Kosovo Crisis 1998−1999, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2007].     

9 On the German Drang nach Osten, see in [Meyer C. H., Drang Nach Osten: Fortunes of a Slogan-Concept in German-Slavic Relations, 1848−1990, Peter Lang AG, 1996; Lewin E., The German Road to the East: An Account of the ‘Drang Nach Osten’ and of Teutonic Aims in the Near and Middle East…, Nabu Press, 2012].  

10 The center of the Ottoman government in Albania was set up at Gjirokastra following the annexation of all the property of the nobility in Central Albania. Among the expropriated Albanian noblemen was and John Kastriota the father of George Kastriota Skanderbeg (1405–1468). The latter succeeded to liberate Albania from the Ottoman sway and ruled an independent Albania from 1443 to 1468. The day when Skanderbeg raised a flag bearing his family’s arms on the citadel of Kruja (November, 28^th) 1443 became a national holiday for Albanians (the “Flag’s Day”). Knowing that it is not surpassingly that a restoration of the Albanian independent statehood in 1912 was announced exactly on the day of November 28^th. A Skanderbeg flag became a national emblem of an independent Albania. The day of November 28^th remained as the national feast day. However, the Ottomans finally subjugated Albania in 1479 taking control over the fortress of Scutari (Shkodër/Skadar) from the hands of Venice (according to the peace agreement signed between the Ottoman Empire and Venice in Constantinople/Istanbul on June 25^th, 1479. The capture of Scutari in 1479 became a part of principal anti-Ottoman propaganda among the Italians, the Albanians and the Montenegrins in their struggle against the Ottoman lordship in present-day North Albania. All of them claimed that the Ottomans captured “their” historical city of Scutari and a policy of liberation of the city from the Ottoman possession became a driving force of their national duty and prudence in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

11 Радовановић Љ., “Балкан и Средоземље”, Међународна политика, Београд, № 484, 1970.

12 Радовановић Љ., “Санстефански и Берлински уговор”, Међународна политика, Београд, № 498, 1971.

13 About the River Danube, see in [Ристић А. М., Геополитички положај Дунава, Београд, 1940; Wechsberg J., The Danube, The Book Service Ltd, 1980; Meszaros L., The Danube, John Beaufoy Publishing, 2009; Beattie A., The Danube. A Cultural History, New York−Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010].

14 About the Balkan military-strategic features during the Cold War, see in [Габелић А., “Гарантије”, Међународна политика, Београд, № 448, 1968; Mates L., Međunarodni odnosi socijalističke Jugoslavije, Beograd: Nolit, 1976].   

15 On the history of the region of Sanjak (Sandžak), see in [Morrison K., Roberts E., The Sanžak: A History, London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 2013].

16 See more in [Kann R. A., The Habsburg Empire: A Study in Integration and Disintegration, New York, 1973; Bérenger J., A History of the Habsburg Empire 1273–1700, London−New York, 1997; Bérenger J., A History of the Habsburg Empire 1700–1918, London−New York, 2000]. 

17 On the issue regarding the war and diplomacy in 1877−1878, see in [Sluglett P., Yavuz M. H. (eds.), War and Diplomacy: The Russo-Turkish War of 1877−1878 and the Treaty of Berlin, University of Utah Press, 2011; Druri I., The Russo-Turkish War 1877, Men-at-Arms, Osprey Publishing, 2012].

18 About general problems of the geostrategic importance and security of South-Eastern Europe, see in [Castellan G., Le monde des Balkans: poudriere ou zone de paix?, Paris: Voubert, 1994; Yazakova A. Shmelyov B., Selivanova I, Kolikov N. (eds.), The Balkans: Between the Past and the Future, Moscow, 1995; Lukić R., Lynch A., Europe from the Balkans to the Urals, Oxford: SIPRI−Oxford University Press, 1996].

19 In regard to the problem of a religious ground of national determination and making political alliances in the Balkans, see in [Пашић Н., Национално питање у савременој епохи, Београд, 1973; Janjić D. (ed.), Religion and War, Belgrade, 1994].  

20 On this issue, see in [Woodward L. S., Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War, Washington D.C.: Brooking Institution Press, 1995; Guskova J., Istorija jugoslovenske krize (1990−2000), I−II, Beograd: Izdavački grafički atelje „M“, 2003; Finlan A., Essential Histories: The Collapse of Yugoslavia 1991−1999, Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2004].

21 On the intervention, see in [Parenti M., To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, London−New York: Verso, 2000; Gibbs N. D., First Do Not Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009].

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October 6, 2023, Latakia, Syria: The Syrian Arab Army has shot down drones targeting the Syrian Military Hospital at Homs today, where terrorists had planned to kill the hospitalized survivors of the massive drone attack the Uyghurs had carried out yesterday, as well as target the flag-draped coffins being dispersed to funerals this morning.

The 91 dead include 31 women and 5 children as they watched their family members in a graduation ceremony at the Homs Military Academy in Homs, while 277 were injured. This was one of the deadliest attacks on the Syrian military, and was timed to occur at the end of the ceremony when the families went down into the courtyard to personally greet their loved ones who had transitioned from cadet to officer.  Syria has declared three days of mourning.

The Syrian Arab Army began attacks on the known Uyghur positions in the province of Idlib, east of Latakia, and Ariha, west of Aleppo.  

The attacks were carried out by the Uyghurs of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and the Brigade of Emigrants. These two armed groups are known for their technological capabilities in conducting drone attacks.

Experts believe the attack on the Syrian military academy, and its civilian audience of family members, was prompted by the visit of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to China where the 19^thAsian Games opened and saw Syrian athletes participating.  

The massive attack was shocking since the Syrian conflict has become a stalemate, and the battlefields are silent since 2017, when US President Trump cut-off the billion dollar CIA program, Timber Sycamore, which funded Radical Islamic terrorists in Syria battling to overthrow the Syrian government in Damascus. All of Syria is under government control, with the exception of the Kurdish-US occupation of the northeast, and the terrorist controlled Idlib province in the northwest.

Al Mayadeen TV reported, the advanced drones used in the attack were delivered three months ago from France to the TIP. This terrorist organization is allied with the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly named Jibhat al-Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. TIP is composed of Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group native to northwestern China. Its fighters are based in the mountainous areas of Latakia and Idlib in Syria, which border on Turkey.  

The Syrian Ministry of Defense had previously reported shooting down two drones north of Aleppo which had been targeting civilians in small villages.

Who Are the Uyghurs?

TIP is an armed Uyghur terrorist group which has been in Syria fighting alongside the US-sponsored terrorists, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), since 2015. Long War Journal reported in 2015 that TIP had ties to Al Qaeda.

Syrian Churches have been destroyed by TIP, and in Jisr al-Shughur a Church’s cross had a TIP flag placed on top of it.  The province of Idlib has been ethnically cleansed of Christians by TIP, and they killed a Christian man and his wife. In previous battles in Idlib and Homs, TIP fought alongside Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Camps training children as terrorists are being run by TIP.  Uyghur child soldiers being trained with guns were depicted in a video released by TIP.

Turkey’s Support of the Uyghurs

The Uyghurs are a Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group having a common linguistic, religious, and cultural kinship with the people of Turkey.

Erdogan, and his ruling AKP party, are followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, a global terror organization which stand on the same platform of core beliefs as TIP, Al Qaeda and ISIS.

In the past, while Mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan described the Uyghurs as the ancient forefathers of the Turkish nation, and their area in western China as the cradle of Turkic history, civilization and culture. 

In 2014, the Uyghurs carried out a terror attack in Kunming, China. The terrorists caught fleeing the attack had Turkish passports on them as they attempted to travel through Indonesia.

According to the Jamestown Foundation, Turkish connections were used by TIP to go to Syria through the humanitarian Uyghur East Turkistan Education and Solidarity Association (ETESA) which is located in Turkey. Turkish President Erdogan personally directed an elaborate travel plan for the Uyghurs in China to arrive in Syria to kill. 

Erdogan directed fake passports to be issued for the Uyghurs, which were then used to travel from China to Istanbul, where the fake passports were then confiscated by Turkish immigration officials, and the Turkish Intelligence agents clandestinely transported the terrorists from Istanbul to Idlib.

TIP solicits donations by using the Turkish postal service, which send the donations to Turkish banks. 

In 2017, the Associated Press reported at least 5,000 Uyghurs were fighting in Syria, and several hundred had joined ISIS.

The US captured 22 Uyghur terrorists from combat zones in Afghanistan in 2006 because they were linked with Al Qaeda. They were imprisoned without trial for five to seven years in Guantanamo Bay, but then released into the US, despite warnings from politicians and complaints from the public fearing it was unsafe.

The US shot down a Turkish drone in Syria today, as reported by Mark Alfred of the Daily Beast.

A US F-16 downed a Turkish drone in northeast Syria after officials deemed it a threat to American forces. 

Turkey, a NATO ally, has been carrying out air attacks on Kurdish militants who are supported by the US, and have 900 US troops nearby while occupying the Syrian oil and gas fields in the northeast.

The downing of the Turkish drone may raise tensions between the allies, with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin set to meet with Turkish officials.

The attack yesterday in Homs demonstrates the persistent efforts to destabilize Syria and terrorize its people. US sanctions have caused thousands of Syrian to risk deadly migrations by sea to Europe. President Obama, and his Vice President Joe Biden, launched a US-NATO attack on Syria in March 2011, which failed its goal of regime change, but succeeded in destroying the country.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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New York Times published a news article “Greece, Battered a Decade Ago, Is Booming” by Liz Alderman, with additional reporting from Niki Kitsantonis (Monday, Sept. 25 / in print on Saturday, Sept. 30, Section B, Page 1 with the headline: “A New Era of Prosperity for Greece”).

Screenshot from The New York Times

The article informs us that Greece was hit by an economic crisis a decade ago. It had, then, a load of debt – (doesn’t it now?) – which it could not repay and almost left the eurozone. So far so good.

The newspaper informs that today it is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe. Again, so far so good.

And clearly, the famous credit rating agencies are upgrading Greece’s debt rating and thus, opening the way for large investors and the economy is growing at twice the rate of the eurozone average. That’s right. CEPR economist Dean Baker, commenting on the article after its publication, wrote with emphasis: “Since the eurozone growth rate for 2023 is projected to be 0.8 percent, growing twice as fast is a rather low bar.”

The journalist mentions that unemployment is at 11 percent, which one would say, with a dose of humor, is “Greek statistics” because the probability is that unemployment is much higher. (Greece’s past government falsified fiscal data in order to enter eurozone.) Dean Baker will point out though, “The 11 percent unemployment rate is far higher than the rest of the European Union, which has a 5.9 percent unemployment rate.” Everywhere in Greece there is poverty, and mine conditions in society.

I am one of the Greeks living in New York, and I have received many messages and phone calls from Greek people who want to immigrate to America because they cannot make ends meet. Friends and family members ask me the same. They are forced to do two-three jobs to survive. The minimum wage is 780 euros (650 net). So, how is it that the article describes “a miracle”? One would say that even the examples of the people mentioned in the article are not typical.

And the tourists who have returned en masse, as the article states, has not helped to improve incomes. On the popular islands – that the average Greek cannot visit – usually, there are galley conditions for the workers.

Unfortunately, in Greek society, a small percentage of 5%-10% live well – “the oligarchs eat with golden spoons” – and the rest suffer. Children of the poor go to school hungry.

The country has some of the most expensive fuel in Europe, expensive food, high VAT, and very expensive electricity. Many do not have money for dental care, to change tires on the car, or, to start a new family. The journalist writes “misery of austerity is still fresh”, no, it is not fresh; it is still present in the social conditions. Nowhere is mentioned that the government gave, until recently, “Soviet-style” Food Pass and Fuel Pass coupons, which helped the re-election by a landslide of the conservative leader Mr. Mitsotakis. This image is not beautified by the fact that the companies Microsoft and Pfizer are investing in Greece.

For reasons that are understandable, rating agencies like DBRS Morningstar and Moody’s do their job.

Very likely for them, a strong economy means neoliberalism, purchasing power that is getting worse every year, and cheap labor. And Greece is a country that lacks personalities like Chomsky, AOC and Bernie. But the NYTimes should not present these assessments while ignoring the poverty that still exists in the country that gave birth to Democracy. The NYTimes has accustomed us to a more critical look at the suffering of ordinary people.

In conclusion, “can a dead man dance?” No! So, the information given by the NYTimes should create “a complete picture” and not the opposite. Perhaps, we can accept that somehow, the good American newspaper wants to help improve the desperate economic situation that continues to impoverish the Greeks and stop the transfer of wealth to the few. Good psychology is everything, even in economy. Until then, the country will continue to live its own difficult fate, its own 1929, similar to the conditions America experienced at the start of the Great Depression era.

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Dimitris Eleas is a new immigrant in America. He is a New York-based writer / article writer/ activist / political scientist and contributes to SLpress (Athens) and The National Herald (NYC). You can contact him via e-mail: [email protected].

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In April 2021, the Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt had a meeting with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club. According to an ABC News report,

“Pratt told Trump he believed Australia should start buying its submarines from the United States, to which an excited Trump – ‘leaning’ towards Pratt as if to be discreet – then told Pratt two pieces of information about US submarines: the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads they routinely carry, and exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected.”

The report, citing “sources familiar with the matter,” goes on to mention that Pratt “allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists”. The net, in other words, proved rather large, with emails and conversations taking place on the subject with three former Australian prime ministers, 10 Australian officials, 11 of Pratt’s employees and six journalists.

The revelation has emerged as part of an ongoing investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into Trump’s retention of classified documents on leaving the White House. Some of the documents, hoarded at Mar-a-Lago, covered US military matters, nuclear weapons, and spy satellites.

What is buried in the latest spray and foam of the Trump disclosures to Pratt is whether that encounter had any bearing on the broader strategic thinking in Canberra and its links to the US military industrial complex. The AUKUS security agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia contemplates the transfer of at least three US nuclear powered Virginia class boats, along with the construction of a specific co-designed nuclear-powered boat for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).  Did Pratt’s enthusiasm for US nuclear submarines percolate through to other officials, think-tankers and courtiers working for Washington’s interests?

Former Australian Prime Ministers Paul Keating and Tony Abbott have told the Australian Financial Review that Pratt never raised the issue of purchasing US nuclear submarines with them. Who, then, were the other prime ministers who received Pratt’s gobbets of wisdom?  Surely Scott Morrison must figure, given his role in brokering the AUKUS agreement.

The ABC News report does acknowledge that a number of Australian officials who featured in the Pratt disclosures were “involved in then-ongoing negotiations with the Biden administration over a deal for Australia to purchase a number of nuclear-powered attack submarines from the United States.”

A number of Australian commentators have tried to minimise the significance of the Trump-Pratt encounter, thereby revealing visible smoke plumes. “We’ve had submariners serve on US nuclear submarines for years,” stated former Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey. “I find it hard to believe that in a conversation between Anthony Pratt and Donald Trump, anything of great significance was discussed that would have an impact on the national security of either Australia or the United States.”

Former Australian Defence Department official Peter Jennings, who also served as executive director of the US-funded and parochially pro-Washington think-tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, for over a decade, saw little reason to be concerned about the content of the disclosures. Most of the material on US submarines was already in the public domain. His concern, rather, was with Trump’s cavalier approach to national security information.  “It’s just the 1000^th example of why Trump is unfit to be president,” he tut-tutted. Jennings, along with the other members of the paid-up Washington consensus in combating Beijing, is no doubt losing sleep about Trump redux. Were Trump to return to the White House, all bets about Australia getting its nuclear-powered submarines are off.

The speed with which AUKUS was entered into by the Scott Morrison government in September 2021, an agreement which also brought no demurral or any murmurs of dissent from the then Labour opposition of Anthony Albanese, had a rank smell to it. For one thing, it has seen Australia further trapped in an insidious game of military competition being waged against China at the behest of US interests, militarising the country and mortgaging the budget to the tune of $368 billion over the course of two decades.

AUKUS also brought with it the abrupt termination of Canberra’s contract with the French Naval Group to construct twelve diesel-electric attack submarines for the RAN. This proved to be a disastrous affair for Australian diplomacy, savaging French-Australian relations and also advertising, to the region, the abject repudiation of Australian sovereignty.

While it should be stressed that Pratt faces no charges of illegality or impropriety, nor features in the 40 charges Smith is levelling against Trump, the Mar-a-Lago meeting with a former US president may prove critical in identifying a nexus with Canberra’s irrational interest in US-nuclear powered technology and the point at which that fascination ended the last vestiges of Australian independence.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected] 

Featured image: The USS John Warner, a nuclear-powered submarine of the type Australia will soon be developing. Source: US Navy

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NATO is increasingly explicit in its anti-Russian war plans. In an article recently published on the Atlantic alliance website, an ex-senior US official called for a nuclear war against the Russian Federation. These moves make clear the real intentions of the Western bloc against Moscow and show how NATO is not interested in any alternative to find a peaceful solution to current tensions.

Gregory Weaver, former nuclear defense advisor to the US Joint Staff, states in the article that Russia poses a nuclear “challenge” to the US. He believes that Moscow could violate its own nuclear doctrine and use atomic bombs on the battlefield in conventional conflicts, such as the Ukrainian one, or directly attack NATO countries if the US were involved in a war against another nuclear power, such as China.

Weaver sees Russian leadership as extremely irresponsible, with “propensity to take risk, and to miscalculate profoundly in the process of doing so.” In this sense, the former advisor believes that Moscow could take nuclear measures against NATO without calculating the consequences of this action, or believing that Washington would simply not respond, avoiding a global nuclear escalation.

So, instead of suggesting peaceful solutions to this scenario and calling for a reduction of tensions to avoid nuclear risks, Weaver embraces the opposite direction: he calls on NATO to engage in a process of nuclear deterrence against Russia. For the author, the alliance must increase its offensive potential, prepare fighters and submarines to launch tactical nuclear weapons and, if “necessary”, start a limited direct nuclear war with Russia. In this scenario, both sides would use tactical nuclear weapons in a “moderate” way, without escalating the conflict globally.

“To enable that strategy, NATO nuclear and conventional forces must be capable of:

1- providing a robust range of response options to restore deterrence by convincing Russian leadership they have direly miscalculated, that further nuclear use will not achieve their objectives, and that they will incur costs that far exceed any benefits they can achieve;

2- countering the military impact of Russian theater nuclear use;

3- continuing to operate effectively to achieve US and Allied objectives in a limited nuclear use environment. To meet these requirements NATO needs a range of continuously forward deployed, survivable theater nuclear capabilities that can reliably penetrate adversary theater air and missile defenses with a range of explosive yields on operationally relevant timelines,” the article reads.

Conveniently, Weaver did not mention in his article the possible consequences of a conflict of this type for the European continent, where such a war would certainly be fought. This clearly shows how Europe has no relevant value for American geopolitical plans, being just a theater of operations against Russia. If it is necessary to destroy European countries with nuclear bombs to achieve its “strategic goals”, the US would certainly do so, as for them the Europeans are not allies, but true vassals and proxies.

In fact, Weaver’s article is a clear example of the warmongering mentality that has achieved hegemonic status among US political and economic elites. The obsession with preserving the declining unipolar order and defeating Russia and China is leading Washington decision-makers to consider such insanities as the deliberate creation of a direct conflict between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

There is in the US an unfounded belief in the possibility of creating a “limited nuclear theater“, where attacks would take place in a moderate manner without escalating into a global risk situation. But this is not a likely scenario. The only possibility for a regional nuclear theater not to escalate into a global one is if the attacks are unilateral, with no response from the affected side. From the moment there is an exchange of attacks, the tendency is that at some point one of the sides decides to attack the decision-making centers in the enemy capital with strategic nuclear weapons – which could lead to disastrous global consequences.

Furthermore, it is necessary to emphasize how Weaver is using fallacious rhetoric in his favor to justify the war. At no point was there any “miscalculation” on Russia’s part. Moscow launched its special military operation very carefully, taking all necessary measures to protect its people and avoid escalations. But there were real threats from Western public figures, such as former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who stated that she was “ready” to promote “global annihilation.”

Until now, the Western side has been the only one to make irrational, miscalculated and irresponsible decisions. The nuclear blackmail started with the West and the Russians only responded. As Russian authorities have made clear several times, the use of nuclear weapons would only occur in cases determined by the country’s doctrine – which, unlike the American one, is strictly defensive.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram. 

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute    

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*** 

 

Graph Source: UK Disabilities PIP Project

Aug. 4, 2023 – Australia – Nathan is a 49 year old dad in the mining industry who developed debilitating Pericarditis after his 2nd Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine.

Jul. 27, 2023 – NSW, Australia – 33 year old Jo Newman was in training for her first half marathon. She took two Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines and developed Pericarditis and 2cm of fluid around her heart.

July 25, 2023 – Perth, Australia – 25 year old Rob is a plumber who was mandated two Pfizer mRNA Vaccines and has developed pericarditis with other neurological symptoms.

July 6, 2023 – Bondi, NSW, Australia – 35 year old Natasha had two Pfizer mRNA Vaccines and developed Pericarditis.

June 15, 2023 – Far North QLD, Australia – 35 year old Shana is a nursing student and mother of 4 children. She had 2 Pfizer mRNA Vaccines and developed pericarditis.

May 24, 2023 – Melbourne, Australia – 23 year old Johan had 2 Moderna mRNA Vaccines and developed Pericarditis.

Sep. 22, 2023 – Soko Nix (Nikkiah Christa St.James-Wolfe) is a TV/Radio host and a screenwriter She is COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated she has come down with pericarditis and gallbladder problems, two of the most common COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine side effects.

Sep. 19, 2023 – Los Angeles, CA – Garon Cockrell, a writer, has now had pericarditis twice.

Sep. 2023 – Long Beach, CA – Marcy Sudock is a violinist and Music Director of Musique Sur La Mer Orchestra and Chamber Ensembles. She developed pericarditis.

July 31, 2023 – NFL Broncos waive 24 year old KJ Hamler after he was recently diagnosed with “mild pericarditis” (click here)

June 23, 2023 – Columbia, SC – Chelsey Walker is a healthcare worker who works at Sandhills Pediatrics (COVID-19 Vaccinated). She developed pericarditis, skin lesions and Turbo Cancer melanoma.

April 2023 – Australia – 41 year old Gareth O’Gradie, Melbourne teacher, father of 2, had part of his heart removed in Feb.2022 as a “extreme” last resort after being bedridden for 7 months with severe pericarditis shortly after his 1st Pfizer Vaccine in July 2021.

Pericarditis…

Pericarditis is an inflammation of the pericardium, which is a thin, protective membrane surrounding the heart.

WHO’s VigiAccess database lists AEs for COVID-19 Vaccines (click here):

• 28,820 reports of myocarditis
• 23,522 reports of pericarditis
• 5,246 reports of pericardial effusion
• 3,565 reports of myopericarditis

Pfizer doesn’t understand how their mRNA Vaccine causes PERICARDITIS (Australian Senator Gerard Rennick questions and grills two Pfizer Executives who can’t answer his question).

Click here to view the video

My Take…

The scientific literature on COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine induced Pericarditis is absolute garbage & a complete fraud.

UK government disability data shows a 700% increase in disabilities due to Pericarditis in 2022 compared to the baseline. This is COVID-19 Vaccine damage.

If this is happening with pericarditis, something similar may be happening with myocarditis and the resulting sudden cardiac deaths of young people.

Notice how many women are getting pericarditis.

Notice how debilitating and persistent this COVID-19 Vaccine Injury can be over the span of years. Most victims have not gotten their lives back.

COVID-19 Vaccine Spike Protein Detoxification is absolutely crucial in these cases. 

Must incorporate these elements:

• 3 day water fasting
• Nattokinase, Bromelain or other spike protein proteases (eg. Serrapeptase)
• Ivermectin, Quercetin, Olive Leaf Extract, Black Seed (Nigella Sativa), Curcumin, Dandelion extract or other Spike protein blockers
• NAC, Vitamin C – antioxidants
• Taurine – cardiac anti-inflammatory
• Vitamin D, Magnesium, Selenium, Zinc – Immune system support

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from Ryan Gassner

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Details of the recent Ukrainian-Iraqi talks have appeared in the Middle Eastern media. According to almasryalyoum.com, on September 27, a YouTube video appeared, which claims that Ukrainian president Zelenskyy has been trying to recruit certain Iraqi prisoners into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to the video, the prisoners in question are convicted terrorists and ISIS fighters. The author of the video is Hassan Fadel, who introduced himself as a former employee of the Foreign Ministry of Iraq, working there as a secretary from 2019 to 2023 before leaving the country.

“My name is Hassan Fadel and I am a former employee of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Iraq. I worked as a secretary there from 2019 to 2023. I discovered this note in April of this year when Ukrainian diplomats gave it to my colleagues. I am deeply outraged by the contents of this note and would like to make it public, because “the fighters experienced in fighting Russians” mentioned in it are former ISIS fighters detained in prison facilities around Iraq. I resigned from the Ministry and left Iraq with my family, so I don’t know what our response was. Still, I don’t want to see these people free, especially armed. ISIS are murderers and terrorists, and they should stay imprisoned for the rest of their lives. Many countries support Ukraine right now and allow it to break international laws. Still, aiding terrorists is too much and shouldn’t be allowed. I am also appalled by the American involvement in this. General McFarlane mentioned in the note is the commander of American Joint Task Force in Iraq. It is simply shocking how easily the issues of the movement of Iraqi prisoners, especially terrorists, can be resolved without the participation of representatives of our country.”

In mid-April 2023, a meeting was held in Baghdad between representatives of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry headed by Fuad Hussein and a Ukrainian delegation headed by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. After the meeting, the politicians spoke to the press, making a number of statements about the development of cooperation between the countries and the desire to end the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The picture of the letter as shown in the video

Another meeting was held in May of 2023 in Saudi Arabia during the Summit on the Settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict, organized by Ukraine. President Zelenskyy personally communicated there with the Prime Minister of Iraq Al Sudani.

It is unknown how many ISIS fighters are still detained. In the last five years, many of them were executed or died of natural causes. According to the circumstantial evidence and the research data, their number can be assumed to be a few thousands. In March of this year, American general Michael Kurilla, who visited prisons housing the detained terrorists, stated, that between those detained in Syria and Iraq it is a veritable ‘ISIS army in detention.’ If freed, this group would pose a great threat regionally and beyond.”

General McFarlane, mentioned in the Hassan Fadil’s video, is the US Army major general, who was heading Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve from September 2022 to August 2023. CJTF-OIR is an international military coalition tasked with fighting ISIS and led by the United States.

No official declarations regarding such operation were made by either Ukraine or Iraq. On September 25^th, British newspaper The Sun posted a video showing one of the AFU fighters wearing ISIS patches.

Daniil ‘Mujahid’ Lyashuk volunteered to fight for Ukraine. He adhered to far-right ideology, and converted to Islam, while also embracing ISIS ideology.

He joined Ukraine’s Tornado battalion that attacked the civilians of Donbas, where he was known as cruel, and tortured the residents, including rape. He boasted on his Telegram account that he was trained by the SAS of the British military.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are a US-sponsored Kurdish separatist militia in northeastern Syria. They are bolstered by several thousand US troops at Al Tanf base in Syria, which is illegally occupied by the US military. 

The SDF have numerous prison camps full of thousands of ISIS terrorists.  Occasionally, some of the terrorists have escaped, and on other occasions the US military have taken them away to Iraq.

It has been reported, that some of the ISIS terrorists were transferred to Ukraine to fight Russia in exchange for their freedom.  The prison caps run by the SDF have been visited often by western journalists who describe them as horrible and unlivable. 

Current media reports that Ukraine is desperate for weapons, ammunition and fighters. The US is in political turmoil and is divided about sending weapons and cash in huge amounts to Ukraine, while the American taxpayers are suffering inflation and facing a national debt in the trillions and tired of foreign wars that seem never-ending.

Recently, the US sent confiscated Iran weapons to Ukraine, and there is a real possibility that foreign terrorists, skilled in battle zones, may be utilized in Ukraine, by releasing them from Iraqi prisons, and Syrian prisons under the control of the US.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from MD

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I awoke this morning to the dawn of a new era.

Today, on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war, Palestinian resistance fighters in Gaza launched an aerial and land attack on Israeli settlers, killing at least 40 people and taking many soldiers and civilians hostage. The barrier fence between Gaza and 1948 was dismantled. Palestinians currently control the Gaza checkpoint at Erez and continue to occupy three Israeli settlements.

The leadership of the operations said that the attacks are a response to the lack of accountability for Israel’s continuing war crimes against the Palestinian people and to dismantle the last apartheid regime in the world.

While the Israeli regime today declared war on the Palestinians, it is vital to remember that Israel has been carrying out unspeakable atrocities against the Palestinian people for over 70 years and has sustained a brutal blockade and siege on Gaza, imprisoning over 2 million Palestinians. No cage goes unchallenged.

The ability of Palestinian fighters to breach Israel’s incredible military infrastructure is a psychological break through.

I am reminded of Mahmoud Arda, one of the six Palestinians who escaped from one of Israel’s most fortified prisons by digging out with a spoon two years ago when he said, “We wanted to tell the world that this monster is nothing but an illusion of dust.”

Today magnifies that truth many-fold.

The US is busying itself with normalization deals between Israel and the Arab Gulf states and making promises to send even more weapons to the Israeli regime. All the while, Palestinians are clear: Israel is not a normal state, and our self-determination and rights will not be denied.

The people of Gaza are ingenious and determined and are teaching the world how to evade drones, breakthrough naval blockades, and capture tanks in response to intolerable conditions.

But we know that Israel will only continue to respond in the way it has since its settler colonial state was established: kill, break, torture, lie and call Palestinians terrorists. ​In Gaza, we are currently witnessing an onslaught of Israeli airstrikes, which have already claimed the lives of 198 Palestinians and left over 1,600 others injured at the time of us writing this email. The horror is far from over.

Take a pledge today to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian fight for freedom and ask the international community–including governments, academics, institutions, cultural workers, and artists and all who believe in justice– to recommit to supporting the Palestinian-led movement to boycott, divest, and sanction apartheid Israel.

Today we stand in unity with our people in Gaza and across Palestine who are at home tonight with their families praying for a better tomorrow that is free of the horrors of Israeli violence and colonial control.

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All images in this article are from the author

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In the early morning hours of Saturday, October 7, the Palestinian resistance in the besieged Gaza Strip launched an unprecedented surprise multi-prong attack on Israel, including firing a barrage of rockets toward Israeli territory while simultaneously carrying out a ground offensive into nearby Israeli towns which breached the Israeli Gaza barrier and overwhelmed surrounding Israeli military posts. 

As of 12:30 local time, it was reported that thousands of rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel and that Israeli air forces had targeted multiple areas across the Gaza Strip with airstrikes. Medical authorities in Gaza report that over 190 Palestinians had been killed and over 1,600 were injured so far. Israeli emergency services report at least 100 Israeli casualties, and dozens of other unconfirmed reports indicate the casualties to be much higher. According to Al Jazeera, 57 Israelis, including military personnel, have allegedly been captured and taken into Gaza. 

While Hamas reported firing more than 5,000 rockets into Israel, including long-range rockets, the Israeli army claimed just over 2,200 rockets were fired into Israel Saturday morning. 

At 11:47 a.m. local time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel was “at war,” vowing that “the enemy” would pay a price “like they have never known before.”

The Israeli army confirmed that Palestinian fighters had successfully breached the Gaza barrier in “several places,” and that dozens of fighters had infiltrated into Israeli territory by land, air (unconfirmed videos showed alleged Palestinian fighters descending into an Israeli town via hang glider), and by sea, Israeli media reported. 

The operation began at around 6:30 a.m. local time as Palestinians in Gaza woke up to the sound of rocket fire leaving the strip toward Israel. As the sound of rocket fire rang across the strip, many Gazans flooded into the streets and took to social media, unaware of what was happening. 

Close to one hour after the rocket fire began, shocking photos and videos began circulating on social media, showing convoys of armed Palestinian fighters breaking through the Israeli barrier along the Gaza border and infiltrating Israeli towns and military bases in the areas close to the strip. 

Unprecedented videos showed Palestinian militants patrolling Israeli towns in armored cars and vehicles, while other videos showed the fighters seemingly casually strolling around the neighborhoods as Israeli police and security forces were yet to respond. 

According to Israeli media, Israelis in southern towns surrounding Gaza were calling into Army radio and Israeli television channels, saying that fighters had been roaming around their towns and entering buildings for more than two hours while residents were still awaiting a response from Israeli forces.  

At 7:50 a.m., the general commander of the Hamas military wing, Muhammed al-Deif, released a recorded statement declaring a “comprehensive war” across occupied Palestine.  

“We announce the starting of the Operation of the ‘Flood of al-Aqsa.’ We also announce that the first attack that targeted the enemy’s locations and military fortifications and airports during the first 20 minutes exceeded 5,000 rockets and shells,” the statement said. 

Al-Deif’s statement said the operation was a response to Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners and the continued attacks and violations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which have seen an increase in recent days as large numbers of Israeli settlers raided the compound during the Jewish holiday season. 

“The occupation forces invade our towns in the West Bank every day, they storm people’s homes while they’re safe, they kill, wound, demolish, and detain Palestinians. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed and injured this year. At the same time, the occupation replaced our people and took their land by force to build settlements,” al-Deif said, adding that “the criminal Israeli siege is ongoing in Gaza.”

“Amid all the Israeli crimes and violations, and their violation of international laws, with the full support of the US and the Western countries accompanied by international silence, we have decided to put a halt to this state of affairs. The enemy must understand that the time of carrying out violations with impunity is over,” the statement said.

Shortly before 11 a.m. local time, the Israeli military announced it was launching Operation Iron Swords on Gaza. Within minutes, Israeli airstrikes began striking targets across the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported at least one Palestinian was killed and several others were wounded when an Israeli airstrike hit the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip.

Anadolu Agency also reported that four Palestinians were killed and several others were injured during ongoing armed confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces along the Gaza border. 

PALESTINIANS BREAKING DOWN THE BORDER FENCE WITH ISRAEL FROM KHAN YUNIS IN THE SOUTHERN GAZA STRIP ON OCTOBER 7, 2023. (PHOTO: STRINGER/APA IMAGES)

Unprecedented Attack & Casualties 

Saturday’s operation, which is being led by Hamas, but seemingly being joined by various militant factions across the Gaza Strip, was unprecedented on many fronts. It is already being considered one of the worst Israeli security and intelligence failures in recent history due to the fact that the operation largely caught Israel off guard. 

Saturday morning marked the first time since Israel placed Gaza under blockade more than 16 years ago that Gaza resistance fighters were able to break through the Israeli barrier fence along the border and enter Israeli territory on foot in large numbers. 

Videos surfaced on social media, posted by both Israeli and Palestinian accounts, showing masked and armed Palestinian fighters arriving in Sderot and other Israeli towns bordering Gaza in trucks equipped with large caliber guns. 

Other videos showed Palestinians in large numbers, both in vehicles and on motorbikes, breaking through openings in the Gaza border fence. While it remained unclear how the initial break happened or where it took place, as the morning continued, footage showed Palestinian bulldozers breaking down parts of the fence as seemingly ordinary Palestinians crossed into the other side. 

Professional video footage released by Hamas in Gaza showed its fighters taking off from Gaza using power-motorized paragliders and flying into Israeli territory. Other videos released by Hamas showed its forces dropping explosives onto an Israeli “Merkava” tank along the Gaza border. Photos and videos published later in the morning showed Palestinians celebrating as they stood on top of a captured Israeli military tank. It was reported that several tanks were captured, along with the soldiers inside. 

VIDEO RELEASED OF HAMAS SHOWING THE DETONATION OF AN ISRAELI TANK OUTSIDE THE GAZA STRIP, OCTOBER 7, 2023. (VIDEO: SOCIAL MEDIA)

Israeli news channels reported that Palestinian fighters reached 21 different sites inside Israel and reported several Israeli deaths and hundreds of injuries. “People in Be’eri, Kfar Aza, and Holit reported that Hamas fighters are walking inside the towns attacking Israelis,” Israeli Channel 13 reported. 

Inside Israeli towns and military bases that were infiltrated by Palestinian fighters, graphic footage emerged of uniformed soldiers and Israelis lying on the ground dead. Other footage showed Palestinian fighters entering into the homes of Israelis, asking to see people’s ID’s, seemingly in search of armed forces. 

While official Israeli sources were yet to confirm how many Israelis had been captured, videos coming out of Gaza purported to show a significant number of Israelis, both dead and alive, that had been captured and taken into Gaza. Several Israeli media sources have reported that Palestinian fighters captured over 35 Israelis and took them to Gaza, but Hamas has not yet confirmed as of the time of writing. 

In Khan Younis, south of Gaza, fighters proudly show some Israeli soldiers who have been captured and brought to Gaza with their military uniforms. Israel’s Ynet news reported that all the Israeli defense lines had been broken and that the Israeli army was still trying to regain control over the situation.

The Israeli military response came several hours after the surprise attack of the resistance, as Israeli air forces launched airstrikes in the Gaza Strip at approximately 10:57 a.m., targeting a hospital in the north of Gaza and killing one of its staff. Other airstrikes were reported in several locations across the strip. 

20 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza so far, including a journalist, while over 105 were injured.

While the surprise attack is being called a declaration of war, there were no signs in the days leading up to it that a military conflict would start. People in Gaza flooded the streets as news streamed in of the resistance attack, while families preparing for school kept their children at home.

PALESTINIANS CROSSING THE BORDER FENCE INTO ISRAEL FROM KHAN YUNIS IN THE SOUTHERN GAZA STRIP ON OCTOBER 7, 2023. (PHOTO BY STRINGER/APA IMAGES)

Calls for a Comprehensive War 

As the morning unfolded, videos showed dozens of fighters on motorcycles and vehicles crossing Gaza’s eastern borders beyond the Israeli fence. 

On the ground, people in Gaza are celebrating the surprise attack while talk has begun to speak of liberation. Other analysts on local news stations are asserting that this attack has dealt a serious blow to the Israeli military and security apparatus, which will lead to a massive Israeli response. 

The general commander of the Hamas military wing has called for a comprehensive war against Israel, not only from Palestine but from all the regional resistance, including Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen.

“Today, the anger of al-Aqsa, the anger of the people, and the anger of all free peoples in the world, will explode. This is our day to make the enemy understand that its time is done.”

In his statement, Al-Deif also called for Palestinians in the West Bank to fight the Israelis and attack the Israeli settlements on Palestinian land while asserting elderly people and children should not be harmed in accordance with God’s will.

“Today is your day to sweep the occupier and his settlements from all of our lands in the West Bank,” al-Deif said in his statement. “Organize your attacks on the settlements with all the possible tools at your disposal…today, for anyone who has a gun, it is now time to use it. Those who do not have guns, use knives, cleavers, axes, Molotovs. Use your cars, trucks, or bulldozers.”  

“Today, the purest and honorable page of history is being written,” the statement continued. “Put down your names and families’ names on the page of glory. Those who can’t actually join the field can join by protesting and showing support.”

PALESTINIANS AFTER CROSSING THE BORDER FENCE WITH ISRAEL FROM KHAN YUNIS IN THE SOUTHERN GAZA STRIP ON OCTOBER 7, 2023. (PHOTO: STRINGER/APA IMAGES)

“It’s liberation day”

After hearing the speech made by the General Commander of the Hamas military wing, and seeing the unprecedented attacks inside occupied Palestine in Israeli towns bordering Gaza, people in Gaza crowded near the Israeli fence Palestinian bulldozers demolished it. People in the streets gathered outside their homes, and talk of liberation and that people would be able to return to their lands began to spread like wildfire. 

Dozens held their weapons and went to the border to enter occupied Palestine. The Palestinian factions in Gaza all issued statements declaring their full participation in the operation, urging people to join the battle for liberation.

Mahmoud Hussam, 23, was standing among the crowds in Al-Mansura Street east of Gaza, where a group of people were riding an Israeli vehicle they seized from the eastern borders. 

“This is the first time we have done something like this from Gaza,” he told Mondoweiss. “It’s liberation day, and all Palestinians should join in such glorious times. Israel must understand that they can’t in any way break the Palestinians.”

Hamas military spokesperson Abu Obidah said in a statement that the operation was still ongoing as planned and called on Palestinians in the West Bank to move immediately on the Israeli settlements.

“The enemy will be stunned when they see their losses and wake up from their shock and realize their failure,” he said.

This is a developing story.

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Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Mondoweiss Gaza Correspondent and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter at @Tareqshajjaj.

Featured image: PALESTINIAN MEMBERS OF THE EZZ AL-DIN AL QASSAM BRIGADES, THE MILITARY WING OF HAMAS BURN MILITARY ARMORED VEHICLE BELONGING TO ISRAELI FORCES NEAR GAZA STRIP, GAZA ON OCTOBER 07, 2023. PHOTO BY STR APAIMAGES

Colonel Douglas Macgregor Straight Calls

Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United States of America and the world.

Incisive analysis on the War in Ukraine. Colonel Macgregor focusses on Russia’s Security concerns. “This War is Lost”. 

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*** 

As the Neo-Nazi junta is increasingly desperate to prevent its military apparatus from breaking apart, the political West is trying to find ways to keep it running, no matter the cost to the Ukrainian people. Virtually the entire economy of the unfortunate country has already been hijacked for this purpose, but the Kiev regime doesn’t stop there. Its new plan is to also militarize all public facilities, particularly as the infrastructure previously used by the Neo-Nazi junta forces is virtually wiped out. The Kiev regime’s air arm has suffered major losses, with its airbases either destroyed or damaged beyond repair by Russian long-range precision strikes. This has effectively made it impossible to launch mass airstrikes on Russian positions.

In the aftermath of the unfortunate dismantling of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited a massive air force that far exceeded its economic and financial capabilities. Coupled with corruption, negligence, American investments into the destruction of former Soviet strategic capabilities (primarily through the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program), foreign sales and other factors, the Ukrainian Air Force soon became a mere shadow of its former self. What remained was less than a hundred combat aircraft of various types, primarily the Su-27 “Flanker”, MiG-29 “Fulcrum” (the Soviet “high-low mix”), Su-24 “Fencer”, etc. While the previous two were designed as air superiority fighter jets, the third aircraft served as a tactical bomber/attack jet.

With the start of the special military operation (SMO), the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) dispatched its top-of-the-line air superiority fighter jets such as the MiG-31 “Foxhound” and Su-35S “Flanker-E”, destroying most of the former Ukrainian Air Force and leaving a handful of operational jets. As these had little to no chance to shoot down vastly superior Russian equivalents, the Neo-Nazi junta forces had no choice but to disperse their units and use them for occasional air support, primarily by flying extremely low. The remaining aircraft were forced to operate from ad hoc bases because their primary airbases were all targeted on the first day of the SMO. NATO made them somewhat more useful by investing in the rearmament of the remaining jets.

This made it possible to integrate Western weapons, particularly the AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-radiation Missile) and JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) bombs. In recent months, the remaining Su-24 jets were repurposed to use the Anglo-French “Storm Shadow/SCALP EG” air-launched cruise missiles. However, even this proved to have a modest impact on the situation on the battlefield as the Russian military was quick to adapt to these new weapons, with its air defenses being able to shoot down most of the incoming missiles and bombs. In order to prevent the total loss of combat value for its remaining air assets, the Kiev regime is now working on militarizing civilian airfields and public infrastructure to accommodate the leftover aircraft.

This is also done to prepare for the arrival of the much-touted F-16 fighter jets. The US-made aircraft cannot be operated from existing ad hoc airbases, because of their higher maintenance and logistics requirements in comparison to Soviet-era equivalents such as the MiG-29. Even the infamous CNN, after engaging in usual propaganda about the F-16 being a supposed “game changer”, had to admit that the jet is “no silver bullet” and that the Neo-Nazi junta will have major issues operating it. According to Colonel Yurii Ihnat, one of the Kiev regime forces’ spokespeople, two squadrons, each made up of 12 F-16s would be enough to supposedly “begin to turn the tables”. Obviously, such claims are beyond laughable to anyone remotely familiar with basic facts about the situation on the battlefield.

Namely, the idea that outdated F-16s that were decommissioned to make way for the troubled F-35s will be able to jeopardize Russian monster jets such as the aforementioned MiG-31BM interceptor or Su-35S is simply ludicrous. In fact, the Neo-Nazi junta itself recently contradicted Ihnat’s “just two squadrons” claim with a demand for another 100 F-16s that were needed to “make a difference”, over four times as many. Even before the SMO, the Kiev regime didn’t have enough adequate space to accommodate that many US-made fighter jets. We can only imagine how bad the situation is now. CNN also reiterated how maintenance-heavy the F-16 is, particularly when compared to Soviet-era fighter jets still used by the Neo-Nazi junta forces’ air arm.

With each flight hour coming at a cost of approximately $27,000 and 16 hours of maintenance, the F-16 will be a logistical nightmare for Ukrainian ground crews that are accustomed to much more robust and less strenuous MiG-29s, Su-24s and even the higher-end Su-27s that Ukrainian pilots themselves consider superior to the US-made fighter jet. According to last year’s report by the US General Accounting Office (GAO), the F-16 ranked as one of the most maintenance-heavy US Air Force jets, as it hadn’t met its mission goals in over a decade. According to Russian sources, in order to somewhat alleviate the aforementioned issues, NATO and the Kiev regime are counting on Poland. Namely, Warsaw is receiving US funding to conduct the necessary adjustments.

Polish personnel will most likely be sent to repair certain military airbases and also convert civilian airfields and infrastructure to accommodate combat aircraft. This also includes the installation of sensitive equipment needed for maintenance and logistical support for F-16. What’s more, Russian intelligence determined that there’s a possibility that the Neo-Nazi junta forces will use these newly established bases to receive F-16s directly from Poland and Romania, with airfields in Lvov, Odessa and Nikolayev being the most likely candidates. Needless to say, if such plans are being implemented, the aforementioned airfields immediately become legitimate targets for the Russian military, leading to unnecessary devastation and further prolonging the conflict.

*

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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A week ago, as of this writing, huge numbers of people, clad in orange t-shirts, took to the streets. It was the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Canada’s newest holiday. [1]

And it was meant to commemorate the pain and tragedy of the history and ongoing impacts of residential schools, the education facilities to which Indigenous children were directed and by design stripped of their ancestry to be converted to the “superior” ways of the European-Canadians. [2]

Many students never survived the experience. Many were buried on the land of the school. The brutal treatment of these Indigenous students had effects on their ability to parent or relate to parents within their communities resulting in inter-generational effects that persist even today.[3]

The Residential school is just one product of the unity on land between Indigenous people and the settler population. If institutions like this are indicative of the asymmetric relationship between the two of them, one should consider how the Treaties forged in the 1870s set the stage for generations of cruelty.[4]

Many historians hypothesized that cultural misunderstanding led to the break down of Treaty negotiations between Indigenous representatives and Treaty commissioners. However, more recently, an academic from Saskatchewan spent a great deal of time researching eyewitness testimonies from the side of First Nations and found that, together with extracts from the settler side, came to the conclusion that the Treaties were beholden to a strategic plan on the part of the Canadian government that forced the “surrender” of the native land even though this issue was never actually discussed by Indigenous nation after Indigenous nation. [5]

This issue of the Global Research News Hour has the distinct privilege of interviewing the academic, his name is Sheldon Krasowski, about the Treaties and their repercussions for the suppression of First Nations and the fraudulent “victory” of Eurpoean settlers that still persists to this day.

We will also have a special host. Thomas White Thunderbird is also of Indigenous ancestry and will conduct the interview as part of the station’s “Pass the Mic” week.

Sheldon Krasowski has taught in both history and Indigenous Studies departments at First Nations University of Canada; Vancouver Island University; the University of Saskatchewan; Blue Quills First Nations College; the University of Calgary; and Athabasca University. ” In 2011, he received a PhD in history from the University of Regina for the dissertation, “Mediating the Numbered Treaties: Eyewitness Accounts of the Numbered Treaties Between the Crown and Indigenous Peoples, 1871-1876.” He is currently Director of Research and Archives at the Office of the Treaty Commissioner in Saskatoon.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 403)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

1. https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/national-day-truth-reconciliation.html
2. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools
3. ibid
4. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-treaties
5. https://www.amazon.ca/No-Surrender-Land-Remains-Indigenous/dp/0889775966

As relações entre o regime neonazista ucraniano e o estado israelense parecem estar a piorar. Alguns acontecimentos recentes estão a prejudicar a posição da Ucrânia na política externa israelita. Apesar de ambos os países serem grandes parceiros das potências da OTAN, as diferenças entre eles parecem claras, impedindo a realização de projetos de cooperação.

​Israel é sem dúvida o maior aliado dos EUA no Médio Oriente, tendo uma política externa completamente alinhada com os interesses de Washington. No entanto, o país mantém uma política mais racional em relação à Ucrânia do que a maioria dos estados ocidentais. Apesar de haver provas de apoio secreto a Kiev, inclusive na inteligência, Israel recusa publicamente enviar armas ao regime ucraniano, uma vez que o país mantém relações pragmáticas importantes com a Rússia e não está interessado em prejudicar a sua diplomacia.

Durante meses, isto gerou críticas públicas por parte do governo ucraniano. Como é conhecido, para Zelensky e a sua equipa, as condições materiais e o bem-estar diplomático dos países parceiros não interessam, existe uma espécie de “obrigação” global de ajudar a Ucrânia incondicionalmente. Por esta razão, o presidente ucraniano tem feito repetidamente comentários negativos contra o regime israelense, exigindo uma postura mais ativa no conflito, bem como o envio sistemático de armas.

Estas críticas começaram logo após o início da operação militar especial russa e aumentaram ao longo do tempo. A postura de Israel no conflito é a mesma desde fevereiro de 2022: apoio político e humanitário à Ucrânia, sem envio – pelo menos publicamente – de armas. Desde que Netanyahu regressou ao poder, os atritos entre os dois países tornaram-se ainda mais evidentes em alguns temas. O primeiro-ministro israelense e Viktor Orban da Hungria são os únicos líderes ocidentais que até agora se recusaram a visitar Kiev.

Demorou meses até que Netanyahu e Zelensky tivessem o seu primeiro encontro, que ocorreu em setembro, durante um evento na sede da ONU. Na ocasião, Netanyahu tentou amenizar os problemas bilaterais e focar em uma questão de grande interesse para Tel Aviv, que é a segurança dos judeus e dos cidadãos israelenses durante a tradicional peregrinação ao local sagrado judaico de Uman, na Ucrânia. Zelensky, no entanto, foi indelicado e rude nas suas conversações e tentou culpar Netanyahu pela insegurança dos judeus, ligando isto à falta de fornecimento de armas por parte de Israel.

“Netanyahu me ligou e pediu minha ajuda para chegar a Uman. Ele me disse que havia abrigos antiaéreos para apenas 11 mil pessoas e que se esperava a chegada de 30 mil peregrinos. Eu disse a ele que se Israel nos enviasse o sistema de defesa antimísseis, isso ajudaria a proteger seus cidadãos (…) A responsabilidade pela segurança de dezenas de milhares de judeus que vêm rezar em Uman durante o ano judaico cabe ao governo israelense, que não faz o suficiente”, disse Zelensky aos jornalistas comentando a reunião.

E aparentemente as autoridades israelitas não tomaram as precauções necessárias para que a peregrinação acontecesse em segurança. Não houve ataques russos a civis judeus durante as celebrações religiosas, mas a ausência de medidas de segurança por parte da polícia ucraniana levou a uma série de incidentes durante as festividades, resultando em mortes e feridos. As autoridades ucranianas também prenderam sete cidadãos israelenses na época, gerando ainda mais preocupação em Tel Aviv.

No mesmo sentido, é importante ressaltar que antes da peregrinação já havia se iniciado outro ponto de tensão entre os dois países por causa de um cidadão israelense preso em Kiev. Na altura, o oligarca ucraniano-israelense Igor Kolomoisky foi capturado pelas forças ucranianas acusado de corrupção, lavagem de dinheiro e fraude. Na verdade, Kolomoisky já foi um dos maiores aliados de Zelensky, tendo até financiado a sua campanha eleitoral em 2019, mas aparentemente tornou-se alvo das campanhas de purga promovidas pelo presidente neonazista na sua tentativa desesperada de evitar um golpe de estado contra ele.

Dado que Kolomoisky é um cidadão israelita e tem grande influência sobre a comunidade judaica global, a sua prisão é obviamente vista com medo e preocupação pelas autoridades de Tel Aviv. Além das preocupações com a segurança pessoal do oligarca – considerando que Kiev é conhecida por praticar amplamente tortura e violações dos direitos humanos contra prisioneiros – há também o receio sobre a possibilidade de o governo ucraniano usar a repressão contra cidadãos judeus como “chantagem” para pressionar Israel a aumentar a sua ajuda ao regime.

Anteriormente, Zelensky teria revogado ou tomado medidas para revogar a cidadania ucraniana dos oligarcas israelenses que viviam no país. Formalmente, Kiev proíbe a existência de dupla cidadania, mas na prática isto é amplamente tolerado no país, com muitas pessoas tendo nacionalidades diferentes da ucraniana – principalmente na comunidade israelense, onde muitos ucranianos também são cidadãos israelenses.

Na verdade, o que parece estar a acontecer é simplesmente o regime neonazista a mostrar a sua verdadeira natureza. Obviamente, uma junta que venera líderes como Stepan Bandera tem uma forte tendência antissemita, apesar de tentar disfarçá-la. No que diz respeito a Israel, é improvável que o país queira prejudicar os seus laços com a Rússia por causa da Ucrânia. Moscou poderá causar danos a Israel em diversas áreas, especialmente na Síria, onde ambos os países têm presença militar.

Só um agravamento muito substancial das relações Moscou-Tel Aviv poderia levar Israel a tomar uma posição pública mais ativa a favor da Ucrânia. A pressão de Zelensky não parece ser suficiente para atingir este objetivo. Pelo contrário, quanto mais Kiev prejudicar os cidadãos judeus no seu território, mais os laços bilaterais com Israel se deteriorarão.

Lucas Leiroz De Almeida

 

 

Artigo em inglês : Israeli-Ukrainian relations deteriorating rapidly, InfoBrics, 5 de Outubro de 2023.

Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

 

 

L’Alto Rappresentante dell’Unione Europea per gli Affari Esteri e la Politica di Sicurezza, Josep Borrell, ha dichiarato che la prima riunione congiunta dei Ministri degli Esteri al di fuori dei confini dell’Unione Europea, svoltasi a Kiev, ha dimostrato che il sostegno dei 27 Paesi UE all’Ucraina è “incrollabile”.

Ha quindi proposto di concedere all’Ucraina una nuova dotazione di 5 miliardi di euro dello “Strumento Europeo per la Pace”. Questo è uno strumento “fuori bilancio”, istituito nel marzo 2021, per finanziare le operazioni militari della UE e di suoi alleati, soprattutto l’Ucraina.

La sua dotazione finanziaria è stata aumentata di 4 miliardi, portandola a oltre 12 miliardi di euro, sempre pagati dai cittadini europei. Una delle attività militari ucraine, finanziate dalla UE anche con lo “Strumento Europeo per la Pace”, è la trasformazione di droni civili (velivoli a pilotaggio remoto usati in attività sportive, ricreative o cinematografiche) in droni killer dotati di potenti esplosivi.

Essi vengono fatti volare sul territorio russo per colpire non solo obiettivi militari, ma spesso anche obiettivi civili. Dato che i soldati ucraini usano ogni mese circa 30 mila droni esplosivi, Kiev ha in programma di acquistare da aziende estere, nei prossimi tre mesi,  oltre 100 mila droni civili da trasformare in droni killer.

I 12 miliardi fuori bilancio dello “Strumento Europeo per la Pace” si aggiungono a oltre 30 miliardi di euro stanziati dall’Unione Europea e a circa 40 miliardi stanziati complessivamente da singoli paesi europei per armare l’Ucraina contro la Russia.

Non sono però ritenuti sufficienti dagli Stati Uniti, che hanno stanziato finora per l’Ucraina 113 miliardi di dollari. Premono perciò sull’Europa perché si addossi un carico maggiore nel finanziamento della guerra contro la Russia. A tale scopo viene  diffuso da Washington tra gli Alleati il timore che gli Stati Unitinon potranno continuare a mantenere tale sforzo.

Il Pentagono annuncia addirittura che “gli aiuti USA all’Ucraina dureranno ancora per poco”. In tal modo gli Stati Uniti – che dettano la politica estera e militare dell’Unione Europea, dato che 23 dei 27 paesi UE appartengono alla NATO sotto comando USA – scaricano sull’Europa i crescenti costi della guerra, il cui reale scopo è per gli USA non solo quello di attaccare la Russia, ma di dividere l’Europa per poterla meglio dominare. Di questo piano è fedele esecutore l’Alto Rappresentante dell’Unione Europea per gli Affari Esteri e la Politica di Sicurezza, Josep Borrell.

Manlio Dinucci

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Today October 7, 2023: twenty-two  years ago, the US and its NATO allies invaded Afghanistan on the grounds that the Afghan government had ordered the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

This article published by GR on April 29, 2007 confirms that the US military in Afghanistan was supporting the opium economy which supplied the US heroin market. Minor edits. 

“US military presence served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade”.

US support of the opium economy is directly related to the surge in heroin consumption and addiction in the US observed in recent years.

Michel Chossudovsky, October 6, 2022

*

The occupation forces in Afghanistan are supporting the drug trade, which brings between 120 and 194 billion dollars of revenues to organized crime, intelligence agencies and Western financial institutions. 

The proceeds of this lucrative multibllion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan. 

The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liason with NATO occupation forces and the British military. 

In recent developments, British occupation forces have promoted opium cultivation through paid radio advertisements.

“A radio message broadcast across the province assured local farmers that the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would not interfere with poppy fields currently being harvested.

“Respected people of Helmand. The soldiers of ISAF and ANA do not destroy poppy fields,” it said. “They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. ISAF and the ANA do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods.” ( Quoted in The Guardian, 27 April 2007)

While the controversial opium ads have been casually dismissed as an unfortunate mistake, there are indications that the opium economy is being promoted at the political level (including the British government of Tony Blair).

The Senlis Council, an international think tank specialising in security and policy issues is proposing the development of licit opium exports in Afghanistan, with a view to promoting the production of pharmaceutical pain-killers, such as morphine and codeine. According to the Senlis Council,  “the poppies are needed and, if properly regulated, could provide a legal source of income to impoverished Afghan farmers while, at the same time, depriving the drug lords and the Taliban of much of their income.” (John Polanyi, Globe and Mail, 23 September 2006)

The Senlis Council offers an alternative where “regulated poppy production in Afghanistan” could be developed to produce needed painkillers. The Senlis statement, however, fails to address the existing structure of licit opium exports, which is characterised by oversupply .

The Senlis’ campaign is part of the propaganda campaign. It has contrbuted to providing a false legitimacy to Afghanistan’s opium economy. (See details of Senlis Project), which ultmately serves powerful vested interests.

How much opium acreage is required to supply the pharmaceutical industry? According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which has a mandate to exame issues pertaining to the supply of and demand for opiates used for medical purposes, “the supply of such opiates has for years been at levels well in excess of global demand”.(Asian Times, February 2006)  The INCB has recommended reducing the production of opiates due to World oversupply.

At present, India is among the largest exporters of licit opium. Turkey, Australia, Britain and Spain are also major producers of licit opium.

India’s opium latex “is sold to licensed pharmaceutical and/or chemical manufacturing firms such as Mallinckrodt and Johnson & Johnson, under rules established by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the International Narcotics Control Board, which require an extensive paper trail.” (Opium in India)..

Soaring Afghan Opium Production

The United Nations has announced that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has soared. There was a  59% increase in areas under opium cultivation in 2006. Production of opium is estimated to have increased by 49% in relation to 2005.

The Western media in chorus blame the Taliban and the warlords. Western officials are said to believe that “the trade is controlled by 25 smugglers including three government ministers.” (Guardian, op. cit).

Yet in a bitter irony, US military presence has served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade. Opium production has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 under the Taliban to 6100 tons in 2006. Cultivated areas have increased 21 fold since the 2001 US-led invasion.

What the media reports fail to acknowledge is that the Taliban government was instrumental in 2000-2001 in implementing a successful drug eradication program, with the support and collaboration of the UN.

Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban’s drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.

The Vienna based UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that the 2006 harvest will be of the order of 6,100 tonnes, 33 times its production levels in 2001 under the Taliban government (3200 % increase in 5 years).

Cultivation in 2006 reached a record 165,000 hectares compared with 104,000 in 2005 and 7,606 in 2001 under the Taliban

Multibillion dollar trade

According to the UN, Afghanistan supplies in 2006 some 92 percent of the world’s supply of opium, which is used to make heroin.

The UN estimates that for 2006, the contribution of the drug trade to the Afghan economy is of the order of 2.7 billion. What it fails to mention is the fact that more than 95 percent of the revenues generated by this lucrative contraband accrues to business syndicates, organized crime and banking and financial institutions. A very small percentage accrues to farmers and traders in the producing country.

(See also UNODC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan,
http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf , Vienna, 2003, p. 7-8)

“Afghan heroin sells on the international narcotics market for 100 times the price farmers get for their opium right out of the field”.(US State Department quoted by the Voice of America (VOA), 27 February 2004).

Based on wholesale and retail prices in Western markets, the earnings generated by the Afghan drug trade are colossal. In July 2006, street prices in Britain for heroin were of the order of Pound Sterling 54, or $102 a gram.

Narcotics On the Streets of Western Europe

One kilo of opium produces approximately 100 grams of (pure) heroin. 6100 tons of opium allows the production of 1220 tons of heroin with a 50 percent purity ratio.

The average purity of retailed heroin can vary. It is on average 36%. In Britain, the purity is rarely in excess of 50 percent, while in the US it can be of the order of 50-60 percent.

Based on the structure of British retail prices for heroin, the total proceeds of the Afghan heroin trade would be of the order of 124.4 billion dollars, assuming a 50 percent purity ratio. Assuming an average purity ratio of 36 percent and the average British price, the cash value of Afghan heroin sales would be of the order of 194.4 billion dollars.

While these figures do not constitute precise estimates, they nonetheless  convey the sheer magnitude of this multibillion dollar narcotics trade out of Afghanistan. Based on the first figure which provides a conservative estimate, the cash value of these sales, once they reach Western retail markets are in excess of 120 billion dollars a year.

(See also our detailed estimates for 2003 in The Spoils of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade, by Michel Chossudovsky, The UNODC estimates the average retail price of heroin for 2004 to be of the order of $157 per gram, based on the average purity ratio).

Narcotics: Second to Oil and the Arms Trade

The foregoing estimates are consistent with the UN’s assessment concerning the size and magnitude of the global drug trade.

The Afghan trade in opiates (92 percent of total World production of opiates) constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion.

(Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000).

Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking  constitutes “the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade.” (The Independent, 29 February 2004).

Afghanistan and Colombia (together with Bolivia and Peru) consitute the largest drug producing economies in the world, which feed a flourishing criminal economy. These countries are heavily militarized. The drug trade is protected. Amply documented the CIA has played a central role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.

The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003).

A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics, one third of which is tied to the Golden Crescent opium triangle.

*

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“The U.S. government has never been shy about using its own citizens as unwitting test subjects for its bioweapon experiments. While there are many well-known cases, this has actually happened hundreds of times in U.S. history, demonstrating the utter contempt that those in power have had, and have now, for the general population of this country.” – (Gary D. Barnett,  Chapter 12, p. 260, “When China Sneezes” Cynthia McKinney (Editor)

***

It is important to lay the long-practiced foundation of the United States’ history of poisoning, mass experimentation, sickening, and killing of its own population, in efforts to test its bioweapons for heinous military biowarfare use. It is a very short step from this abhorrent practice, to one of using as guinea pigs this same population, in a plot for  mass ‘vaccination,’ completely covert and without consent.

The ability to do this has been verified, admitted to, and written about by the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science just recently. It has been reported by some alternative sites, but already there are multiple mainstream deniers claiming that no such covert ‘vaccination’ program would be attempted. History tells a different story.

To name only a few, and beginning in 1932:

• Tuskegee Syphilis Study; where 600 black men were used as fodder for a horrible Syphilis experiment, and were purposely not given any treatment, causing many to die horrible deaths.
• Operation Sea Spray; a San Francisco biological attack scenario in 1950 by the U.S. Navy, covertly spraying pneumonia-causing bacteria over the city in order to monitor the infection levels in the residents. Actually, the U.S. military conducted 239 germ-warfare tests over populated areas in America.
• Operation Big Buzz; was a U.S. military release of Yellow Fever infected mosquitos (supposedly uninfected) in 1955 over Savannah, Georgia, just to monitor the effects on the unsuspecting people there. There were at least nine other operations of this type throughout the 1950s and beyond, including Operation Big Itch, Operation Magic Sword, Operation Drop Kick, Operation May Day, also in Savannah, Operation Dew, Operation Polka Dot, Operation Dark winter, Operation Whitecoat, and Operation LAC.
• Project 112; in 1962, huge increases in bioweapon testing began, authorized by Robert McNamara, then U.S. Secretary of Defense. This was done in the New York subway system, and exposed tens of thousands of Americans to deadly bacteria.
• In 1965, prisoners in Philadelphia were used as guinea pigs and subjected to dioxin, the horrible cancer-causing chemical toxin used in Agent Orange. This was done to verify the resulting cancer infection among these captive prisoners. Actually, Holmesburg Prison in Pennsylvania, nick-named the “Terrordome”, experimented on prisoners for decades until it closed in 1995. Horror exemplified.

Remember that these are but a handful of examples of U.S. government, military, and pharmaceutical company, hidden experimentation and terror against unsuspecting American citizens. There are literally hundreds of examples of this type of evil that were committed over a century, and this is still going on in one way or another today.

This is exclusive of the horror that occurred during the fake ‘covid pandemic’ scare; a false flag event meant to get as many as possible injected with experimental, cancer-causing, health destroying, and extremely deadly toxic poisons called a ‘covid vaccine.’ Millions have been threatened, faced job loss, lied to about success and safety, and subjected to any number of life-threatening illnesses and adverse effects of these poisonous bioweapon injections.

Now, Yale ‘researchers’ have stated that they have a new airborne messenger RNA (mRNA) inhalable, lung-targeted, delivery system of nanoparticles for airborne or mucosal ‘vaccination’ This is meant for large-scale ‘vaccination,’  and could (would in my opinion) be used for broad-based and covert delivery of this poison to the masses without their knowledge or consent; that is of course unless this is already taking place due to the constant chemical spraying of skies worldwide with very harmful nanoparticle distribution. According to the Yale study:

“An inhalable platform for messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics would enable minimally invasive and lung-targeted delivery for a host of pulmonary diseases. Development of lung-targeted mRNA therapeutics has been limited by poor transfection efficiency and risk of vehicle-induced pathology.

Here, we report an inhalable polymer-based vehicle for delivery of therapeutic mRNAs to the lung. We optimized biodegradable poly(amine-co-ester) (PACE) polyplexes [nanoparticles] for mRNA delivery using end-group modifications and polyethylene glycol. These polyplexes achieved high transfection of mRNA throughout the lung, particularly in epithelial and antigen-presenting cells.

We applied this technology to develop a mucosal vaccine for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and found that intranasal vaccination with spike protein–encoding mRNA polyplexes induced potent cellular and humoral adaptive immunity and protected susceptible mice from lethal viral challenge. Together, these results demonstrate the translational potential of PACE polyplexes for therapeutic delivery of mRNA to the lungs.”

In terms a normal person can understand, this means that a biological toxic soup filled with deadly RNA/DNA altering nanoparticles, can be delivered to the lungs of everyone without their knowledge, in order to insert encoded  ‘spike proteins’ to cure what is falsely called a ‘virus.’ This so-called ‘coronavirus’ (‘covid’) has never been once separated, isolated, or identified, and has never once been shown to even exist, and has never been proven to cause any disease whatsoever, but worry not, ‘your’ government will take good ‘care’ of you whether you like it or not.

This what a friend and close correspondent of mine, Dr. Igor Shepherd, had to say about this in a letter to me recently:

“This is how Russia was testing biological weaponized viruses on the population back in the 80’s (mostly in Subways). This created huge epidemics of influenza in the cities. These goons are doing whatever it takes to mass vaccinate the population.” 

“This encapsulation of delivered material is very stable once dispersed in the environment, and can last for months in the air.  This is why it was done in the subway in Leningrad—for quick dispersal. The same technology was used by the KGB for assassination purposes. On a mass scale huge outbreaks can be created so fast without anyone aware of this….and this can be what will create their next pandemic.

And then they will use this exact same technology to “vaccinate” the population for this created pandemic. This time it will be a real pandemic, and many people will die…either way…this is their goal…to shrink humanity, and introduce the new “generation” of transhumans.”

It must be stated that these nefarious efforts by the State, its controllers, the evil pharmaceutical industry, the mainstream media, the politicians, the so-called ‘think-tanks,’ all the government bureaucracies, the military, the enforcement agencies, the central banks, and the NGOs, have but one agenda. That is for total control over all populations, with the goal of dramatically reducing the surface population through eugenic manipulation, democide, genocide, and psychological rape of the minds of the naïve herd.

As Dr. Shepherd mentioned, this plot to mass ‘vaccinate’ all, may cause what will be said to be the next ‘pandemic,’ but this time around, unlike the fake ‘covid’ plot, mass death will occur due to a poisonous bioweapon aerosol attack, spreading extreme panic and fear. What will be desired and expected by the State, will be a collective crying out for the government to come to the rescue of this ignorant and hapless population. That is exactly what is sought, so beware the deliberate evil that is intended to bring about a defenseless people clamoring for a master to save them.

You, all of you, are your own master. Take great heed, for the plot for a single global governing force is close at hand, and with that can only come enslavement at the hands of technocratic monsters.

“Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all of the delusions current in our time. Conscientious objectors to vaccination should stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defense of their conviction.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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Gary D. Barnett [send him mail] is a retired investment professional who has been writing about freedom and liberty matters, politics, and history for two decades. He is against all war and aggression, and against the state. He recently finished a collaboration with former U.S. Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, and was a contributor to her new book, “When China Sneezes” From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Political-Economic Crisis.” Currently, he lives in Montana with his wife and son. Visit his website.

Featured image credit Jordan Henderson

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How much open corruption will the American people take?

Congressman Matt Gaetz responds to Joe Biden‘s nomination of Hampton Dellinger to lead United States Office of Special Counsel:

Joe Biden nominated Hampton Dellinger, a former colleague and law partner of Hunter Biden, to lead the United States Office of Special Counsel (OSC) yesterday, a top federal watchdog tasked with protecting our nation’s civil servants from political targeting.

While Joe Biden…

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) October 4, 2023

Joe Biden nominated Hampton Dellinger, a former colleague and law partner of Hunter Biden, to lead the United States Office of Special Counsel (OSC) yesterday, a top federal watchdog tasked with protecting our nation’s civil servants from political targeting.

While Joe Biden tries to convince America that there was zero influence between him and Hunter’s business deals, he appoints a close friend of Hunter to protect the Biden Crime Family from accountability.

As both the House and Senate have called on the OSC to investigate the Biden administration’s retaliation against IRS whistleblowers, who have accused AG Garland and DOJ of burying probes into Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes, Dellinger should withdraw his nomination.

If confirmed by the Senate, Dellinger’s appointment would send a chilling message to civil servants everywhere: you are not protected, and you will continue to be targeted by the Bidens if you look into the real crimes committed by the President’s family.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Portrait of Hampton Dellinger, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy under President Biden. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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“It’s very important that the world knows Toughie was a perfect gentleman. A handsome, handsome frog. And beloved.”

Amphibian biologist Mark Mandica’s tribute to Toughie – the last Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog who died in 2016 – voices the profound grief that comes from caring for an ‘endling’.

Up to 10,000 species go extinct every year, according to WWF, as human activities continue to drive what scientists have confirmed is a sixth mass extinction event.

It’s near impossible to grapple with the scale of the biodiversity crisis, but familiarising ourselves with just a few of these endlings – especially ones as beloved as Toughie – helps put it into emotional terms we can begin to process.

Their stories serve as reminders of how other species are navigating the world in depleting numbers – species that can still be saved.

And World Animal Day today (4 October) is a timely occasion to think about how we can improve their welfare and chances of survival.

Martha the Passenger Pigeon – 1914

A photo of Martha next to the Passenger Pigeon Memorial. Cincinnati Zoo

Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, passed away at America’s Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Her death marked the first documented extinction of a species at the hand of man, according to the zoo.

“By the time we realised the passenger pigeon was in real trouble, it was too late,” it states. After the last known wild pigeon was hunted to death in Ohio in 1900, a single captive flock existed at the zoo.

Breeding attempts failed, and by 1910 only Martha was still standing. “A reward of $1,000 [around €900, or €27,000 in today’s money] was offered to anyone who could supply a mate for Martha, but none was found,” it adds.

There’s an aura of ritual surrounding the passenger pigeon’s demise. Martha’s body was frozen and now resides at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

At Cincinnati, one of the zoo’s early bird aviaries has been preserved as a memorial for her. Inside, an exhibit “serves as a reminder to all of the tragedy of extinction and pleads with visitors to consider how their actions affect wildlife.”

Benjamin the Tasmanian Tiger – 1936

A colourised picture of the last-known surviving Tasmanian tiger from footage taken in 1933.AFP PHOTO / THE NATIONAL FILM AND SOUND ARCHIVE OF AUSTRALIA

The Tasmanian tiger – or thylacine – is undoubtedly one of the most iconic species to have gone extinct in the twentieth century.

Declared the last of his line, Benjamin was captured in the wild and kept at Hobart Zoo, where he died a few years later in 1936.

Historic video footage of him pacing behind bars is distressing to watch. And, not yet 100 years later, it stretches the imagination to make room for this now strange-looking creature, with the black stripes of a tiger, the pointed nose of a dog and the pouch of a kangaroo.

The largest carnivorous marsupial of the modern age, Tasmanian tigers were driven to extinction by hunting (there was a government bounty over their heads until 1909), disease, and habitat loss following European colonisation.

It’s been hard for people to lay to rest such a unique and charismatic animal. Reported sightings continued for decades. Last year researchers at the University of Melbourne announced their intention to bring the species back to life.

Lonesome George the Giant Galápagos Tortoise – 2012

Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni) (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

The last known representative of the giant Galápagos tortoise subspecies Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni, Lonesome George lived out his final years at the Charles Darwin research centre in the Galápagos Islands.

He is thought to have been about 100 years old and could have lived to 200, but was found lifeless by a Galápagos National Park ranger in 2012, bringing his circa 10 million-year-old life to an end.

George was the sole survivor of waves of attacks by whalers and seal hunters – who killed the subspecies for food and oil – in the Pacific islands.

Relocated from Pinta island in 1972, his habitat devastated by escaped goats, the solitary giant achieved cult status in Ecuador and beyond.

But various breeding attempts including artificial insemination, and one Swiss zoology graduate smearing herself in female tortoise hormones to try and stimulate him, sadly failed.

“[George] had a unique personality. His natural tendency was to avoid people. He was very evasive. He had his favourites and his routines, but he really only came close to his keeper Llerena,” recalled Joe Flanagan, a leading vet who knew George for more than 20 years.

“He represents what we wanted to preserve forever. When he looked at you, you saw time in the eyes.”

Toughie the Rabbs’ Fringe-limbed Tree Frog – 2016

“You can always tell Toughie from other Rabbs’ Fringe-limbed Tree Frogs’ photos from the yellow dot on the lip under his right eye,” Mandica tells Euronews Green. Mark Mandica

Toughie – so named by his carer Mandica’s young son when he learned of the endlings’ plight – died at the Atlanta Botanical Garden in Georgia, US.

On a mini audio documentary featured on the UK podcast ‘Shortcuts’ earlier this year, presented by Josie Long, the amphibian biologist lovingly describes the final years of the Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog.

In the early 2000s, a lethal fungus called chytrid struck the frogs’ native Panama rainforests “like a hurricane” – inadvertently brought by humans to an area where amphibians had no resistance.

Researchers hurriedly collected frogs from trees, “pulling them out of a burning building basically,” says Mandica.

Globally, the skin-eating disease is responsible for 90 presumed amphibian extinctions. Amphibians are more threatened, and declining more rapidly, than either birds or mammals – also as a result of habitat loss and climate change.

Toughie’s solitary years at the botanical garden were spent in silence, except for one special moment – recorded by Mandica – when he found the frog “singing” on his own.

“He obviously wanted a mate and that’s profoundly sad, because there wasn’t one on the entire planet,” the biologist said.

Fatu and Najin, the Last Northern White Rhinos – ?

Fatu and Najin (Source: Love the Last)

Najin and Fatu, two northern white rhinos living at the Ol Pejeta conservancy in Kenya, might not yet take their species to the grave.

But the future isn’t looking bright, after the world’s last male northern white rhino, Sudan, passed away at the sanctuary following age-related issues in 2018.

“His death is a cruel symbol of human disregard for nature and it saddened everyone who knew him,” said Jan Stejskal, an official at Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic, where Sudan had lived until 2009.

“But we should not give up,” he told the AFP news agency. “We must take advantage of the unique situation in which cellular technologies are utilised for conservation of critically endangered species. It may sound unbelievable, but thanks to the newly developed techniques even Sudan could still have an offspring.”

Artificially assisted reproduction is a possibility for the females, recent vet checks confirmed. The subspecies’ hopes now rest with the development of in vitro fertilisation techniques and stem cell technology, says Ol Pejeta, “costly and complicated procedures that have never before been attempted in rhinos.”

Black, Sumatran and Javan rhinos are also critically endangered – the latter with estimated 18 individuals left – after poaching crises.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci and the CIA have some splainin’ to do.

According to a new letter from the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Fauci was admitted to CIA headquarters “without a record of entry” while the agency was conducting its official analysis of the origins of COVID-19. 

The letter claims Fauci “participated in the analysis to ‘influence’ the Agency’s review.” The date of the alleged meeting is not disclosed. 

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio), chair of the committee, gave the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services until October 10 to submit all requested items and pertinent communications related to the then-director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ clandestine meeting at Langley.

“The American people deserve the truth—to know the origins of the virus and whether there was a concerted effort by public health authorities to suppress the lab leak theory for political or national security purposes,” Wenstrup said.

Dr. Fauci has not yet made any public statements on the matter, but his alleged visit to CIA headquarters raises important questions.

Did Fauci request the meeting or the CIA? 

Why was the meeting held in secret? 

Was the CIA aware that Fauci had interests that may have conflicted with his ability to make an objective assessment of the origins of COVID-19?

Each of these questions is important, but let’s begin with the last one. 

1. A Conflict of Interest? 

As director of NIAID, Fauci, early in the pandemic, dismissed allegations that COVID-19 might have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, calling these claims “conspiracy theories” and alleging it was “molecularly impossible.” 

It was later learned that Fauci made these statements even though scientists he commissioned to author a paper on the origins of the virus privately said otherwise.

It turns out Dr. Fauci had a very good reason to conceal the fact that COVID-19 likely escaped from the lab in Wuhan, as most US government agencies now believe (including the FBI and the CIA).

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the agency that oversees NIAID, admitted in the fall of 2021 that for years the agency had been funding what was described as “risky virus research in Wuhan,” a charge Fauci had repeatedly and vociferously denied. Fauci, a longtime defender of gain-of-function research, had signed off on funding provided to the non-profit organization EcoHealth Alliance that had resulted in an “unexpected result”: an enhanced coronavirus from bats created in partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

That NIH had funded gain-of-function research is now beyond dispute, evidenced by the recent termination of funding for WIV after NIH “determined that…WIV conducted an experiment that violated the terms of the grant regarding viral activity, which possibly did lead…to…unacceptable outcomes.”

According to Vanity Fair reporter Katherine Eban, officials at EcoHealth Alliance say they informed NIH of this “unexpected result” (an enhanced coronavirus) in a progress report in 2018, but Fauci says he didn’t see the progress report prior to his congressional testimony.

All of this helps explain why Fauci was so insistent from the very beginning that COVID-19 originated naturally from a wet market, even though scientists who wrote the “Proximal Origin” paper in Nature in early 2020 told him it was “friggin’ likely” and “plausible” the virus emerged from the Wuhan lab.

Was the CIA aware of this potential conflict of interest when Fauci allegedly visited CIA headquarters in an attempt to “influence the Agency’s review”?

2. Why Was the Meeting Held in Secret and Who Authorized It?

Putting aside the question of conflicting interests, there is the simple question of secrecy. 

One could argue Fauci visited CIA headquarters because he was director of NIAID and an infectious disease expert. The problem with this argument is that Fauci had already made many public statements on the origins of the virus, and if he was simply offering an elaboration of his points, there would be no need to hold such a meeting secretly.

Moreover, the CIA was conducting an independent review. That means the agency was supposed to reach its determination without outside influence. 

A visit from Fauci has all the appearances of attempting to influence the outcome of the CIA’s report, which is no doubt why the visit went “without a record of entry.”

Who authorized the secret visit and why?  

3. Who Requested the Meeting and Who Was Present? 

The fact that Fauci’s alleged visit to Langley was done surreptitiously suggests that both the CIA and Fauci understood there were troubling ethics in making such a visit when the agency was conducting an independent review of COVID-19’s origins.

This raises an important question: Who requested the meeting, Fauci or the CIA? 

This is not a trivial question. Mere weeks ago, a letter sent to CIA Director William Burns stated that a senior-level CIA whistleblower claimed the agency attempted to bribe six of its analysts who concluded with a low level of confidence that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan lab, allegedly offering six of the seven agents cash incentives to change their conclusions.

“The whistleblower,” the letter states, “contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position.”

If the charge is true, it means public officials attempted to bribe CIA analysts tasked with providing an official government assessment of the origins of the most deadly pandemic in a century to influence the outcome of their report.

That’s a very serious charge. The public deserves answers.

‘A Massive Coverup Spanning from China to DC’?

From the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a persistent government effort to silence and marginalize those who questioned NIH’s policies and conclusions. 

It began with coordinated attacks on those who challenged the government’s COVID policies, which was first revealed when the American Institute for Economic Research published emails showing NIH Director Francis Collins instructing subordinates (including Fauci) on the need for “a quick and devastating published take down (sic)” of the premises of the Great Barrington Declaration, whose authors Collins described as “fringe epidemiologists.” (These “fringe” epidemiologists came from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford University.)  

The attacks later shifted toward those who challenged the government’s assertion that COVID could only have originated naturally, a claim that was treated as dogma. Social media sites suspended users (at the behest of the government) who suggested COVID could have been man-made.

It’s become apparent that “fighting misinformation” was never NIH’s goal, or that of any other government agency. The goal was to fight information that conflicted with the government’s narratives, a common practice of authoritarian regimes. 

David Asher, the man who led the State Department’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, recently explained to New York magazine journalist David Zweig that the reason we have so little information about COVID’s origins is because people in power prefer it that way. 

“Our own State Department told us ‘don’t get near this thing, it’ll blow up in your face,’” Asher told Zweig. “It’s a massive coverup spanning from China to DC.”

The unprecedented attacks on free speech Americans have witnessed in the last three years stem directly from what Asher describes. During the pandemic, NIH was awarded $150 million to fight “misinformation,” a block of money that has been halted in the wake of NIH’s blunders and First Amendment challenges. 

The most important thing to understand is that the war on “misinformation” isn’t an effort to spread the truth; it’s an effort to conceal it. 

Free speech is truth’s greatest ally, which is precisely why authoritarian regimes throughout history have been so hostile to it. The famed Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis had it right when he observed, in Whitney v. California that “the freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.”

If Americans want the truth about the origins of COVID-19, they should stop supporting government-led efforts to censor speech and start pressing those in power to answer questions—starting with Dr. Fauci and the CIA.

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Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Oct. 3, 2023 – Columbus, OH – 31 year old Brian Baseler, OneAmerica Relationship Director died suddenly in his sleep. He had his COVID-19 Booster on Jan. 30, 2022.

Sep. 26, 2023 – New Jersey – 46 year old rapper and actor Nashawn Breedlove, who starred in the Eminem movie “8 Mile” died suddenly in his sleep.

Sep. 16, 2023 – Hermosa Beach, CA – 48 year old Matthew Hobbie, former Sarasota Sailors Two-Sport Star and baseball player, died suddenly in his sleep.

Sep. 15, 2023 – California – Singer JC Gafford died suddenly in his sleep.

Sep. 14, 2023 – Spain – Bob Campenaerts from Antwerp, Belgium, died in his sleep on a cycling holiday in Spain.

Sep. 11, 2023 – NY – Christopher Mellblom died suddenly in his sleep on Sep. 11, 2023 from a “heart issue.”

Sep. 5, 2023 – Melbourne, Australia – 17 year old Melody Southon, a teenage girl from Seabrook died in her sleep on Sep. 5, 2023.

Sep. 3, 2023 – Nashville, TN – 32 year old Heather Nichole Fink died suddenly in her sleep on September 3, 2023. “I got my second COVID-19 vaccine yesterday…omg my body is not ok lol.”

Sep. 2, 2023 – Pahoa, HI – Melissa Torrente, young mother of 2, teacher and social worker died suddenly in her sleep on Sep. 2, 2023.

Sep. 4, 2023 – Italy – 64 year old Italian Doctor Dr. Piero Realdon, died suddenly in his sleep on Sep. 1, 2023.

Sep. 3, 2023 – Australia – Eileen Ella Saunders died in her sleep.

Sep. 2023 – Dearborn, MI – 41 year old truck driver Muhannad Majeed, died suddenly in his sleep while on his trucking route in Laredo, Texas.

Aug. 28, 2023 – Italy – 37 year old Michele Brigidi died suddenly in his sleep on August 28, 2023. He was found dead in his bed by his parents.

Aug. 20, 2023 – UK – 31 year old Aaron Swift died in his sleep on August 20, 2023 “he died in his sleep without any health issues or warning prior.”

Aug. 20, 2023 – Adelaide, Australia – 14 year old William Pfeiffer died suddenly in his sleep on Sunday, Aug. 20, 2023. He had no known medical history.

Aug. 19, 2023 – Australia – 39 year old Lindy Joy Turner from Geelong, Australia, died in her sleep in Bali, Indonesia after struggling with a cold and breathing difficulties.

Aug. 19, 2023 – California – Eileen McLoone died suddenly in her sleep on Aug. 19, 2023.

Aug. 18, 2023 – Warrington, UK – 39 year old Anne-Marie Barber died in her sleep on Aug. 18, 2023 after complaining of abdominal pains or period pains.

Aug. 18, 2023 – UK – 28 year old Cameron Amor died in his sleep on Aug. 18, 2023. Autopsy concluded: “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.”

Aug. 16, 2023 – New York – 34 year old Riccardo Zebro, an Italian Chef who cooked for Robert De Niro, died suddenly in his sleep on Aug. 16, 2023.

Aug. 16, 2023 – Belluno, Italy – 50 year old Valentina Cervasio di Meano, a Spanish Teacher and avid mountain hiker died suddenly in her sleep on August 16, 2023. Family members found her dead in bed.

Aug. 16, 2023 – Italy – 44 year old photographer Anna Bruscaglin collapsed while attending a beach party in Squillace, Italy with a group of friends. She was found dead in the night of August 16, 2023.

Aug. 14, 2023 – Rockville, MD – Susan Loftus died suddenly in her sleep while on vacation in Higgins Beach in Maine, boogie boarding.

Aug. 13, 2023 – Burlington, VT – 36 year old Chef Ahmed Omar died in his sleep on Aug. 13, 2023.

Aug. 10, 2023 – New Iberia, LA – 36 year old Euclide Babin Jr died in his sleep on Aug. 10, 2023. He had lost several family members, including his mother on July 25, 2022 and his uncle on July 28, 2023.

Aug. 9, 2023 – Dartmouth, NS – 55 yo Brian Scott Sutherland died unexpectedly on Aug. 9, 2023 at home. His partner, 59 yo Robert Bobby Barkhouse died unexpectedly in his sleep on Mar. 22, 2022.

Aug. 7, 2023 – Aug 21, 2023 – Menifee, CA – 41 year old Krystle Ochoa died suddenly in her sleep on Aug. 7, 2023.

Aug. 6, 2023 – Ronkonkoma, NY – Brian Flaherty, a local softball league player died suddenly in his sleep from a cardiac arrest on Sunday morning August 6, 2023.

Aug. 5, 2023 – Christchurch, New Zealand – 17 year old Kaitlyn Baker died suddenly in her sleep on August 5, 2023, “no underlying health issues.”

Aug. 5, 2023 – Ireland – 20s year old primary school teacher Gemma McKenna died suddenly in her home on Saturday, August 5, 2023.

Aug. 3, 2023 – Manchester, UK – 35 year old Becky Collins died suddenly in her sleep on August 3, 2023. She was found dead by her 12 year old son and her niece who was over for holidays sleepover.

Aug. 2, 2023 – Tucson, AZ – 60 year old Jessica Ann Lerma Dodd, a Community Relations Manager died suddenly in her sleep on Aug. 2, 2023. She died still having the “I got my COVID-19 vaccine” photo in her facebook profile.

July 31, 2023 -Los Angeles – 59 year old Michelle Anne Dash, died in her sleep on July 31, 2023. She worked at an Alternative medicine/supplement store. “I have a healthy distrust of Authority – and I’m vaccinated.”

July 29, 2023 – Middlesbrough, UK – Tony Harrison, age 41, served in the Coldstream Guards from 1997 to 2004 and even had breakfast with the Queen. He fell asleep in his sister’s house on July 29, 2023 and died in his sleep.

July 28, 2023 – Calgary, Alberta – 36 year old Jennifer Allen, Canadian surrogacy champion died unexpectedly in her sleep on July 28, 2023.

Click here to read all cases.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

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Introduction

This brief documents the extent to which recently retired four–star generals and admirals have gone to work as lobbyists, executives, board members, consultants, or financiers of the arms industry upon leaving government service. It covers the period from June 2018 through July 2023.

The role of generals and admirals in the arms industry is part of the larger problem of the revolving door, in which hundreds of senior Pentagon and military officials go to work for major Pentagon contractors every year, using their contacts with former colleagues to wield influence on behalf of their corporate employers and clients. A 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office found that over 1,700 senior government and military officials — including generals, admirals, and top acquisition officers — went to work for one or more of the top 14 weapons contractors between 2014–19, for an average of over 300 per year.[2] This report looks in greater detail at a smaller number of “revolvers,” focusing only on four–star generals and admirals.

The revolving door is a problem because it creates the appearance — and in some cases the reality — of conflicts of interest in the making of defense policy and in the shaping of the size and composition of the Pentagon budget.  The role of top military officials is particularly troubling, given their greater clout in the military and the government more broadly than most other revolving door hires. Their influence over policy and budget issues can tilt the scales towards a more militarized foreign policy.

The revolving door is a problem because it creates the appearance — and in some cases the reality — of conflicts of interest in the making of defense policy and in the shaping of the size and composition of the Pentagon budget.

There is also the potential for military officials to favor companies they are supposed to oversee while they are still in government, with the goal of landing a lucrative position with them upon retirement. As Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–MA) put it, “When government officials cash in on their public service by lobbying, advising, or serving as board members and executives for the companies they used to regulate, it  undermines public officials’ integrity and casts doubt on the fairness of government contracting.”[3]

Official government tracking of post–government employment of retired four–stars and other senior government officials with national security responsibilities is insufficient, but even under current rules a number of concerning cases have been uncovered.

For example, as the Project on Government Oversight  (POGO) has noted in its path breaking report “Brass Parachutes,” while he was in the service, General James E. Cartwright advocated vigorously for the JLENS, a surveillance balloon notorious for an incident in which it broke free from its moorings and floated 160 miles off course.[4] Cartwright blocked the Army from canceling the program in 2010, then joined the board of JLENS’s producer, Raytheon, after retiring as vice–chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[5]

In another prominent case, General James Mattis went to bat for the blood testing firm Theranos while he was serving as Commander of the U.S. Central Command, then joined the company’s board upon leaving government service. Mattis pressed the Army to buy and utilize Theranos equipment, as he acknowledged in an email to Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes uncovered by the Washington Post: “I’ve met with my various folks and we’re kicking this into overdrive to try to field your lab in the near term.”[6]

After Mattis left the military to join the Theranos board, he defended the company’s practices — even as it was marketing a product that did not work, with false claims that included denying charges that it was out of compliance with Food and Drug Administration requirements.[7] Mattis later claimed that, despite being a board member, he was not informed of the limitations of the Theranos devices while he was serving at the company for compensation of $150,000 per year.[8] In 2018, Holmes was indicted on charges of wire fraud for allegedly perpetrating a “multi–million dollar scheme to defraud investors, doctors, and patients.”[9] The Securities and Exchange Commission described Theranos as an “elaborate, years–long fraud” in which Holmes “exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”[10]

Retired military officers were also prominently involved in a lobbying effort that prevented the Navy from divesting itself of multiple copies of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), which the service had determined were not relevant to the most important challenges facing the Navy and would, if retained, result in a service that was “less capable, less lethal, and less ready.”[11] The LCS is also plagued with technical problems that were described in detail in a New York Times investigation of the campaign to save the ship from retirement.[12]

The role of ex–Navy officers in the campaign to save the LCS was described in detail by Danielle Brian, Executive Director of the Project on Government Oversight, in her April 2023 Congressional testimony.[13] Among the retired Navy officials spearheading the effort to block the retirement of the LCS was a retired Navy veteran, Timothy Spratto, who served as general manager of BAE Systems’ shipyard in Jacksonville, Florida, where the littoral combat ships are serviced.[14] Before joining BAE, Spratto served as Assistant Chief of Staff, Material Readiness and Assessments, Naval Surface Forces Atlantic.[15]

Another key player in the effort to save the LCS was retired Rear Admiral James A. Murdoch, who served as program executive officer for the littoral combat ship program from 2011–14 before leaving government service to become the international business development director for ship and aviation systems at Lockheed Martin, one of the prime contractors for the Freedom–class Littoral Combat Ships.[16] Also involved in the successful lobbying effort was retired Captain Tony Parisi, who worked on the General Dynamics team that trains crews to run the LCS, and wrote an op–ed in 2022 for Real Clear Defense titled “Don’t Give Up the Ship.”[17] The work of these former military officers resulted in the procurement and continued deployment of flawed ships that cost taxpayers billions of dollars and put crew members at risk.[18]

More consistent and detailed reporting on post–government activities of military officers who go to work in the arms industry would likely uncover many other incidents similar to the ones described above.

Proponents of the revolving door argue that the expertise ex–military officers bring to the arms industry can improve its performance and ability to produce systems relevant to the needs of the warfighter. This is belied by the fact that — according to a study by Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office — over 90 percent of senior government officials who go into the arms industry serve as lobbyists.[19] Their job is to promote projects and practices that boost the bottom lines of their new employers, not weigh in on how the firms carry out their government–funded projects, for good or ill.  To the extent that there is expertise in the military sector that can make contractors more effective, it can be transmitted without hiring a majority of retiring senior officials as lobbyists (see detailed recommendations, below).

Over 90 percent of senior government officials who go into the arms industry serve as lobbyists.

One overall finding of this report is that the nature of the revolving door has shifted.  Not only do retired officers join the boards of major contractors like Lockheed Martin or the ranks of lobbyists at major firms that include weapons contractors as clients, but they set up their own consulting firms, work as advisors to defense startups, and join firms that finance arms companies. There are many routes available for former military officials to seek work in the arms sector. In the sections that follow we provide details on post–government employment of recent four–star retirees and recommendations for curbing their influence over decisions on Pentagon spending and policy.

Click here to read the full report.

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William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of “More Money, Less Security: Pentagon Spending and Strategy in the Biden Administration.”

Dillon Fisher is a Democratizing Foreign Policy Program Intern.

Featured image: The US is investigating whether secret military plans were leaked. (Photo: Asten / Flickr CC)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

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All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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The ruling class often laments the “wealth gap”, which is strange considering they have given themselves permission to steal from the slave class. Now, they are using it as an excuse to inflict permanent slavery on the masses through the creation of a central bank digital currency, or CBDC.

A new report by Legacy Research claims that universal basic income (UBI) will pave the way for the rulers’ endgame: CBDC. By dolling out a UBI with the help of a digital ID and CBDC, the slave class will be able to be fully controlled by the rulers.

 UBI offers a no-strings-attached monthly payment… for everyone, at every income level.

To pay for all this, governments will need digital money. It’s the most efficient way to manage and track such a massive transfer of wealth.

That digital money will come in the form of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

I’ve been warning you about the privacy threats CBDCs pose since June.

Currently, 114 countries – representing over 95% of global gross domestic product (GDP) – are exploring a CBDC. And 11 have launched a CBDC, including China, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. –Legacy Research

So is their plan to impoverish everyone by inflating the fiat currency, so they can swoop in with a UBI and “save” the poor suffering slaves? Most likely. In order to fully control the human population, the rulers need to get a CBDC in place before too many realize that government is slavery and this is nothing more than invisible, but permanent chains of all of us.

In order for this scheme to work, the rulers will need to convince the slaves it’s in their best interest to take the currency. Americans are easily persuaded. After all, a lot of them took the “vaccine” in exchange for a free donut. Many will be willing to accept the CBDC in exchange for a small sum of fiat currency.

It all started in July with the launch of FedNow, which Legacy Research describes as the “Trojan Horse” of digital currencies and the completion of the slave system. Once you’re signed up with a federal bank account, you have officially “signed a contract” making yourself their slave, no illusion of freedom will be needed. You are literally handing over what’s left of your essential freedoms and privacy.

The rulers will take what they want, freeze your account, cut off your UBI, or simply “remove” you from access to their system if you do things they dislike.

In order for this scheme to work, the ruling class will need our “consent”. That means we are likely going to be forced to sign up on our own in order to get the free “donut”. Much like they did with the COVID injections, they need you to go voluntarily ask them to be a slave. Once you’re locked in, there will be no way out. We all should be standing up to this egregious act of tyranny now.

The masters seek to erect a permanent digital cage around every single human on this planet. The rulers already have as much money and resources as they could ever want. But what they really desire is power.

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Featured image is from SHTFplan.com