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Since the July 26 seizure of power by the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Homeland (CNSP) in Niger, threats of direct military intervention have been pervasive from France and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

ECOWAS is obviously not acting in the interests of the people of the region with the Federal Republic of Nigeria newly elected President Bola Tinubu seeking to strengthen ties with the United States and France.

France has refused to withdraw its ambassador from Niamey claiming that the envoy is being held hostage by the CNSP government. Such statements by President Emmanuel Macron are designed to provide a rationale for some type of military strike or a longer-term intervention in Niger to undermine the political trajectory of the new government.

Even prior to the signing of the Liptako-Gourma Charter on September 16, the military governments in Mali and Burkina Faso said publicly that any attack against the CNSP in Niger would be considered an act of war against their respective administrations. Reports from the region indicate that tensions are escalating in the border areas of all three states who are signatories to the new accord. The involvement of France in these hostilities cannot be ruled out by the CNSP and other allied forces.

West African military leaders sign Liptako-Gourma Charter

ECOWAS has toned down its boisterous threats of a military invasion of Niger to reinstall Mohamed Bazoum as president. Bazoum was endorsed by Paris and Washington as someone who would support the ongoing presence of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) troops along with the French Foreign Legion.

However, their purported shift to a more diplomatic approach to the situation in Niger is a reflection of the widespread opposition to a military intervention by various sectors of the population and political structures in the ECOWAS states. The Nigerian Senate, which is dominated by President Tinubu’s own party, the All-Progressive Congress (APC), rejected his proposal for an intervention in neighboring Niger.

Niger CNSP leaders greet masses and political rally

The U.S. administration of President Joe Biden has sought to maintain dialogue with the CNSP by backing away from describing the July 26 rebellion as a military coup. A report during mid-September claimed that the Pentagon has resumed some surveillance operations in Niger which have been suspended since the seizure of power by the military government in Niamey.

According to a report published by the Associated Press in response to a press conference held by Pentagon officials:

“The Pentagon said Thursday (Sept. 14) that it has not restarted counterterrorism operations in Niger, a day after the head of U.S. airpower for Europe and Africa said those flights had resumed. Gen. James Hecker, responding to a question from The Associated Press at a security conference Wednesday (Sept. 13), said the U.S. military has been able to resume some manned aircraft and drone counterterrorism operations in Niger. But the Pentagon issued a statement Thursday saying those missions are only for protecting U.S. forces and not the more sensitive, and broader, counterterrorism operations U.S. forces have successfully run with the Nigerien military in the past, adding “stories to the contrary are false.” 

Sanctions have been imposed through ECOWAS on the CNSP and the other governments aimed at weakening their resolve to institute the changes they feel are necessary for their countries. This appropriate challenge to these sanctions and a vicious propaganda campaign emanating from Paris is to strengthen the alliance between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

Interestingly the push for war by imperialist states coincides with the declaration of a food emergency in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the most populous and largest economy on the African continent. The food insecurity crisis in the ECOWAS states is also being experienced in East Africa, where a threat of famine was narrowly avoided over the last several months.

In addition to food insecurity, an inflationary spiral is impacting countries like Nigeria whose new government under President Tinubu eliminated fuel subsidies. In Kenya, the largest economy in East Africa, President William Ruto has raised taxes which prompted demonstrations and violent unrest organized by the political opposition.

In an article on the recently signed military pact in the Sahel, the Ecofin news agency quoted statements made by the interim leader of Mali, who said that:

“’I have signed today with the heads of state of Burkina Faso and Niger the Liptako-Gourma Charter establishing the Sahel States Alliance (AES) aimed at creating a framework for collective defense and mutual assistance for the benefit of our populations,’ Mali’s junta leader, Assimi Goïta, wrote on X (formerly Twitter). Speaking on the alliance, the Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop explained that per the charter, “any violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of one or more contracting parties will be considered an aggression against the other parties and will trigger a duty of assistance and relief by all parties, individually or collectively, including the use of armed force to restore and ensure security within the area covered by the Alliance.” 

Impact of Draconian Sanctions on the CNSP Government in Niger

Niger is one of the least developed countries in the world. Despite its wealth in strategic resources such as large deposits of uranium, the country ranks economically as being 138th  globally.

The World Data website which publishes reports on the status of economic growth internationally, said of the situation in Niger:

“The average monthly income in Niger is 51 U.S. Dollar per capita. In the U.S.A., the figure is 6,364 U.S. Dollars. However, the prices of consumer goods are also around 62.9 percent lower than in the U.S.A. If you compare income and price levels, the result is a more expensive life in Niger than in the United States. The bottom line is that the costs do not offset the lower income, and you get about 97.8 percent less. However, it is also important to remember that this is a purely statistical model. Both the labor output and the type and quality of the goods received always correspond to the national average on both sides of the equation – so they do not necessarily have to match. Here you can also find an international comparison of cost of living and purchasing power.”

In reports coming out of the Malanville border crossing between Niger and northern Benin, thousands of trucks are backed up for miles with goods destined for distribution in the targeted state. This is a direct result of the sanctions imposed on the country by the ECOWAS regional organization which is now headed by President Tinubu of Nigeria. See this.

As a result of the sanctions, the price of food, fuel, clothing, industrial supplies, medicines, and other goods are skyrocketing. Some 6,000 tons of humanitarian assistance from the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) are being prevented from entering Niger.

The country was already under extreme economic distress due to the overall financial and food crisis throughout Africa and the world. At present, the WFP says that over three million Nigeriens are struggling to eat even one meal per day. WFP officials indicate that if the sanctions are not lifted, 10 million people in Niger, around 40% of the population, would be facing even more shortages of basic foodstuffs.

These sanctions are designed to pressure the CNSP government into abandoning its core political values. Nonetheless, the support for the military administration in Niger has grown as illustrated by the mass demonstrations inside the country that are attracting tens of thousands of enthusiastic youth and workers.

Plans for various economic development projects have been suspended due to the imperialist-instigated sanctions. Reuters news agency says of the current situation:

“The sanctions are not just threatening Niger’s food and aid supplies. Nigeria has cut power supplies, jeopardizing medical care in hospitals, [a leading CNSP leader Gen. Abdourahmane] Tiani said. Niamey-based entrepreneur Maxime Kader told Reuters he had to stop selling poultry incubators due to a lack of plywood and low power. Large-scale infrastructure projects have also been hit by the fallout. The freezing of regional financial flows has halted construction on a Chinese-led dam project that was meant to boost food security. Forecasts of economic growth of 7% this year was based on the expected launch of an oil pipeline from Niger to Benin, but it has not been clear how the coup has impacted work to complete the PetroChina (601857.SS) -backed project. PetroChina did not reply to a request for comment.”

One of the demands which needs to be advanced in Africa and internationally, is the immediate lifting of these sanctions. Anti-imperialist forces in the western capitalist states could insist that the governments of France, the U.S. and other NATO countries withdraw support for this de facto economic blockade of Niger by their allies in the ECOWAS region.

The people of Niger have an inherent right to self-determination and national sovereignty. They should be allowed without interference to settle their own internal problems irrespective of the interests of France and other imperialist states.

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

All images in this article are from the author

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In an interview with ABC This Week on September 10, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked about the possibility of negotiations with Russia. “You spent quite a bit of time with President Zelenskyy,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl said. “What is your sense?  How does he see this ending? Does he see himself coming to a negotiating table with the Russians at some point? How does this end?”

Blinken responded, as the US consistently has, by implying that the Ukraine-US side has always been willing to take the diplomatic route and that it is Russia who has been unwilling to negotiate.

“And as to negotiations, Jon, it takes two to tango,” Blinken said. “And thus far, we see no indication that Vladimir Putin has any interest in meaningful diplomacy.” Blinken then added that “If he does, I think the Ukrainians will be the first to engage, and we’ll be right behind them.”

That answer took more than a little historical revisionism and more than a lot of nerve. Russia has three times engaged in meaningful diplomacy. All three took place in the early days of the war, and all three could have ended the war before the escalation and devastation. Russia first engaged in meaningful diplomacy with Ukraine in Belarus just three days after the war began. They then, once again, engaged in diplomacy mediated by then Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Most promisingly, Russia signed a tentative agreement with Ukraine during the negotiations in Istanbul.

The Istanbul agreement would have ended the war with Russia withdrawing to the positions it occupied before the war and Ukraine promising not to seek NATO membership and to make permanent neutrality a feature of its constitution.

Russia claims to be willing to return to meaningful diplomacy and pick up the strands of the Istanbul negotiations where they were shorn by the US. Referring to “what was agreed upon in Istanbul,” Putin recently reiterated that “If they want to get back to it, we are ready to talk to them.” Russia’s territorial terms may be more difficult for the US and Ukraine to accept than they were in Istanbul over a year ago, but that is the price of poor statecraft. The Pentagon identified an inflection point as early as November 2022 at which Ukraine may have attained its most beneficial point on the battlefield to be in the strongest position at the negotiating table: Biden’s identified goal. Pushing beyond that point would likely only weaken Ukraine. The Biden administration did not listen. “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” Shakespeare counsels. Washington missed the tide.

Though Russia claims to still be willing to negotiate, Ukraine no longer is. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a decree banning negotiations with Putin, and his 10-Point Peace Plan insists upon a settlement that precludes negotiations by demanding the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory, including the Donbas and Crimea.

But earlier in the war, Ukraine was willing to talk as the Belarus, Bennett and Istanbul talks testify. But despite Blinken’s insistence that if the Ukrainians are willing to “engage,” then the US will “be right behind them,” the US was not. It has been the US that is not willing to tango: not Russia, not Ukraine. Ukraine was ready to bring the brief war to an end on terms that satisfied their goals. But the US was not because the terms did not satisfy their goals.

The US said no to the Belarus talks, proclaiming the conditions unsuited “for real diplomacy.” According to no less an informed source than Naftali Bennet, the US “blocked” the Bennett brokered talks that had “a good chance of reaching a ceasefire.” And according to well placed Turkish officials, including Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and deputy chairman of Erdogan’s ruling party Numan Kurtulmus, the US put an end to those most promising talks too because they “want[ed] the war to continue.”

If it takes two to tango, the dance has not been delayed on account of Russia or Ukraine. The dance has been delayed because, as Putin responded to Blinken’s accusation, “the Americans . . . don’t know how to do this tango themselves. The music is remarkable and the steps are beautiful, but the US seeks to deal with everything from a position of power.” The diplomatic dance has been delayed because the US won’t engage in “meaningful diplomacy” and called it off: repeatedly.

And in perhaps the biggest betrayal of a dance step of all – and perhaps a sign of America’s face-saving exit strategy – the State Department placed the blame on Ukraine. On September 7, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that Russia was willing to negotiate not invading Ukraine in exchange for NATO signing a promise not to enlarge into Ukraine. NATO, he said, “rejected that.” “Of course we didn’t sign.” In a stunning admission, the NATO Secretary General then concludes,

“So [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”

Asked about Stoltenberg’s comment and the US-NATO refusal to negotiate, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller responded that

“We always made clear in the run-up to that war that we were willing to engage in diplomacy with Russia.” Then he said, “The Ukrainians made clear that they were willing to engage in diplomacy with Russia about legitimate regional security concerns.”

That is true as the three sets of talks make clear. But then Miller added, confusingly,

“I certainly don’t believe NATO was – or that Ukraine – or I won’t speak for them – NATO – Ukraine did not want to seem to want to compromise their own right to determine their future as a country.”

Miller placed the blame on Ukraine for not being willing to negotiate NATO membership.

That’s untrue. By day two of the war, Zelensky had already signaled that he was prepared to abandon Ukraine’s pursuit of NATO membership, declaring that he wasn’t afraid to negotiate neutrality and security guarantees with Moscow. By day two, Zelensky had already said,

“We are not afraid to talk to Russia. We are not afraid to say everything about security guarantees for our state. We are not afraid to talk about neutral status. We are not in NATO now … We need to talk about the end of this invasion. We need to talk about a ceasefire.”

Zelensky advisor Mykhailo Podolyak also said that “Ukraine wants peace and is ready for talks with Russia, including on neutral status regarding NATO.” In all three sets of talks – Belarus, Bennett, Istanbul – Ukraine promised not to join NATO.

It was the US, not Ukraine, that was unwilling to negotiate Ukraine’s NATO membership, as Miller admitted in the same response: “I will reiterate what we said at the time, which was NATO has an “Open Door” policy and we are not – we were not willing to compromise NATO’s “Open Door” policy.” Derek Chollet, counselor to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has admitted that the US explicitly told Moscow that negotiating NATO expansion into Ukraine was never even on the table.

The State Department rewrote history and shifted the blame for the refusal to negotiate NATO membership and the possible prevention of the war to Ukraine.

When it comes to diplomacy, Blinken is right, it does take two to tango. But he is wrong about which partner refuses to dance. Russia and Ukraine have shown an “interest in meaningful diplomacy.” It is the US that has consistently “blocked” it and cancelled the dance.

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Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

Featured image is from Al Mayadeen English

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Diaspora politics can often be testy. While the mother country maintains its own fashioned narrative, governed by domestic considerations, the diaspora may, or may not be in accord with the agreed upon story. While countries such as China and Iran are seen as the conventional bullies in this regard, spying and monitoring the activities of their citizens in various countries, India has remained more closeted and inconspicuous.

Image: Photograph of the slain Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. (Licensed under Fair Use)

Of late, that lack of conspicuousness has been challenged. On September 18, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed that there were “credible allegations” that agents in the pay of the Indian government had murdered Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a vocal supporter for an independent Sikh homeland known as Khalistan and deemed by Indian authorities since 2020 to be a terrorist. He was alone in his truck when he was shot to death on June 18 outside the Surrey temple, Guru Nanak Gurdwara.

While the death remains under investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Trudeau was convinced enough time had lapsed to warrant open mention. After all, Pavan Kumar Rai, the Canadian head of New Delhi’s foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), had been expelled by Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly as a direct consequence of the acts.

In his statement to the House, Trudeau revealed that Canadian security agencies had been pursuing such links between New Delhi and the Nijjar’s death. “Our top priorities have therefore been 1) that our law enforcement and security agencies ensure the continued safety of all Canadians, and 2) that all steps be taken to hold the perpetrators of this murder to account.” The matter had also been raised with Indian President Narendra Modi at the G20 summit.

Trudeau went on to reiterate the standard protocols that had been outraged in such matters.

“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty. It is contrary to the fundamental rules by which free, open and democratic societies conduct themselves.” Canada’s “position on extra-judicial operations in another country is clearly and unequivocally in line with international law.”

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc also added further detail on the contact between Ottawa and New Delhi.

“The national security and intelligence adviser to the prime minister and the director of CSIS have travelled on a number of occasions in recent weeks also to India to meet their counterparts in India to confront the intelligence agencies with these allegations.”

The Indian response was predictably sharp, with New Delhi also expelling a “senior Canadian diplomat,” asking the individual to leave within five days. Prior to that, the Canadian high commissioner to India, Cameron MacKay, was summoned for a bit of an ear-bashing, while the Indian Ministry of External Affairs expressed the “Government of India’s growing concern at the interference of Canadian diplomats in our internal matters and their involvement in anti-India activities.”

For its part the MEA rebuked Canada for its sympathies for what it called Khalistani terrorists.

“Such unsubstantiated allegations seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” It was also a “matter of deep concern” that “Canadian political figures [had] openly expressed sympathy for such elements”.

The interest by New Delhi in the tetchier elements of the Khalistan movement would have been sparked by a smattering of reports that seem to add weight that a resurgence was in the offing. The Conversation, for instance, thought it significant enough to note acts of vandalism against the Indian consulate in San Francisco in March, and discuss the activities of a “group of separatists” who had “blocked the entrance to the Indian consulate in Brisbane, forcing it to close temporarily.” And just to note the gravity of these acts, the publication went on to document attacks on three Hindu temples in Australia, a point that gave Prime Minister Modi the chance to moralise and vent to his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, in a visit in May this year.

That same month, Sydney’s Blacktown City Council cancelled a June 4 booking that would have featured a purely ceremonial, symbolic “Khalistan Referendum”. A similar event had taken place in Melbourne’s Federation Square earlier in the year, an initiative of the US-based Sikhs for Justice. A Blacktown City Council spokesperson called the booking “in conflict with adopted Council policy,” posing “risks to Council staff, Council assets and members of the public”.

A frontline against the Khalistan movement has become violently visible. While Indian authorities maintain a watch on Sikh activists at home and initiate arrests (this, along with keeping a tight rein on other dissident movements in line with Modi’s all suffocating notion of Hindutva), killings have taken place in other countries.

Paramjit Singh Panjwar, designated the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) chief, was gunned down in Lahore in May. Indian reports on the killing took a certain glee in the brutal demise of Panjwar, who had “fled to Pakistan in 1990 with the help of its spy agency ISIS, which allegedly provided him a safe house in Lahore and a new identity: Malik Sardar Singh.”

Another, Harmeet Singh, leader of the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF), suffered the same fate in January 2020, also on Pakistani soil. His death was put down to either the tawdry business of a love affair with a married Muslim woman from Pakistan, or a dispute over drug money.

Not to be outdone, certain members of the Sikh diaspora in the United Kingdom have also expressed concern that the death of Birmingham-based Avtar Sigh Khanda remains suspicious. Khanda is said by Indian security sources to be responsible for grooming the prominent Khalistani separatist Amritpal Singh, who was arrested in April. West Midlands police, however, found nothing to warrant opening an investigation into Khanda’s death. The same, it would seem, cannot be said about Nijjar, whose assassination has taken some of the shine off Modi’s garish publicity machine.

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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 Guru Nanak Gurdwara, outside of which Nijjar was killed (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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[This article was originally published on September 11, 2021.]

It was the first day of summer vacation in France, and I was unusually melancholic for an 8-year-old. I lived in a little town outside Paris and all my friends had left to visit their families in the provinces. The morning was blue, unusually cold and felt decidedly lonesome. I decided to approach my sullen father with a question about Iraq, the country he had fled in the ’70s as a dissident: “Baba, do we even have a family?”

Sensing my dismay, my father smiled, took out a piece of paper and began writing down names. He didn’t stop until he’d filled the page with nearly a hundred names of family members: Auday, Mazen, Riad, Nahla, Soad, Hasna. … I practiced saying them. One name in particular stood out to me: Fallujah. My father had circled the word and written right next to it, “our hometown.” 

I carried the page with me, reading and rereading it until I had memorized as many names as I could. My father told me that every one of these people knew my name and had seen photographs of me. We hadn’t spoken to them because Iraq was at war with Iran and telephone calls were rare. 

I was struck by the paradox of my situation: born in Paris when really, I belonged to Fallujah. 

One summer day in 1988, we finally received that long-awaited phone call: The war was over! A year later, my mother, my sister and I found ourselves on an Iraqi Airways plane bound for Baghdad, then Fallujah. 

Of course, it’s hard to say the name Fallujah today in Europe or the United States without instantly conjuring up images of war, destruction and battle-hardened anti-American jihadis. What does the world know of Fallujah besides its destruction by U.S. forces in 2004 and its 2014 conquest by the Islamic State group? From my experience, almost nothing. But that empty space is where my history and my family’s history reside. 

Fallujah is the city where my parents were born, a clean, green city bordered by the Euphrates – or Al-Furat – River, after which I was named. It wasn’t as exciting as Baghdad, a much larger and wealthier city, but its greatest charm was the world of family it opened up. During my first visit, it was exhilarating to meet aunts and uncles and cousins in the flesh, people whose lives I’d only been able to imagine until then. After years of feeling isolated in France, as one of the only Iraqi families we knew, I was overwhelmed to discover that I belonged to a warm and loving community of more people than I could count. 

Feurat Alani (second from right) and his sister on the banks of the Euphrates River in Fallujah with his uncles in 1989. Credit: Courtesy of Feurat Alani

1989 was a year of peace, sadly an anomaly in Iraq’s recent history. In the years that followed, the lightness and joy of my first visit began to fade. When I returned in 1992, an unstoppable United Nations Security Council-imposed embargo had just begun to set in, and by 1995, the weight of the sanctions hung heavy over Iraq. Fallujah began to fold in on itself. Everyone was hungry. More and more of my cousins were dropping out of school to work in the local markets. When I left Iraq at the end of that visit, I didn’t know if or when I would return. I wanted to just be a teenager and focus on my life in France.

The turning point came on Sept. 11, 2001. I remember the shock and grief watching the news on that fateful Tuesday. I remember phone calls of disbelief and tears from my cousins in Iraq. But as Bush administration officials wasted no time in building their case for invading Iraq, a slow horror set in about what this emerging narrative – however fraudulent – could mean for my hometown. It was this narrative, coming out of 9/11 and daily conversations with my father, that pushed me back to Iraq and into journalism. 

My father had fled Iraq after being imprisoned by Saddam Hussein for spreading Communist ideas and building an opposition to his authoritarian rule. During the lead-up to the war, we talked about his activism in Iraq and his fears and hopes for the future every day. I knew I had to go back myself and tell stories about what Iraqis were going through. 

And so for a decade, I made Baghdad my base and reported across the country for a range of French and international outlets on everything from the fallout of the U.S. invasion to the rise of the Islamic State group. But my most powerful stories – and life lessons – came from Fallujah and my family.  

The horror of reporting on bodies buried in the local football stadium after the deadly battles of Fallujah in April and November 2004 was surpassed only by recognizing some of the names on the makeshift tombstones. Three of my cousins died during the fighting and are buried there. 

The Martyrs’ Cemetery was previously a football stadium in Fallujah. Credit: Yvon Le Gall

A fourth cousin had joined the insurgency but was caught and imprisoned in Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca. When he was released a year later, he decided to enroll in the newly created Iraqi police force. He was killed a week later by al-Qaida in Iraq, which called him a traitor for joining any part of the U.S.-installed Iraqi government. 

As I was trying to make sense of the senseless violence and the sectarian nightmare that was unfolding in Iraq, I learned that my uncles, all of whom had been in the Iraqi military, had joined different sections of the anti-American insurgency: Salafi, Sufi, nationalist, independent. I was initially surprised by the diversity of ideology in a city that had always seemed homogenous on its face, essentially an army town, which in Saddam’s time also meant a Sunni town. But mostly, I was uncomfortable with how the fighting had changed my uncles. One of them, a decorated veteran of the war with Iran, reminded me that resistance to an occupying force was legitimate under international law. But I also saw the rage that swept across his face each time an American military convoy passed through the rubble of our hometown. It terrified me.

This is when my father planned his first visit to post-invasion Iraq. A few days after he arrived, he ran into an old friend he hadn’t seen in 30 years at a cafe they both used to love in Baghdad. Minutes after the encounter, two young men walked in and shot his friend, killing him on the spot. We later learned that the friend had been suspected of working with the Americans. My father left Iraq soon after and, after three decades of holding out hope of returning and playing a role in his country, applied for French citizenship.

By 2007, I could no longer ignore the stories I’d been hearing about an uptick in the number of birth defects among babies born in Fallujah. My friend Abu Yunis, a former football player who became my fixer and guide in the city, told me about babies dying soon after birth and deformed children growing up in hiding. His descriptions were so fantastical that I had struggled to believe him. But after he started sending me photographs, I started investigating the phenomenon for French television. I interviewedIraqi families, medical researchers, doctors, scientists, weapons experts, as well as Marines who had fought in Fallujah. Doctors reported a sharp uptick in birth defects after the invasion. No one knew exactly what had caused it, but one theory was that toxic contamination caused by the war might be responsible. One doctor in Fallujah told me she was so overwhelmed by seeing 1 in 5 babies being born with deformities that her only advice to people in the city was to stop having children. 

Even after most American troops left the country, policies the United States put in place – like the disbanding of the army, the de-Baathification of government institutions, and the imposition of a sectarian political system – continue to haunt Iraq. There’s no other way of putting it: The war has left Iraqis a legacy of death. Each year, the Fallujah I knew and loved slips further away. But this history, as bloody and painful as it is, matters and should not be forgotten. There’s no official count of how many Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion began. There’s no memorial for all the Iraqis who’ve died terrible, violent deaths. Or for those who’ve died of hunger or disease as a result of the war. 

As a French Iraqi, I’m used to translating Iraq for a French audience, right from when I returned from my first visit in 1989 and tried explaining what life in Iraq was like to my school friends. But I also think of my role as an archivist, a keeper of memories, both joyful and hard – my own and my family’s and of the people in Fallujah and across Iraq. It’s why I became a journalist, to insist on recording the history of our present moment, however imperfect and incomplete it is. It’s the only way I can piece together the full picture of what happened to Fallujah, my lost hometown. 

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Feurat Alani can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @Feurat.

Featured image: Credit: Illustration by Anuj Shrestha

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In his 1923 book The Goose-Step, renowned muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair examined the consequences of plutocratic capitalist control of American colleges and universities, writing that “our educational system is not a public service, but an instrument of special privilege; its purpose is not to further the welfare of mankind, but merely to keep America capitalist.”

If Sinclair were alive today, he would likely be horrified though not surprised by the appointment of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to a professorship at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Presidential Fellow at Columbia World Projects (CWP).

Clinton is offering a class at the school this fall, with Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo, called “Inside the Situation Room.” It will have students “examine decision-making in a variety of historical and contemporary contexts, from the search for Osama bin Laden, to the ‘red line’ in Syria, to negotiating with Iran,” according to a press release from the University.

Source: nypost.com

Clinton is also, along with Dr. Yarhi-Milo—a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and a protégé of the late CIA-connected Columbia professor Robert Jervis—helping to set up a new Institute of Global Politics at Columbia, where an inaugural group of fellows include Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine; Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia candidate for governor, and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO and Chairman of Google.

These choices reflect a partisan bias in favor of corporate Democrats and anti-Russia and anti-China war hawks. Schmidt is currently involved in a crusade to undermine China’s economy as a member of the National Security Council’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Yovanovitch played a key role in U.S. political interference in Ukraine and the escalation of the conflict with Russia. She is now championing the provision of lethal weapons supplies to Ukraine, which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called “a money-laundering scheme,” taking wealth out of the pockets of tax-payers and putting it into the coffers of Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed-Martin,” which are are owned by the investors of “BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard.”

Clinton’s course is biased because it assumes that U.S. intervention in countries like Syria is legitimate and does not question dominant narratives about U.S. foreign policy that may be flawed or based on imperialist assumptions.

Among the assigned readings is Clinton’s memoir, Hard Choices (2014), which was found to have numerous distortions and whitewashes the Obama administration’s record, including in helping to coordinate the 2009 coup in Honduras, which transformed the country into a narco-state under Juan Orlando Hernández.^[1]

According to The New York Times, a small group of activists on campus protested outside the building where Clinton began teaching, chanting “shame on you! Kick Hillary out.”

One of the activists was Dahoud André, an organizer with a group called Komokoda (Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti), who has helped expose the Clintons’ corruption in managing earthquake relief aid in Haiti in 2010 and Hillary’s role in propping up an illegitimate administration under Michel Martelly that systematically repressed dissent and aided in the looting of Haiti by multi-national corporations.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, after hearing about Clinton’s new gig, tweeted

“the U.S. official who has urged more wars than anyone over the last 3 decades with the possible exception of John Bolton—including Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine—is teaching Columbia students a class called ‘Foreign-Policy Decision-Making.’ And boy they’re excited!”

As they should be.

Clinton’s most shameful action as Secretary of State was her championing Operation Odyssey Dawn over Libya, which contributed to the destruction of what had been Africa’s most prosperous country under Muammar Qaddafi. Tens of thousands of Libyans were killed and the country was plunged into chaos and civil war afterwards and even saw the return of slavery.^[2]

Clinton promoted disinformation about Qaddafi to support the U.S. military intervention, and met with opposition forces before the war to help plan for the post-Qaddafi order after Qaddafi was removed.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates (2006-2011) told  The New York Times that Hillary Clinton’s backing of military intervention in Libya was decisive. President Barack Obama had told him privately in the Oval Office that the Libya decision was “51-49,” and Gates said:

“I’ve always thought that Hillary’s support for the broader mission in Libya put the president on the 51 side of the line for a more aggressive approach.”

After Qaddafi, was lynched, Hillary jubilantly told a reporter, “We came, we saw, he died,” a twisted play on the words of Julius Caesar following his victory over the King of Bosporus at the Battle of Zela around 47 BC.

Hillary the Hawk

Clinton’s performance concerning Libya was not out of character for her.

A 2016 profile in The New York Times Magazine referred to her as “Hillary the hawk.”

The article written by Mark Landler noted that,

“for all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion, neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that [Hillary] Clinton has.”

According to Landler, Clinton tried to pressure Obama to a) increase the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan even more than under his “surge policy”; b) sustain a U.S. troop presence in Iraq; c) funnel more arms to anti-government rebels in Syria; d) dispatch a U.S. aircraft carrier in waters between North Korea and China as a show of U.S. force; and e) reject any symbolic concessions to Russia as a gesture of goodwill in resetting the relationship, the latter position earning her the respect of Cold War hardliner Robert Gates.

Source: ebay.com

After 9/11, when she was a New York Senator, Clinton traveled to Fort Drum at the invitation of General Franklin “Buster” Hagenbeck, who tried to warn her about the risk of invading Iraq—which he said would be “like kicking over a bee’s nest.” But Hillary ignored his advice and voted to authorize U.S. military action in Iraq.

Subsequently, she took a seat on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee alongside fellow hawks like John McCain (R-AZ), and grew close with General Jack Keane, a board member of General Dynamics and key architect of George W. Bush’s 2007 troop-surge strategy in Iraq.

Democratic Party’s Nixon

Described by one of her detractors as a “cool and hardened political operative,” Hillary had honed her political skills in the early 1970s, when she served as an investigator on the House Judiciary Committee set up to decide whether Richard Nixon should be impeached for his involvement in the Watergate scandal.

Clinton learned a lot from studying Nixon’s political tactics, and later deployed those skills in a truly Nixonian manner by manufacturing the bogus Russiagate scandal to malign her political rival Donald Trump and explain her humiliating loss to him in 2016.

According to Barbara Olson, chief counsel for the House Oversight Committee that investigated an assortment of Clinton scandals, “few Americans realize the extent to which Hillary burnished her political skills [by] practicing the bare-knuckle tactics of the highly politicized House Judiciary Committee on the Watergate impeachment investigation.”^[3] 

Image: Hillary Clinton as a young Watergate lawyer. [Source: conservativebookclub.com]

Hillary skillfully used an arsenal of “opposition researchers and private detectives,” that her mentor Dick Morris identified as “secret police,” in a systematic campaign to “intimidate, frighten, threaten, discredit and punish innocent Americans [critical of the Clinton’s] whose only misdeed is their desire to tell the truth.”^[4]

Another example of what Hillary learned from Nixon is how useful it can be to portray oneself as a victim of powerful anti-democratic forces. Nixon had complained of a “vast left-wing conspiracy” arrayed against him; Hillary turned that on its head, claiming that she and her husband were victims of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” As a master manipulator, she made that charge stick by cultivating influential journalists and turning them into “surrogates” or “fans” who duped the public on her behalf.

Ozark Corruption

Clinton’s students at Columbia are unlikely to be aware of the skeletons in her closet from her tenure as First Lady of Arkansas during Bill Clinton’s governorships (1979-1981; 1983-1992).

According to The Washington Post, Hillary used her position as partner at the prestigious Rose Law Firm in that era to cultivate support for Bill among Arkansas’ economic elite.

Rose’s clients included: Wal-Mart; Stephens, Inc., the largest investment house in the U.S. outside of Wall Street; Dan Lasater, a bond trader convicted for cocaine trafficking who was Bill’s largest campaign donor; and Tyson Foods, which allegedly provided Bill with envelopes filled with cash in support of his political campaigns.^[5]

As part of the quid pro quo, Hillary recommended many of the regulators and judges who wound up favoring the clients of her employer and who donated money to Bill’s campaigns.

During Bill’s first gubernatorial term, Hillary appears to have been involved in an illicit pay-to-play scheme involving cattle futures trading that enabled the Tyson Chicken dynasty to give the Clintons in excess of $100,000 in campaign donations.

There is also strong evidence indicating that Clinton and Rose Law Firm colleagues such as Vince Foster, who died under suspicious circumstances after he became Deputy White House Counsel, helped launder money from illicit Whitewater land deals and a drug-trafficking and arms-smuggling operation run by the CIA under Bill Clinton’s oversight at the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport in western Arkansas.^[6]

The Clintons’ corrupt ways and backstabbing made them many enemies in Arkansas who saw through their phony veneer.

In his memoir, Jim McDougal, who took the fall for the Whitewater scandal and died of a heart attack in prison, wrote that the Clintons were “like a tornado who came into people’s lives” and “destroyed them”; they “took without giving back in return.”

In a just world, Bill and Hillary Clinton would have long ago been jailed for their many crimes and condemned by society. Instead, sadly, they continue to be given honors and prestigious appointments.

Why No Student Protest?

Columbia University’s decision to make Clinton a professor follows Yale University’s hiring of General Stanley McChrystal, who presided over a large-scale assassination program as head of the Joint Strategic Operations Command (JSOC), to teach courses in leadership at the Jackson School of Global Affairs, and Stanford’s appointment of Condoleezza Rice, a key architect of the Iraq War, as a faculty member in its business school.^[7]

When a New York Post journalist interviewed students at Columbia about Clinton’s appointment, some expressed belief the university was trying to capitalize on Clinton’s celebrity; however, not one rebuked her for the ghastly policies that she helped to perpetuate in Libya or for her personal corruption, and none said they believed it was inappropriate for a university to appoint an arguable war criminal who lacks scholarly credentials or a Ph.D., to its faculty.

The reason is that most students at Columbia, like other universities, are unaware that Clinton can be considered a war criminal.

Wrapped up in their social media feeds, students today read very little about history or politics and are mostly oblivious to the role that their country plays in the world, confining any activism primarily to issues of identity politics and the culture wars.

This is all to the delight of the U.S. foreign policy elite, which is able to carry out deadly imperialist schemes with almost no societal pushback, and can then reward the architects of those schemes with professorships at Ivy League schools that will allow them to indoctrinate the next generation and cultivate new protégés.

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

1. See Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019), for discussion of Clinton’s omissions in her memoir and role in the 2009 Honduran coup. 

2. Alex Lantier reported in an article on the World Socialist website that economic production and average personal income in Libya since Operation Odyssey Dawn have been cut in half. Lantier blamed Operation Odyssey Dawn for catastrophic flooding in eastern Libya caused by a storm after two dams burst. The dams were in poor condition because of a lack of government investment in them since the war. Lantier wrote that “Those who launched the NATO war in Libya or applauded it as a ‘humanitarian’ intervention, and who today are backing a NATO war against Russia in Ukraine on similar grounds, bear direct political and moral responsibility for the Derna catastrophe.” Chief among these people, of course, is Hillary Clinton. 
3. See Barbara Olson, Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton(Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2001). 
4. Olson, Hell to Pay, 4, 5. 
5. See Roger Morris, Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1996). 
6. See Jeremy Kuzmarov, War Monger: How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory from Bush II to Biden (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2023) for more details and sources. 

7. In 2016, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) also invited disgraced General David Petraeus, who commanded illegal U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, to be a keynote speaker at its annual conference. 

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As expected, US mass media gave plenty of uncritical coverage to what Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky said at the UN General Assembly. There will be further Russia-Ukraine UN discussion on Wednesday, September 20.

On a comparative historical note, the Clinton administration-led NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia lasted 78 days on account of Yugoslavia (then consisting of Serbia and Montenegro) not having a sugar daddy.

As per Russian, Turkish, Israeli and some other sources, there’s good reason to believe that were it not for neocon-neolib mischief making (notably by Boris Johnson) against the March 2022 Russia-Kiev regime talks in Istanbul, Russia’s Special Military Operation could’ve ended within two months of its start.

Better yet, had the Kiev regime and its Western backers honored the UN-approved Minsk Accords (giving Donbass autonomy) within Ukraine, there wouldn’t have been a Special Military Operation.

Going back further, the coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected president (in violation of an internationally brokered power sharing arrangement), led to an anti-Russian Kiev regime, prompting Crimea’s reunification with Russia and rebellion in Donbass.

NATO head Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged that for several years prior to 2022, a war-like situation was evident on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR, with his organization arming and training Kiev regime forces.

Ukraine’s Communist-drawn boundary brought together people with different historical, cultural, linguistic and geopolitical preferences. Disrespecting the pro-Russian community on that land with discriminatory and sometimes violent manner played a prominent role in Russia’s Special Military Operation, along with the collective Western political establishment having overly selective ethical blinders.

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Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic.

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*** 

What changed in the US-China relationship that is pushing the two countries closer to war?

No one seems to know. Readers who follow developments in China closely, know that relations between the two superpowers have grown increasingly strained in the last few years. But while the US has taken a more hostile approach to China, no one seems to know why. Was there something in particular that China did that angered Washington leading to the imposition of economic sanctions, technology blockades and military provocations in the Taiwan Strait?

No, there’s no indication that China did anything. What changed was Washington’s approach to China. And—as you’ll see—Washington’s approach changed very quickly and very dramatically. China went from friend to foe almost overnight.

Here’s why.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US maintained a policy of engagement with China that accelerated its development and transformed the country into the main engine of global growth. In December, 2001, China was granted “most-favored-nation”(MFN) status which was followed shortly after by its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). These developments allowed China to access western markets which turned China into a manufacturing center for US multinationals like Nike, Apple and Dell. China’s opening also triggered a surge of foreign investment which pumped up growth while strengthening its financial assets and bond market. In short, US policy laid the groundwork for the “Chinese miracle” which set the stage for a great power conflict with the US.

No other country in the world is more responsible for China’s meteoric rise than the United States. Now, however, the foreign policy establishment has decided that it doesn’t like its own creation. It doesn’t like the fact that China took advantage of the opportunities it was given to transform itself into a peer competitor of the United States. It doesn’t like the fact that China’s economy is growing more than twice as fast as America’s and is set to surpass the US within the decade. It doesn’t like the fact that China is building a 21st century, state-of-the-art infrastructure grid that will economically integrate a large part of Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia into the world’s biggest free trade zone. It doesn’t like the fact that China’s expansive economic/political strategy will inevitably replace the “rules-based international order” with a Chinese-led system in which the renminbi is the world’s reserve currency and China’s financial markets are the largest and most liquid in the world. America’s foreign policy establishment is not happy about any of these developments especially since it is largely responsible for all of them.

Don’t get me wrong; the Chinese are intelligent, resourceful, creative, and industrious people. And the Chinese Communist Party has played a critical role in lifting 800 million people out of poverty while steering the nation’s economy towards unprecedented growth and prosperity.

But if China was not given access to western markets and entered into the WTO, there would be no Chinese miracle and no Chinese superpower today. Those opportunities were the result of widely-supported policies that were endorsed almost-universally by US foreign policy elites. So, if Washington now regrets having supported those policies, it can only blame itself. Here’s some more background from foreign policy expert John Mearsheimer:

During the Cold War and under the policy of President Nixon, the U.S. decided to engage China and form a quasi-alliance with China against the Soviet Union. That made eminently good sense. And Nixon was correct to help the Chinese economy grow, for the more powerful China became, the more effective it was as a deterrent partner against the Soviet Union. However, once the Cold War ended in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the U.S. no longer needed China to help contain the Soviet Union.

What we foolishly did was pursue a policy of engagement, which was explicitly designed to help China grow more powerful economically. Of course, as China grew economically, it translated that economic might into military might, and the U.S., as a consequence of this foolish policy of engagement, helped to create a peer competitor.

My bottom line is that the Nixon-Kissinger policy, from the early 1970s up until the late 1980s, made eminently good sense. But, after that, engagement was a colossal strategic blunder….

The U.S. was not only expecting China to grow more powerful—it was purposely helping China to grow more powerful. It was doing this based on the assumption that China would become a democracy over time and therefore would become a responsible stakeholder in an American-led international order.

Of course, that didn’t happen. China did not become a democracy. And China, in effect, has set out to establish hegemony in Asia and challenge the U.S. around the planet. We now have a new Cold War.” U.S. engagement with China a ‘strategic blunder’: Mearsheimer, Nikkei

While I agree with most of what Mearsheimer says, I strongly disagree with the notion that US leaders were genuinely concerned about China becoming a democracy. Nor does democracy explain why US policy changed from mutually-beneficial engagement to open hostility. What Mearsheimer fails to acknowledge is that the western economies are controlled by an oligarchy of elites who have been unable to make any significant inroads into the Chinese government’s power-structure. This is not because the Chinese government is ostensibly “communist”, but because Chinese leaders are strongly nationalistic and determined to maintain China’s own sovereign independence against the onslaught of western elites. In other words, the emerging confrontation with China is a power-struggle between the WEF globalist cabal and Chinese nationalists.

In any event, China is not responsible for the strained relations that exist today. The hostility and provocations are all coming from the United States which is trying to undo the damage it did by implementing policies that ran counter to its own national interests. In short, the Biden administration is trying to reverse 30 years of failed policy by doing an about-face and then blaming it on China. It’s a classic “bait and switch” operation. Here’s more from Mearsheimer:

As time has shown, the engagement strategy was a failure. The Chinese economy has made an unprecedented leap forward, but the country has not transformed itself into a liberal democracy or “a responsible glass holder (a player interested in maintaining the current international order).” On the contrary, Chinese leaders see liberal values ​​as a threat to their country’s stability. And they, as the leaders of the rising powers usually do, have a tough foreign policy. We must admit that economic involvement was a colossal strategic mistake. Kurt Campbell and Eli Ratner – two former Obama administration officials who admitted that engagement had failed and those in the Biden administration today – write: “Washington is now facing the most dynamic and formidable contender in modern history.” (U.S. engagement with China a ‘strategic blunder’: Mearsheimer, Nikkei)

The question that immediately arises is: If engagement was such “a colossal strategic mistake” then why did it take 30 years to figure it out? With a population that is 4 times the size of the US and GDP growing at roughly 9% for 2 decades, it should have been fairly obvious that China was going to be bigger and more powerful than the US in the not-too-distant future. And yet everyone in the political establishment pretended not to see what was right beneath their noses.

That’s shocking. And what’s even more shocking is the remedy our leaders have settled on to maintain their current advantage in the global order. They intend to do everything in their power to sabotage China’s economic development. This aligns perfectly with Mearsheimer’s observation that “the only opportunity that can change the dynamics is a dramatic crisis undermining China’s unrelenting growth.” And that explains what’s going on today, the Biden administration is making a concerted effort to target the vulnerable sectors of the Chinese economy and inflict as much damage as possible via sanctions, blockades and supplyline disruption. We expect that this economic war on China will gradually intensify in the next few years along with new provocations in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. If Mearsheimer’s analysis is correct, then we are still in the early rounds of a hybrid war that will undoubtedly drag on for years to come.

So, when did it occur to our foreign policy geniuses that fueling China’s growth might actually hurt US prospects for the future?

We don’t know the specific date, but it looks like sometime around 2017 the elite consensus that supported engagement began to fall apart as more and more people became aware of the policy’s shortcomings. Check out this comment by the Financial Times associate editor Martin Wolf who explains how quickly western elites turned against China:

I think what is happening is that western policymakers and above all, American policymakers have decided that the rise of China is a major strategic threat. And this has several dimensions. One of these is that the left of center has come to the view that “Well, they are never going to become a democracy as we thought they would, and that is problematic. We don’t like that.” But the bigger element—which is the view of the strategic community and quite a large part of the corporate community—is that “These people (China) are a serious threat. They have immense resources, the defense build up is quite substantial, and they getting are ahead technologically in some very important areas, and we are far too dependent upon them….. They see the interdependence on China as frightening, and this paranoia has now become a dominant element in American thinking…. And it has shifted very quickly and very much across the board in America although we are now seeing it in Europe as well. A paper was recently released by the German Industrial Confederation which basically said, “You know the Chinese technology policy; it’s a threat to Germany.” This is a big change and it’s happened quite recently.” China: Friend or Foe?, You Tube, 12: 35 minute

So, according to Wolf, overall views on China among foreign policy elites changed very quickly and very dramatically. (Wolf’s account is similar to many other elites who tell the same story.) Engagement was increasingly seen as damaging to western interests, and the search for a different approach began. What Wolf fails to tell us is what it was that convinced foreign policy mandarins that China had become “major strategic threat”? Was it due to the CCP’s increasingly activist oversight of foreign corporations or the Communist Party’s refusal to implement reforms of their massive State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) or did it have something to do with China’s impressive strides in advanced technology that put the future of AI and supercomputing up-for-grabs?

What was it?

While we can’t answer that question with 100% certainty, we can make an educated guess.

In 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping launched his signature infrastructure program called the Belt and Road Initiative, which is a vast, multi-continent development strategy that is the most expensive and expansive infrastructure program of all time. The BRI has already garnered commitments from more than 150 nations representing 75% of the global population. The stated goal of the project is “to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future.” In fact, the project does all of that and much more. The BRI will improve ports, skyscrapers, railroads, roads, bridges, airports, dams, coal-fired power stations, and railroad tunnels. It will create a vast spiderweb of cutting-edge high-speed rail that will lower the cost of shipping while boosting the profits of manufacturers and wholesalers. The BRI projects a vision of a fully-integrated 21st century world in which Beijing lies at the very epicenter of global commerce. This is why the US and its allies—who are the staunch defenders of an archaic, extractive model of neoliberal capitalism—are prepared to do whatever-it-takes to derail China’s development and prevent this futuristic plan from going forward. Here’s how Sir Malcolm Rifkind, politician and former cabinet minister, summed up the significance of the BRI in a recent discussion of China on You Tube:

“I think if we’re going to look years ahead, I think the most important thing is the potential relevance of the Belt and Road Initiative to the relationship of Europe and China. For a thousand years, Europe and China have had to have contact with each other through the sea lanes. That huge central Asian landmass was, like the Atlantic Ocean- a barrier. What is happening now; and if we look 5, 10, 15 years ahead—already freight trains are going from China to western Europe in increasing numbers in both directions. So, what that means is, Europe and China could be looking directly at each other in a way that Europe and North America were able to do because of air travel and because the Atlantic became a bridge. That would be a historic change regardless of the politics China and Europe looking directly at each other and trading with each other in that way. That would have massive implications.” China: Friend or Foe? You Tube, 1:21:10 min

Rifkind is right. The opening of transit corridors and freight lines between China and Europe are “the most important thing” because they draw the continents closer together into a giant free trade zone which will inevitably increase their mutual power and prosperity while leaving the US on the outside looking in. This is why the Biden administration is so determined to make sure the BRI does not become a reality. Keep in mind, the primary foreign policy objective of the United States is “to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.” The vast expansion of China’s Belt and Road across the Eurasian landmass and linking European capitals to Beijing and Shanghai, definitely fit that description and qualify China as Washington’s mortal enemy.

China’s leaders still believe that they can reach an accommodation with Washington that will help to avoid a direct confrontation. But Washington’s red lines have already been crossed and there’s bound to be trouble ahead.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

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

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*** 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed six high-ranking military officials. The sweeping firings come as the Ukrainian leader plans to travel to Washington later this week to lobby Congress to pass a multi-billion funding package for Kiev. 

Taras Melnychuk, permanent representative of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers, announced the six deputy defense ministers had been fired from their posts on Telegram. The deputies were fired two weeks after Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov was sacked over corruption. Melnychuk, or newly appointed Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, did not explain the reason for the recent terminations. 

The New York Times reports Zelensky made the move to give the appearance of working to tackle corruption before he directly appeals to Congress for a new multi-billion dollar aid package.

“The shake-up in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wartime leadership team came as he headed to the United States, keen to demonstrate to American officials and other Western leaders that his government is not squandering — on either graft of mismanagement — the tens of billions of dollars in aid they have sent to Ukraine,” the outlet explained. 

The Times notes the impact of firing the officials is more likely to be felt in the long term.

“Battlefield decisions runs directly from Mr. Zelensky to the military’s uniformed general staff, largely bypassing the civilians at the defense ministry, so the turnover is not expected to have an immediate effect on the course of the war,” the outlet explained. “The ministry’s role is primarily not in tactics but logistics — procurement, salaries and benefits — where changes may not be felt right away.”

Ukraine was infamous for being the most corrupt country in Europe before the Russian invasion. Since then, Washington has sent Kiev over $100 billion in weapons and other direct financial assistance. 

The White House has fought against establishing an office to oversee aid shipments to monitor for corruption. The Pentagon inspector general has found that American weapons shipped to Ukraine lack proper documentation. The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction has warned that without sufficient oversight of aid, corruption will run rampant and undermine Kiev’s military. 

Weapons from the war in Ukraine have already been found in the hands of European criminals and African militants. 

Last month, Zelensky made another sweeping move by firing the heads of all of Ukraine’s recruitment centers. The president reported that an investigation found dozens of officials made millions of dollars selling Ukrainians medical waivers from military conscription. 

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Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman.

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Secret Pakistan arms sales to the U.S. helped to facilitate a controversial bailout from the International Monetary Fund earlier this year, according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement, with confirmation from internal Pakistani and American government documents. The arms sales were made for the purpose of supplying the Ukrainian military — marking Pakistani involvement in a conflict it had faced U.S. pressure to take sides on.

The revelation is a window into the kind of behind-the-scenes maneuvering between financial and political elites that rarely is exposed to the public, even as the public pays the price. Harsh structural policy reforms demanded by the IMF as terms for its recent bailout kicked off an ongoing round of protests in the country. Major strikes have taken place throughout Pakistan in recent weeks in response to the measures.

The protests are the latest chapter in a year-and-a-half-long political crisis roiling the country. In April 2022, the Pakistani military, with the encouragement of the U.S., helped organize a no-confidence vote to remove Prime Minister Imran Khan. Ahead of the ouster, State Department diplomats privately expressed anger to their Pakistani counterparts over what they called Pakistan’s “aggressively neutral” stance on the Ukraine war under Khan. They warned of dire consequences if Khan remained in power and promised “all would be forgiven” if he were removed.

Since Khan’s ouster, Pakistan has emerged as a useful supporter of the U.S. and its allies in the war, assistance that has now been repaid with an IMF loan. The emergency loan allowed the new Pakistani government to put off a looming economic catastrophe and indefinitely postpone elections — time it used to launch a nationwide crackdown on civil society and jail Khan.

“Pakistani democracy may ultimately be a casualty of Ukraine’s counteroffensive,” Arif Rafiq, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute and specialist on Pakistan, told The Intercept.

Pakistan is known as a production hub for the types of basic munitions needed for grinding warfare. As Ukraine grappled with chronic shortages of munitions and hardware, the presence of Pakistani-produced shells and other ordnances by the Ukrainian military has surfaced in open-source news reports about the conflict, though neither the U.S. nor Pakistan has acknowledged the arrangement.

Records detailing the arms transactions were leaked to The Intercept earlier this year by a source within the Pakistani military. The documents describe munitions sales agreed to between the U.S. and Pakistan from the summer of 2022 to the spring of 2023. Some of the documents were authenticated by matching the signature of an American brigadier general with his signature on publicly available mortgage records in the United States; by matching the Pakistani documents with corresponding American documents; and by reviewing publicly available but previously unreported Pakistani disclosures of arms sales to the U.S. posted by the State Bank of Pakistan.

The weapons deals were brokered, according to the documents, by Global Military Products, a subsidiary of Global Ordnance, a controversial arms dealer whose entanglements with less-than-reputable figures in Ukraine were the subject of a recent New York Times article.

Global Military Products, Inc. (GMP) (Source: Global Ordnance)

Documents outlining the money trail and talks with U.S. officials include American and Pakistani contracts, licensing, and requisition documents related to U.S.-brokered deals to buy Pakistani military weapons for Ukraine.

The economic capital and political goodwill from the arms sales played a key role in helping secure the bailout from the IMF, with the State Department agreeing to take the IMF into confidence regarding the undisclosed weapons deal, according to sources with knowledge of the arrangement, and confirmed by a related document.

To win the loan, Pakistan had been told by the IMF it had to meet certain financing and refinancing targets related to its debt and foreign investment — targets that the country was struggling to meet. The weapons sales came to the rescue, with the funds garnered from the sale of munitions for Ukraine going a long way to cover the gap.

Securing the loan eased economic pressure, enabling the military government to delay elections — a potential reckoning in the long aftermath of Khan’s removal — and deepen the crackdown against Khan’s supporters and other dissenters. The U.S. remained largely silent about the extraordinary scale of the human rights violations that pushed the future of Pakistan’s embattled democracy into doubt.

“The premise is that we have to save Ukraine, we have to save this frontier of democracy on the eastern perimeter of Europe,” said Rafiq. “And then this brown Asian country has to pay the price. So they can be a dictatorship, their people can be denied the freedoms that every other celebrity in this country is saying we need to support Ukraine for — the ability to choose our leaders, ability to have civic freedoms, the rule of law, all these sorts of things that may differentiate many European countries and consolidated democracies from Russia.”

Bombs for Bailouts

On May 23, 2023, according to The Intercept’s investigation, Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. Masood Khan sat down with Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu at the State Department in Washington, D.C., for a meeting about how Pakistani arms sales to Ukraine could shore up its financial position in the eyes of the IMF. The goal of the sit-down, held on a Tuesday, was to hash out details of the arrangement ahead of an upcoming meeting in Islamabad the following Friday between U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Donald Blome and then-Finance Minister Ishaq Dar.

Lu told Khan at the May 23 meeting that the U.S. had cleared payment for the Pakistani munitions production and would tell the IMF confidentially about the program. Lu acknowledged the Pakistanis believed the arms contributions to be worth $900 million, which would help to cover a remaining gap in the financing required by the IMF, pegged at roughly $2 billion. What precise figure the U.S. would relay to the IMF remained to be negotiated, he told Khan.

At the meeting on Friday, Dar brought up the IMF question with Blome, according to a report in Pakistan Today, which said that “the meeting highlighted the significance of addressing the stalled IMF deal and finding effective solutions to Pakistan’s economic challenges.”

After publication of this story, the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying the article is “baseless and fabricated.” The spokesperson said the bailout “was successfully negotiated between Pakistan and the IMF to implement difficult but essential economic reforms. Giving any other colour to these negotiations is disingenuous.” The spokesperson added,

“Pakistan maintains a policy of strict neutrality in the dispute between Ukraine and Russia and in that context, does not provide any arms and ammunition to them. Pakistan’s defense exports are always accompanied with strict end user requirements.”

A spokesperson for the State Department denied the U.S. played any role in helping procure the loan.

“Negotiations over the IMF review were a matter for discussion between Pakistan and IMF officials,” the spokesperson said. “The United States was not party to those discussions, though we continue to encourage Pakistan to engage constructively with the IMF on its reform program.”

An IMF spokesperson denied the institution was pressured but did not comment on whether it was taken into confidence about the weapons program.

“We categorically deny the allegation that there was any external pressure on the IMF in one way or another while discussing support to Pakistan,” said IMF spokesperson Randa Elnagar. (Global Ordnance, the firm involved in the arms deal, did not respond to a request for comment.)

The State Department’s denial was contradicted by Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a leading voice in Washington on foreign affairs. Earlier this month, Van Hollen told a group of Pakistani journalists, “The United States has been very instrumental in making sure that the IMF came forward with its emergency economic relief.” Van Hollen, whose parents were both stationed in Pakistan as State Department officials, was born in Karachi and is known to be the closest observer of Pakistan in Congress.

In an interview with The Intercept at the Capitol on Tuesday, Van Hollen said that his knowledge of the U.S. role in facilitating the IMF loan came directly from the Biden administration.

“My understanding, based on conversations with folks in the administration, has been that we supported the IMF loan package given the desperate economic situation in Pakistan,” he said. 

Eleventh-Hour IMF Deal

The diplomatic discussion about the loan came a month before a June 30 deadline for the IMF’s review of a planned billion-dollar payment, part of a $6 billion agreement made in 2019. A failed review would mean no cash infusion, but, in the months and weeks ahead of the deadline, Pakistani officials publicly denied that they faced serious challenges in financing the new loan.

In early 2023, Dar, the finance minister, said that external financing assurance — in other words, financial commitments from places like China, the Gulf states, or the U.S. — were not a condition the IMF was insisting Pakistan meet. In March 2023, however, the IMF representative in charge of dealing with Pakistan publicly contradicted Dar’s rosy assessment. IMF’s Esther Perez Ruiz said in an email to Reuters that all borrowers need to be able to demonstrate that they can finance repayments.

“Pakistan is no exception,” Perez said.

The IMF statement sent Pakistani officials scrambling for a solution. The required financing, according to public reporting and confirmed by sources with knowledge of the arrangement, was set at $6 billion. To reach that goal, the Pakistani government claimed it had secured roughly $4 billion in commitments from Gulf countries. The secret arms deal for Ukraine would allow Pakistan to add nearly another billion dollars to its balance sheet — if the U.S. would let the IMF in on the secret.

“It was at an impasse because of the remaining $2 billion,” said Rafiq, the Middle East Institute scholar. “So if that figure is accurate, the $900 million, that’s almost half of that. That’s pretty substantial in terms of that gap that had to be bridged.”

On June 29, a day before the original program was set to expire, the IMF made a surprise announcement that instead of extending the previous series of loans and releasing the next $1.1 billion installment, the bank would instead be entering an agreement — “called a Stand-By Arrangement” — with fewer strings attached, more favorable terms, and valued at $3 billion.

The agreement included the conditions that the currency would be allowed to float freely and energy subsidies would be withdrawn. The deal was finalized in July after Parliament approved the conditions, including a nearly 50 percent increase in the cost of energy.

Uzair Younus, director of the Pakistan Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, said that the IMF deal was critical to Pakistan’s short-term economic survival.

“Had that not happened, there would have been a full-blown economic meltdown in the country,” Younus said. “So it was a make-or-break moment.”

The question of how Pakistan overcame its financing obstacles, has remained a mystery even to those following the situation professionally. The IMF issues public accounting of its reviews, Rafiq noted, but doing so if the financing relates to secret military projects presents an unusual challenge.

“Pakistan is very strange, in many ways,” he said, “but I don’t know how a secret, covert, clandestine military program would figure into their calculations, because everything’s supposed to be open and by the books and all that.”

Imran Khan, Ukraine, and Pakistan’s Future

At the start of the Ukraine war, Pakistan was in a markedly different geopolitical and economic position. When the conflict began, Khan, at the time the prime minister, was in the air on the way to Moscow for a long-planned bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The visit outraged American officials.

As The Intercept previously reported, Lu, the senior State Department official, said in a meeting with then-Pakistani Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan two weeks after the invasion that it was the belief of the U.S. that Pakistan had taken a neutral position solely at Khan’s direction, adding that “all would be forgiven” if Khan was removed in the no-confidence vote. Since his ouster, Pakistan has firmly taken the side of the U.S. and Ukraine in the war.

Imran Khan addresses a rally in Pakistan in October 2022 (Source: Multipolarista)

The U.S., meanwhile, continues to deny that it put its thumbs on the scale of Pakistani democracy — for Ukraine or any other reason. At an off-the-record, virtual town hall with members of the Pakistani diaspora at the end of August, Lu’s deputy, Elizabeth Horst, responded to questions about The Intercept’s reporting on Lu’s meeting with the Pakistani ambassador.

“I want to take a moment to address disinformation about the United States’s role in Pakistani politics,” Horst said at the top of the call, audio of which was provided to The Intercept by an attendee. “We do not let propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation get in the way of any bilateral relationship, including our valued relationship with Pakistan. The United States does not have a position on one political candidate or one party versus another. Any claims to the contrary, including reports on the alleged cypher are false, and senior Pakistani officials themselves have acknowledged this isn’t true.”

Senior Pakistani officials, including former Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, have confirmed the authenticity of the cable, known internally as a cypher, published by The Intercept.

Van Hollen, in his press briefing with Pakistani journalists, took the same line as the State Department, saying that he had been assured by the administration that the U.S. did not interfere in Pakistani politics. In his interview with The Intercept, he clarified that he meant the U.S. did not engineer Khan’s ouster.

“I’m not disputing the accuracy of the cable,” Van Hollen said. “Look, I have no idea where the administration is on what their view is on the final result, but I do not read that [cable] to mean that the United States engineered his removal.”

After orchestrating Khan’s removal, the military embarked on a campaign to eradicate his political party through a wave of killings and mass detentions. Khan himself is currently imprisoned on charges of mishandling a classified document and facing some 150 additional charges — allegations widely viewed as a pretext to stop him from contesting future elections.

Horst, at the town hall, was also pressed as to why the U.S. has been so muted in response to the crackdown. She argued the U.S. had, in fact, spoken up on behalf of democracy.

“Look, I know many of you feel strongly and are very concerned about the situation in Pakistan. I’ve heard from you. Trust me when I say I see you, I hear from you. And I want to be responsive,” she said. “We do continue to speak up publicly and privately for Pakistan’s democracy.”

While Pakistan reels from the impact of IMF-directed austerity policies and the political dysfunction that followed Khan’s removal, its new military leaders have made lofty promises that foreign economic support will rescue the country. According to reports in the Pakistani publication Dawn, Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir recently told a gathering of Pakistani businessmen that the country could expect as much as $100 billion in new investment from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, hinting that there would be no more appeals to the IMF.

There is little evidence, however, that the Gulf nations are willing to come to Pakistan’s rescue. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, recently announced major investments and economic partnerships with India during a visit there for the G20 summit. Despite reports in the Pakistani press expressing hope that MBS would pay Pakistan a visit, none materialized, let alone any major new investment announcements.

The absence of other foreign support left Pakistan’s embattled military regime further dependent on the IMF, the U.S., and the production of munitions for the war in Ukraine to sustain itself through a crisis that shows no sign of resolution.

*

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First published on August 15, 2023

 

 

 

“Just a short time ago it would have seemed like a Quixotic adventure in the colonised, neocolonised, or even the imperialist nations themselves to make any attempt to create films of decolonisation that turned their back on or actively opposed the System.” — Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino – ‘Towards a Third Cinema’

From the short black and white films of the Lumiére brothers to the technically superb blockbusters of today, cinema has been analysed from every kind of social and political perspective. Yet, it is still a relatively young art, and its technical and narrative forms have made it a rich source of discussion and speculation, and one has the feeling that we are still only grappling with a crude understanding of its complexity.

‘The director gets first cut’ is a well-known statement that shows the business interest of the investors in making a profit or, at the very least, getting their money back. The ever-growing costs involved in making films have been an influential factor in their form and content.

There is no doubt that the realism of the reflected world in cinema fundamentally, consciously or unconsciously, reflects the structures of society itself. This is not always obvious, and commentary can be added to explain what is not instantly apparent from what is, after all, a visual medium, unlike in literature for example, where underlying societal hierarchies and structures can be explained as part of the narrative.

From a political perspective, the conservative forces that determine what films get made, publicised, and exhibited, also make it difficult to produce cinema that is opposed to the general status quo. Yet such films do get made from time to time. Even though we can see that films generally reflect the dominant order of society, there are also narratives that go beyond the conservative order to try and change it or, in some cases, even advocate overthrowing it.

The norm in visual art for centuries has been the representation of people who accept the hierarchies in society. In general, over the years the forms change but the content remains the same, right up to today’s modern cinema. Attempts made to create a new type of radical narrative in cinema history have produced some memorable works, but they have not managed to compete with the commercial, popular, ‘bread and circuses’, action-based, globalised contemporary cinema.

Throughout the twentieth century the social realist films of Frank Capra during the 1930s and 1940s, Italian neo-realism in the 1940s and 1950s, the Third cinema of the 1960s and 1970s were all attempts to go beyond the commercialisation of cinema and turn it into a force for social change.

The different ‘movements’ for change in cinema have tried to show the problem of class interests and who benefits from ‘the System’. The more radical films highlight problems of neo-colonialism and imperialism, and their aims range from exposing how elites operate and manipulate people, to producing ‘revolutionary cinema’ that seeks to inspire more profound change in society.

Why does cinema provide mass catharsis yet effect no real social change of social problems in society? What kinds of films make us conscious of our socio-economic predicament?

I will look at these questions about cinema from the perspective of class interests and elite manipulation of culture to maintain the status quo.

Linear Action: ‘Serving the Man’

Christ as Martyr and Master 
Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych, c. 1430–1440 by Jan van Eyck (1390–1441)

To refer back to the human predicament of slavery (in its different forms) I am using the same metaphor from my previous articles [see Origins of Violence and Resistance Culture] based on Jan van Eyck’s (c. 1390 – 1441) painting, Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych (c. 1430–1440) where we see Christ as ‘Martyr’ and ‘Master’:

“In Christianity the rulers had a religion that assured their objectives. The warring adventurism of the new rulers needed soldiers for their campaigns and slaves to produce their food and mine their metals for their armaments and wealth. Thus, Christ was portrayed as Martyr and Master. In his own crucifixion as Martyr he provided a brave example to the soldiers, and as Master he would reward or punish the slaves according to how well they had behaved.”

The ‘warriors’ and the ‘domestics’ are watched over by the ‘lord’ (the all-seeing eye). This basic scenario is common to much of cinema narratives from early cinema to today’s blockbusters. The ‘warrior’ is the active protagonist upon which the narrative is focused, while the domestics in general facilitate or impede the progress of the ‘warrior’ protagonist. The important point in this scenario is that the protagonist is ultimately working for the ‘man’, e.g., criminal gangs, mafia dons, the bourgeois government, the deep state, secret services etc. – to defend the state, not to overthrow it.

His/her role has become more complex over time, and he/she is used to maintain or expand the dominant position of the ‘lord’, or the all-seeing eye that surveys and controls the action. The ultimate holders of power are not necessarily present or seen but operate in the background controlling the action. The action contained within the film contains the range of sight of the ‘all-seeing eye’ but is presumed to ‘see’ before and after the film narrative. The action of the ‘warrior’ is linear because it does not change or threaten the position of the ‘lord’.

(1) Linear action (Illustration by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

Early Cinema

An early example of such a structure is the Bataille de boules de neige (Snow Fight) recorded by the Lumiére brothers in 1896. It is believed that the people throwing the snowballs at each other were from the local factory. A cyclist comes upon the scene, cycles into the centre of the group and is knocked off his bicycle by the snowball throwers and his hat falls on the ground. He gets up, grabs his bike, and cycles off without his hat. This short scene has all the elements of a movie: documentary (people throwing snowballs) combined with a narrative/story (cyclist cycles into scene and leaves), combined with drama/action (cyclist falls off his bicycle, loses his hat).

Thus, in this scenario the cyclist is the ‘warrior’ and the people throwing the snowballs from the local factory are the ‘domestics’. There is the interplay of the two worlds of the ‘warrior’ and the ‘domestics’ as the cyclist protagonist enters and leaves again in this short ‘story’ (he arrives / he falls off / he leaves). The ‘lord’ is not included in the film (except as the all-seeing eye of the camera itself).

Bataille de boules de neige (Snow Fight) (1896) short silent film produced by the Lumiére brothers. (See video here)

Italian Neo-Realism

The same type of action is played out in the later Italian Neo-Realist film, The Bicycle Thieves (1948). The protagonist meets with his wife telling her he needs to get a bicycle to secure his new job offer. He marches on ahead of her, only stopping when his wife (who is carrying two buckets of water) needs help to walk down a small incline, and then marches off forcefully again. As the ‘warrior’, he engages with the ‘domestic’ only when his help/action is needed but he is mainly concerned with his problem of securing a bike so he can secure a wage and an income for his family. The drudgery of her ‘domestic’ role is in sharp contrast to the ‘action’ of his linear ‘warrior’ role.

Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette) (1948) Italian neorealist drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica.

If a ‘domestic’ ever becomes active, he/she switches over to become a ‘warrior’ protagonist. Over time the ‘warriors’ expanded to include different ethnicities and sexualities. The ‘warriors’ are often alienated from the ‘domestics’ as they are often shown in cinema as a loner, undomesticated, and/or a whisky drinking hero.

Fundamentally, the ‘warrior’ is active for himself or for the needs of the elites but is never threatening to the system itself. This basic format can be seen repeatedly in films from early cowboy movies, James Bond, Mission Impossible (Ethan Hunt), Jack Reacher, The Matrix (Neo), John Wick, etc.

Dialectical Action: ‘Sticking It to the Man’ 

However, there are films where the ‘warrior’ narrative changes from a linear type of thinking to a dialectical consciousness whereby he/she slowly becomes aware of his/her entrapment, oppression, or enslavement. This awareness gradually develops until eventually the protagonist confronts the ‘lord’ and throws off his/her oppression. The power of the ‘all-seeing eye’ breaks down and the protagonist escapes or changes the world, while at the same time breaking the hold of the vanquished overlord.

(2) Dialectical Action (Illustration by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

The film The Truman Show (1998) depicts such a journey on a personal and philosophical level. As Truman Burbank becomes gradually aware of the limitations of his artificial world, the prospect of freedom is too powerful, and he decides to go through his dome door and leave the monitored world forever.  He is given the opportunity to talk directly to the ‘all-seeing eye’, his ‘lord’, Christof (the show’s creator and executive producer) but ultimately, he rejects Christof’s pleas to return to the ‘familiar’ world of total control. While this is not a political film, the dialectics of growing consciousness are well illustrated, in that returning to his previous unconscious state is an impossibility.

Over the years popular cinema has produced films of varying degrees of opposition to the boss, the lord, or the ‘the System’, for example, Salt of the Earth (1954), Spartacus (1960), The Battle of Algiers (1966), Che (2008), The White Tiger (2021), etc.

First, Second and Third Cinema

Poster for the film Spartacus (1960) directed by Stanley Kubrick.

The idea of using cinema to promote social change has been around for a long time. The social realism in the films of Frank Capra, or the cinema of the Italian Neo-Realists tend to represent the reality of poverty, but not necessarily the kind of social consciousness needed to question the hierarchy. In other words, they reflect the system but do not change it.

The Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino (members of the Grupo Cine Liberación) reflected on these types of problems when they wrote their manifesto ‘Hacia un tercer cine’ (‘Toward a Third Cinema’) in the late 1960s:

“Solanas and Getino’s manifesto considers ‘First Cinema’ to be the Hollywood production model that idealizes bourgeois values to a passive audience through escapist spectacle and individual characters. ‘Second Cinema’ is the European art film, which rejects Hollywood conventions but is centred on the individual expression of the auteur director. Third Cinema is meant to be non-commercialized, challenging Hollywood’s model. Third Cinema rejects the view of cinema as a vehicle for personal expression, seeing the director instead as part of a collective; it appeals to the masses by presenting the truth and inspiring revolutionary activism.”

The aim of Third Cinema was to go straight for the jugular, and to try and unite ‘Third World’ peoples experiencing oppression by depicting subjects in such a way as to inspire critical thinking and a revolutionary attitude. Both form and content were affected by Third Cinema principles, by emphasising the drama of everyday life over dramatic narratives, and by using amateur styles and not relying on expensive action set pieces. Examples are: Vidas Secas (Brazil, 1963), La Hora de Los Hornos(Argentina, 1968), Memorias del Subdesarrollo (Cuba, 1968), Antonio das Mortes (Brazil, 1969), Blood of the Condor (Bolivia, 1969), Mandabi (Senegal, 1969), México, la revolución congelada (Argentina, 1971), etc.

Cover of La Hora de Los Hornos (Argentina, 1968) directed by Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas. 

However, if the aim is to depict a growing socio-political consciousness, resulting in radical or revolutionary change or even an attempt at such change, then the films of First and Second Cinema can be just as effective as the films of Third cinema. The heroic, dramatic style of Hollywood in Spartacus(1960) made for a popular, successful film. The difficulty lies with the conservative, elite control of an expensive medium, coupled with elite control of conservative content.

Second Cinema is often described as European art cinema, which in the case of socio-political content is perceived to blunt any political message. Yet, the ‘art’ effects used in The Battle of Algiers (1966) were perceived to add to its sense of historical authenticity:

“[The writer and director] Pontecorvo and cinematographer Marcello Gatti filmed [The Battle of Algiers] in black and white and experimented with various techniques to give the film the look of newsreel and documentary film. The effect was so convincing that American releases carried a notice that “not one foot” of newsreel was used.”

That authenticity added to its negative reception and temporary banning in France, yet acclaim among academics and continued popularity to this day.

Image: The Battle of Algiers (1966) Italian-Algerian war film co-written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. U.S. theatrical release poster.

The negative side of Second Cinema comes down to what Solanas and Getino described as its inability to go beyond being merely the ‘progressive’ wing of Establishment cinema. They write:

“The most daring attempts of those film-makers who strove to conquer the fortress of official cinema ended, as Jean-Luc Godard eloquently put it, with the filmmakers themselves ‘trapped inside the fortress.’”

Thus, the strictures of Second Cinema were believed to have led to the concept of a militant new Third cinema that would develop new styles, forms and means of production and distribution that would break down the fortress walls.

There is no doubt that the expense and control of distribution in the past led to the frustration of radical filmmakers and their desire to overcome these difficulties with various alternative models of filmmaking and distribution. However, times have changed and the rise of cheaper digital cameras, editing software, and the internet itself as a means of distribution have changed the accessibility of filmmaking and film viewing. Films can be made now using phones and viewed using phones. Life experience in the ‘system’ can be turned into art by almost anyone now. The question is: will such contemporary cinema simply supply more reflections of the status quo, or will it rise above the media cacophony and become a new cinematic force for radical change?

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.

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

Featured image: Che (2008 film) directed by Steven Soderbergh.

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With the emerging multipolar world, Russia has to ditch its decades-long peripheral engagement with Africa. In practical terms, the first Russia-Africa summit was to raise relations unto a more quantitative level, especially promoting frequent interaction and boosting presence in economic spheres. Winning Africa’s sympathy through hyperbolic pledges and promises, tonnes of bilateral agreements most of which have largely remained unfulfilled, would not be enough in this competitive geopolitical era. Beyond Sochi and St. Petersburg summits, however, policy proposals until now lack effective visible actions. Critics say Russia, most probably, needs to show some degree of assertiveness.

During the past few years, Russia’s geopolitical influence has already been heard on the global stage. It claims to be pursuing an integrative multipolar relations with friendly countries around the world, including those in Africa. But Russia is still not a popular holiday destination for Africa’s political elite, corporate business leaders and middle-class. The politicians and corporate business leaders highly prefer to spend their vacation in the United States and Europe, some Asian destinations are increasingly becoming their preferential choice. That trend is unlikely to change, it will remain as such for the next decades.

After the first symbolic Russia-Africa summit in the Black Sea city of Sochi in October 2019, both Russia and Africa adopted a joint declaration – in fact a comprehensive document which outlines various expertly well-phrased parameters for uplifting cooperation into a new qualitative stage.

In order to boost effective economic interests and to foster cooperation, frequent interaction is therefore necessary. The frequency of interaction should not only be established during summits, but some basic strategic steps and measures are necessary to encourage simply holiday travels to both regions. These are significantly missing in the current relations between Russia and Africa. Critics often say Russia is contributing enormously to its own so-termed isolation (a segregated world), it closes its doors especially when there are huge opportunities to develop first-class tourism.

With current geopolitical situation, Africa’s middle-class estimated at 380 million still have other suitable alternative holiday destinations. Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi beach or Crimea are not their desired priority for spending ‘simple’ vacations. Russian tour operators acknowledge that there is nothing such as African tourism to Russia. On the opposite side, Morocco, Egypt, Seychelles, South Africa and Zanzibar are the few African destinations popular among Russian vacationers.

The second summit declaration on 28 July 2023 in Saint Petersburg, points to building on the historical and time-tested friendly ties between the Russian Federation and African States. Here Russian authorities only dream of official state visit by heads of African states and ministers as an essential pillar of their version of multipolar world.

Since the first symbolic Sochi summit held 2019, very little has happened on the tourism, social and cultural sides. Russia and Africa have been discussing how best to explore untapped resources, the possibilities of promoting cooperation in the field of tourism, dissemination of information on tourism opportunities of the Russian Federation and African States.

Meanwhile, Russia and Africa have agreed to promote exchanges of delegations, athletes, teams, coaches and other specialists in the field of sports training. And further down, take steps toward ensuring respect for the rights of journalists and promoting the development of media outlets. While reiterating professional training programmes, academic and student exchanges et cetera, all these have, in practical terms, remained largely as official documents stacked in computerized files and would later be pushed into electronic historical archives.

For the past few years since Sochi, the first declaration remains tacitly as a declaration. The basic question often asked is for what purposes are the summit declarations. Worse, series of speeches full of western confrontation and juicy-coated remarks are seemingly for linguistic colouration. “Russia is ready to build multifaceted relations with Africa. If Russia Wins, Africa Wins!” remarked by the Current Chairman of the African Union, Comoros President Azali Assoumani during the late July St. Petersburg summit.

Early September 2023, local Russian media abuzzed with latest information emerging from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Russia plans ‘visa-free regime’ with all African countries, referring to the fact that it was within the framework of Russia and Africa’s action plan adopted at the second summit in St. Petersburg.

Our investigations and research indicate that Russia has visa-free agreements with six African countries. And visa-free regime only applied to African countries that signed agreements with Foreign Ministry. Within the agreements, only holders of diplomatic passports are permitted under this consular agreement. Moreover, the point on developing or facilitating work, easing contacts with African countries, between ordinary citizens of Russia and Africa still need visas to travel both ways.

According to sources monitored, agreements have to be signed after successful negotiation with Russian authorities. One source confirmed in an interview with me that Russia has an agreement on visa-free travel for holders of diplomatic service passports with 32 countries on the continent, and yet refused to make public and to the media the official list of approved African countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and the African leaders adopted the final declaration of the second Russia-Africa summit. An action plan of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum for the period 2023-2026 and a number of other documents were also adopted.

In addition, several agreements, contracts and other documents related to various areas of cooperation between Russia and Africa were approved on the sidelines of the forum and the summit.

“We highly appreciate the results of our joint work at the summit. I am confident that the results achieved will form a good basis for further deepening the Russian-African partnership in the interests of prosperity and well-being of our peoples,” Putin said in a speech posted to official Kremlin website.

Putin was pleased with the results of the summit, which was held in a “constructive and very friendly atmosphere.” Russia and the Africa have confirmed their position on the formation of a multipolar world order.

After the first Russia-Africa summit held in Sochi (2019), and within the framework of the joint declaration that was adopted, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation created a Secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum. With hopes for a comprehensive and enduring collaboration on long-term programs, Secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum has since then been networking for potential Russian, African and international organisations with the aim of effectively promoting Russia’s economic interests in Africa and to foster mutually beneficial cooperation with African countries.

According to the stipulated rules and regulations, the Russia-Africa summit will be held every three years. In the period between the Russia-Africa summits, the mechanism of dialogue partnership will operate, regular political consultations will continue through the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Russia, African countries and the leadership of the African Union.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), Weekly Blitz and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. He researches Eurasia, Russia, Africa and BRICS. His focused interest areas include geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development questions relating to Africa. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

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Menschen, die sich während der Coronakrise dazu entschieden haben, auf die Impfung zu verzichten, sind in der Regel in der Lage, hierfür vielfältige Gründe anzuführen. Wer es partout vermeiden will, sich mit diesen Sachgründen auseinanderzusetzen, muss andere Ursachen für ihre Impfskepsis finden. Das von der Europäischen Union mit einem Millionenbetrag geförderte Projekt JITSUVAX differenziert 11 „Einstellungsursachen“, die dazu führen, dass Menschen offiziellen Gesundheitsempfehlungen misstrauen. Schon der von der japanischen Kampfkunst Jiu-Jitsu abgeleitete Name zeigt, worum es wirklich geht: den Gegner unschädlich machen, in dem man ihn diskreditiert und als psychisch krank brandmarkt, anstatt sich in der Sache mit seinen Argumenten auseinanderzusetzen.

Einführung in die Thematik

Die Mitglieder der Europäischen Union leisten „ganze Arbeit“ und wollen wohl nichts dem Zufall überlassen. Andere Organisationen wie die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) schließen sich an.

Nachdem vor kurzem bekannt wurde, dass der Digital Service Act (DSA) für sehr große Plattformen und Suchmaschinen in Kraft getreten ist, der die Macht von Internetmonopolisten einschränken und Möglichkeiten politischer Zensur erweitern soll (1), hat nun der bekannte deutsche Wirtschaftsjournalist Dr. Norbert Häring auf seinem Blog darüber berichtet, dass das EU-Projekt „JITSUVAX“ mit einer Laufzeit von vier Jahren mit 3,1 Millionen Euro gefördert wird, um psychologische Methoden zur Bekämpfung von Impfskepsis zu entwickeln (2). Der Artikel mit dem Titel „JITSUVAX: Psychologische Kampfkunst gegen Leute, die bei mRNA-Impfstoffen skeptisch sind“ erschien inzwischen auch auf der unabhängigen Internetplattform apolut als Standpunkt (3).

Härings Beurteilung des Projekts hört sich so an:

„‚Wissenschaftler‘, die sich von der Regierung bezahlen lassen, um faule psychologische Tricks zu entwickeln, mit denen die Regierung die Bürger manipulieren kann, sind eine Schande für die Wissenschaft. Sie fügen der Demokratie großen Schaden zu“ (4).

Persönlich denke ich hier nicht nur an die Wissenschaft und Demokratie, sondern auch an die unzähligen Forschungsergebnisse und Artikel über die internationale Corona-Politik und die teilweise sogar tödlich verlaufenden Covid-Impfungen. Unter anderem denke ich an die engagierten Beiträge des kanadischen Wirtschaftsprofessors Michel Chossudovsky, Herausgeber und Direktor des „Centre for Research on Globalization“ und Betreiber der Webseite „globalresearch.ca“ sowie an die neue EU-Verordnung, die ehrliche Aufklärung in naher Zukunft als mutwillige und schädliche Desinformation charakterisieren und ahnden will.

EU-Projekt der Universität Bristol

Die Universität Bristol leitet seit zwei Jahren ein EU-Projekt, das psychologische Methoden zur Überwindung von Impfablehnung entwickelt. Cornelia Betsch, Psychologin und Professorin für Gesundheitskommunikation, leitet die deutsche Abteilung des Fünfländerprojekts mit dem Namen „JITSUVAX“.

Für den Publizisten Häring ist das ganze Projekt fragwürdig, weil Menschen, die gegenüber experimentellen mRNA-Impfungen skeptisch seien, als Gegner behandelt und ihnen niedere Motive und unlautere Mittel unterstellt würden. Als Methode setze man auf psychologische Manipulation.

Diese „Manipulationswissenschaftler“, so Häring, identifizieren elf problematische Persönlichkeitsmerkmale bei Impfskeptikern, auf denen die Impfskepsis beruhe; unter anderem: Verschwörungsglaube, Misstrauen gegen Autoritäten, religiöse Einstellungen und Beharren auf Autonomie. Für sie existieren als Gründe für Impfskepsis nur psychische Defekte. Legitime sachliche Gründe für die Ablehnung der Impfung haben diese sogenannten Forscher nicht beschrieben (5).

Zum Inhalt des Projekts schreibt Häring wörtlich:

„Es erforscht und verbreitet psychologische Tricks, die Ärzte anwenden sollen, um Impfzurückhaltung zu überwinden“ (6).

Vorschlag einer Impfpflicht zur Befriedung der Gesellschaft

Mit Datum vom 15. November 2022 schreibt Häring in seinem Blog:

„Regierungsnahe ‚Wissenschaftler‘ schlagen allen Ernstes Impfpflicht zur Befriedung der Gesellschaft vor. Eine allgemeine Impfpflicht würde die Polarisierung der Gesellschaft abbauen helfen, schreiben fünf deutsche Sozialwissenschaftler in einem Aufsatz in der Zeitschrift Nature Human Behaviour. Wie sie darauf kommen? Mit Wissenschaft hat es nichts zu tun, aber viel mit Voreingenommenheit, Tricks und akademischer Lebensferne.“

Häring bringt dazu ein Beispiel:

„Wenn also jemand zu dem Schluss kommt, das eigene Kind nicht gegen Covid impfen zu lassen, weil sich herausgestellt hat, dass die Impfung nicht gegen Ansteckung und Weitergabe hilft, und weil die Gefahr von schweren Nebenwirkungen mindestens für Kinder größer ist als die Gefahr schwerer Gesundheitsschäden durch Covid, dann muss als Ursache einer der elf psychischen Defekte identifiziert werden. Denn die Möglichkeit, dass die Behörden einen Fehler gemacht haben, und die Impfempfehlung für Kinder und Säuglinge falsch war, ist ausgeschlossen. Für die Manipulationswissenschaftler ist die Wahrheit ein flexibles Ding, das sich immer danach richtet, was die Behörden gerade sagen“ (7).

Weitere namhafte Organisationen schließen sich unheilvollen Plänen an

Unter der Überschrift „WHO-Mitglieder beschließen Resolution zur Manipulation der öffentlichen Meinung“ schreibt Häring auf seinem Blog mit Datum vom 31. Mai 2023:

„Auf der Weltgesundheitsversammlung in Genf haben die Mitgliedstaaten eine Resolution verabschiedet, die alle Regierungen und die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) auffordert, die Verhaltenswissenschaften verstärkt und systematischer zu nutzen, um ‚gesundheitsbezogene Fehlinformationen und Desinformationen‘ zu konterkarieren und die Nachfrage nach Impfstoffen sicherzustellen“(8).

Am 31. Januar 2023 schreibt Häring zur Überschrift „WHO rät Regierungen, die alles Vertrauen aufgebraucht haben, Schleichwerber anzuheuern“:

„In einem von der WHO empfohlenen Artikel in Foreign Affairs raten Gesundheitswissenschaftler und -funktionäre den Regierenden, denen große Teile der Bevölkerungen nicht mehr vertrauten, in vertrauenswürdige Institutionen und Personen zu ‚investieren‘, damit diese für Pandemiemaßnahmen werben“ (9).

Wissenschaftliche Aufklärung als Desinformation: Schöne neue Welt!

Sollte die wertvolle wissenschaftliche Aufklärung in naher Zukunft als schädliche Desinformation charakterisiert und geahndet und Covid-Impfskeptiker als psychisch krank diskreditiert werden, dann lässt Aldous Huxleys „Schöne neue Welt“ („Brave New World“) grüßen!

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Dieser Artikel wurde ursprünglich im Manova-Magazin veröffentlicht.

Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe. Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer in der Erwachsenenbildung. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Für seine Verdienste um Serbien bekam er 2021 von den Universitäten Belgrad und Novi Sad den Republik-Preis „Kapitän Misa Anastasijevic“ verliehen.

Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.   

Anmerkungen

(1) https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/458082.digital-services-act-eu-regeln-für-big-in-kraft.html

(2) https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/7GU4gc

(3) https://apolut.net/jitsuvax-psychologische-kampfkunst-gegen-mrna-skeptiker-von-norbert-haering/

(4) A. a. O.

(5) A. a. O.

(6) A. a. O.

(7) A. a. O.

(8) A. a. O.

(9) A. a. O. 

Das vorgestellte Bild stammt vom Manova-Magazin

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2021 July – (above photo) 28 year old Japanese woman develops rapidly progressive Alopecia after 1st Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.

Jan. 2023 (Martora et al) – 7 yo girl develops Alopecia.

7 year old girl had 2 doses of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. 20 days later she developed erythematous and vescicolous unilateral lesions localized to the trunk with a burning sensation. She was diagnosed with alopecia areata and herpes zoster.

She did not take any drugs and there was no other plausible explanation for the findings.

2023 Jan (Matsuda et al) – 37 year old Japanese woman

37 yo woman developed low grade persistent fever on day 13 after Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.

She noticed coin-sized hair loss on day 22, and it became widespread within 1 week. The patient’s hair mostly recovered leaving only one oval bald patch on day 310 with topical corticosteroid therapy alone.

2022 Sep (Deborah Lin et al) – 57 year old woman

57 year old woman developed multiple diffuse areas of patchy hair loss one day after her 1st Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.

The patches progressed to 50% scalp involvement.

2022 Sep – Melbourne, Australia – Kerry

2022 Apr – Kevan Taylor

2022 Apr – Sydney, Australia, 40 year old Samio Elsherbiny

Had Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine on July 24, 2021. Less than 2 weeks later, he started noticing chunks of his beard falling out, then his eyebrows and then waking up to chunks of hair on his pillow in the morning.

2022 Feb (Marco May Lee et al) – 80 year old man 

80 year old man had 1st dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and 7 days later developed rapidly progressive loss of facial hair and widespread involvement of the entire scalp

He had a 2nd mRNA vaccine dose and reported worsening.

At 2 month follow-up he had alopecia areata totalis.

2022 Jan (Gallo et al) – 31 year old man, healthcare worker 

31 year old man had 2nd Pfizer dose and 3 weeks later presented with intense hair loss and appearance of numerous patches of alopecia.

This was the first report of Alopecia after Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in the literature.

2021 Aug (Iwata et al) – 40 year old Japanese woman

40 yo Japanese woman had rapidly progressive alopecia after 1st dose of Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.

She lost her head hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, axillary hair, pubic hair, and hair on the arms and legs. She again received the second dose of the same vaccine a month later and there was no additional event except for a mild fever for a few days.

Anonymous – 20 year old woman after 2nd dose of Moderna

Fun conspiracy theory

My Take… 

Pfizer causes Alopecia. Pfizer treats Alopecia.

Alopecia is also seen with AstraZeneca and Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines.

“Alopecia areata (AA) is a patchy autoimmune nonscarring hair loss.” (Abdalla et al)

WHO Vigiaccess records 1254 cases of Alopecia areata due to COVID-19 vaccines.

“Alopecia areata (AA) is a T lymphocyte-mediated autoimmune condition characterized by hair loss due to an inflammatory response targeting the hair follicle. Recent reports have suggested that COVID-19 may trigger a variety of autoimmune conditions, including AA” (2022 Feb, Scollan et al)

“Alopecia areata (AA) is a patchy nonscarring alopecia with underlying autoimmunity against hair follicles with resultant dystrophy of the hair follicle at the anagen phase of growth. Severe forms of AA include alopecia totalis (all scalp hair) and universalis (entire body). Despite multiple underlying pathophysiological mechanisms, there are two well-established primary explanations. The immune dysregulation with loss of immune privilege of hair follicles and genetic predisposition. Other factors include infections, drugs, and vaccines with consequent immune dysregulation and development of AA.” (2022 Aug, Abdalla et al)

ALOPECIA MEANS IT’S WORKING – “further studies will certainly clarify whether the development of alopecia areata or other forms of immune-mediated reactionscould represent a positive prognostic factor regarding immune protection from SARS-CoV-2” (2022 Jan, Gallo et al)

No, it’s just vaccine damage.

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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.

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The summit meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has led to a surge of pearl clutching among the U.S. foreign policy establishment and its allies in the corporate news media. Warnings are growing that the meeting signals greater military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang, which portends an increased security threat to the United States and its allies in both Europe and East Asia. Having made that diagnosis, though, the analysts have very few ideas for a cure or even a modestly beneficial treatment.

Those issuing the alarms also fail to grasp that the Biden administration and the overall foreign policy blob have no one to blame but themselves for this development. The unifying factor in most alliances is the existence of a common enemy. In this case, the common enemy for Russia and The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is the United States and its compliant military allies. U.S. leaders have pursued clumsy, tone-deaf policies toward both Moscow and Pyongyang, thereby creating a powerful incentive for them to boost their security cooperation.

The United States and NATO engaged in one provocation after another toward Russia, with NATO expansion and rising Western arms shipments to Ukraine being the culmination. Such an aggressive intrusion into a region that Moscow considered not only as its rightful sphere of influence but Russia’s core security zone was bound to turn out badly, as perceptive analysts had warned for years. Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was the bitter fruit of that policy.

U.S. officials and pro-NATO propagandists have insisted that the invasion had nothing to do with Russian fears about the expansion of the alliance. However, recent statements by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have fatally undermined that narrative. He now concedes that NATO expansion was a major factor in the Kremlin’s decision to launch the February invasion.

Instead of retreating from a policy that had produced disastrous results, the United States and its allies drastically escalated the confrontation with Moscow. The alliance is waging a proxy war against Russian forces in Ukraine and a comprehensive effort to make Russia a diplomatic and economic pariah throughout the world. That effort has been ineffectual, especially in the so-called Global South, but the mere attempt has poisoned Russia-U.S. relations, sending them to their worst level since the chilliest days of the Cold War.

Putin and the Russian elite now regard the United States as an implacable enemy determined to destroy their country as a meaningful, independent international player. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s indiscreet admission that NATO’s principal goal in the Ukraine war was not to defend Ukraine but to weaken Russia to the point that it could no longer pose a threat to any country reinforced Moscow’s perception that Washington had a malignant policy agenda.

Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the Kremlin is seeking economic and military allies anywhere it can find them.  Even before the latest outreach to the DPRK, Russian leaders were moving to strengthen ties with other countries that are willing to resist Washington global hegemony. The level of cooperation between Russia and Iran has soared since the onset of the Ukraine war, with Tehran providing (among other things) drones to assist Moscow’s military capabilities in Ukraine. Even more significant is the mounting strategic cooperation between Russia and China. Not only are the two countries (along with others) working together to erode Washington’s global economic and financial primacy, the level of bilateral military collaboration has spiked. Joint military exercises have taken place on several occasions over the past two years. Both the pace and scope of such war games also is increasing.

Given the overall atmosphere of intense hostility between the United States and Russia, it is hardly surprising that Russian leaders would find the DPRK as a valuable partner. North Korea has an extensive and expanding capacity to produce conventional weapons, while Russia faces the danger of a growing drain on its own stocks because of the Ukraine war. In return for boosting weapons shipments to Russia, Pyongyang wants financial aid from Moscow along with assistance for the DPRK’s missile and nuclear programs.

Just as Washington has given Russia ample incentives to pursue strategic cooperation with North Korea, it has given Pyongyang such incentives to work with Moscow. After some promising developments during Donald Trump’s administration to ease U.S. tensions with Pyongyang, U.S. policy has reverted to the norm of past decades. The Biden administration’s policy toward North Korea has been little more than a stale rehash of those failed stances.  Washington continues to issue its pointless demand that the DPRK abandon its nuclear weapons program in exchange for vague promises of subsequent sanctions relief and progress toward a normal relationship.

Trump and Kim meet Sunday before Trump became first US president to step on North Korean territory. (White House Photo)

Meanwhile, military cooperation between the United States and South Korea (as well as between the United States and Japan) has noticeably increased. For the first time since the early 1980s, a U.S. ballistic missile submarine has docked in South Korea. Such actions make Kim and his associates extremely nervous.

The Biden administration’s policies toward both North Korea and Russia constitute a failure of foreign policy 101. A cardinal rule of a smart, effective policy is to avoid driving disparate adversaries together. In the years before the onset of the Ukraine crisis, Moscow was trying to distance itself from Kim’s regime and its behavior. The Kremlin had even signed on to U.S-led international sanctions against Pyongyang. For its part, the DPRK was seeking a more normal relationship with the United States. Washington’s abrasive, incompetent moves have sharply reversed both trends.

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Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute.  He also held various senior policy posts during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute.  Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,200 articles on international affairs.  His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).

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GR Editor’s Note

There is a Double Speak: While the G77 Calls for “Reform of the Financial System”, what they fail to acknowledge is that many of the heads of state and government of the Global South have not only endorsed the Neoliberal agenda, they are directly or indirectly controlled by the Washington Consensus.

Brazil: Luis Ignacio da Silva

This certainly applies to Lula Ignacio da Silva from the outset of his presidency. The first thing he did was to hand over the management of his country’s Central Bank to FleetBoston and the State investment Banco do Brasil to Citibank. 

“A former CEO/president [Henrique Meirelles] of one of America’s largest financial institutions (and a US citizen) controls Brazil’s Central Bank and sets the macroeconomic and monetary agenda for a country of more than 200 Million people. 

It is called a Coup d’Etat… by Wall Street.” 

Lula was then praised both by Wall Street and the IMF: Lula is “Our best president” according to IMF Managing Director Heinrich Koeller (2003)

Let us not forget that Lula in June 2004, following a request from Washington, sent Brazilian troops to Haiti in the wake of the CIA sponsored Coup d’état directed against the democratically elected president Bertrand Aristide. This was an illegal occupation under the auspices of The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). The UN Secretariat was complicit. 

Military Governments in the Sahel. Trained in the US

With regard to the leaders of the military governments of  Burkino Fasso, Mali and Niger, they received their military training in the U.S. They are in liaison with the Pentagon. Colonel Assimi Goita, (the architect of several military coups) who represented The Republic of Mali at the Havana G77 venue was not only trained in the US, he actively collaborated with the U.S. Army Special Forces (“Green Berets”). 

The Role of the UN: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres

UNSG Antonio Guterres is the epitome of ambiguity and DoubleSpeak, particularly in relation to the dramatic social and economic crisis affecting the Global South. 

“Poverty is increasing and hunger is growing… the conclusion is clear, the world is failing developing countries.” says UNSG General Antonio Guterres in his opening presentation at the G77 venue in Havana.

What has Guterres done to reverse the tide of global poverty? He is not only a faithful appointee of the US government, his 2030 UN Sustainable Development Project is being carried out in coordination with Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum (WEF), which represents the interests of the global financial establishment.

A strategic partnership was signed in 2019 at a meeting held at UN headquarters between UN Secretary-General António Guterres and WEF Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab “to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Signing of the WEF-UN Partnership 

What should have been debated by the G77 in Havana is the nature of this insidious WEF-UN partnership, which is in derogation of the UN Charter. It’s a neoliberal agenda to the nth degree on behalf of “Big Money”, to the obvious detriment of the Global South. It is part and parcel of the WEF’s “Great Reset”:

“The UN-Forum partnership will focus on aligning financial systems and accelerating finance flows toward the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Collaboration will seek to build a shared understanding of sustainable investing, especially in small island developing States, least developed countries and landlocked developing countries, and identify and take forward solutions to increase long-term SDG investments” (emphasis added)

While Guterres refers rhetorically to the failed “global systems and structures”, he is visibly involved in “aligning financial systems” to the detriment of heavily indebted developing countries, which are the victims of U.S. dollarization. 

“Failing developing countries”? Guterres has endorsed on behalf of the United Nations, (in coordination with the Bretton Woods institutions), the continued imposition of  “IMF strong economic medicine” resulting in mass poverty as well as recurrent famines throughout the Global South. 

India

While India historically has been a powerful voice of the Global South, Narendra Modi’s economic policies consist in  promoting privatization and foreign investment, with the support of  USAID and the World Bank. The funds dedicated to poverty-alleviation have been significantly reduced. Not surprisingly, Modi “decided to scale down” India’s participation in  the G77 Havana venue. 

Is the so-called emerging “Multipolar World” a reality or a fiction?  

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 18, 2023

*** 

G77 Rejects “Digital Monopolies”,

Calls for “Reform” of the Financial System

by

Gabriel Vera Lopes

In the final declaration, the G77+China Summit highlighted the importance of technology for development, the impacts of climate change, and called for a reform of the international economic system. The event ended on Saturday September 16 in Havana, the capital of Cuba, and was attended by heads of state from Latin America, Africa, and Asia including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, as well as United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and diplomats and delegations from more than 100 countries.

The summit is the largest event of countries from the Global South within the United Nations (UN).

“We stress the urgent need for a comprehensive reform of the international financial architecture and a more inclusive and coordinated approach to global financial governance, with greater emphasis on cooperation between countries, notably by increasing the representation of developing countries in global decision-making and policy-making bodies that will contribute to increasing the capacities of developing countries to access and develop science, technology and innovation,” says the Havana Declaration.

The summit’s final declaration also criticizes “digital monopolies” and “other unfair practices that hinder the technological development of developing countries”.

The text also attacks “sanctions” and “coercive economic actions” against developing countries.

“We emphasize that such actions not only undermine the principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter and international law, but also seriously impede the advancement of science, technology and innovation and the full realization of economic and social development, particularly in developing countries.”

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel stressed at the opening of the summit on Friday September 16 that one of the aims of the event was to seek common positions so that the countries of the Global South could take their demands to other international forums. On the same day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out that “global systems and structures have failed” the countries of the Global South.

President Lula on Saturday September 16 criticized the sanctions imposed by the United States against Cuba, defended the reformulation of the global governance system and also questioned technology companies. 

“It is particularly significant that, at this time of great geopolitical transformations, this summit is being held here in Havana. Cuba has been an advocate of fairer global governance and is even the victim of an illegal economic embargo. Brazil is against any unilateral coercive measure. We reject Cuba’s inclusion on the list of states that sponsor terrorism,” said the Brazilian head of state.

“The South can no longer bear the dead weight of all the misfortunes”

The Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Group of 77 (G77) and China began on Friday September 15. The opening ceremony was preceded by an excerpt from Fidel Castro’s speech at the “first Summit of the South”, held in 2000, also in Cuba. The opening speeches were then given by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres.

At the start of his inaugural speech, the Cuban president emphasized the importance of the group, which currently has 134 members:

“Today we are two-thirds of the UN’s members, home to 80% of the world’s population,” he said.

Díaz-Canel also paid tribute to former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, recalling that he used to say that “we presidents go from summit to summit, while the peoples go from abyss to abyss.” He called for joint efforts to coordinate joint actions between the countries of the global South in order to “change the rules of the game” and achieve the “pending democratization of the system of international relations”.

“It is the peoples of the South who suffer most from poverty, hunger, misery, deaths from curable diseases, illiteracy, human displacement and other consequences of underdevelopment,” said Díaz-Canel. He described the international economic order as “unjust and ecologically unsustainable”.

He also said that “this will be an austere summit”, since in Cuba “we lack many things, but we have an abundance of feelings of friendship, solidarity and fraternity.” He denounced the fact that “Cuba is literally surrounded by a blockade that has lasted six decades and all the difficulties that derive from this siege, which has now been reinforced.” He stressed that Cuba “is not the only one suffering from this unjust world order.”

Describing the global situation, the Cuban president said that “We are traveling on the same ship, even if some are the passengers and others the servants. The only way for this world ship not to end up like the ‘Titanic’ is through collaboration.”

Díaz-Canel questioned the international patent system and made a special complaint about international military spending and the irrationality of the fact that these resources cannot be used to improve the living conditions of the majority.

“Estimates indicate that 9% of world military spending could finance adaptation to climate change in 10 years, and 7% would be enough to cover the cost of universal vaccination against the pandemic,” he estimated.

In the opening speech of UN Secretary General Guterres, he started by saying that the countries of the Global South are “caught in a web of global crises”.

“Poverty is increasing and hunger is growing. Prices are rising, debt is exorbitant and climate disasters are becoming more frequent,” said Guterres. “Global systems and structures have failed them,” adding that “the conclusion is clear: the world is failing developing countries.”

The UN Secretary-General noted that in recent decades, the G77 countries and China “have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and have come together in the United Nations in search of global solutions and solidarity.”

“To change this, we need action at the national level to ensure good governance, mobilize resources, and prioritize sustainable development. And we need action at the global level that respects national ownership, with the aim of building an international system that defends human rights and looks after the common interest,” he said.

In this sense, Guterres recognized that “many current global institutions reflect a bygone era.” He highlighted the need to update the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Importance of the Summit

The summit takes place a few days before the opening of the 78th UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday September 19. It is hoped that the countries meeting in Havana will be able to agree on common positions to be defended at the assembly.

Although the UN General Assembly does not have a binding character that obliges member countries to adopt its declarations, several experts emphasize the importance of the 134 countries that currently make up the G77 + China coordinating joint positions as a way of putting pressure on the most powerful countries.

Claudia Marin, from Cuba’s International Policy Research Center, noted that “many of the countries that make up the G77 + China have gained enormous international weight in the last two decades, as in the case of those that make up the BRICS, and this means that the countries of the Global South as a whole have greater weight in their demands.”

However, Marin stressed in an interview with Brasil de Fato that “it will only be possible to build a fairer international system if the weight of these emerging countries can be articulated with the number of countries from the Global South through a greater degree of South-South collaboration”.

Diplomatic Victory Against the Blockade

The G77 Summit of Heads of State and Government is being held in Cuba just days after US President Joe Biden extended the law regulating the blockade against Cuba for another year. A ritual that both Democrats and Republicans have been repeating year after year for more than six decades. Cuba is currently the only state subject to US trade restrictions under the Trading with the Enemy Act, although it is not the only one to suffer unilateral sanctions from Washington.

Every year since 1992, Cuba has presented a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly on the need to suspend the US blockade. Since then, the majority of member states have always voted in favor of the document. This year, the vote is expected to be repeated.

According to several experts, the fact that delegations from all over the world have arrived in Havana to take part in the summit demonstrates the enormous diplomatic capacity that Cuba has managed to build.

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This is based on reports published in Portuguese on Brasil de Fato. 

Featured image: Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the host and president of the G77+ group, addresses the summit. Photo: Presidencia Cuba

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*** 

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared on Sunday that in spite of wanting “quick peace,” the West should prepare for “a long war.” The West has conceded that Ukraine’s offensive against Russia is not likely to succeed.

That means more war propaganda will be administered and more money and equipment will be sent to Ukraine. The rulers are going to tell us that this will quicken the pace of the war, but we know by now it won’t. It’ll only prolong it and make the outcomes for those in Ukraine and Russia much worse.

According to a report by RT, while Stoltenberg insisted that he still supports President Vladimir Zelensky’s goal of a military victory over Russia, he says it’ll be long and drawn out. 

“Most wars last longer than expected when they first begin,” Stoltenberg said in an interview with Germany’s Funke media group. “Therefore we must prepare ourselves for a long war in Ukraine.”

“We are all wishing for a quick peace,” Stoltenberg said. “But at the same time, we must recognize: if President Zelensky and the Ukrainians stop fighting, their country will no longer exist. If President Putin and Russia lay down their weapons, we will have peace.”

Even though Ukraine is suffering a high attrition rate (some units have lost 90% of their manpower) Stoltenberg is pushing for a “military solution” and not a diplomatic one.

Russia maintains that it is open to a diplomatic solution to the conflict, but that any peace deal would have to take into account the “new territorial reality” – that Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporozhye, and Crimea will never be ceded back to Ukraine. Furthermore, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said negotiations would be held “not with Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters.”

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*** 

My New York City apartment doesn’t have a lot going for it. It’s 700 square feet. The master bedroom fits little more than a queen-sized bed. There’s no kitchen pantry. My baby son sleeps in a large closet. But I’m a cook, and it does have at least one thing that keeps me renewing the lease year after year: a four-burner gas stove. 

Gas ranges allow cooks a greater degree of control over heat, from which flavor and texture result. But for the next generation of New York cooks, that feature will be even more of a rarity.

Starting this year, gas stove hookups will be banned in newly constructed buildings under seven stories throughout the five boroughs. The 90-year-old brownstone I live in, which was renovated and divided into four units in 2019, will be grandfathered in. Starting in 2027, this regulation will also apply to taller buildings. Inspired by city regulators, state lawmakers passed a similar ban in May. Now, New Yorkers who like high-heat and precise temperature control will be out of luck regardless of whether they live in Buffalo or Bushwick.

Over on the Left Coast, Berkeley adopted a similar ban in 2019, which was overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals this April. More than 50 other California cities, from Los Angeles to Sacramento, have adopted copycat regulations over the last five years which are now in legal limbo. Then in January, the feds got on board: Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard L. Trumka Jr. called gas stoves “a hidden hazard” and made noises about possibly banning them, saying—ominously, to libertarian ears—”products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

Under the guise of environmentalism, big government types keep coming for our kitchens—from gas stoves to dishwashers. Even our pizza ovens are under siege. 

It’s the same story every time, with endless permutations: Environmentalists pick a product to ban, use questionable evidence to justify their onslaught or misunderstand how people’s behavior will shift if their tools are made worse, and leave the rest of us to suffer the consequences—peppering our lives with additional low-grade annoyances. 

What today’s environmentalists fail to realize is that people will change their purchasing behavior as it becomes easier and cheaper to do so, that the products they seek to impose will, in many cases, inevitably become part of the marketplace if they’re good enough. 

In the meantime, they’ve made our kitchens and cooking worse, with no real effect beyond annoyance and cost increases. 

*

“No one is coming for your gas stove anytime soon,” reassured a headline in The New York Times back in January, after the fracas that ensued in response to Trumka’s comments. “Switching from gas to electric stoves is seen as good for the environment—which has inspired a conservative backlash,” reads the subhead, which somehow pins the blame on conservatives. 

The CPSC quickly came to Trumka’s defense, citing how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and World Health Organization had deemed the levels of nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide released by gas stoves unsafe. As evidence, it offered a new study that attributed 13 percent of childhood asthma cases to gas stoves. 

Just one problem: The study was terribly flawed.

It was not full of new findings or bolstered by new and better methodology, but rather a review of existing literature on the topic. It used excess asthma risk calculations from those studies and an estimate of the number of homes in the U.S. with gas stoves in them to calculate how many childhood asthma cases are caused by gas stoves (12.7 percent, they claim). It was funded by the environmentalist group Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), which seeks to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030. Study co-author Brady Seals is part of RMI’s carbon-free buildings initiative—a conflict of interest that makes clear where RMI stands on the matter of eliminating gas stoves from people’s homes. 

In order for that number to hold up, you have to accept that gas stoves are a significant contributor to the development of childhood asthma. But there’s a lot of noise in the data: Namely, that households that own gas stoves tend to look different than households that don’t, and that there are a lot of uncontrolled variables which distort the confidence with which we should believe RMI’s estimate.

Trumka, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who jumped to his aid, and Democratic senators like Cory Booker, who adopted this as a cause du jour by adding a racial justice sheen to it, ignore that some 35 percent of Americans use gas stoves because they want to. Gas tends to be cheaper than electric. Most home chefs—not to mention nearly all professionals—despise electric stoves for good reason; they take more time to initially heat up and are slower to respond when heat is ratcheted up or down. Searing a scallop or caramelizing onions is far more difficult with a suboptimal appliance, and even with practiced technique the results are likely to taste worse. 

But it’s not just stoves that today’s big government types seek to banish to the ash heap of (appliance) history. 

“The dishwashers, they had a little problem,” President Donald Trump said while campaigning in Nevada back in 2020. “They didn’t give enough water, so people would run them 10 times, so they end up using more water,” he added, correctly identifying the core problem, if exaggerating the magnitude.

“We’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms, where you turn the faucet on in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where it all flows out to sea because you could never handle it all, and you don’t get any water,” Trump had said the year prior. People “take a shower and water comes dripping out, very quietly dripping out. People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once; they end up using more water. So EPA is looking very strongly at that, at my suggestion.”

“Since 1994, federal law has capped flow from a shower head to 2.5 gallons of water per minute,” reported The Washington Post. “After manufacturers started producing more luxurious shower fixtures with more than one nozzle, the Obama administration amended the rule so that the same limit applied to the entire fixture.” The Energy Department under Trump revoked that rule, allowing multiple nozzles, but did not make the case for why the federal government should be concerning itself with such consumer choice matters in the first place.

Though Trump might be incorrect that people are flushing their toilets 15 times in a row to achieve a shiny clean bowl, he’s directionally correct, bringing attention to the fact that efficiency standards—which have been ratcheted up in recent years—frequently end up being anything but. “‘Efficiency’ has become a euphemism to laud an appliance that uses fewer inputs relative to its outputs rather than shorthand for doing the job as effectively as possible,” wrote National Review’s Noah Rothman. 

“When a new energy standard is adopted by the DOE, the result is an increase in dishwasher cycle time,” reads a report by the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Of the current 177 models reviewed by ConsumerReports.org, the fastest cycle time was the Frigidaire model FBD2400KS at 90 minutes. This is not due to consumer choice, but because it is not technologically feasible to create dishwashers that both meet the current standards and have cycle times of one hour or less.” (Some dishwashers have shorter cycles, running at about 60 minutes, which can rinse glass but don’t really get the job done when confronted with tougher grease and grime.)

“Manufacturers have met these [energy efficiency] standards by having machines recirculate less water throughout a longer wash cycle,” wrote Reason‘s Christian Britschgi.

But another unintended consequence of the war on dishwashers is that people, when faced with less effective dishwashers, spend more time prewashing their dishes, or end up handwashing them altogether, which uses somewhere between three and five times the amount of water that would have been used by the appliance. As for the showerheads, people predictably report taking longer showers when the water pressure is worse.

Granholm said in May, when announcing tightened emissions standards for vending machines, dishwashers, and electric motors, that consumers can expect to save more than $650 million in water and energy bills as a result of the administration’s push to force tighter standards on appliance makers. But if it were so self-evidently money-saving, wouldn’t manufacturers have already moved in that direction? Do we really need Granholm and other federal bureaucrats to tell us how to wash our dishes and hair?

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It’s not just the large appliances. Little things that make people’s lives better, tastier, and less tedious are being cracked down on by big government types in federal and state governments.

Activists in Washington, D.C., have succeeded at getting the city council to crack down on gas-powered leaf blowers. People who actually use such equipment, like low-paid supers tasked with keeping outside areas of apartment buildings clean, say battery-powered alternatives make it harder for them to get their jobs done; gas is still the best in the game. San Francisco led the nation in banning single-use plastic bags back in 2007; now, nine states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Colorado—have outright bans on the grocery-store staples which are cheap to make, light to transport, and can impressively hold more than 1,000 times their own weight. Though environmentalists claim these “urban tumbleweeds” are clogging up streets and storm drains, polluting oceans and harming wildlife, most reliable studies indicate they comprise a very small percentage of overall litter—besides, most users attest to the fact that they simply do the job way better than existing alternatives, unmatched in convenience. (“Paper bags from the grocery store fucking suck,” complained one person who would ostensibly be in support of such environmental regulations on r/ZeroWaste.) And where plastic bag bans have gone, plastic straw bans have soon followed: Oregon, Colorado, and New York have all banned the turtle-killers, leaving consumers stuck with paper straws that disintegrate mid-drink. It all amounts to what National Review‘s Noah Rothman has appropriately termed “the war on things that work.”

It’s a bit ironic that the environmentalist left has chosen to fight a battle against the tools that allow food to be made and enjoyed. Their efforts amount to a concerted attack on culinary pleasure, especially that which is produced at home.

High-end food world, after all, suffers no delusions that it’s the province of conservatives; most food writers are avowed liberals and most food sites assume they’re speaking to—and policing—their good progressive ilk. “I’m a vegan landlord,” read one Bon Appetit headline from earlier this year, “and I banned my tenants from cooking meat.” Food columnist J. Kenji López-Alt recently reflected in The New Yorker about “kitchen-bro culture,” and beloved recipe writer Alison Roman had her column placed on “temporary leave” by The New York Times after making purportedly tone-deaf remarks about Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo, two minority women. (Roman was never given the opportunity to revive her column at the Times, but has since migrated to Substack.) The Gimlet Media podcast Reply All, which attempted to chronicle the workplace abuses from on high at Bon Appetit—commenting on toxic leadership within kitchen culture more broadly—ended up an ouroboros eating its own tail after its hosts were ousted for…allegedly fostering a toxic workplace and opposing union demands.

At high-end restaurants around Manhattan and Brooklyn, where I live, it is not uncommon to see menu copy referencing extra charges explicitly added to the bill to pay employees a “living wage” or so that the restaurant can provide health care to their staff; Astor Wines, where I order most of my liquor, touts that it’s “worker-owned”; even posh Eleven Madison Park—which boasts a price tag of $365 for its multicourse menu—went plant-based back in 2022. The food world is frequently consumed by discussing the ethics of using animal products, the ethics of factory farming, the ethics of chefs de cuisine berating sauciers in pursuit of excellence (or at least uniformity).

But leftists, who seem to want ever-present access to not only good restaurant food, but the means of (at-home) production, don’t seem to grok that these goals are in tension with another goal: remaking the main site of energy use and production in the home—the kitchen. The two can’t coexist, at least not in their present form, and home cooks like myself grow bitter when our tools are taken away before our budgets allow us to replace them with better alternatives.

Consider, for example, induction cooktops, which use electromagnets (not fossil fuels)and result in faster heating times than their electric counterparts. Many users report lower energy bills when compared with gas and electric, not to mention the compounding fact that induction doesn’t heat up the rest of the kitchen when in use. But the catch, at least at present, is that they require entirely retrofitting your kitchen—you need special cookware in order to cook with induction, and the models themselves remain expensive enough to be out of reach for many. 

Many European households and eateries—comprising 35.9 percent of the total market share worldwide—have switched to induction stoves, with American professional chefs like Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert following suit. The tech is increasingly favored by developers of luxury buildings in places like New York that have banned gas. 

This is the story, after all, of so much technological advancement: A new innovation is adopted first by the well-off, then the rest. Competition drives prices down. Demand increases, so more makers enter the space. Eventually, the superior technology wins out, and the stockings become accessible even to factory girls (to use a Schumpeterism).

In June, the New York Post reported that the New York City Department of Environmental Protection was drafting new rules that would force city pizzerias, which frequently use coal-burning pizza ovens, to slash carbon emissions by 75 percent. ​​”This is an unfunded mandate and it’s going to cost us a fortune not to mention ruining the taste of the pizza totally destroying the product,” one angry restaurateur told the Post. 

Though only a few dozen establishments are affected by this mandate, many pizzeria owners were hit hard by both the first (March 2020) and second (December 2020) rounds of COVID orders, which barred them from allowing indoor dining; they certainly don’t have excess funds lying around to retrofit their kitchens.

When they ban the products you enjoy using, big government types are forcing you to accept worse-quality goods, telling you it’s time to take one for the team. Your sacrifice theoretically results in deliverance from environmental horrors. But it doesn’t really work that way in practice because big government types so frequently fail to factor in the unintended consequences of their actions.

Despite the New York Times‘ gaslighting, people are coming for your stoves. And they’re also coming for your dishwasher, your showerhead, your leaf blower, and your plastic straws. No single crusade is enough to get most people fired up, but each makes life a little worse and a little more expensive, in pursuit of ever-elusive environmental goals. Environmentalists would be wise to let people make their own decisions instead, as a matter of principle and as a matter of pragmatism, since people so frequently end up doing good—just on their own timeline.

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Liz Wolfe is an associate editor at Reason.

Illustration is by Lex Villena/Reason

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*** 

After shipping some $45 billion in military equipment to Ukraine, the Biden Administration is bringing Ukrainian President Zelensky back to Washington to beg for more money. But with the war going badly for Ukraine and strong US opposition to spending more on the effort, it looks to be an uphill battle.

Also today: who was the armed guy impersonating a cop at the RFK rally…and why can’t RFK get Secret Service Protection? Finally…Homeland Security has a new target: you! Watch today’s Liberty Report:

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Each morning I do a quick scan of the headlines coming over the wire services, clear my emails and Facebook entries, and then take a closer look at The New York Times online, paying particular attention to the opinion pages. I usually am not disappointed in my belief that the President Joe Biden Administration as well as ex-President Donald Trump, have been and continue to be collectively destroying what was once an admirable nation, something like flushing us repeatedly down the toilets of their ambition and greed.

In that light, last Friday was particularly bad and I had what I have come to call a Gadarene Swine moment. For those unfamiliar with the New Testament tale, which comes from the Gospel of Mark, it tells how Jesus encountered a madman during his Galilean ministry who was infested with demons. The man sought help to be cured of his infestation and Jesus obliged him, commanding “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”, before confronting the unleashed demon and asking “’What is your name?’ He answered, ‘My name is Legion. For we are many.’ And he begged Him repeatedly not to send them away out of the country. Now there was a great herd of swine feeding near the mountains. All the demons pleaded with Him, asking, ‘Send us to the swine, so that we may enter them.’ At once, Jesus gave them leave. Then the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. And the herd, numbering about two thousand, ran wildly down a steep hill into the sea and were drowned in the sea.”

My first thought was inevitably deep sympathy over what was done to the poor pigs, but that was quickly replaced by bottomless depression induced by the articles that I had just read in the Times that morning. Yes, we Americans have become the Gadarene Swine and are plummeting to our deaths as a people, driven by demons released by the folks that we have unfortunately come to accept as “our leaders.” The three pieces in question were two “opinions,” one by the inevitable Tom Friedman entitled “A Trip to Ukraine Clarified the Stakes. And They’re Huge” and the other a featured piece written by the newspaper editorial board entitled “How to Support Ukraine Beyond the Next Election.” The third article was a news report entitled “As President, Biden Sees Broader War Powers Than He Did as Senator: The president says he can direct limited military operations without lawmakers’ approval.”

The three pieces together suggest that the United States has become dominated by the airing of specious and often not very credible threats as an excuse to go onto a war footing forever, or at least until the country collapses due to its misplaced priorities. I will not, however, try to recreate in any detail the nonsense spewed by the country’s “paper of record,” if only to reject the basic arguments being made for “going the course” in wars that have no reasonable raison d’etre for having been started at all. None of the pieces even seek to answer the most basic question, which is also avoided by our warmongering governing class, and that is “What was or is the US national interest in getting involved in these wars in the first place?”

And surely the most frightening of the three articles is the one that airs the claim made by a muddle-headed Chief Executive Joe Biden that he can start a new war any time he wants, a bold challenge to the US Constitution’s essentially anti-war balance of government powers and also the existing War Powers Act. The article includes material like “If he is elected to a second term, President Biden pledged that he will go to Congress to start any major war but said he believed he was empowered ‘to direct limited U.S. military operations abroad’ without such approval when such strikes served critical American interests… In 2019, Mr. Biden had already shifted to embracing the view, adopted by the executive branch under administrations of both parties, that presidents have broader constitutional authority to carry out limited attacks on other countries without congressional authorization, so long as it falls short of full-scale war. As president, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden used force unilaterally, citing their claimed constitutional authority to use military force without congressional permission. In April 2017 and again in April 2018 , Mr. Trump directed airstrikes against Syrian government forces, and Mr. Biden in June 2021 and in August 2022 directed airstrikes on Iranian-backed militia groups in Syria.”

Should I ask how Biden will determine a “critical American interest?” Or exactly how either Syria or Iran has been “imminently threatening” the United States, which is in fact itself illegally occupying Syrian territory? And what about the current proxy war against Russia in Ukraine? Was Ukraine a threat to the US justifying bringing America to the brink of a nuclear war? Friedman is just back from a three-day trip to Ukraine and opines “What Putin is doing in Ukraine is not just reckless, not just a war of choice, not just an invasion in a class of its own for overreach, mendacity, immorality and incompetence, all wrapped in a farrago of lies. What he is doing is evil… This is as obvious a case of right versus wrong, good versus evil, as you find in international relations since World War II.”

Perhaps Tom might make an attempt to look more deeply into the seeds of the Ukraine war and might even consider Googling “Minsk accords,” “Boris Johnson visit to Kiev,” and “NATO Expansion,” but he certainly exhibits the type of judgmentalism that he has displayed for so many years at the Times while covering the Middle East, where he has finally been able to recognize “apartheid” after a journey of nearly fifty years during which time numerous crimes against humanity committed by his Israeli friends have been staring him in the face.

The Times editorial group piece also is unwavering in separating good from evil: “ While this board has questioned some specific decisions by Mr. Biden, such as supplying the Ukrainian Army with cluster munitions, we agree with him that it would be ‘wrong and contrary to well-settled principles’ to pressure another country to negotiate over its sovereign territory. Ukraine deserves full support against Russia’s unprovoked invasion, and it is in America’s national interest to lead its NATO allies in demonstrating that they will not tolerate Mr. Putin’s revanchist ambitions. It is a demonstration of America’s commitment to democracy and leadership that other would-be aggressors are watching.”

It is the well-worn “we have to be firm” assertion to set the example and warn other potential aggressors of consequences. But at the same time, to describe Russia’s attack as “unprovoked” is complete nonsense. And the real irony, not to mention hypocrisy, is the “negotiate over…sovereign territory” line when the US is occupying Syrian national territory and looking the other way and smiling as Israel steals the West Bank and Golan Heights. Some who have been closely following the developing situation in Syria are now reporting that it appears that the US is preparing to mount a new series of attacks to remove the legitimate government of Bashar al-Assad. Three Republican congressmen recently traveled to occupied Syria to meet with groups that the United States government itself has labeled as terrorists. That is referred to as materially supporting terrorism which is a crime and one must ask the dwarflike Attorney General Merrick Garland where was the FBI to interrogate and possibly charge and indict the three when they returned? A major war in Syria would inevitably involve Lebanon and Iran. It would be a disaster for the entire region particularly when Israel takes advantage of the situation and Washington steps in to “have Israel’s back” even if the Jewish state starts the fighting. But the US rarely cares about how heavily its boot comes down on the local population or bothers to count the cost either in dollars or lives.

And, of course, the real danger is that if you buy into this type of nonsense, as both of the major political parties have, there is more to come to us long suffering Gadarene Swine, who will continue to endure an endless series of interventions based on nothing beyond the principal that one can get away with nearly anything when backed by a trillion dollar “defense” budget. And, oh by the way, Ukrainian “leader” Volodymyr Zelensky will be in Washington this week to meet with Biden and all his friends in Congress even as they “debate” giving him another $24 billion. He will want to make sure that the message is delivered to his hosts that he is the man who is in charge. Let’s see how the New York Times covers it!

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

“There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.”—Professor Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler

Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service?

Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law?

Do you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car?

Are you among the 44% of Americans who live in a household with a gun? If so, are you concerned that the government may be plotting to confiscate your firearms?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the government and flagged for heightened surveillance and preemptive intervention.

Let that sink in a moment.

If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

I assure you I’m not making this stuff up.

So what is the government doing about these so-called American “extremists”?

The government is grooming the American people to spy on each other as part of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3 program.

According to journalist Leo Hohmann, the government is handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.”

As Hohmann explains,

“Whether it’s COVID and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential ‘violent extremist’ and terrorist.”

Cue the dawning of the Snitch State.

This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, hyper-vigilant, technologically-wired age.

For more than two decades, the Department of Homeland Security has plastered its “See Something, Say Something” campaign on the walls of metro stations, on billboards, on coffee cup sleeves, at the Super Bowl, even on television monitors in the Statue of Liberty. Colleges, universities and even football teams and sporting arenas have lined up for grants to participate in the program.

The government has even designated September 25 as National “If You See Something, Say Something” Awareness Day.

If you see something suspicious, says the DHS, say something about it to the police, call it in to a government hotline, or report it using a convenient app on your smart phone.

This DHS slogan is nothing more than the government’s way of indoctrinating “we the people” into the mindset that we’re an extension of the government and, as such, have a patriotic duty to be suspicious of, spy on, and turn in our fellow citizens.

This is what is commonly referred to as community policing.

Yet while community policing and federal programs such as “See Something, Say Something” are sold to the public as patriotic attempts to be on guard against those who would harm us, they are little more than totalitarian tactics dressed up and repackaged for a more modern audience as well-intentioned appeals to law and order and security.

The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own policing.

After all, the police can’t be everywhere. So how do you police a nation when your population outnumbers your army of soldiers? How do you carry out surveillance on a nation when there aren’t enough cameras, let alone viewers, to monitor every square inch of the country 24/7? How do you not only track but analyze the transactions, interactions and movements of every person within the United States?

The answer is simpler than it seems: You persuade the citizenry to be your eyes and ears. You hype them up on color-coded “Terror alerts,” keep them in the dark about the distinctions between actual threats and staged “training” drills so that all crises seem real, desensitize them to the sight of militarized police walking their streets, acclimatize them to being surveilled “for their own good,” and then indoctrinate them into thinking that they are the only ones who can save the nation from another 9/11.

Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.

This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America’s reality.

This is how you turn a people into extensions of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent police state, and in the process turn a citizenry against each other.

It’s a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry remains focused on and distrustful of each other and shadowy forces from outside the country, they’re incapable of focusing on more definable threats that fall closer to home—namely, the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.

Community policing did not come about as a feel-good, empowering response to individuals trying to “take back” their communities from crime syndicates and drug lords.

Rather, “Community-Oriented Policing” or COPS (short for Community Partnerships, Organizational Transformation, and Problem Solving) is a Department of Justice program designed to foster partnerships between police agencies and members of the community.

To this end, the Justice Department identifies five distinct “partners” in the community policing scheme: law enforcement and other government agencies, community members and groups, nonprofits, churches and service providers, private businesses and the media.

Together, these groups are supposed to “identify” community concerns, “engage” the community in achieving specific goals, serve as “powerful” partners with the government, and add their “considerable resources” to the government’s already massive arsenal of technology and intelligence. The mainstream media’s role, long recognized as being a mouthpiece for the government, is formally recognized as “publicizing” services from government or community agencies or new laws or codes that will be enforced, as well as shaping public perceptions of the police, crime problems, and fear of crime.

Inevitably, this begs the question: if there’s nothing wrong with community engagement, if the police can’t be everywhere at once, if surveillance cameras do little to actually prevent crime, and if we need to “take back our communities” from the crime syndicates and drug lords, then what’s wrong with community policing and “See Something, Say Something”?

What’s wrong is that these programs are not, in fact, making America any safer while turning us into a legalistic, intolerant, squealing, bystander nation.

We are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall, widening mass surveillance dragnet comprised of fusion centers, red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, terror watch lists, facial recognition, snitch tip lines, biometric scanners, pre-crime programs, DNA databases, data mining, precognitive technology and contact tracing apps, to name just a few.

This is how the government keeps us under control and in its crosshairs.

By the time you combine the DHS’ “See Something, Say Something” with CP3 and community policing, which has gone global in the guise of the Strong Cities Network program, you’ve got a formula for enabling the government to not only flag distinct “anti-government” segments of the population but locking down the entire nation.

Under the guise of fighting violent extremism “in all of its forms and manifestations” in cities and communities across the world, the Strong Cities Network program works with the UN and the federal government to train local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal.

What this program is really all about, however, is community policing on a global scale with the objective being to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police will identify, monitor and deter individuals who could be construed as potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats.

The government’s war on extremists has been sold to Americans in much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was sold to Americans: as a means of combatting terrorists who seek to destroy America.

However, as we now know, the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that has turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect.

Similarly, the concern with the government’s ongoing anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers, data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released two reports, one on “Rightwing Extremism,” which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” and one on “Leftwing Extremism,” which labeled environmental and animal rights activist groups as extremists.

These reports, which use the words terrorist and extremist interchangeably, indicate that for the government, anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—can be labeled an extremist.

Fast forward a few years, and you have the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which each successive presidential administration has continually re-upped, that allows the military to take you out of your home, lock you up with no access to friends, family or the courts if you’re seen as an extremist.

Now connect the dots, from the 2009 Extremism reports to the NDAA and the far-reaching data crime fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

Add in tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that identifies and tracks you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the circle, toss in the real-time crime centers which are attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, unless we can put the brakes on this dramatic expansion and globalization of the government’s powers, we’re not going to recognize this country five, ten—even twenty—years from now.

As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.

It’s already worse.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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*** 

The ground war in Ukraine has run its course, a new phase is beginning. Even diehard supporters of Ukraine in the western media and think tanks are admitting that a military victory over Russia is impossible and a vacation of the territory under Russian control is way beyond Kiev’s capability.

Hence the ingenuity of the Biden Administration to explore Plan B counselling Kiev to be realistic about loss of territory and pragmatically seek dialogue with Moscow. This was the bitter message that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken transmitted to Kiev recently in person. 

But President Zelensky’s caustic reaction in a subsequent interview with the Economist magazine is revealing. He hit back that the western leaders still talk the good talk, pledging they will stand with Ukraine “as long as it takes” (Biden mantra), but he, Zelensky, has detected a change of mood among some of his partners: “I have this intuition, reading, hearing and seeing their eyes [when they say] ‘we’ll be always with you.’ But I see that he or she is not here, not with us.” Certainly, Zelensky is reading the body language right, as in the absence of an overwhelming military success shortly, western support for Ukraine is time-limited.

Zelensky knows that sustaining the western support will be difficult. Yet he hopes that if not Americans, European Union will at least keep supplying aid, and but may open negotiations over the accession process for Ukraine possibly even at its summit in December. But he also held out a veiled threat of terrorist threat to Europe — warning that it would not be a “good story” for Europe if it were to “drive these people [of Ukraine] into a corner”. So far such ominous threats were muted, originating from low ranking activists of the fascist Bandera fringe.

But Europe has its limits, too. The western stockpiles of weapons are exhausted and Ukraine is a bottomless pit. Importantly, conviction is lacking whether continued supplies would make any difference to the proxy war that is unwinnable. Besides, European economies are in doldrum,’ the recession in Germany may slide into depression, with profound consequences of “deindustrialisation.” 

Suffice to say, Zelensky’s visit to the White House in the coming days becomes a defining moment. The Biden Administration is in a sombre mood that the proxy war is hindering a full-throttle Indo-Pacific strategy against China. Yet, during an appearance on ABC’s This Week, Blinken explicitly stated for the first time that the US would not oppose Ukraine using US-supplied longer-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory, a move that Moscow has previously called a “red line,” which would make Washington a direct party to the conflict. 

The well-known American military historian, strategic thinker and combat veteran Colonel (Retd.) Douglas MacGregor (who served as advisor to the Pentagon during the Trump administration), is prescient when he says that a new “Biden’s phase of the war” is about to begin. That is to say, having run out of ground forces, the locus will now shift to long-range strike weapons like the Storm Shadow, Taurus,  ATACMS long-range missiles, etc. 

The US is considering sending ATACMS long-range missiles that Ukraine has been asking for a long time with the capability to strike deep inside Russian territory. The most provocative part is that NATO reconnaissance platforms, both manned and unmanned, will be used in such operations, making the US a virtual co-belligerent. 

Russia has been exercising restraint in attacking the source of such enemy capabilities but how long such restraint will continue is anybody’s guess. In response to a pointed query about how Washington would see the attacks on Russian territory with American weaponry and technology, Blinken argued that the increasing number of attacks on Russian territory by Ukrainian drones are “about how they’re [Ukrainians] going to defend their territory and how they’re working to take back what’s been seized from them. Our [US] role, the role of dozens of other countries around the world that are supporting them, is to help them do that.” 

Russia is not going to accept such a brazen escalation, especially as these advanced weapon systems used to attack Russia are actually manned by NATO personnel — contractors, trained ex-military hands or even serving officers. President Putin told the media on Friday that “we have detected foreign mercenaries and instructors both on the battlefield and in the units where training is carried out. I think yesterday or the day before yesterday someone was captured again.” 

The US calculus is that at some point, Russia will be compelled to negotiate and a frozen conflict will ensue where the NATO allies would retain the option to continue with Ukraine’s military build-up and the process leading to its membership of the Atlantic alliance, and allow the Biden Administration to focus on the Indo-Pacific. 

However, Russia will not settle for a “frozen conflict” that falls far short of the objectives of demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine that are the key objectives of its special military operation. 

Faced with this new phase of the proxy war, what form the Russian retaliation will take remains to be seen. There could be multiple ways without Russia directly attacking NATO territories or using nuclear weapons (unless the US stages a nuclear attack — of which the chances are zero as of now.)

Already, it is possible to see the potential resumption of military-technical  cooperation between Russia and the DPRK (potentially including ICBM technology) as a natural consequence of the aggressive US policy towards Russia and its support for Ukraine — as much as of the current international situation. The point is, today it is with DPRK; tomorrow it could be with Iran, Cuba or Venezuela — what Col. MacGregor calls “horizontal escalation” by Moscow.  The situation in Ukraine has become interconnected with the problems of the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan. 

Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said on state television on Wednesday that Russia has “no other options” but to achieve a victory in its special military operation and will continue to make progress with their key mission of mowing down the enemy’s equipment and personnel. This suggests that the attritional war will be further intensified while the overall strategy may shift to achieving total military victory. 

The Ukrainian military is desperate for manpower. In the 15-week “counteroffensive” alone, over 71,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. There is talk of Kiev seeking repatriation of its nationals in military age from among the refugees in Europe. On the other hand, in expectation of a prolonged conflict, the mobilisation in Russia is continuing. 

Putin disclosed on Friday that 300,000 people have volunteered and signed contracts to join the armed forces and new units are being formed, equipped with advanced types of weapons and equipment, “and some of them are already 85–90 percent equipped.” 

The high likelihood is that once the Ukrainian “counteroffensive” peters out in another few weeks as a massive failure, Russian forces may launch a large-scale offensive. Conceivably, Russian forces may even cross Dnieper river and take control of Odessa and the coastline leading to the Romanian border, from where NATO has been mounting attacks on Crimea. Make no mistake, for the Anglo-American axis, encircling Russia in the Black Sea has always remained a top priority.

Watch the excellent interview (below) of Col. Douglas MacGregor by Professor Glenn Diesen at the University of North-Eastern in Norway:

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*** 

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has reported that another ring of people engaged in helping people to evade the draft and leave the country has been identified and broken up. With Ukraine short on manpower at the front, it is racing to fill its ranks.

The last set of people detained were connected with the port in Izmail, in the Odessa region. Bribes were elicited from men of service age who wanted to leave the country. They were provided with papers claiming they were navigators on cargo ships, costing between $700 and $1,200.

Those detained are accused of taking a total of $55,000 in such payments. They were allegedly caught in the act, arrested and could face jail sentences of up to 10 years. 

The SBU has also detained a deacon of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Odessa for allegedly helping men to leave the country under the guise of being prepared for ordination in the Church, with a minimal fee per person of $4,500. The deacon managed to aid six individuals in such a manner before also being arrested.

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*** 

If you are under age 65, do not take the new coronavirus shot being rolled out this month. That is the recommendation of Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo in the “Guidance for COVID-19 Boosters” publication he released Wednesday. And, even for older individuals, Ladapo is not giving a blanket OK for the shots. The publication advises that people 65 years old and older should discuss the information in the publication “with their health care provider, including potential concerns outlined in this guidance.”

This stand by Ladapo puts him at odds with top government health officials in other states who are recommending the latest experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shot for everyone from babies to the elderly. This will be coronavirus shot number eight for people who have taken the experimental shots on the recommended schedule as they became available from day one.

This is not the first time Ladapo has stood apart from his counterparts in other states’ governments in regard to coronavirus shots. In October of 2022 he advised that a smaller subset of people — men ages 18 to 39 — should not take the mRNA coronavirus shots; earlier in 2022 the Florida Department of Health that he leads advised that healthy children ages 5 to 17 may not benefit from coronavirus shots and Florida alone among states refused to distribute coronavirus shots to children age four and younger. As with Ladapo’s new advice, the concern earlier was that the dangers of the shots outweigh the benefits, if any.

Ladapo’s advice offered Wednesday is quite similar to the advice offered by America’s Frontline Doctors in December of 2020 — during the rollout of the original campaign pushing coronavirus shots. Many Americans would have saved themselves from regret, and more, if they had followed this advice from the beginning.

Of course, by this point, most Americans are wise to the coronavirus fearmongering and pro-shots hype. Instead of rushing out to take the new shot, their reaction to being urged to take it will be along the lines of “you’ve got to be kidding,” “not a chance,” or just a simple “nope.”

It would be nice if many top health officials of other state governments would join Ladapo in standing up to the coronavirus shots propaganda that threatens individuals’ health through the encouragement that they be injected repeatedly with dangerous and ineffective shots. If these officials have not warned by now about the shots like Ladapo has, then they should be judged as either too ignorant, too meek, too lazy, too fraudulent, or too corrupt to merit continuing in their positions.

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*** 

“The war in Ukraine has driven an increase in sales across the portfolio for sure,” says Matthew Bragoni, a representative of Ensign-Bickford Aerospace and Defense (EBAD).

Bragoni, a US army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is standing by his company’s stall in London at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI). This biannual arms fair is the jewel in the crown of the global weapons industry.

“Everyone’s well aware that the US military has been donating [to Ukraine] a lot of product that was in stock,” he observes. “And so we’re seeing the second order effect where these purchases – as the US emptied out their inventory – they’re re-buying”.

EBAD is based in the US state of Connecticut. Bragoni is the director of their group which is focused on delivering products to “warfighters around the world”. These range from missile parts down to explosives for clearing minefields, which are now being sent to Ukraine – “something we’re very proud of”, Bragoni notes.

“We’ve sold and delivered over a thousand man portable line charges, which are backpack carried mine clearing charges,” he explains. “So if a soldier finds himself in a heavily mined area, he can deploy the system quickly, create a path to safety and get back to friendly territory without injury.”

While no gadget can stop thousands of Ukrainian soldiers losing limbs in Russian minefields, Bragoni believes the future looks bright for arms companies.

“It’s going to be more insecure going forward…the near term is very dangerous. I think we’re seeing it across the globe,” he says. “There’s a strong pivot back to entrenchment from a Cold War mentality. And we’re going to see a rebuild of inventory in stock.”

He pauses then adds: “I think that’s going to cause a ten year boom in manufacturing and EBAD will certainly be a beneficiary.”

On the ethics of London hosting the world’s largest arms fair, which mayor Sadiq Khan opposes but hasn’t stopped, Bragoni is stumped. “Britain has been at the core of Western security and global security for the last 200 years, and I think it’s natural that they host the world’s largest expo…I would hope a British citizen would be proud of that.”

‘Business Is Great’ 

Bragoni’s enthusiasm is shared by another American firm whose stand we find further inside the sprawling ExCel exhibition centre, after navigating past an AI-powered robotic dog.

“Business is great,” Trevor Schriver from Curtiss Wright confirms. “In spite of the last two or three years of economic downturn resulting from the Covid issues and so forth. But military spending is continuing to increase from my perspective. So business has been good.”

His division sells systems to help helicopters land on warships, even in the stormiest weather. 

When Schriver learns we haven’t attended arms fairs in other countries, he is taken aback. “Only one you’ve ever been to? Then you’ve been spoiled! We attend shows on a global basis, and this is without question, a premiere show globally. There’s no question about it.”

He does show a little more concern about the protesters camped outside the ExCel. Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) called the event a “marketplace in death and destruction”.

Schriver is diplomatic: “War is never a good thing. I think we can all agree on that fact. But we need to focus on the fact this is a defence show.”

He adds: “This isn’t a show to encourage aggression. It’s a show meant to deter your enemies by showing strength… And that’s exactly how it should be perceived. We’re naive to think that without defensive equipment that you’re going to be safe. Not everybody shares that perspective.”

Attendees admire automatic weapons. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

‘Very Buoyant’

The mood at DSEI is in stark contrast to the subdued atmosphere we found at its last iteration two years ago. Held in September 2021, weeks after the fall of Kabul, the technological prowess of the West’s arms industry had been humbled by the Taliban’s “country boys”, as the head of the UK military, General Nick Carter called them.

This time the event is taking place amid $50bn of arms shipments to Ukraine, a long-awaited chance to test NATO equipment against its Soviet-era equivalent. And even if Ukraine’s grinding counter-offensive does not achieve a breakthrough this year, with nearly half a million killed in the conflict, the increase in arms sales will be long lasting.

“The business environment is very buoyant, very active,” says Steve Blackwell, the sales manager for APEM, the world’s largest manufacturer of switches, joysticks and LCDs, which are mostly used in military vehicles.

“The war in Ukraine is a factor for the increased activity levels within this market,” he states. “We’re seeing new projects launched, but also legacy products that were designed in the 1990s, the noughties, are also being rekindled and new developments are taking place”.

NATO members are also finally trying to meet their commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence, Blackwell notes approvingly. “So we’re seeing a very broad and a very deep requirement for all of our military products.”

South Korea displays its K9 Thunder howitzer at DSEI. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

The proof is visible to anyone at DSEI. “It seems to be very, very active,” he smiles. “Very, very busy. The footfall is amazing.”

Even for firms as far away from the Ukraine conflict as South America, business is on the rise. Componentes & Sistemas de Defesa (CSD) is a Brazilian arms firm with close links to its authorities. Their salesman Paulo Kleinke says they make “ammunition, rockets, and bombs”.

Business is “very good at the moment, actually, because of the conflicts all over the world,” Kleinke freely admits. “Most of the countries are now replacing ammunition that they have given to Ukraine and maybe sometimes Russia. But yes, for us it is a good period.”

‘Very Cool’

No one we meet at DSEI is more cheerful than Tony Gaunt, who jokes that his diminutive stature is due to testing his company’s “very cool” ejector seat. Gaunt represents Martin Baker, a British family business that makes this highly specialised product for many of the world’s military aircraft.

He says business is booming. “Even through COVID, we didn’t suffer any loss in business at all. We were very, very busy all the way through and we have a very good order book.” Customers need deep pockets. Their older seats sell for between £150,000 and £300,000.

At Martin Baker, “our biggest customer is the US, without a shadow of a doubt,” Gaunt says. Yet it does have some more controversial ‘end-users’. 

Many of its ejector seats are fitted in the Tornado and Typhoon fighter jets that Saudi Arabia’s air force has used to bombard Yemen since 2015, creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with surgical strikes on food supplies and medical facilities.

BAE displays its Typhoon jet. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

Gaunt is proud that two Saudi Tornado pilots recently made a safe ejectionfrom the company’s seats, but tries to put some distance between Martin Baker and the final user. “We sell to BAE Systems who provide it [to Saudi]. So they then determine the end user.”

BAE Systems is Britain’s largest arms company, and has profited more than almost anyone else from the war in Yemen, selling £18bn to Riyadh during the conflict. Their pavilion at DSEI, which flows with red wine, is so vast they arrived an extra week earlier than everyone else to set up. One of their Typhoons is parked outside the entrance to ExCel.

From Yemen to Ukraine

BAE suffered severe pressure during the Yemen war, with CAAT repeatedly taking them to court over their Saudi sales. Brigadier John Deverell, a former British defence attaché to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, even compared BAE’s business to the slave trade. 

In 2020, after airstrikes killed Yemeni children, he told us: “If I were a board member or a major shareholder in BAE Systems, I’d be asking what is being done to diversify away from reliance on Saudi revenue? This is not reputationally sustainable.”

Fortunately for BAE, world events have allowed them to remake their image. The war in Yemen has abated after an unexpected Chinese-brokered ceasefire. And closer to home, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen BAE sell weapons to counter Vladimir Putin’s war crimes (many of which mirror what Saudi jets did in Yemen). 

Their M777 155mm Howitzer, a vast artillery gun, dominates the other entrance to ExCel. It’s used mostly by the US marine corps, which shipped at least 90 to Ukraine. Business with Kyiv is booming so much that BAE is now opening an office in the country. Their share price has doubled since last year.

One of their most well-known products, the Challenger 2 tank, is not on display at DSEI, despite Rishi Sunak donating 14 to Kyiv from British army stocks. It has attracted some controversy for being equipped with depleted uranium (DU) ammunition, which Iraqi doctors blame for causing birth defects and cancer after the US and UK fired it in both Gulf Wars.

Wandering around their stand, we find an interesting looking shell. It’s the XM1155 Scalpel, which has double the range of current precision guided munitions. A BAE salesman is proud of their creation, but is coy about some details. “It’s not made from DU, but I can’t say what metal it does use.”

A Burning Question

The company has extremely close ties with the British government, which has invited high-level delegations from Saudi Arabia to attend DSEI. So when we see armed forces minister James Heappey strolling through the ExCel centre, a burning question arises.

“Why does the UK sell so many weapons to dictatorships like Saudi Arabia? How do you justify that?”, we ask him. He responds by suggesting we arrange an interview through his department’s press office, who would almost certainly stonewall us.

“You’re the democratically elected minister,” we push back. “Are you aware that Saudi Arabia has sentenced someone to death for a tweet? How do you feel about selling weapons to a regime that does that?”

Heappey walks on, ignoring our question. Yet DSEI’s official spokesman, retired British army general Roddy Porter, is more accommodating. “Whether regimes are bad or not is a matter of perspective, and a matter of where you stand on a particular argument,” he reasons, dabbling in moral relativism.

“But essentially the delegations are invited by the British government and we have no say in how that happens. That’s the law.” Although Porter seems relaxed about rubbing shoulders with a regime that dismembered a journalist, he is more committed to press freedoms in the UK. 

“In previous years, you may not have got accredited to come to the exhibition,” he confesses. “We took a different line about two or three DSEIs ago. In that credible journalists, irrespective of their editorial line, ought to be enabled to come into the exhibition.”

It’s the third time we’ve interviewed Porter at DSEI, and the discussions are increasingly profound. He rejects President Eisenhower’s famous warning that the military industrial complex would spark wars as “too cynical”. Having served in Northern Ireland, the first Gulf War and three tours of Bosnia, he has a particular view of human nature that for him justifies the international arms trade.

“I was a soldier for 31 years. I’ve seen people die. My friends have died, and I’ve been in the vicinity of some pretty horrible events. I think much of what I’ve seen has driven me to the conclusion that defence is important for the nation and defence is important for our allies and our friends, because some of the evil I’ve seen, I wouldn’t want to go any further than it’s gone.”

For him, DSEI promotes the bombs and the bullets needed for “pushing back on wickedness”. Porter posits: “It’s regrettable, but it’s a necessity given the nature of our fallen world and the nature of the human heart”. Ukraine’s leaders may agree with Porter. Those who were on the receiving end of BAE’s missiles in Yemen almost certainly would not.

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Matt Kennard is chief investigator at Declassified UK. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. Follow him on Twitter @kennardmatt

Phil Miller is Declassified UK’s chief reporter. He is the author of Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes. Follow him on Twitter at @pmillerinfo

Featured image: A senior Egyptian navy officer tests a gun at DSEI. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

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*** 

Just over ten years ago, Lord Justice Leveson proposed tougher legislation of newspapers amidst general horror that journalists had hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Millie Dowler.

His proposals were greeted with fury.

In the Daily Mail Richard Littlejohn said they meant the “suppression of free speech.” This was, added Littlejohn, the “classic hallmark of a fascist regime.”

Mike Harris for the Daily Telegraph warned that “three centuries of press freedom will be consigned to the dustbin of history, with investigative journalism almost impossible and shackles imposed on our much-loved local press”.

Every title from the Murdoch press, Associated Newspapers and the Telegraph – the hegemonic groups which account for approximately 75% of mainstream newspaper readership – denounced the Leveson reforms.

Meanwhile they united to launch a concerted campaign – the so called free speech network – to block them.

It was one of the most effective campaigns in modern times. 

Behind the scenes politicians were nobbled. Deals were struck. Leveson Two – the section of the enquiry which would have examined links between politicians, the police and press – was blocked.

Let’s contrast the campaign against Leveson with British media coverage of the US attempt to extradite Julian Assange.

Another Watergate?

As I write Assange rots in a cell in high security Belmarsh prison, where he has been held for years. Any day now could see the WikiLeaks publisher sent to the United States for trial on trumped up espionage charges – then dumped in a US jail for the rest of his life.

The consequences of such a judgement could not be more grim for free speech. 

Any story which depends on obtaining documents from US government sources will become impossibly dangerous.

Break another Watergate scandal? Forget it.

No British journalist would dare to handle the material, let alone publish it. Any journalists involved could find themselves subject to extradition. 

The more serious the story, and the more it needed to be published, the greater the danger.

Let’s spell this out.

Julian Assange is by far the most important case involving free speech this century. No wonder the late Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed so many of the US lies about the Vietnam war, gave such powerful testimony for Assange before his death in June this year.

Ellsberg, the principled former marine who leaked the so-called Pentagon papers, said that he felt a “great identification” with Assange.

Cause celebre?

So you would have expected British journalists and newspaper editors to have turned the Assange case into a cause celebre for media freedom.

Wrong.

The Assange story has been treated by much of the British media like an embarrassing family secret.

As I discovered when I carried out a survey of recent press reporting.

The Times claims to be Britain’s foremost paper of record. There have been a handful of news stories such as ‘Assange not allowed to attend Vivienne Westwood’s funeral’ and no opinion piece since the start of 2021. 

That one wasn’t friendly. Written by James Ball, a former WikiLeaks staffer, the headline announced: ‘Assange is no hero. I should know – I lived with him and his awful gang’. 

There has been a comparable lack of reporting in the Telegraph. Not much in the Financial Times. Ditto the Sunday Times – the paper once edited by the formidable investigative editor Harold Evans – and the Sunday Telegraph.

Richard Littlejohn, the columnist for the Daily Mail who absurdly compared the Leveson proposals to fascism, mocked Assange in a contemptible article as he emerged from incarceration at the Ecuadorian embassy in London: claiming that “he stank the place to high heaven”.

Liberal Left

The New Statesman is a sad case. Once a beacon of the liberal left, a  hatchet job on Assange by Suzanne Moore in April 2019 set the tone.

“Wikileaks was the future once,” wrote Moore. “Remember? We were all excited about the vast info dumps revealing horrific war crimes and the killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then it became something else. It became him, and he did not care if the information he was releasing was helping Trump or Putin, outing gay men in Saudi Arabia, identifying informants or rape victims. Their names were out there and they were at risk.”

To think that the New Statesman was once a supporter of press freedom, human rights and the radical left. Or that its editor Jason Cowley, occupies the same chair as Kingsley Martin or Anthony Howard.

To be fair to Suzanne Moore she did state that it was wrong to extradite Assange. 

Not so the Economist, which actually supports extradition. The paper argued in April 2019 that “the central charge – computer hacking – is an indefensible violation of the law. Neither journalists nor activists, like Mr Assange, have carte blanche to break the law in exercising their First Amendment rights. They are entitled to publish freely; not to break and enter, physically or digitally, to do so.”

In preparation for this piece I have repeatedly approached the magazine’s spokesperson asking if its position has changed. There have been no replies to my emails. Until the Economist publishes an editorial to the contrary, we must assume that the paper still supports extradition. 

Even those titles which oppose extradition tend to do so superficially.

They fail to highlight the full horror of Julian Assange’s ongoing incarceration in Belmarsh. That the CIA plotted to assassinate Assange. 

Or the magnitude and horror of what he revealed about the US led war on terror. 

Such as the video of US helicopter gunmen laughing as they shot at and killed 12 unarmed civilians in Iraq – including a Reuters photographer and his assistant. The US refused even to discipline the perpetrators.

The core revelation that civilian casualties in Iraq were far higher than the US had admitted. The systematic abuse at Guantanamo Bay. That 150 innocent inmates were held for years without charge. 

And so on. 

Old Bailey

No titles have properly reported the story, and virtually all of those that have, are from outside the mainstream media. 

Only a handful of reporters regularly attended Assange’s four-week hearing three years ago at the Old Bailey: one from the specialist agency Central Court News, another from the Press Association; and court reporter James Doleman filing daily reports for Bridges for Media Freedom. There was a reporter from the Morning Star.

A BBC representative attended every day but appears not to have filed anything at all.

The former British ambassador Craig Murray, sitting in the public gallery with the Assange family, filed a series of brilliant daily reports. No British paper provided anything comparable. 

The Assange case proves the argument made by Noam Chomsky that mainstream media should be understood as an instrument of state and corporate power. 

I rang up the one figure from the mainstream media who has broken from this paradigm: Peter Hitchens has used his Mail column (credit to Mail editor Ted Verity) to make the case against extradition. “It could happen any day now”, he warned last month. 

“After yet another brief, unsuccessful court hearing, a column of vans and police cars roars out of Belmarsh prison in London and hurries to Heathrow, where a manacled, stooped and blinking prisoner is handed over to American officials and bundled aboard a plane bound for Washington DC.”

Hitchens added:

“He faces absurd charges of spying, when he never spied. His crime was to embarrass the US government by selectively releasing information that Washington had tried and failed to keep secret. I do not think this is a crime, here or there.”

Hitchens named several British columnists.

“Charles Moore. Danny Finkelstein. Matthew Parris. Janice Turner. These are all people I respect greatly, people who are prepared to say difficult or unpopular things. They believe in liberty under the law. I would love to see their voices raised in favour of Assange. I just don’t think that they’ve made the connection. It’s not too late for them to do so.”

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Research by Nicholas Brookes.

Peter Oborne is a journalist and author. His latest book is The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam.

Featured image is from Lawyers for Assange

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*** 

Military-industrial complex players big and small gathered in London this week, hawking everything from long-range missiles to gold-plated pistols to arms fair attendees—including representatives of horrific human rights violators—as weapon-makers and other merchants of the machinery of death reap record profits.

“War is good for business,” one defense executive attending the biennial Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) conference at ExCel London flat-out told Reuters. “We are extremely busy,” Michael Elmore, head of sales at the U.K.-based armored steelmaker MTL Advanced, told the media agency.

Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the West’s scramble to arm Ukrainian homeland defenders have been a bonanza for arms-makers.

“Ukraine is a very interesting combination of First and Second World War technologies and very modern technology,” Kuldar Vaarsi, CEO of the Estonian unmanned ground vehicle firm MILREM, told Reuters.

Shiny missiles for the shiny promise of world peace. #DSEI23 pic.twitter.com/czUXg3Al9o

— Dr Iain Overton (@iainoverton) September 12, 2023

Saber-rattling and fearmongering by government, media, and business figures amid rising tensions between the U.S. and its allies on one side, and a fast-rising China on the other, have also spurred military spending, including Japan’s $320 billion buildup announced last December.

“We think this is a longer-term essentially ‘sea change’ in national defense strategy for the U.S. and for our Western allies,” Jim Taiclet, CEO of U.S. arms giant Lockheed Martin, told investors during a call earlier this summer announcing higher-than-expected sales and profit outlooks.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States, Russia, France, China, and Germany were the world’s top arms exporters from 2018-22, with the five nations accounting for 76% of all weapons exports during that period. The U.S. accounted for nearly 40% of such exports during those five years, while increasing its dominance in the arms trade. The U.S. also remains by far the world’s biggest military spender.

At previous fairs, companies have been found to be promoting illegal weapons like cluster bombs, leg irons and electric shock weapons.

Weapons on display at #DSEI will be used across the world to silence communities speaking up for human rights ⚠️

— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) September 12, 2023

In addition to major corporations, middlemen like Marc Morales have also been profiting handsomely from wars in countries including Ukraine. Morales happened to have a warehouse full of ammunition in Bulgaria that the Pentagon originally intended for Afghanistan when Russia invaded its neighbor, and he has been richly rewarded as the U.S. spends tens of billions of dollars arming Ukrainian forces. He named his new $10 million yacht Trigger Happy.

Outside the sprawling ExCel convention center in London’s Docklands, anti-war protesters rallied against the global arms trade and the death and destruction it fuels. The Guardian reported that at least a dozen demonstrators were arrested during the course of the conference, including nine on Thursday for blocking a road outside the venue.

Protesters are taking their message to the streets and blocking roads around the ExCeL centre. Say no to killing. Say no to the arms fair. #StopDSEI #DSEI23 pic.twitter.com/AwJIDfMXCE

— CAAT (@CAATuk) September 12, 2023

Sam Perlo-Freeman, a researcher at the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), told The Guardian that “a lot of countries that are being talked about as new arms export markets are ones we would be concerned about.”

“Egypt is a repressive regime and Vietnam an absolute dictatorship,” Perlo-Freeman added. “Indonesia is involved in brutality in West Papua.”

Emily Apple, also of CAAT, told People’s World that “the companies exhibiting read as a who’s-who of the world’s worst arms dealers.”

“Israel is an apartheid state, and it is disgusting that the U.K. is not only selling weapons to Israel but encouraging Israeli arms companies to sell their weapons in London,” she continued. “Representatives from regimes such as Saudi Arabia, who have used U.K.-made weapons to commit war crimes in Yemen, will be wined and dined and encouraged to buy yet more arms.”

Israel's Ministry of Defence has been welcomed to London to flog its arms.

Here's its stand inside the #DSEI23 arms fair, which is sponsored by the UK Ministry of Defence. pic.twitter.com/5hiU35z9Wh

— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) September 12, 2023

“Deals done at DSEI will cause misery across the world, causing global instability, and devastate people’s lives,” Apple added.

Inside ExCel, it was business as usual. Pressed by Declassified U.K. chief reporter Phil Miller on why Britain’s right-wing government supports “selling arms to the Saudi dictatorship that sentences someone to death for tweeting,” Minister of State for the Armed Forces James Heappey deflected.

Private sector leaders, however, have been more forthcoming. As Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes opined during a 2021 investor call touting the company’s “solid” growth: “Peace is not going to break out in the Middle East anytime soon.”

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

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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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*** 

On today’s episode of The Truth Expedition, Mark has a candid conversation with Dr. William Makis.

Dr. Makis is a Canadian physician who specializes in nuclear medicine, radiology, and oncology.

The conversation includes information on what a vaccinated person can do to protect themselves, shedding, depopulation and more.

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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.

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The Role of Russia in Contemporary Global Politics and International Relations

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, September 18, 2023

It is a historical law that each state in the world changes with time. However, only a few states experienced dramatic change during the short period of time as Russia did over the last 33 years. Russia has changed as a state, nation, and military power followed by her fluctuating position in global politics and international relations.

Flight Attendants Suffering COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries and Sudden Deaths

By Dr. William Makis, September 18, 2023

More tragic injuries and deaths in another COVID-19 vaccine mandated profession. Pilot COVID-19 vaccine injuries and deaths get a tremendous amount of attention, however flight attendants were mandated to take COVID-19 vaccines as well, and they are suffering.

Canadian School Purges Books Published Before 2008 in Bid for ‘Inclusivity’

By Zero Hedge, September 18, 2023

Erindale Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario, ‘burned’ roughly 50% of its library book, including Harry Potter and the Hunger Games series, as part of a new “equity-based book weeding” implemented by the Peel District School Board earlier this year, according to the CBC.

Video: The Pfizer “Killer Vaccine”: “Money vs. Mortality”. Michel Chossudovsky

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 18, 2023

In numerous countries, pressured unduly by Big Pharma, corrupt national governments implemented policies of social enforcement and acceptance. Moreover, the devastating health impacts of the Covid-19 vaccine have been the object of systematic denial by the heath authorities as well as the media.

Florida: First State to Officially Recommend Against COVID-19 Boosters

By Steve Wilson, September 18, 2023

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said Wednesday that the Sunshine State will be the first state to officially recommend against COVID-19 boosters for those under age 65.

Brief for Murder: Pinochet’s Apologists Five Decades On. Chile’s September 1973 Coup d’état

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 18, 2023

To this day, the murderers of Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende, (wait, we hear the first apologist mock, he was not murdered but suicided out of choice) along with thousands of innocents continues to receive briefs in their defence.

History: Britain’s Colonial Policies in Africa

By Shane Quinn, September 18, 2023

The black populations of Africa, comprising the vast majority of the continent’s inhabitants, were not asked for their views about the Western European powers’ predatory schemes in Africa. 

“Side Effects” of COVID-19 Vaccine”, “Tell the American Public the Truth”: Former Director of CDC Dr. Robert Redfield Comes Clean on Government Censorship

By Lloyd Billingsley, September 18, 2023

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control during the administration of Donald Trump, recently went on record that the government health bureaucracy tried to quash discussion about the ineffectiveness of Covid vaccines.

G20 Announces Plan to Impose Digital Currencies and IDs Worldwide

By Bryan S. Jung, September 18, 2023

The leaders of the Group of 20 nations have agreed to a plan to eventually impose digital currencies and digital IDs on their respective populations, amid concern that governments might use them to monitor their people’s spending and crush dissent.

CDC Study Confirms COVID-19 Vaccination Increases Risk of Suffering Autoimmune Heart Disease Affecting the Heart by Over 13,200%

By The Expose, September 18, 2023

A study conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration has shown that the risk of myocarditis following mRNA COVID vaccination is around 133x greater than the background risk in the population.

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*** 

Oct. 10, 2022 – Los Angeles, CA – 26 year old Abraham Popalzai, a flight attendant, was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon/liver cancer after having severe symptoms at work.

Sep. 3, 2023 – 52 year old Donald Smith, flight attendant for Alaska Airlines, died unexpectedly while hiking with his family (cardiac arrest).

Aug. 26, 2023 – Houston, TX – 44 year old Meredith Tabing Smith, flight attendant with Southwest Airlines, died after battling Leukemia (Turbo cancer?).

Aug. 16, 2023 – Shelton, WA – 27 year old Akeylah Mains (daughter of Amanda Mains) is a flight attendant who was diagnosed on August 3, 2023 with Guillain-Barre Syndrome (a rare autoimmune disease associated with COVID-19 vaccines).

Aug. 2, 2023 – St.Petersburg, FL – Donna Joan Springer Lowe is a flight attendant who has been diagnosed with two different cancers in the past 2 years, esophageal cancer and ocular melanoma. She also had a cardiac arrest during an esophageal surgery.

July 14, 2023 – Vancouver, WA – 47 year old Teresa Marie Meyer died suddenly and unexpectedly in her sleep on July 14, 2023. She was a former flight attendant who worked at Amazon. Her 14 yo son found her dead.

June 21, 2023 – American Airlines Flight Attendant Carol Wright collapsed in-flight (VCE-PHL) shortly after take-off on June 21, 2023. Her colleagues performed CPR as pilots diverted to Dublin. She was taken to hospital upon landing but died. She was with American Airlines 38 years.

June 21, 2023 – Ogden, UT – Kendra Prince is a flight attendant. At 33 weeks pregnancy her baby suddenly stopped kicking after an uneventful pregnancy and 24 hours later baby’s heart was not beating and was stillborn.

June 3, 2023 – Parma, OH – 61 yo Michael Jones was a United Airlines flight attendant who died on June 3, 2023 from turbo gallbladder cancer he battled for 3 months.

May 22, 2023 – Austin, TX – Amber York is a flight attendant. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020 but had beaten it and was cancer free. Her cancer has just returned as a brain metastasis, Triple negative breast cancer.

Dec. 21, 2022 – Air Albania flight attendant Greta Dyrmishi, age 24, died suddenly in-flight after plane landed in the UK (Dec.21, 2022). A post-mortem found that the 24-year-old had died from sudden adult death syndrome (SADS).

Dec. 4, 2022 – Germany – 31 year old Michelle Markisch, flight attendant for German leisure airlines Condor, died unexpectedly.

Nov. 7, 2022 – Daytona Beach, FL – Dorian Boliaux is a flight attendant for United Airlines. in Sep.2022 she was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma (blood cancer). She was also diagnosed with AL Primary Amyloidosis!

Sep. 22, 2022 – Dover, OH – Amanda Sharp is a flight attendant for Republic airways. She was diagnosed with breast cancer which was operated, but had spread rapidly to her lymph nodes, which was discovered only after.

Aug. 26, 2022 – Dallas, TX – 48 year old Gilroy Sanchez Gonzales, a flight attendant for American Airlines and an ICU nurse, died suddenly on Aug. 26, 2022.

My Take…

More tragic injuries and deaths in another COVID-19 vaccine mandated profession.

Pilot COVID-19 vaccine injuries and deaths get a tremendous amount of attention, however flight attendants were mandated to take COVID-19 vaccines as well, and they are suffering.

COVID-19 vaccine mandates have decimated a number of professions, most notably doctors, nurses, other healthcare workers, teachers, police officers, firefighters, the military, pilots and more.

What is particularly alarming in this group are the turbo cancers.

• 26 year old man with Stage 4 Colon/liver cancer
• Young woman with 2 cancers (esophageal, ocular melanoma)
• Young woman’s breast cancer returns as a brain metastasis triple negative
• Woman diagnosed with multiple myeloma AND AL primary amyloidosis
• 44 yo woman dies of leukemia
• 61 yo man dies of gallbladder cancer after only 3 months
• Young woman has operation for breast cancer but it spreads to lymph nodes before her oncologists can catch it!

One of these is rare. All of these, is unheard of.

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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.

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*** 

In a quest to be more “inclusive,” a Canadian school board in Mississauga, Ontario has decided to purge its library of all books published before the year 2008.

Erindale Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario, ‘burned’ roughly 50% of its library book, including Harry Potter and the Hunger Games series, as part of a new “equity-based book weeding” implemented by the Peel District School Board earlier this year, according to the CBC.

The board insists it was following a wider directive from the Minister of Education to make learning resources more inclusive and reflective of the community.

Yes, a library with empty shelves sounds very inclusive…

Also purged were classics  like “The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank” and iconic children’s books like “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”

When asked WTF, the school board has been notably evasive, refusing to address whether books are being removed solely based on their publication date. Their statement, which claims books are removed if they are “damaged, inaccurate, or not checked out often,” doesn’t check out whatsoever.

10th-grade student of Japanese descent Reina Takata worries that significant portions of her heritage could vanish with this book purge.

“Authors who wrote about Japanese internment camps are going to be erased,” she warned.

Official Backpedaling

Given the mounting backlash, Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce finally weighed in, condemning the practice as “offensive, illogical, and counterintuitive.” He has since ordered the board to cease the book removals immediately.

The larger issue here is the increasing trend of over-correction in the name of “wokeness,” often leading to the vanishing of history, culture, and nuanced discourse. At what point does the push for equity turn into a frenzy of historical whitewashing? Erindale Secondary School may have given us the answer: when you arbitrarily remove 50% of your library in the name of inclusivity, you’re probably doing it wrong.

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*** 

Finland’s Border Guard is now protecting the first section of the border with Russia where a fence has been erected, reported Finnish radio Yle on Thursday. The pilot 3-kilometer-long section of the metal barrier, which is 3 meters high and topped with barbed wire, is located in the town of Imatra near the busiest border crossing.

Construction of the fence on the eastern border began in the spring. Initially, it was assumed that the first test section of the barrier would be ready by the end of June. The delay was caused by difficulties at the construction stage, as well as time-consuming installations of the monitoring system.

A border barrier fence between Finland, left, and Russia is seen in a forest near the Pelkola border crossing point in Imatra, southeastern Finland, Friday, April 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

Several hundred meters of the test section are also located in the area of the local military barracks, where surveillance techniques are being tested.

“The experience from the pilot will be used in the next stages of work,” said project leader Ismo Kurki from the Border Guard unit for southeastern Finland.

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*** 

Not so long ago, following French President Emmanuel Macron’s Beijing visit, many in the U.S. reacted to his expressed desire to avoid confrontation with China with indignation, labeling the leader a fool and a puppet.

Evidently, the backlash didn’t phase Macron. He doubled-down, saying that “being an ally does not mean being a vassal… [or] mean that we don’t have the right to think for ourselves.” When it comes to responding to fluctuating China-U.S. tensions, Macron believes that for Europe no response is the best response.

And as much as some Americans might wish he was wrong, he is not. 

Macron is not witless. He is making a case that prioritizes his country’s tangible interests, not the U.S.’s. These include focusing on his region, avoiding conflict with a major global power, and remaining a relevant actor in world affairs. 

Critics like The Spectator World’s John Pietro may label Macron’s call for European strategic autonomy “fantastical” and “unpopular,” but reality is not on their side. 

In fact, Macron’s view is very popular. According to the European Council on Foreign Relations, close to three-quarters of Europeans believe that the Continent should pursue increased independence vis-à-vis American military power. Additionally, the report shows that majorities in all surveyed countries believe that Europe should remain neutral in any conflict between China and the U.S. over Taiwan. 

Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has repeatedly advocated for strategic autonomy too, as he publicly emphasizes his desire to strengthen relations between China and the EU. 

Three years ago, for instance, Borrell made the case for the framework exalted by Macron.

“[T]he world has changed. It is difficult to claim to be a ‘political union’ able to act as a ‘global player’ […] without being ‘autonomous,’” Borrell explains. “[T]he weight of Europe in the world is shrinking,” he acknowledges, claiming that “[t]he next two decades are going to be crucial because China will use them to become the first global power.”

With this in mind, the EU official concludes that “traditional alliances remain essential” but insufficient, and relations between countries will become “more transactional” as the power balance shifts.

Borrell looks at the changing world, and sees an opportunity to build a relationship with a powerful China, just like Macron does. For him, as for most Europeans, Russia poses a far more perilous threat than China. Much to some American neoconservatives’ disappointment, he sees no value in taking strong stances against China.

If the U.S. were to publicly and strongly reject Europe’s openness to China, Borrell may reconsider. But that has not happened. Hence, with precaution and measured language, Borrell and Europe writ large will likely continue to dance with both China and the U.S. 

With eyes on Russia, it may seem like Europe and the U.S. have a phenomenal bond. When it comes to China though, that bond is not quite clear. So, while Americans’ gut reaction to Macron’s philosophy might be indignation, still, the U.S. must take Macron’s signals and framework seriously. Pretending he’s a lunatic simply won’t cut it.

*

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Juan P. Villasmil is a foreign policy specialist. His work has been featured on The Wilson Center’s New Security Beat, The National Interest, RealClearWorld, and others. He is also a Young Voices contributor.

Featured image is from Frederic Legrand – COMEO/Shutterstock

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*** 

About £9 billion of this year’s massive expansion in military spending is earmarked for nuclear weapons — that’s on top of over £205bn already being shelled out on replacing Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system.

And no doubt there’ll be plenty extra spent on increasing the nuclear arsenal, announced in 2021, in spite of it being a breach of international law.

So you’d think there was already enough nuclear weaponry in Britain. But no. We’re having US nuclear weapons foisted on us too, without any public or parliamentary discussion.

As Diane Abbott wrote in these pages last weekend, the United States Congress has been informed of this development, but no such information has been provided to the British Parliament.

Repeated questions put in the House of Commons usually result in the non-information that “the Ministry of Defence is unable to comment on US spending decisions and capabilities, which are a matter for the US government. It remains long-standing UK and Nato policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at a given location.”

Is this obfuscation, or can the US really put nuclear weapons here without our government’s say-so? Is this the much-vaunted “special relationship” — that the US can make us a nuclear target without our government even being allowed to comment?

One thing’s for certain: next year when the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement comes up for renewal in Parliament, we can’t allow it to be the same old rubber stamp. It’s time to put paid to UK subordination to US nuclear, military and foreign policy.

But Lakenheath is our most immediate challenge. There’s been clear evidence for over a year that the US is planning to return its nuclear weapons to the base in Suffolk — a base often dubbed USAF Lakenheath because it is, in fact, wholly run and controlled by the US.

It’s time for our government to rethink its supine position, because even if it thinks that’s OK, the majority of the population doesn’t: 59 per cent of respondents to a recent Yougov poll opposed US nukes coming back to Britain, with only 23 per cent supporting.

CND has been active in protesting to stop the weapons coming here since the news first emerged last year. Despite the huge risks that are now facing all of us as a result of these weapons, getting widespread coverage of this issue has not been easy. The honourable exception has, of course, been the Morning Star.

But the tide has now turned. With the latest news from the Federation of American Scientists, we have managed to break through into the mainstream, with coverage on major national broadcasting and most national newspapers, not to mention a good range of local coverage.

The next step in our protests is coming up next weekend, with a ” national day of action on Saturday September 23.

Events are happening across the country, and at Lakenheath itself, CND will visit to conduct a citizens’ weapons Inspection.

If the government refuses to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons at the base, then citizens need to take matters into their own hands to ensure we have the information we need. And if we are going to be on the nuclear front line, then we certainly need to know that!

So far, the information we have is that US Air Force documents dated March this year strongly indicate that Washington is in the process of re-establishing its nuclear weapons presence in Britain, with the new B61-12 guided nuclear bomb.

Massive building works are under way at Lakenheath, including construction work on new facilities to house the anticipated influx of air crew. The work is expected to last from June 2024 to February 2026.

The new bomb will also be located in five other European countries and assigned to Nato. The presence of these US nuclear weapons in Europe has already been used by Putin to justify his recent movement of Russian nukes to Belarus. Their return to Britain has led to promises of Russian countermeasures.

It’s clear that Lakenheath is once again a vital cog in Washington’s overseas nuclear machine — despite refusals from the British government to acknowledge this reality.

The deployment of the new B61-12 to Europe undermines prospects for global peace and ensures Britain will be a target in a nuclear conflict between the US/Nato and Russia.

Everyone needs to know that this is not a local or regional problem confined to East Anglia. In the event of a war, certainly Lakenheath will be targeted. But so will Britain’s other nuclear facilities, as well as major cities. The fact is, we are all at greater risk than ever if these weapons come back to Britain.

It’s beyond irresponsible that the UK government is allowing this deployment. It’s time for us to step up our mobilisation. Over the decades, from Lakenheath to Greenham Common, persistent popular protest has been vital in getting US nuclear weapons removed from Britain. Now we must stop them coming back.

*

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Kate Hudson is general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Featured image: DESTINATION SUFFOLK: B61-12 guided nuclear bomb first trial in December 2021 Photo: Pic: Los Alamos National Laboratory/CC

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*** 

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said Wednesday that the Sunshine State will be the first state to officially recommend against COVID-19 boosters for those under age 65.

The state, in its guidance, discourages use of the booster for those under age 65 because the new U.S. Food and Drug Administration boosters lack a human clinical trial and evidence of their efficiency or benefits.

“Once again, the federal government is failing Americans by refusing to be honest about the risks and not providing sufficient clinical evidence when it comes to these COVID-19 mRNA shots, especially with how widespread immunity is now,” Ladapo said in a news release. “In Florida, we will always use common sense and protect the rights and liberties of Floridians, including the right to accurate information.”

In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a ban on vaccine passports, mask and vaccine requirements in Florida schools and businesses and prohibited employers from hiring or firing workers based on vaccination status.

“I will not stand by and let the FDA and CDC use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective,” DeSantis said in a news release. “Once again, Florida is the first state in the nation to stand up and provide guidance based on truth, not Washington edicts.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently got new leadership. Dr. Mandy Cohen is the former Health Department leader in North Carolina, a state which declared a state of emergency for 888 days and imposed numerous restrictions on regular everyday life including schools, businesses and houses of faith.

*

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Steve Wilson has been an award-winning writer and editor for nearly 20 years at newspapers in Georgia, Florida and Mississippi and is a U.S. Coast Guard veteran and University of Alabama graduate. Wilson is a regional editor for The Center Square.

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*** 

During the Cold War, assassinations most foul were entertained as necessary measures to advance the set cause. In Latin America, military regimes were keenly sponsored as reliably brutal antidotes to the Marxist tic, or at the very least the tic in waiting. Any government deemed by Washington to be remotely progressive would become ripe targets for violent overthrow.

To this day, the murderers of Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende, (wait, we hear the first apologist mock, he was not murdered but suicided out of choice) along with thousands of innocents continues to receive briefs in their defence.

On September 15, Mary Anastasia O’Grady, a Wall Street Journal scratcher turned police-state boot polisher bombarded her Australian Radio National host, Tom Switzer, with the stock libels about Allende’s legacy and the military coup of September 11, 1973. The interview will go down as one of Switzer’s poorer efforts, despite meek attempts to bring his frothing interviewee back to the bloody account opened by the military regime.

Perhaps we could have expected little else. As Jeffrey Goldberg so fittingly remarked in The Atlantic in September 2010, O’Grady “never met a fascist Central American oligarch she didn’t like”. Her penchant for falsifying history in the name of pathological polemics is the stuff of legend.

With Switzer suitably boxed, O’Grady gives Allende the traditional Cold War brushing: he was not really democratic; he had issues with the press (the same press backed by Washington to disrupt the reform agenda). He did not countenance varied opinions. He appropriated property for the peasantry.

The O’Grady interview with Switzer is remarkable for not making a single mention of the role played by the crippling US economic blockade, the spoiling efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency and its covert funding of opposition groups, or the delighted, proud encouragement from President Richard Nixon’s National Security advisor Henry Kissinger egging on the destruction of Allende’s “insidious” model of a government. Switzer also fails to mention the meddling efforts made by other powers such as Australia, a country whose own intelligence service admitted to having no national or economic interest in Chile’s affairs yet committed intelligence officers to the task of overthrowing Allende.

In a CIA Intelligence Memorandum, issued shortly after Allende’s election victory, the views of the Group of Inter-American Affairs, made up of representatives from the agency, State and Defense departments, and the White House, concluded that the US had no vital interests in Chile. Allende’s victory would not alter the military balance in any significant way, or pose threat to peace in the region. But a victory would “threaten hemispheric cohesion and would represent a psychological setback to the US as well as a definite advance for the Marxist idea.” With such sentiments in place, the hand of intervention was soon forthcoming.

The 1975 staff report by the Senate Select Committee to study governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities is frank and unequivocal about that fact. “Broadly speaking, US policy sought to maximize pressures on the Allende government to prevent its consolidation and limit its ability to implement policies contrary to US and hemispheric interests.”

Rather than being treated exactly as he should be, a sadistic psychopath deserving a cell with a bar soap, potty and a lengthy prison sentence, the man who came to power, General Augusto Pinochet, is seen as the necessary school bully who bruised one nose too many (“human rights abuses”, as these are sniffily called), the thousands of corpses arising under his watch barely warranting a footnote of recognition. The relativists immediately resort to the canard about Allende’s Marxist credentials and his closeness to Cuba’s Fidel Castro, as if that justified everything.

Remaining in power till 1990, Pinochet oversaw the killing or disappearance of 3,200 individuals, and the torture of 38,000 victims. After leaving the presidency, he remained chief of the armed forces and a senator until 2002 managing, despite protracted legal proceedings against him, to remain out of prison. (He did, however, spend 16 months under house arrest in the UK.)

In May this year, the polling company Cerc-Mori found that 36% of people believed that the general “liberated Chile from Marxism,” tying it with a similar figure reached in 2000. Sociologist Marta Lagos, speaking to the AFP news service, mused darkly that Pinochet “is the only dictator in Western contemporary history who, 50 years after a coup d’état, is viewed favourably by more than a third of the population.”

Conservative lawyer José Antonio Kast is very much of that view, perpetuating that tiresome fantasy that the Pinochet regime could hardly be considered a dictatorship, certainly not when compared to Venezuela and Nicaragua. The political right, in such a hair-splitting mood, is never seen as capable of police-state authoritarianism. Besides, the General did the good thing in overseeing a peaceful transition of power, leaving the opposition intact. Splendid of him to do so.

Despite losing to his left-leaning opponent Gabriel Boric in the 2021 presidential elections, Kast’s Republican Party netted 23 of 51 seats on the council that is tasked with rewriting a constitution that operated during the military regime. Marcelo Mella of the University of Santiago sees such signs as ominous: “It is a far-right party with a cultural restoration project.”

For Kast, the link between progressive agendas, the broader left, and communism, is seamless, the red bogey that needs social extirpation. As he stated in 2021 during the presidential campaign, “This December we won’t just elect a president, we will choose between liberty and communism.” Boric’s alliance with Chile’s Communist Party has also made such links easy, if faulty.

In August, Boric announced the National Search Plan, an initiative to search for the remains of those who were forcibly disappeared during the Pinochet era. “This is not a favour to the families,” the president declared. “It is a duty to society as a whole to deliver the answers the country deserves and needs.” But his own popularity is flagging in the polls.

The pendulum, it would seem, is again swinging away from the left. The shadow cast by the legacy of the military junta has grown thicker.

As it does so, the Pinochet defenders, beneficiaries of economic policies that were prosecuted alongside murderous ones against critics, remain noisy and grotesquely at large.

*

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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] 

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*** 

What happened to Elon Musk this past week showcases how completely unhinged and dangerous U.S. policy to Ukraine has become. The condemnation began when the Washington Post published excerpts from a new biography on Musk revealing that he turned down a Ukrainian request to help launch a major sneak attack in September 2022 on the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

There were numerous, legitimate reasons why Musk refused to activate his Starlink internet services for Ukraine to carry out the unprecedented, surprise attack on Russian naval vessels: Musk was providing terminals to Ukraine for free; he was not on a military contract at that time; the late-night request came directly from the Ukrainian—not American—government; and Starlink had never been activated over Crimea because of U.S. sanctions on Russia.

Most importantly, Musk was concerned that enabling the attack could result in serious “conflict escalation.” He worried that he was being asked to turn on Starlink for a “Pearl Harbor like attack” and had no wish to “proactively take part in a major act of war,” possibly provoking a Russian nuclear response.

In response to this nuclear aversion, Musk was called “evil” by a high-level Ukrainian official and “traitor” by American war enthusiasts.

Rachel Maddow on the Russia conspiracy network MSNBC said Musk was “intervening to try to stop Ukraine from winning the war.” Not to be outdone, CNN‘s Jake Tapper described Elon as a “capricious billionaire” who “sabotaged a military operation by Ukraine, a U.S. ally,” an act that demands “repercussions.” For his part, chief Iraq war salesman-turned-Democrat-darling, David Frum, said that Musk must be stripped of his U.S. government contracts for not reflexively acceding to the Ukrainian Starlink request, and former “progressive,”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, called for an immediate Congressional investigation “to ensure foreign policy is conducted by the government and not by one billionaire.”

‼️ @SenWarren demands an investigation into SpaceX after Musk blocked Ukraine from extending the Starlink network near Crimea.

“The Congress needs to investigate whether we have adequate tools to ensure foreign policy is conducted by the government and not by one billionaire". pic.twitter.com/p3I19Yk851

— Ostap Yarysh (@OstapYarysh) September 12, 2023

But the Musk pile-on was just getting started.

In the days that followed, his detractors used a Ukrainian operation as proof that Musk was overreacting.

Days after the Starlink story broke, Ukraine successfully launched British Storm Shadow cruise missiles into the Russian naval headquarters in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. It was the largest attack since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly 19 months ago, and it damaged a Russian submarine and warship.

When the military action was not followed by World War III, Musk was torched again.

As the pro-war media noted, “It was precisely such a strike, according to Musk, that should have provoked a nuclear war.”

A torrent of international relations pundits on Twitter mocked Musk, tweeting things like “I was assured by an internet service provider executive that this would have caused WWIII and the use of nuclear weapons” and “How’s it going man, after the splendid attack on Sevastopol? WW3 started already?”

Musk’s detractors might think this is all very funny, but attacking Crimea—not to mention the Russian mainland in increasingly frequent drone strikes on Moscow—is no laughing matter. Even the staunchest Western war enthusiasts from the NATO-aligned Atlantic Council to the Estonian defense minister to Biden’s own Secretary of State Antony Blinken all previously acknowledged that threatening Crimea is a possible “red line” that could lead to nuclear war.

As the Russian military specialist Nicolo Fasola pointed out in April, “There’s a definite risk that Putin would use nuclear weapons to counter a Ukrainian offensive in Crimea. And that’s why Ukraine’s Western allies are reluctant.”

But that previous caution has faded—no doubt as a result of the much-touted counteroffensive disappointing American war planners, leading to a seemingly endless and halting war of attrition reminiscent of World War I. Meanwhile, Biden’s political legacy is on the line as the presidential election looms.

The longer the war goes on, the more the Biden administration and its NATO allies are throwing caution to the wind. Biden keeps consenting to supply weapons previously ruled out as excessively escalatory, from Patriot air defense systems to Abrams tanks to cluster munitions to F-16’s. The latest reversal is over the expected transfer of Army Tactical Missile Systems that can fly up to 190 miles, enabling Ukrainian forces to strike far beyond Russia’s defensive positions inside Crimea and deep into Russian sovereign territory.

National Security advisor Jake Sullivan used to rule out ATACMS “to ensure that we don’t get into a situation in which we are approaching the Third World War.” Even CNN, an enthusiastic advocate for greater American involvement in the war, has acknowledged the “fears about escalating the conflict.”

A couple months ago, Senator James Risch of Idaho told the Aspen Security Forum, “I’m tired of hearing about escalation. I want Putin to wake up in the morning worried about what he’s going to do that’s going to cause us to escalate.” Biden apparently now agrees.

The view now ruling the Democratic Party and the President is the same as the warmongers:

It’s silly to worry as Musk does about turning the Ukraine war into something catastrophically worse.

It’s un-American not to try to find Russia’s redline for starting World War III.

It’s traitorous to believe—as the President himself did, just a few months ago—that we should be doing all we can to prevent escalation.

The new mantra seems to be:

We’re not trying hard enough in Ukraine until we feel the nuclear blast against our faces.

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Our thanks to Newsweek for having brought this important article to our attention.

Copyright Prof. Max Abrahms, Newsweek, September 2023.

To access the complete article on Newsweek click here

Max Abrahms, Ph.D., is a professor of political science at Northeastern University and author of Rules for Rebels: The Science of Victory in Militant History.

 

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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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*** 

As Americans flock to Oppenheimer, one salutary result is a reawakened public awareness of the perils of nuclear weapons, and revived attention to the U.S. decision to bomb Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945). Less apparent is the extraordinary suffering of Japanese civilians and the appalling failure of the Truman administration to consider policy alternatives.

This inattention mirrors the public’s perception at the time, a pattern which has persisted over decades, as the U.S. government strikes countries from the air.

Long forgotten, and largely unnoticed in America, was the accidental bombing on August 6, 1973, by American B-52s of the center of Neak Luong, a ferry and garrison town inside Cambodia. It had fallen most heavily near barracks, where pro-government soldiers resided with their wives and children, damaging the local hospital and demolishing large sections of the town.

“Let the Americans see me,” mourned the anguished Cambodian soldier.

New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg encountered the victims as they were carried to the Preah Ket Mealea hospital in Phnom Penh. As he described it, “there were scenes of blood and weeping. Infants shattered by shrapnel, lay unconscious on stretchers.” Whole families had been affected. Walking along the riverbank, he observed a Cambodian soldier sobbing uncontrollably: “All my family is dead. .All my family is dead…Take my picture! Let the Americans see me.”

At the American Embassy, Colonel David Opfer was assuring the press that “the destruction was minimal,” although more than 200 people had died. As was routinely the case, whether in South Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia, government officials chose to deny or downplay the destruction.

Viewed in isolation, Neak Luong was a genuine accident. There was no intention to attack friendly soldiers and their families. However, this erroneous air strike was occurring in a context in which U.S. bombers had been striking Cambodia secretly and illegally for the past five years. Until that summer, the Nixon Administration had successfully concealed from Congress and the public their 3,600 bombing raids between March of 1969 and May of 1970.

Importantly, the attack on Neak Luong had occurred seven months after the January 1973 Paris Peace Accord had been signed, ostensibly ending U.S. participation in the Vietnam War.

Although a specific Cambodian cease-fire was not included, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had assured colleagues that based on understandings with Hanoi, fighting there would cease.

Instead, the country was consumed by its own civil war between the Lon Nol government and the rapidly growing Khmer Rouge. As fighting continued, the United States kept bombing in support of the regime. The result was a six-month period more hellish than its predecessor, as much of the countryside became a virtual “free-fire zone,” for all participants.

This U.S. activity was of questionable legality, since under the Cooper-Church Amendment, the U.S. military was prohibited from bombing in support of the Cambodian government, except in response to North Vietnamese aggressor.

In April 1973, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent two veteran observers, James Lowenstein and Richard Moose, on a fact-finding trip to Southeast Asia. Although assured by the Embassy and Air Force personnel that U.S. air strikes were to halt “the movement of North Vietnamese personnel, tanks, artillery, and supplies into South Vietnam,” they soon discovered the U.S. Embassy was coordinating the bombings, with an estimated 80% in support of Lon Nol’s regime.

Remarkably some American airmen responsible for the bombing were expressing their distress in letters to elected officials. These messages were so anguished, they were placed in the Congressional Record by Senator William Fulbright and given to The New York Times by Senator Edward Kennedy. According to one,

“I am an AC-130 gunship navigator fighting the war in Cambodia on a day-to-day basis… What I see is an absurd effort by my Commander in Chief to preserve an unpopular, corrupt, dictatorial government at any expense. We have once again become involved in a civil conflict and because of our involvement have escalated the death and destruction on a massive scale.”

The careless killing of civilians did not end with the wars in Southeast Asia. One unfortunate lesson from that era was that a reliance on air power was politically safer than a large, extended deployment of American soldiers. Hence the “war on terrorism” waged in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere has involved tens of thousands of airstrikes whether by U.S. bombers or drones. Sadly, the tragic coda to the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was a hasty drone attack on August 29, 2021, that killed an innocent aid worker and seven children.

“Let the Americans see me,” mourned the anguished Cambodian soldier. While the case of Neak Luong was carefully reported, as was the misdirected drone attack in Kabul, these were the exceptions. Largely unaware of the existence or consequences of these air wars, the public has had little appetite or interest in policy alternatives. This remains a daunting challenge for the peace movement: how to make visible the ongoing practice of striking alleged enemies, with no accountability.

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

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Carolyn Eisenberg is a professor of U.S. history and american foreign policy at Hofstra University. She is the author of the recently published Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia.(Oxford University Press). She is a Co-Founder of Brooklyn for Peace.

Featured image: B-52 drops bombs over Southeast Asia. (Photo: Wikimedia)

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*** 

Face biometrics continue to underpin advances speeding travelers through airports, with Idemia participating in a digital ID pilot for travel and tipping the capabilities of next-generation scanners.

National digital ID programs were also in the news with ID Day approaching. Kenya is starting again, Ethiopia is moving ahead, and the Philippines is getting phones with biometric technology from Totm. An interview with Onfido’s CEO and a major change by NIST were also among the week’s most read articles on Biometric Update.

Top Biometrics News of the Week

A pilot of Digital Travel Credentials for air travel between the Netherlands and Canada is back on, using a smartphone app from Idemia. The pilot was described during an FTE webinar featuring representatives of airlines, the TSA and CBP. The next generation of the Idemia ID scanners used in a growing number of U.S. airports will be able to accept DTCs, an executive with the company says.

The new terminal at Kansas City International Airport features capabilities for Global Entry members to use biometrics and mobile devices without physical documentation, in most cases. The extent to which trusted travellers are monitored has been revealed, meanwhile, with the discovery fine print stating that the U.S. checks all against criminal and no-fly lists every 24 hours.

Details for Kenya’s new digital ID system have been unveiled, including a September 29 launch date for Maisha Namba supported by a $6.8 million budget. The birth-to-death ID number was approved by a government committee, along with the accompanying ID card, digital signature, and unified population registry.

A Totm subsidiary has signed an MoU to work closely with a Filipino mobile phone maker to integrate biometrics and ID management products to give state-backed institutions a way to carry out KYC checks. The company plans to use its experience in Indonesia in working with the Philippines’ digital ID ecosystem.

The rollout of Ethiopia’s national digital ID, Fayda, continues with integration by the Ministry of Education as the student identification for admissions, records management, licensing and national exams. The government says the move will improve identity verification of students, as well as protection of their data.

Denmark is held up by OIX as an aspirational example to the UK and other countries trying to deliver government services through digital ID. The Danish national ID has 99 percent adoption and is commonly used for access to public and financial services.

A policy guide from the G20 and the World Bank suggests how countries in the Global South can improve financial inclusion and productivity with digital public infrastructure. DPIs can lower transaction costs while increasing access to financial services, but also come with their own risks that must be planned for.

Migrants seeking refuge in Nigeria have been “instrumentalized” for political purposes with the help of biometrics, according to research by academics. The paper draws on incidents like the discovery of refugees from Niger holding biometric voter IDs in Nigeria to argue that migrants are being used to undermine the legitimacy of elections in the country.

A name on Time’s list of 100 influential people in AI familiar to observers of the facial recognition market is Inioluwa Deborah Raji. Her work on algorithmic bias is receiving recognition in Africa, and most in the industry are likely already familiar with her sincere approach to contentious policy debates.

Reusable digital identity is now the primary focus at Onfido, CEO Mike Tuchen tells Biometric Update in an interview. With the company’s plans for an IPO crushed by rising interest rates and a corresponding fall in equities market demand, Tuchen discussed the relation between ID verification orchestration and federation, and how the acquisition of Airside fits into Onfido’s goals.

NIST has divided the FRVT program into evaluations of face biometric recognition and data analysis, under the respective acronyms FRTE and FATE. The Face Recognition Technology Evaluation includes new tracks for matching multimodal and twins’ biometrics, while analysis tracks include morph detection, image quality assessment, PAD and age estimation.

Incognia CEO Andre Ferraz compares America’s new instant payment solution, FedNow, to Brazil’s Pix and India’s UPI in a Biometric Update guest post. Ferraz argues that those examples show industry collaboration is needed to ensure the benefits of FedNow are not overshadowed by fraud.

Please tell us about any insights, perspectives or content we should share with the people in biometrics and the broader digital identity community in the comments below or through social media.

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In March 1881 on the territory of present day South Africa, British military forces were defeated by Boer soldiers during the First Boer War. The Boers were white settlers who for generations had lived in southern Africa and they were mostly of Dutch or German descent. 

The First Boer War was not a large conflict, involving soldiers numbering in their low thousands, but poor British command and positioning of their troops contributed to the defeat against well-organised Boer forces. Britain’s small-scale colonial battles were teaching them false lessons in warfare. The military failures persisted in coming years, for which British soldiers were to pay a very high price when faced with a global war from 1914. 

The Boers’ victory in the First Boer War had persuaded British prime minister, William Gladstone, to recognise the statehood of the South African Republic (also called the Transvaal Republic) along with another smaller Boer territory bordering the Transvaal, the Orange Free State. These territories, located in the northern half of modern day South Africa, would be self-governed by the Boers but still under British sovereignty. London wanted to maintain its claims to the regions. 

British planners were well aware of South Africa’s strategic significance. The waters off its southern coastline were a trade route which allowed the Royal Navy passage to India, one of the British Empire’s prized possessions. South African soil contained valuable mineral deposits such as gold and diamonds, which included the discovery on separate occasions of renowned diamonds like the Eureka, the Excelsior and the Cullinan. From the late 1860s onward, British adventurers had flocked to South African areas like Kimberley (diamonds) and Witwatersrand (gold) hoping to make their fortune. 

Cecil Rhodes, a prominent English-born liberal politician and mining tycoon, became in July 1890 the prime minister of the British-controlled Cape Colony, which today lies within the southern part of South Africa. Rhodes was also the president of the British South Africa Company, which was involved in mining and colonial activities regarding the exploitation of southern Africa’s material resources. 

Rhodes’ actions were assisted by funding from the extremely wealthy Rothschild banking family.

Rhodes had extravagant ambitions. With Rothschild money, he wanted to construct a railway that would stretch uninterrupted from one end of the African continent to the other, from Cape Colony to Cairo. Rhodes had colonial aspirations as well. This included his intention of carving out a strip of British territory that would also run along the length of Africa. 

Racism was partly behind these desires. Rhodes had said the English are “the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race”. 

The black populations of Africa, comprising the vast majority of the continent’s inhabitants, were not asked for their views about the Western European powers’ predatory schemes in Africa. 

Rhodes’ aims were blocked by the existence of the South African Republic, which would not agree either to the railway or to the implementation of a strip of British territory running through Africa. Paul Kruger, the South African Republic’s leader since 1883, was not against the entry of Britons to the area but he had taxed them heavily and refused to give them political rights. 

Kruger was also buying weapons from the German Empire, and these arms perhaps proved of some slight use in overcoming the Rhodes-backed Jameson Raid. This was an attempt to remove Kruger’s government in Pretoria, capital city of the South African Republic, and to turn the area into an outright British colony. 

The Jameson Raid lasted for four days from 29 December 1895. In the end the British-led raiders, who failed to reach Pretoria, were caught in a vulnerable position out in open ground and forced to give up their assault. The raiders had brought with them significant firepower, but they were unable to deploy their weapons sufficiently because of the complete lack of cover which the terrain provided. 

The failure of the Jameson Raid caused distress in London. Moreover, the British were irritated that Berlin was gaining friendly relations with the Boer government. The Germans felt they were within their rights to pursue such policies, and the question could be asked as to what right the British had to exploit Africa through colonial measures. British anger was simmering away for months, because the Germans in the mid-1890s were bankrolling the Boers’ construction of a railway line, that ran from Pretoria almost 300 miles eastward to Delagoa Bay in Mozambique. 

The German-funded railway line, which was finished by July 1895, provided an alternative to another railway that went through Cape Colony, overseen by Rhodes. Historian Donald J. Goodspeed wrote, “This may have been what made Rhodes decide that it was time to strike. Whatever the precipitating factor, he planned a coup d’etat [Jameson Raid] that would oust the Boer government at Pretoria and replace it with one headed by his brother, Frank, the leader of the Uitlanders in the Transvaal”. 

The Uitlanders were workers primarily of British nationality. They had come to the South African Republic for such events as the Witwatersrand Gold Rush. It started in 1886 when gold reserves were discovered in the Witwatersrand scarp, a 35 mile long formation of rock, which sparked excitement around much of the globe. Witwatersrand would account for 50% of all of the gold mined in the world. Gold prospectors entered the South African Republic from as far away as America and Australia. 

In Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm II was delighted to learn of the Jameson Raid’s demise. After it ended, on 3 January 1896 the kaiser made contact with the Kruger government in Pretoria. The kaiser congratulated Kruger and his followers for defeating the Jameson Raid and for having secured the independence of the South African Republic. The kaiser hinted that Germany would have been prepared to intervene militarily on the Boers’ behalf, should they have required assistance. The British did not take kindly to the suggestion. 

These colonial rivalries, between the Western powers, would prove to be contributory factors that resulted in the outbreak of World War I. After the kaiser had messaged Kruger, there was talk in Berlin of sending German soldiers to Delagoa Bay east of Pretoria. This was not possible because the Royal Navy controlled the maritime routes, and the British government had since sent out a fresh naval squadron. 

By the late 19th century the British Empire was, however, faced with increasing obstacles to its power. A British major-general, Horatio Kitchener, led British soldiers to conquer the Sudan in 1898, and they then advanced along the White Nile, one of the tributaries of the Nile river. To their displeasure, Kitchener’s men found a French military expedition already based at the town of Fashoda, now located in South Sudan. 

Neither the British nor the French were initially prepared to back down and for months through 1898 the two nations were on the brink of war. It was the French who eventually gave way in October 1898 when they chose to evacuate Fashoda. Among other reasons, this was because the Royal Navy held the upper hand out to sea and Paris was unable to supply and reinforce its troops at Fashoda. The French government, in addition, viewed its rivalry with Germany in Europe as more urgent than colonial squabbles with Britain in Africa. 

The Royal Navy itself also still greatly surpassed the Imperial German Navy in size and strength. This should not have caused the Germans much concern. Germany’s position in central Europe, where the country faced potential conflicts on her western and eastern borders, meant that having a powerful army was far more important to Germany than having a powerful navy. 

It made sense for other major states like Russia, Britain and America to possess large navies, as those countries have extensive shorelines and needed warships to safeguard their coasts. Britain was especially reliant on foreign trade. In 1897 for example, 66% of Britain’s trade came from outside of Europe, whereas 66% of Germany’s trade that year came from within Europe. 

The Germans couldn’t really afford the luxury of having a strong army and navy. Their former chancellor, Bismarck, would never have tolerated the enlargement of the German Navy. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who assumed the throne in 1888 and was a keen amateur seafarer, developed other ideas. “I will never rest until I have raised my navy to the same level as my army”, the kaiser declared in 1897. The following year he said, “Our future lies on the water”. Yet Germany’s future, should the nation become involved in a continental war, surely depended on its army. 

The kaiser disliked democracy but he could be sensitive to public attitudes. He was heartened to learn that there was considerable support from the German people for the naval expansion, along with Germany’s continued colonial presence in parts of west and east Africa. 

Later on, the British foreign secretary Edward Grey stated in 1908 that Germany had “the strongest army in the world”. The German Army would most probably have been able to defeat its French and British counterparts, as was shown in 1940, but the Russian Army was much larger than anything which Germany could hope to assemble. In 1897 an official census revealed the Russian population to be at 126 million. Germany’s population was over 70 million less than that figure and Russia contained greater natural resources than Germany too. A war of attrition between the Russian and German divisions would clearly favour the Russians. 

While Germany was a resource-poor state, Russia could afford to have a strong army and navy, and such a policy has been within the country’s interests. The German government needed to be more careful with its money but instead in 1897 the Reichstag (parliament) sanctioned an addition to the navy of seven battleships, two heavy cruisers, and seven light cruisers. The kaiser of course supported this. 

For years the kaiser had attended the annual British naval exercises that took place at Spithead on the south coast of England. He often looked on with jealousy at the impressive British warships that sailed past. At the end of 1899 another naval bill was passed in the Reichstag, which allocated more enlargement of Germany’s fleet over the coming 15 years. The German army high command was far from happy about this. 

At the outbreak of World War I, Germany’s navy was still inferior to the Russian Navy and the Royal Navy. German warships made little impact during the four years of world war, which rendered close to irrelevant the expense and effort in expanding the navy in the first place. The kaiser’s pursuit of a bigger navy from the late 19th century led to further souring of relations between Germany and Britain, and encouraged the latter to seek closer ties with France, a country the British had traditionally thought to be their biggest enemy.

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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

“What and where is Witwatersrand?” World Atlas, 25 April 2017

“The Martini Henry Rifle”, Shoreham Fort

“Famous diamonds”, London Diamond Bourse

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

“Kitchener, Horatio Herbert”, Dictionary of Irish Biography

“Rothschild: history of a London banking dynasty”, Daily Telegraph, 4 February 2011 

Featured image is from Geopolitica.RU

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*** 

Global Research’s Editor Note

The Modi BJP government remains committed to the Neoliberal Agenda and the Washington Consensus which in the course of the last 30 years has resulted in mass poverty, including austerity measures directed against health and education.

These policies (supported by the World Bank) –which have been conducive to marginalization and increased levels of poverty were initiated in the early 1990s under the helm of finance minister (and former prime minister) Manmohan Singh. Since the advent of Narendra Modi‘s BJP government, education and health programs have deteriorated, particularly in rural areas.

The BJP’s economic policy has been to promote privatization as well as foreign investment, with the support of  USAID and the World Bank. The funds dedicated to poverty-alleviation have been significantly reduced. 

The article by Bharat Dogra documents and analyses the response of impoverished rural communities to the failures of the neoliberal policy agenda.

Michel Chossudovsky, September 18, 2023

 

Rajaram Ka Purva is a remote rural hamlet in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh inhabited by the poorest of the poor. Almost none of the children in this hamlet are able to go to school. The reasons relate to poverty, distance of the nearest school as well as the unsafe path to school.

Till these difficulties can be sorted out and the children here can go to a regular school, a local country organization of this district Vidya Dham Samiti has started an informal school so that at least some teaching can be done and the children are not completely unprepared when they are finally able to attend a regular school.

The teaching here is done by a youth of the same settlement, the only one from the entire settlement who could reach high school. Even this very modest effort of education has earned the gratitude of parents and brought much joy to children who were delighted to celebrate the Independence Day for the first time this year.

There are several remote rural hamlets in this Bundelkhand region (as well in other parts of the country with high poverty rate) where a significant number of children are unable to attend school due to several factors. Then there are other hamlets where the number of children who drop out is very high, one contributing factor being migrant labor.

This is the situation in quite a few rural hamlets in the work area of Vidya Dham Samiti in Banda district.  

This voluntary organization has started organizing special schools for such hamlets, roughly for about two hours in a day, aimed at imparting at least some education so that children can get admission to some government school sooner or later. The teaching is done by a volunteer from the community to whom a token amount is given by way of encouragement. There is also a plan to add a nutrition component if funds can be raised. Similar efforts can be considered for other areas where the need for such schools exists at least among certain sections comprising the most marginalized households. Socially conscious citizens can come forward to support such efforts.

Support for these schools essentially consists of two components—a minimum of Indian Rs. or INR 1500 per month for the encouragement amount to be given to the volunteer teacher per school and a minimum of INR 5000 per month for nutrition support for children per school (if nutrition support is added).

If this pattern is to be followed then such an informal school can be supported with an annual minimum sum of INR 18,000. On the other hand, if nutrition support is included then the total annual requirement goes up to INR 78,000. In this framework the community is expected to create or provide a shelter for the school with its own efforts.

Socially conscious citizens can consider supporting such efforts for the education of the poorest sections in their own area. They should initiate such efforts by taking the help of any honest voluntary organization, preferably with some experience in such matters.

However those citizens who are interested in such a supportive role but do not have the contacts for this can get in touch with this writer at [email protected] to get such contacts. Please do not send any money to this writer; his role is confined merely to guiding you towards such contacts who can take up this work.

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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Man over Machine, When the Two Streams Met and A Day in 2071.  

Featured image: The Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2016 report suggests that girls out of school in UP is almost double of all-India figuresof 5.2%.(Getty Images)

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“Defying Science” is an Understatement.

The Evidence is Overwhelming. The Covid-19 Vaccine is a dangerous substance. 

Important review and analysis of the Biden Administration’s “New Covid Vaccine”.

“unsupported claims the new vaccine reduces hospitalizations”.

There is ample evidence which confirms that the Covid-19 Vaccine has since the outset in December 2020 has resulted in an upward movement of mortality and morbidity. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research September 18, 2023

Related articles

COVID-19 Vaccine-associated Mortality in the Southern Hemisphere

By Prof Denis Rancourt, Dr. Marine Baudin, Dr. Joseph Hickey, and Dr. Jérémie Mercier, September 18, 2023

 

The Covid “Killer Vaccine”. People Are Dying All Over the World. It’s A Criminal Undertaking

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 17, 2023

 

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What if I told you one in 50 people who took a new medication had a “medically attended adverse event” and the manufacturer refused to disclose what exactly the complication was — would you take it?

And what if the theoretical benefit was only transient, lasting about three months, after which your susceptibility goes back to baseline?

And what if we told you the Food and Drug Administration cleared it without any human-outcomes data and European regulators are not universally recommending it as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is?

That’s what we know about the new COVID vaccine the Biden administration is firmly recommending for every American 6 months old and up.

The push is so hard that former White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha and CDC head Mandy Cohen are making unsupported claims the new vaccine reduces hospitalizations. long COVID and the likelihood you will spread COVID.

None of those claims has a shred of scientific support.

In fact, if the manufacturers said that, they could be fined for making false marketing claims beyond an FDA-approved indication.

The questions surrounding Moderna’s new COVID vaccine approved this week are still looming.

Pfizer’s version, approved this week as well, also has zero efficacy data and has not been tested on humans at all. We only have data about antibody production from 10 mice.

The FDA, or Moderna (frankly, it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes), should disclose what happened to the patient who took the new vaccine and had a complication that required medical attention.

The public has a right to know.

The last time the Biden administration approved and recommended a novel COVID bivalent booster, last fall, with no human-outcomes data, it was an epic fail.

Only 17% of Americans took it (and some of those were forced to do so by their employer or school).

Not foreseeing such weak public support for the booster last year, the Biden administration had prepaid pharma $4.9 billion for 171 million doses — many of which were tossed in the wastebasket.

Now it is making the same mistake.

Two weeks ago, the Biden administration upped its orders for the pediatric version of the new COVID vaccines from 14.5 million doses at $1.3 billion to 20 million doses for $1.7 billion, which is more than four times as many pediatric doses as were used last year.

There clearly seems to be a special push this time to give it to children — the same group European regulators are not supporting.

In fact, the original Moderna vaccine was banned in parts of Europe for people under age 30.

European doctors are not alone.

Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine-mandate supporter and FDA adviser from the University of Pennsylvania, told The Atlantic this week that he’s not going to take the new COVID vaccine.

He didn’t take the bivalent booster last fall either, despite being 72 years old.

While he disagreed with Jha on the booster, he recently confessed, “Yes, he was wrong, but you know you can’t say that exactly.”

Yes, you can.

America is tired of political apologists as medical experts. They want the truth.

Offit is at least more honest than most experts who put their heads in the sand and parroted whatever public health officials said.

Pfizer made $100 billion during the pandemic. It can afford to fund a randomized trial to demonstrate to the American people the new booster is effective.

That’s the scientific process.

Unlike influenza, COVID-19 is constantly circulating, so there is ample opportunity to run a trial; indeed, Moderna already ran a randomized trial.

Its trial of just 50 people began four months ago and oddly only reported 14-day side effects.

Why didn’t it enroll more people in its trial? Why didn’t it report three-month effectiveness and do a proper trial?

Conducting a placebo-controlled trial in people during this time would not only yield useful information; it would enable further study of those subjects three and six months from now, when a winter surge may occur.

Let’s be honest: Follow-up studies of COVID vaccines in general have revealed a disappointing truth — mild efficacy against infection is transient, lasting just a few months.

Perhaps Pfizer and Moderna knew the FDA regulatory process was greased for them and they didn’t have to.

It’s time for the FDA to resume its role as a regulator and not the marketing department for Pfizer and Moderna.

It is possible a new booster may help downgrade the severity of COVID infection for select high-risk populations, but that’s all the more reason a proper clinical trial is needed.

It’s also worth noting the CDC’s new recommendation ignores natural immunity, which means many schools will do the same.

A February Lancet review of 65 studies concluded natural immunity is at least as good as vaccinated immunity and probably better.

So if a college student had COVID a few months ago, the CDC wants him or her to get the new shot anyway, but the correct scientific answer is the risks are expected to outweigh the benefit.

Supporters of pushing the novel COVID boosters point to the annual flu-shot approval process, which does not require a randomized trial.

But COVID vaccines are very different from flu vaccines.

COVID vaccines have higher complication rates, including severe and life-threatening cardiac reactions.

Flu shots have a 50-plus-year safety record whereas COVID vaccines have been associated with a serious adverse event rate of one in 5,000 doses, according to a German study by the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut.

Another study, published last year in the medical journal Vaccine, estimated the rate of serious adverse events to be as high as one in 556 COVID vaccine recipients.

And for young people, the incidence of myocarditis is six to 28 times higher after the vaccine than after infection, even for females, according to a 2022 JAMA Cardiology study.

That’s one of the reasons a study that we and several national colleagues published last year found that college booster mandates appear to have resulted in a net public health harm.

Finally, at a molecular level, some scientists are concerned about what is called immune imprinting and additional ways multiple booster doses can weaken the immune system.

A study published last year in the journal Science described a reduced immune response among people infected who then received three COVID vaccine doses.

If public health officials get their way, a healthy 5-year-old boy will get 72 COVID vaccine shots over the course of his lifetime, if he has an average lifespan, with a risk of myocarditis after each one.

Inexplicably and defying science, the CDC is saying even if a child had COVID three weeks ago, he or she should still get the new COVID shot.

Two of the FDA’s best vaccine experts are gone. Dr. Marion Gruber, who was director of the FDA’s vaccine office, and her deputy director, Dr. Philip Krause, both quit the agency in 2021 in protest over political pressure to authorize vaccine boosters for young people.

Ever since the loss of these two vaccine experts, the agency’s vaccine authorizations have been consistent with an overly cozy relationship between pharma and the White House.

Pushing a new COVID vaccine without human-outcomes data makes a mockery of the scientific method and our regulatory process.

In fact, why have an FDA if White House doctors can simply declare a drug to be safe after discussing secret data in private meetings with pharma?

If public health officials don’t want a repeat disappointing turnout of Americans who get the COVID booster shot, they should require a proper clinical trial to show the American people the benefit.

Public health leaders cannot afford to squander any more credibility and money on interventions with no scientific support.

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Marty Makary, MD, MPH, is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and author of “The Price We Pay.”

Tracy Beth Høeg, MD, PhD, is an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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It is a historical law that each state in the world changes with time. However, only a few states experienced dramatic change during the short period of time as Russia did over the last 33 years.

Russia has changed as a state, nation, and military power followed by her fluctuating position in global politics and international relations.

Since 1991 up today Russia transformed peacefully its entire political and economic system which is relatively rare in history. When the USSR dissolved in 1991, Russia left to be one of its 15 constituent republics which proclaimed independence forced to overwhelmingly redefine her role in global politics.

The 1990s were very painful for Russia’s position in international relations as the country’s foreign policy was, in fact, supervised and directed by Washington and Brussels as the case of NATO’s direct aggression on Serbia and Montenegro in 1999, for instance, clearly shows but since 2008 (Russian-Georgian War) Russia’s foreign policy once again became an independent and gradually returning the country to the club of Great Powers as the case of the Ukrainian crisis since 2014 onward demonstrates it undoubtedly today.

Nevertheless, probably the most significant anomaly dealing with Russian politics is the fact that Russians are understandably (very) suspicious of the West and its policies toward their country but miraculously at the same time they accept the Western culture and moral values and both economic and political systems (at least up to the special military operation of Russia in East Ukraine since the end of February 2022).   

Nevertheless, the importance of Russia´s influence in the world in the arena of global politics is based on the fundamental fact that Russia is one of the strongest international actors that is determining the global political agenda.

It means that Russia is a member of the Great Power’s club as „a great power state is a state deemed to rank amongst the most powerful in a hierarchical state system “.[i] Russia in this respect surely fits to conventionally accepted criteria that define a Great Power: 

1. Great Power state is in the first rank of military prowess.
2. Great Power state can maintain its security and influence other states on how to behave.
3. Great Power state is economically powerful, although this is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for membership to the Great Power club (the cases of Japan or Germany are the best illustrations of this claim).
4. Great Power state has global but not only regional spheres of national interest and action.
5. Great Power state is running a „forward“ foreign policy and, therefore, it has a real but not only potential influence on international relations and global (world) politics.[ii]
6. Great Power is a state (at least according to the 18th-century concept) that could not be conquered even by the combined might of other Great Powers.[iii]

Russia surely belongs today to the club of key global powers having powerful nuclear weapons, a growing economy, and perspective economic capacities but what is most important and different to others, Russia possesses almost endless natural resources (many of them are probably still even not discovered).

From a geopolitical viewpoint, Russia is occupying the crucial segment of the Heartland – the focal geopolitical part of the world and, therefore, the rest of the (Western) Great Powers historically wanted either to occupy Russia (for instance, Napoléon I or A. Hitler) or to control her authorities (for instance, of Boris Yeltsin).[iv]

Russia with its rich history and national traditions is today in the process of defying its new role in the current century, especially since February 2022 onward. Russia seeks peace (up to the extent when its vital national and existential interests are in danger), justice, multipolarity in international relations (against US hegemony), and, therefore, global stability, yet it is quite visible that Western threats against Russia’s security and her positive role in international politics exist.

Nevertheless, behind Russia’s policies, there is a comprehensible strategy based on a firm vision of the contemporary world and the protection of Russian national interests.  

A contemporary history of Russia starts after the dissolution of the USSR by Mikhail Gorbachev (according to the agreement with Ronald Reagan in Reykjavík in October 1986),[v] which marked at the same time the beginning of the political and economic turmoil in the 1990s when Russia under Boris Yeltsin and his pro-Western liberals was a puppet state of the West.

However, the country gradually emerged from the period of instability since 2000 mainly due to well-combined six factors that the new administration of President Vladimir Putin skillfully exploited to the full extent: 

1. Substantial mineral resources, particularly oil and gas.
2. Significant military power, based on the second-greatest nuclear potential in the world.
3. Relatively well-educated productive segment of the population.
4. High-quality scientific and technological base which survived in several industries.
5. Permanent membership in the UNSC, the G8 and G20.
6. Important political and economic influence on the territory of the former Soviet Union (the area of Near Abroad).                        

It is predicted that Russia will remain in the future as one of the focal and strongest international actors on the same level of influence together with the US, EU, China, and rising Islamic cultures, especially Iran and Turkey.

Russia’s natural resources and capabilities already allowed it to follow an independent line in foreign policy and security interest, both in the post-Soviet region and in some key areas of the world: East Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East. However, Moscow’s interests will inevitably clash with those of other major actors – especially the US and its European clients as the situation today in Ukraine demonstrates.

That is for sure that world order in international relations is going to continue to function according to World Systems Theory: a variant of structuralism that conceptualizes world order as being structured into:

1. A rich and developed core;
2. Poor and underdeveloped periphery; and
3. Many intermediary or semi-peripheral states.

Russia is going to improve its position within the first group which gave all Great Powers who are going to govern international relations and global politics according to the principle of Balance of Power which refers to a mechanism whereby Great Power’s states collaborate with each other in order to maintain their interests against threats from those who would seek systemic dominance, such as the US during the first 18 years after the Cold War 1.0. (till 2008).

Due to the great impact of Russia, a future world order already started to get rid of both the US’s political hegemony[vi] and the process of Americanization that is primarily the influence of the US on key areas of international interaction, including international relations, popular culture, technology, business activities or language which is leading in many countries to the loss or significant undermining of local customs, traditions, and identities.     

Nevertheless, it has to be noticed that Russia’s internal stability and international standing can be endangered by the country’s possible failure to solve two of its essential problems:

1. Diversification and modernization of the economy.
2. Threatening potential demographic collapse.

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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

 

[i] Andrew Heywood, Global Politics, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 7.

[ii] About world politics, see in [Jeffrey Haynes et al, World Politics, New York: Routledge, 2013].

[iii] Richard W. Mansbach, Karsten L. Taylor, Introduction to Global Politics, Second Edition, London−New York: Routledge, 2012, 578.

[iv] About geography and history, see in [Halford John Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History”, The Geographical Journal, 23, 1904, 421−437; Pascal Venier, „The Geographical Pivot of History and Early 20th Century Geopolitical Culture“, Geographical Journal, 170 (4), 2004, 330−336].

[v] About R. Reagan and M. Gorbachev’s relations, see in [Jack F. Matlock Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended, New York, Random House, 2004].

[vi] About the US’s foreign policy in the post-Cold War’s world, see in [David P. Forsythe, Patrice C. McMahon, Andrew Wedeman (eds.), American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World, New York−London: Routledge, 2006].

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A study conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration has shown that the risk of myocarditis following mRNA COVID vaccination is around 133x greater than the background risk in the population.

This means Covid vaccination increases the risk of suffering myocarditis, an autoimmune disease causing inflammation of the heart, by 13,200%.

Source

The study, conducted by researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as well as from several U.S. universities and hospitals, examined the effects of vaccination with products manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

The study’s authors used data obtained from the CDC’s VAERS reporting system which were cross-checked to ensure they complied with CDC’s definition of myocarditis; they also noted that given the passive nature of the VAERS system, the number of reported incidents is likely to be an underestimate of the extent of the phenomenon.

1626 cases of myocarditis were studied, and the results showed that the Pfizer-BioNTech product was most associated with higher risk, with 105.9 cases per million doses after the second vaccine shot in the 16 to 17 age group for males, and 70.7 cases per million doses after the second shot in the 12 to 15 age group for males. The 18 to 24 male age group also saw significantly higher rates of myocarditis for both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s products (52.4 and 56.3 cases per million respectively).

Source

The study found that the median time to symptom onset was two days, and that 82 percent of cases were in males, consistent with previous studies. Around 96 percent of affected people were hospitalised, with most treated with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; 87 percent of those hospitalised had resolution of symptoms by time of discharge.

At the time of data review, two reports of death in people younger than 30 years of age with potential myocarditis still remained under investigation and were not included in the case counts.

Among the reported symptoms were: chest pain, pressure, or discomfort (89%), shortness of breath (30%), abnormal ECG results (72%), and abnormal cardiac MRI findings (72%).

The study’s authors noted that myocarditis following vaccination appeared to resolve more swiftly than in typical viral cases; however, given that vaccination is no longer considered a reliable way in which to avoid COVID infection, it is unclear whether this has any specific relevance to the cost-benefit analysis of COVID vaccination, especially considering the low risk of complications following coronavirus infection for the age group most at risk for heart-related complications following vaccination.

Given the plethora of studies confirming a link between vaccination and myocarditis, the CDC has commenced active surveillance of adolescents and young adults to monitor their progress following heart-related incidents after vaccination. Long-term outcome data, however, are not yet available.

In the meantime, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology advise that people with myocarditis should refrain from competitive sports for three to six months, and only resume strenuous exercise after normal ECG and other test results are obtained. In addition, they advise that further mRNA vaccine doses should be deferred.

Source

In conclusion, the study’s authors note that the risk of myocarditis after receiving mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines was increased across multiple age and sex strata and was highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males and young men, and that this risk should be considered in the context of the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination.

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Featured image: mRNA vaccines cause myocarditis by leading your own immune cells to attack your heart, which can lead to sudden death by ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation. (Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock)

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*** 

Dangerous Nonsense

Uranium is used to generate electricity.

The climate movement upholds uranium as a means to reducing “greenhouse gas emissions”.

The dangers of the nuclear power industry (radiation) is barely mentioned.

Dangerous nonsense. C02 is said to be more dangerous than nuclear radiation. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 18, 2023

 

The price of yellowcake – uranium concentrate used in nuclear generation – has surged to the highest level in 12 years as nuclear once again becomes a desirable form of energy generation.

The FT reports that yellowcake prices have gained 12% over the past month alone, hitting $65.50 per pound, which is the highest since 2011, before the Fukushima disaster.

The price rise is driven by a change in sentiment towards nuclear as governments realize wind and solar can’t do the job on their own because the grid needs dispatchable electricity.

“You have a focus on energy security colliding with a focus on clean energy,” the CFO of Cameco, the second-largest uranium producer in the world, told the FT.

The uranium market has been depressed since the Fukushima disaster, which means not a lot has been invested in production capacity growth. Now, it seems that things are changing fast. And this might mean a shortage.

The Wall Street Journal suggested as much in a recent report that noted uranium prices have surged by 30% since the start of the year as new nuclear power plants came online and the life of older ones was extended, causing a surge in demand in the face of constrained supply.

These constraints got more serious recently after the military coup in Niger, which supplies 5% of global uranium and as much as a quarter of European uranium. With the burst of anti-French sentiment in the Western African country, there are fears that latter’s supply is under threat.

It’s not only Niger, either. Russia is the world’s biggest processor of uranium, and one of the biggest suppliers as well. There are fears among analysts that the EU and the United States might decide to sanction Russia’s uranium industry, which would have a major impact on supply security for the nuclear industry.

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Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com.

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

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“My position was just tell the American public the truth. There are side effects to vaccines. Tell them the truth and don’t try to package it.”

That was Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control during the administration of Donald Trump. Dr. Redfield recently went on record that the government health bureaucracy tried to quash discussion about the ineffectiveness of Covid vaccines.

“There was such an attempt to not let anybody get any hint that maybe vaccines weren’t foolproof, which, of course, we now know they have significant limitations,” said Redfield, who co-founded the University of Maryland’s Institute of Human Virology and served as the Chief of Infectious Diseases and Vice Chair of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. 

“I think we should have really confidence and not be afraid to debate the issues that we think are in the public’s interest and just tell the public the truth,” said the former CDC director. This wasn’t the first time Dr. Redfield had been at odds with the government health establishment.

“I’m of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped,” Redfield told CNN in 2021. “Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out.” After these statements, as Vanity Fair reported, “death threats flooded his inbox,” some from prominent scientists.

“I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield explained. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.” The people might expect the FBI to investigate death threats against a public official, but reports of any such investigation are hard to find.

In 2021, Joe Biden said he would ask the intelligence community to “redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion.” The Delaware Democrat ignored a key reality about the pandemic. 

The CDC deploys the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a medical CIA, to prevent epidemics from arriving on American soil. The intrepid EIS officers failed to stop the Covid virus from arriving stateside, and their failure, like the death threats against Redfield, has not been subjected to an investigation. In early 2020, EIS veteran Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the sister of Rod Rosenstein, delivered a series of press briefings that faithfully echoed China’s talking points.

Biden medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for nearly 40 years. Dr. Fauci funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct gain-of-function research that makes viruses more lethal and transmissible. The WIV, in turn, received shipments of deadly pathogens courtesy of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, the Chinese national who headed the special pathogens unit at Canada’s National Microbiology Lab.

In 2017-2018 alone, Dr. Qiu made at least five trips to the WIV. Despite the record, Dr. Fauci maintained that the virus arose naturally in the wild, a matter of speculation, not science. After more than 50 years in government, Dr. Fauci announced retirement at the end of 2022.

Dr. Fauci’s bio shows no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry, but he claims to represent science. The former NIAID boss continues to act as though he still runs the place, urging people to follow CDC orders to mask up. In similar style, with mysterious new variants allegedly emerging, Joe Biden announces new vaccines “for everybody,” regardless of what they had done in the past.

Former CDC director Dr. Redfield proclaims that complete immunization is a “false perception,” that vaccines have “significant limitations,” and that vaccine mandates caused a deterioration in public trust. 

Dr. Redfield’s comments came in the wake of a decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the government cannot force social media companies to remove content to which they object. A plaintiff in the case was Dr. Jay Battycharya of Stanford University.

With epidemiologists Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard and Dr. Sunetra Gupta of  Oxford, Dr. Battycharya was co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a plea for more human policies on lockdowns, masking and such. Instead of debating these medical scientists, National Institutes of Health boss Dr. Dr. Francis Collins ordered Fauci to organize a “devastating takedown” of the declarations.

“At the height of the pandemic, I found myself smeared for my supposed political views, and my views about Covid policy and epidemiology were removed from the public square on all manner of social networks,” writes Dr. Battycharya, who became an American citizen at age 19. “I could not believe this was happening in the country I so love.”

According to the Stanford professor, the Fifth Circuit decision “isn’t perfect.” The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “can still work with academics to develop a hit list for government censorship.” And NIAID “can still coordinate devastating takedowns of outside scientists critical of government policy.”

On the other hand, “the federal government can no longer threaten social media companies with destruction if they don’t censor on behalf of the government.” Like Dr. Robert Redfield, the Stanford immunologist has learned a valuable lesson:

“Our government is not immune to the authoritarian impulse. I have learned the hard way that it is only we, the people, who must hold an overreaching government accountable for violating our most sacred rights. Without our vigilance, we will lose them.”

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Featured image: Redfield speaks on the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020 (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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*** 

This image is symbolic of everything that is wrong with modern society. A gas leak from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal in 1984 resulted in around 560,000 injured (respiratory problems, eye irritation, etc.), 4,000 severely disabled and 20,000 dead. Not only that, but the pesticides produced at the factory and the model of farming promoted has caused well-documented misery for farmers, harm to soil, water sources and the health of the population and a radical transformation of social relations in rural communities. And these issues apply not only to India but also to other countries.  

That old advertising brochure dating from around the early 1960s encapsulates the arrogance of billionaires and their companies that think they are the hand of God, that they are the truth and the science, and that we should all be in awe of the technology they produce.   

Facilitated by the likes of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they uproot highly productive traditional agriculture, saying it is deficient. They poison the soil, the food, the waterways and people. But that’s not enough. They pirate, own and genetically engineer the seeds. The chemicals and engineering do not result in more or better food. Quite the opposite. Diets have become narrower, and the nutritional content of many food items has progressively diminished (see McCance and Widdowson’s the Mineral Depletion of Foods). Moreover, food secure regions have become food insecure.   

But it goes beyond this. Consider the amount of killer-chemicals that the likes of Union Carbide’s promised techno-utopian consumer society (Union Carbide produced numerous other similar brochures to the one presented above, promoting the role of science and technology across all sectors) has gifted to humanity in everyday products from shampoos to toys, pans, packaging, sofas and tins.   

It is notable that glyphosate, the world’s most used agricultural herbicide, began life as an industrial chelator of minerals in metal pipes to prevent blockages and deterioration. It now ensures mineral depletion/nutrient deficiencies in the human body. Glyphosate affects human soil – the gut microbiome – which directly feeds the major organs. Little wonder we witness a proliferation of illness and disease.   

But forget about what has become modernism’s spiralling public health crisis – don’t forget to take that money-spinning experimental booster jab because, remember, they said that they really care about you and your health.  

Meanwhile, bioscience parks across the world expand and promise an even more marvellous techno-dystopia than the one already created. They are working on injecting you with nanotechnology to ‘cure’ you of all the diseases that the modernist type of thinking, products and technology created in the first place – or on manipulating your DNA-physiology to hook you up to the internet (of things). The patents are there – this is not speculation.   

And as these bioscience parks expand, their success is measured in annual turnover, profits and ‘growth’. They want more and more ‘talent’ to study life sciences and health subjects and to take up positions at the biotech companies. And they call for more public subsidies to facilitate this. More kids to study science so that they can be swept up into the ideology and practices of the self-sustaining paradigm of modern society.   

Of course, ‘sustainability’ is the mantra. Sustainability in terms of fake-green, net-zero ideology but, more importantly, sustainable growth and profit.  

Meanwhile, across the world, most notably in the Netherlands, these parks demand more land. More land for expansion and more land to house ‘global talent’ to be attracted to work. That means displacing farmers under the notion that they are the major emitters of ‘greenhouse gases’, which, in the Netherlands at least, they are clearly not. Look towards other sectors or even the US military if you require a prime example of a major polluter. But that’s not up for discussion, not least because military-related firms are often intertwined with the much-valued bioscience-business ‘ecosystems’ promoted.   

And once the farmers have gone and the farmland is concreted over under the concept (in the Netherlands) of a Tristate City, do not worry – your ‘food’ will be created in a lab courtesy of biosynthetic, nanotechnological, biopharmaceutical, genetically engineered microbes and formulas created at the local bioscience park. Any carbon-related pollution created by these labs will supposedly be ‘offset’ by a fraudulent carbon credit trading Ponzi scheme – part of which will mean buying up acres in some poor country to plant trees on the land of the newly dispossessed.    

This brave new ecomodernism is to be overseen by supranational bodies like the UN and the WHO. National uniparty politicians will not be engaged in policy formation. They will be upholders of the elite-determined status quo – junior ‘stakeholders’ and technocratic overseers of an algorithm/AI-run system, ensuring any necessary tweaks are made.   

Of course, not everything that happens under the banner of bioscience should be dismissed out of hand, but science is increasingly the preserve of an increasingly integrated global elite who have created the problems that they now rollout the ‘solutions’ for. It is a highly profitable growth industry – under the banner of ‘innovation’, cleaning up the mess you created.   

But the disturbing trend is that the ‘science’ and the technology shall not be questioned. A wealthy financial-digital-corporate elite funds this science, determines what should be studied, how it should be studied and how the findings are disseminated and how the technology produced is to be used.   

As we saw with the COVID event, this elite has the power to shut down genuine debate, prevent scrutiny of ‘the science’ and to smear and censor world-renowned scientists and others who even questioned the narrative. And it also pulls the strings of nation states so much so that former New Zealand PM Jacinda Arden said that her government is ‘the truth’. The marriage of science and politics in an Orwellian dystopia.   

The prevailing thinking is that the problems of illness, hunger, malnutrition, unemployment, pollution, resource usage and so on are all to be solved down at the bioscience park by what farmer/author Chris Smaje says through technical innovation and further integration into private markets which are structured systematically by centralised power in favour of the wealthy.  

The ecomodernist ideology we see embedded within the mindsets of those lobbying for more resources, land and funding have nothing much to say about how humanity got ill, infertile, poor, dispossessed, colonised, depressed, unemployed or marginalised in the first place. Driven by public funding, career progression and profit, they remain blinkered and push ahead with an ideology whose ‘solutions’ only produce more problems that call for more ‘innovation’ and more money.   

At the same time, any genuine solutions are too often dismissed as being driven by ideology and ignorance that will lead us all to ruin. A classic case of projection.    

As I have written previously, current hegemonic policies prioritise urbanisation, global markets, long supply chains, commodified corporate knowledge, highly processed food and market dependency at the expense of rural communities, independent enterprises and smallholder farms, local markets, short supply chains, indigenous knowledge, diverse agroecological cropping, nutrient-dense diets and food sovereignty.    

And this has led us to where we are now.   

Trade and agriculture policy specialist Devinder Sharma once said that we need family farms not family doctors. Imagine the reduction in illnesses and all manner of conditions. Imagine thriving local communities centred on smallholder production, nutrient-dense food and healthy people. Instead, we get sprawling bioscience parks centred on economic globalisation, sickness and the manipulation of food and human bodies.    

Although a few thousand immensely powerful people are hellbent on marching humanity towards a dystopian ecomodernist future, we can, in finishing, take some inspiration from the words of John Seymour (1912-2004), a pioneer of the self-sufficiency movement.   

Seymour was described as a one-man rebellion against modernism by writer and ecologist Herbert Girardet. But as a farmer himself, Seymour regarded himself a ‘crank peasant’ and offered solutions in terms of localism, small-scale economics, a return to the land and organic agriculture.   

In a call to action, he stated:  

​”The tiny amount you and I can do is hardly likely to bring the huge worldwide moloch of plundering industry down? Well, if you and I don’t do it, it will not be done, and the Age of Plunder will terminate in the Age of Chaos. We have to do it – just the two of us – just you and me. There is no ‘them’ – there is nobody else. Just you and me. On our infirm shoulders we must take up this heavy burden now… Tomorrow will be too late.”  

Many the issues mentioned above are discussed in the author’s ebook Food, Dispossession and Dependency: Resisting the New World Order.

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from Beyond Pesticides

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Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Click here to read.

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*** 

 

 

Abstract 

Seventeen equatorial and Southern-Hemisphere countries were studied (Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Suriname, Thailand, Uruguay), which comprise 9.10 % of worldwide population, 10.3 % of worldwide COVID-19 injections (vaccination rate of 1.91 injections per person, all ages), virtually every COVID-19 vaccine type and manufacturer, and span 4 continents.

In the 17 countries, there is no evidence in all-cause mortality (ACM) by time data of any beneficial effect of COVID-19 vaccines. There is no association in time between COVID-19 vaccination and any proportionate reduction in ACM. The opposite occurs. 

All 17 countries have transitions to regimes of high ACM, which occur when the COVID-19 vaccines are deployed and administered. Nine of the 17 countries have no detectable excess ACM in the period of approximately one year after a pandemic was declared on 11 March 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO), until the vaccines are rolled out (Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Philippines, Singapore, Suriname, Thailand, Uruguay). 

Unprecedented peaks in ACM occur in the summer (January-February) of 2022 in the Southern Hemisphere, and in equatorial-latitude countries, which are synchronous with or immediately preceded by rapid COVID-19-vaccine-booster-dose rollouts (3rd or 4th doses). This phenomenon is present in every case with sufficient mortality data (15 countries). Two of the countries studied have insufficient mortality data in January-February 2022 (Argentina and Suriname). 

Detailed mortality and vaccination data for Chile and Peru allow resolution by age and by dose number. It is unlikely that the observed peaks in all-cause mortality in January-February 2022 (and additionally in: July-August 2021, Chile; July-August 2022, Peru), in each of both countries and in each elderly age group, could be due to any cause other than the temporally associated rapid COVID-19-vaccine-booster-dose rollouts. Likewise, it is unlikely that the transitions to regimes of high ACM, coincident with the rollout and sustained administration of COVID-19 vaccines, in all 17 Southern-Hemisphere and equatorial-latitude countries, could be due to any cause other than the vaccines. 

Synchronicity between the many peaks in ACM (in 17 countries, on 4 continents, in all elderly age groups, at different times) and associated rapid booster rollouts allows this firm conclusion regarding causality, and accurate quantification of COVID-19-vaccine toxicity. 

The all-ages vaccine-dose fatality rate (vDFR), which is the ratio of inferred vaccine-induced deaths to vaccine doses delivered in a population, is quantified for the January-February 2022 ACM peak to fall in the range 0.02 % (New Zealand) to 0.20% (Uruguay). In Chile and Peru, the vDFR increases exponentially with age (doubling approximately every 4 years of age), and is largest for the latest booster doses, reaching approximately 5 % in the 90+ years age groups (1 death per 20 injections of dose 4). Comparable results occur for the Northern Hemisphere, as found in previous articles (India, Israel, USA). 

We quantify the overall all-ages vDFR for the 17 countries to be (0.126 ± 0.004) %, which would imply 17.0 ± 0.5 million COVID-19 vaccine deaths worldwide, from 13.50 billion injections up to 2 September 2023. This would correspond to a mass iatrogenic event that killed (0.213 ± 0.006) % of the world population (1 death per 470 living persons, in less than 3 years), and did not measurably prevent any deaths. 

The overall risk of death induced by injection with the COVID-19 vaccines in actual populations, inferred from excess all-cause mortality and its synchronicity with rollouts, is globally pervasive and much larger than reported in clinical trials, adverse effect monitoring, and cause-of-death statistics from death certificates, by 3 orders of magnitude (1,000-fold greater). 

The large age dependence and large values of vDFR quantified in this study of 17 countries on 4 continents, using all the main COVID-19 vaccine types and manufacturers, should induce governments to immediately end the baseless public health policy of prioritizing elderly residents for injection with COVID-19 vaccines, until valid risk-benefit analyses are made.

Introduction 

All-cause mortality by time is the most reliable data for detecting and epidemiologically characterizing events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge or collapse in deaths from any cause.

Such data can be collected by jurisdiction or geographical region, by age group, by sex, and so on; and it is not susceptible to reporting bias or to any bias in attributing causes of death in the mortality itself

(Aaby et al., 2020; Bilinski and Emanuel, 2020; Bustos Sierra et al., 2020; Félix-Cardoso et al., 2020; Fouillet et al., 2020; Kontis et al., 2020; Mannucci et al., 2020; Mills et al., 2020; Olson et al., 2020; Piccininni et al., 2020; Rancourt, 2020; Rancourt et al., 2020; Sinnathamby et al., 2020; Tadbiri et al., 2020; Vestergaard et al., 2020; Villani et al., 2020; Achilleos et al., 2021; Al Wahaibi et al., 2021; Anand et al., 2021; Böttcher et al., 2021; Chan et al., 2021; Dahal et al., 2021; Das-Munshi et al., 2021; Deshmukh et al., 2021; Faust et al., 2021; Gallo et al., 2021; Islam, Jdanov, et al., 2021; Islam, Shkolnikov, et al., 2021; Jacobson and Jokela, 2021; Jdanov et al., 2021; Joffe, 2021; Karlinsky and Kobak, 2021; Kobak, 2021; Kontopantelis et al., 2021a, 2021b; Kung et al., 2021a, 2021b; Liu et al., 2021; Locatelli and Rousson, 2021; Miller et al., 2021; Moriarty et al., 2021; Nørgaard et al., 2021; Panagiotou et al., 2021; Pilkington et al., 2021; Polyakova et al., 2021; Rancourt et al., 2021a, 2021b; Rossen et al., 2021; Sanmarchi et al., 2021; Sempé et al., 2021; Soneji et al. 2021; Stein et al., 2021; Stokes et al., 2021; Vila-Corcoles et al., 2021; Wilcox et al., 2021; Woolf et al., 2021; Woolf, Masters and Aron, 2021; Yorifuji et al., 2021; Ackley et al., 2022; Acosta et al., 2022; Engler, 2022; Faust et al., 2022; Ghaznavi et al., 2022; Gobiņa et al., 2022; He et al., 2022; Henry et al., 2022; Jha et al., 2022; Johnson and Rancourt, 2022; Juul et al., 2022; Kontis et al., 2022; Kontopantelis et al., 2022; Lee et al., 2022; Leffler et al., 2022; Lewnard et al., 2022; McGrail, 2022; Neil et al., 2022; Neil and Fenton, 2022; Pálinkás and Sándor, 2022; Ramírez-Soto and Ortega-Cáceres, 2022; Rancourt, 2022; Rancourt et al., 2022a, 2022b; Razak et al., 2022; Redert, 2022a, 2022b; Rossen et al., 2022; Safavi-Naini et al., 2022; Schöley et al., 2022; Sy, 2022; Thoma and Declercq, 2022; Wang et al., 2022; Aarstad and Kvitastein, 2023; Bilinski et al., 2023; de Boer et al., 2023; de Gier et al., 2023; Demetriou et al., 2023; Donzelli et al., 2023; Haugen, 2023; Jones and Ponomarenko, 2023; Kuhbandner and Reitzner, 2023; Lytras et al., 2023; Masselot et al., 2023; Matveeva and Shabalina, 2023; Neil and Fenton, 2023; Paglino et al., 2023; Rancourt et al., 2023; Redert, 2023; Schellekens, 2023; Scherb and Hayashi, 2023; Šorli et al., 2023; Woolf et al., 2023). 

We have previously reported several cases in which anomalous peaks in all-cause mortality (ACM) are temporally associated with rapid COVID-19 vaccine-dose rollouts and cases in which the start of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign coincides with the start of a new regime of sustained elevated mortality; in India, Australia, Israel, USA, and Canada, including states and provinces (Rancourt, 2022; Rancourt et al., 2022a, 2022b, 2023). 

These studies allowed us to make the first quantitative determinations of the vaccine-dose fatality rate (vDFR), which is the ratio of inferred vaccine-induced deaths to vaccine doses administered in a population, based on excess-ACM evaluation on a given time period, compared to the number of vaccine doses administered in the same time period.

The all-ages all-doses value of vDFR was typically approximately 0.05 % (1 death per 2,000 injections), with an extreme value of 1 % for the special case of India (Rancourt, 2022). Our work, using extensive data for Australia and Israel, has also shown that vDFR is exponential with age (doubling every 5 years of age), reaching approximately 1 % for 80+ year olds (Rancourt et al., 2023). 

The clearest example is that of a relatively sharp ACM peak occurring in January-February 2022 in Australia, which is synchronous with the rapid rollout of Australia’s dose 3 of the COVID-19 vaccine; occurring in 5 of 8 of the Australian states and in all of the more-elderly age groups (Rancourt et al., 2022a, 2023).

In contrast, often one must contend with the confounding effect of the intrinsic seasonal variation of ACM; however, in this case for Australia, the said January-February 2022 peak occurs at a time in the intrinsic seasonal cycle when one should have a stable (Southern Hemisphere) summer low or summer trough in ACM. There are no previous examples of such a peak in the summer in the historic record of ACM for Australia (Rancourt et al., 2022a).

Few national jurisdictions have the kind of extensive age-stratified mortality and vaccination data available for Australia and Israel. Two other such jurisdictions are Chile and Peru. Here, we show that Chile and Peru, like Australia, has a relatively sharp ACM peak occurring in January-February 2022, which is synchronous with the rapid rollout of Chile’s dose 4 and Peru’s dose 3 of the COVID-19 vaccine, respectively, occurring for all of the more-elderly age groups. 

This shared feature between Chile, Peru and Australia led us to look for more examples of the January-February 2022 ACM-peak phenomenon in the Southern Hemisphere and in equatorial regions. Equatorial countries have no summer and winter seasons and no seasonal variations in their ACM patterns. We found the same phenomenon everywhere that data was available (Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Uruguay), although incomplete for Bolivia and not as distinctive for New Zealand. Here, we report on those findings. 

Data

The sources of mortality and vaccine-administration data are given in Appendix A: Sources of mortality and vaccination data. 

Appendix B: Examples of all-cause mortality and vaccination data contains examples of the data: all-ages national ACM by time (week or month), from 2015 to 2023, and all-ages all-doses vaccine administration by week, using Y-scales starting from zero, for the 17 countries considered in the present study: Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Suriname, Thailand, and Uruguay.

Figure 1 shows the said 17 countries considered, in relation to the equator on a world map. 

Figure 1: World map showing the 17 countries considered in the present study, in relation to the equator and the tropics ― Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Suriname, Thailand, and Uruguay. 

Method to Detect Time Transitions to

Regimes of High All-Cause Mortality 

We implement the following method developed by one of us (JH) for detecting changes in regime in ACM data by time (day, week, month, quarter). 

One is interested in detecting transitions in time (as one advances in time from a stable historic period) to regimes of “higher than usual” or “higher than recent” ACM, which may be associated with the declaration of a pandemic or with rollouts of vaccines. Although the trained eye can detect such transitions in the raw ACM by time data itself, it is useful to apply a statistical transformation, which is designed to largely eliminate the confounding difficulty of seasonal variations in ACM, which occur in non-equatorial countries. 

Since the dominant period of the seasonal variations in ACM is 1 year, and since we wish to detect changes moving forward in time, we adopt the following approach. We apply a 1-year backward moving average to the ACM by time data. Each point in time of the 1-year backward moving average is simply the average ACM for the year ending at the said point in time, and we plot this moving average by time. Changes in regime of ACM then appear as breaks (in slope or value) in the moving average by time. 

Note that the 1-year backward moving average method produces one significant but easily discerned artifact: Relatively large and sharp peaks in ACM give rise to artificial drops in the moving average at one year ahead of (later than) the said relatively large and sharp peaks in ACM. 

Methods to Quantify vDFR from All-Cause Mortality 

4.1 Historical-trend baseline for a period (or peak) of mortality (Method 1) 

Our first method (Method 1) for quantification of vDFR by age group (or all ages) and by vaccine dose number (or all doses) is as follows (Rancourt et al., 2022a, 2023), here improved to adjust for systematic seasonal effects: 

i. Plot the ACM by time (day, week, month) for the age group (or all ages) over a large time scale, including the years prior to the declared pandemic. 

ii. Identify the date (day, week, month) of the start of the vaccine rollout (first dose rollout) for the age group (or all ages). 

iii. Note, for consistency, that the ACM undergoes a step-wise increase to larger values near the date of the start of the vaccine rollout.

iv. Integrate (add) ACM from the start of the vaccine rollout to the end of available data or end of vaccinations (all doses), whichever comes first. This is the basic integration time window used in the calculation, start to end dates. 

v. Apply this window and this integration over successive and non-overlapping equal-duration periods, moving as far back as the data permits. 

vi. Start each new integration window at the same point in the seasonal cycle as the start of the basic integration window for the vaccine period, even if this introduces gaps between successive integration periods. 

vii. Plot the resulting integration values versus time, and note, for consistency, that the value has an upward jog, well discerned from the historic trend or values, for the vaccination period. 

viii. Extrapolate the historic trend of integrated values into the vaccination period. The difference between the measured and extrapolated (historic trend predicted) integrated values of ACM in the vaccination period is the excess mortality associated with the vaccination period. 

ix. The extrapolation, in practice, is achieved by fitting a straight line to chosen pre-vaccination-period integration points. 

x. If too few points are available for the extrapolation, giving too large an uncertainty in the fitted slope, then impose a slope of zero, which amounts to using an average of recent values. In some cases, even a single point (usually the point for the immediately preceding integration window) can be used. 

xi. The error in the extrapolated value is most often overwhelmingly the dominant source of error in the calculated excess mortality. Estimate the “accuracy error” in the extrapolated value as the mean deviation of the absolute value difference with the fitted line (mean of the absolute values of the residuals) for the chosen points of the fit. This error is a measure of the integration-period variations from all causes over a near region having an assumed linear trend. 

xii. The said “accuracy error” is generally larger than the “precision error” (or statistical error) in the extrapolated value, as it represents the year-to-year variability of the integrated ACM in the integration window in the years prior to the Covid or vaccination periods. 

xiii. If there are too few integration windows in the available normal years prior to the peak or region of interest to obtain a good estimate of the historic year-to-year variability, or if the statistical errors in the integrated values are relatively large, then make use of the statistical errors to best estimate the needed uncertainty. 

xiv. Apply the same integration window (start-to-end dates during vaccination) to count all vaccine doses administered in that time. 

xv. Depending on particular circumstances in the data, it may be necessary to use different integration bounds (different windows) for the ACM and for the vaccine administration. We saw no need for this, and we did not try to implement or test such an optimization. 

xvi. Define vDFR = (vaccination-period excess mortality) / (vaccine doses administered in the same vaccination period). Calculate the uncertainty in vDFR using the estimated error in vaccination-period excess mortality. 

The same method is adapted to any region of interest (such as a peak in ACM) of sub-annual duration, by translating the window of integration (of the region of interest) backwards by increments of one year. 

The above-described method is robust and ideally adapted to the nature of ACM data. Integrated ACM will generally have a small statistical error. 

A large time-wise integration window (e.g., for the entire vaccination period) mostly removes the difficulty arising from intrinsic seasonal variations; and this difficulty is further solved by starting each new integration window at the same point in the seasonal cycle as the start of the basic integration window for the vaccine period (point-vi, above).

The historic trend is analysed without introducing any model assumptions or uncertainties beyond assuming that the near trend can be modelled by a straight line, where justified by the data itself. Such an analysis, for example, takes into account year to year changes in age-group cohort size arising from the age structure of the population. The only assumption is that a locally linear near trend for the unperturbed (ACM-wise unperturbed) population is realistic. 

While the above method is designed for cases (jurisdictions) in which there is no evidence in the ACM data for mortality caused by factors other than the vaccine rollouts, such as Covid measures (treatment protocols, societal impositions, isolation and so forth; since no excess mortality occurs in the pre-vaccination period of the Covid period), it can be readily adapted to cases in which mortality in the vaccination period is confounded by additional (Covid period) causal factors that cannot be ruled out. 

One approach is simply to adapt the above method to calendar years, irrespective of whether excess mortality occurs prior to the COVID-19 vaccine rollouts. One obtains excess ACM by calendar year, relative to the expected value from the historic trend deduced by linear extrapolation from a chosen range of yearly ACM values for < 2020 (for years prior to 2020, when the 11 March 2020 announcement of a pandemic was made). One then compares the excess ACM for 2020 and for 2021. In many (most) countries, there was essentially no COVID-19 vaccination in 2020, and a rapid rollout essentially started in January 2021. 

Special Case of a Single Historic Integrated Point (Method 2) 

In cases in which it is not possible or practical to obtain more than one integration value for the needed extrapolation (steps v to ix, above), rather than assume a zero slope for the extrapolation (step x, above), the following second method (Method 2) can be applied.

If Y(−1) is the sole historic integrated point, then simply take the needed extrapolated value, Y(0), to be: 

Y(0) = Y(−1) + m ΔT W    (1)

where m is the slope of the best-straight-line fit through the original ACM by time unit (day, week, month…) versus numbered time unit, ΔT is the number of time units between Y(0) and Y(−1) (i.e., between the start of the Y(0) integration window and the start of the Y(−1) integration window), and W is the inclusive width of the integration window in number of time units. 

This assumes that the ACM by time varies on a straight line, notwithstanding seasonal variations, on the near segment used to obtain the best-straight-line fit. 

The resulting excess mortality for the integration window or period, xACM(0), is then: 

xACM(0) = ACM(0) − Y(0)      (2)

where ACM(0) is the integrated ACM in the period of interest. 

The statistical error (standard deviation) in xACM(0) is then given by: 

sig(xACM(0)) = sqrt [ ACM(0) + Y(−1) + (ΔT W sig(m))2 ]      (3)

where sig(m) is the nominally statistical error in m. 

If there is no seasonal variation in ACM, as occurs in equatorial-latitude jurisdictions, then sig(m) is the actual statistical error in m. With seasonal variations in ACM, sig(m) extracted from the least squares fitting to a straight line does not have a simple  meaning. In this case, sig(m) will incorporate uncertainty arising from seasonal variations, and increases with increasing amplitude of the seasonal variation. 

Application of the Methods to the Specific Countries 

The parameters for applying the methods (Methods 1 and 2) to the data are given in Appendix C: Technical and specific information for applications of the methods to the data. 

Click here to read the full report.

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Cancer Genomics Expert Dr. Phillip Buckhaults Testifies to the SC Senate on the DNA Contamination Found in mRNA COVID Vaccines

“The Pfizer vaccine is contaminated with plasmid DNA, it’s not just mRNA…I’m kind of alarmed about the possible consequences of this…It could be causing some of the rare, but serious, side effects like death from cardiac arrest…

This DNA can and likely will integrate into the genomic DNA of cells that got transfected with the vaccine mix…It’s different from RNA because it can be permanent…

It could cause theoretically…a sustained autoimmune attack towards that tissue.

It’s also a very real theoretical risk of future cancer in some people.

There’s probably about 200 billion pieces of this plasmid DNA in each dose of the vaccine…This is a bad idea.”

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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.

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First published on July 2023

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Video is in English

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Démocratie au Canada… Trudeau fait enlever physiquement et arrêter les membres de l'auditoire lorsqu'ils lui tiennent tête…

Tout dans son allure en bras de chemise faussement décontractée, son arrogance méprisante fait penser à quelqu'un d'autre en France… pic.twitter.com/UH2jNS2AdB

— Barbara78 (@dragonduclos) July 22, 2023

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Featured image: Source: Justin Trudeau: people.com; skull: fruugo.us; Collage courtesy of Steve Brown

A Hurricane of Fear… And a New Corona Rising!

By Brett Redmayne-Titley, September 17, 2023

Fear feeds on stupidity. Stupidity borne of willful personal ignorance resulting from individual apathy that too easily accepts media propaganda verbatim. The educated, those whose efforts towards self-education and the creation of a “developed opinion” based on provable peer-reviewed facts are now under worldwide attack.

The US Has Blood on Its Hands in the Libyan Flood

By Steven Sahiounie, September 18, 2023

A Libyan official has said they will investigate to find those responsible for the dead in the recent flooding at Derna, Libya which may be more than 11,000. They don’t need an investigation to know the responsible party is US President Barack Obama, who devised and engineered a US-NATO attack on Libya in 2011 for regime change.

Why Has “The Rocket Attack Against Konstantinovka” Suddenly Vanished from the Radar Screen? Was It a Failed False Flag?

By Stephen Karganovic, September 17, 2023

Slightly over a week ago, all major collective West news outlets carried the story of a rocket attack on a crowded market in Konstantinovka, a town which is under Kiev regime control. It was announced that as a result of the blast 17 people were killed, including a child, and 32 were injured. 

A Daft Policy: The US Economic Strangulation of China

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 17, 2023

The broad lament from commentators about global economic growth is that China is not pulling its weight. Not enough is being done to stir the sinews and warm the blood, at least when it comes to the GDP counters.

New York Pushing Vaccine Boosters and Fighting for Concentration Camps

By Dr. Joseph Sansone, September 17, 2023

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James, have formally filed an appeal this past Wednesday in an attempt to overrule the Cattaraugus County Supreme Court ruling striking down proposed concentration camps. The state of New York is pursuing the authority to force quarantine human beings against their will and the ability to locate them in quarantine camps AKA concentration camps.

“The Chips War”: The West Versus China

By Peter Koenig, September 17, 2023

Ever since the Biden Administration, alias the Globalists, took power in Washington, China was bombarded with threats and sanctions; foremost with attempts of “chips-strangulation”, meaning, being blocked for the chip production, and by supply chain disruptions of electronics, notably semiconductors.

Ukrainian Conflict: “A Testing Ground for Electronic Warfare”?

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, September 17, 2023

Once again, it seems clear that Ukraine is just one part of America’s ambitious war plans. According to Western media, American experts are “taking notes” of the reality of combat with electronic warfare in Ukraine. The objective is to make the Ukrainian battlefield a “testing ground” for electronic warfare techniques that can serve US interests in other conflicts – such as a possible confrontation with China in the future.

Is This the Reason Why Blue Cars, Blue Umbrellas and Other Blue Things Didn’t Burn in the Maui Fires?

By Ethan Huff, September 17, 2023

Like the recent fires in California and Australia, the Hawaii fires are “unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” to quote Greg Reese of Infowars, who put together the following informational video about what many believe really happened in West Maui.

Video: Crimes Against Syria

By Mark Taliano, September 17, 2023

Washington-led Empire’s criminal war on Syria is a war against civilization itself. Empire, with its legacy media accomplices, hides behind veils of fabricated lies to commit crimes against children, women, men, Muslims, Christians, minorities, secularism, democracy, and the entire fabric of the sovereign nation of Syria itself.

The Elite’s 5,000-Year War on Your Mind Is Climaxing. Medical and Technological Mind Control. Can We Defeat It?

By Robert J. Burrowes, September 16, 2023

Mind control methods extend far beyond childhood terrorization reinforced by other psychological as well as political methods in their various forms. Most notoriously, no doubt, among his other ‘experiments’, Dr. Josef Mengele supposedly studied mind-control at Auschwitz, with these ‘medical’ experiments sometimes leading to the death of his subjects.

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The leaders of the Group of 20 nations have agreed to a plan to eventually impose digital currencies and digital IDs on their respective populations, amid concern that governments might use them to monitor their people’s spending and crush dissent.

The G20, which is made up of the world’s leading rich and developing nations and is currently under India’s presidency, adopted a final declaration on the subject over the weekend in New Delhi.

The group announced last week that they had agreed to build the necessary infrastructure to implement digital currencies and IDs.

While the group said that discussions are already underway to create international regulations for cryptocurrencies, it claimed that there was “no talk of banning cryptocurrency” at the summit.

Many critics are concerned that governments and central banks will eventually regulate cryptocurrencies and then immediately replace them with central bank digital currencies (CBDC), which lack similar privacy and security.

Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that discussions are underway to build a global framework to regulate crypto assets because they believe that cryptocurrencies can’t be regulated efficiently without total international cooperation.

“India’s [G20] presidency has put on the table key issues related to regulating or understanding that there should be a framework for handling issues related to crypto assets,” Ms. Sitharaman said before the G20 gathering.

The top items discussed at the New Delhi summit included building digital public infrastructure, digital economy, cryptoassets, and CBDCs.

Gita Gopinath, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) first deputy managing director, said in a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the G20 “helped shape a global perspective on how policymakers should deal with crypto assets.”

She also told Business Today that there was “no talk of banning cryptocurrencies, indicating a global consensus against such measures” in the discussions.

However, some of the suggestions call for additional policing of cryptocurrencies, which are decentralized and don’t operate under central banks’ control.

She called for the United Nations to have a role in AI regulation and called the European Union’s COVID-19 digital certificate a perfect model for digital public infrastructures (DPI), which would include digital IDs.

“Many of you are familiar with the COVID-19 digital certificate. The EU developed it for itself. The model was so functional and so trusted that 51 countries on four continents adopted it for free,” Ms. von der Leyen said.

“Today, the WHO uses it as a global standard to facilitate mobility in times of health threats. I want to thank Dr. Tedros again for the excellent cooperation,” she said, referring to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Public Support Lacking

The Cato Institute 2023 CBDC National Survey from May found that only 16 percent of Americans support the adoption of a CBDC. At least 68 percent of respondents said they would oppose CBDCs if the government started to monitor their purchases.

She wrote that the IMF was also “contributing to proposals for a comprehensive policy framework.”

In a separate statement, Ms. Georgieva said,

“More work lies ahead, including in the realm of digital money and crypto assets.”

“To this end, the G20 has tasked relevant institutions to improve regulation and supervision of crypto assets—the IMF is contributing to proposals for a comprehensive policy framework—and advance the debate on how central bank digital currencies could impact the global economy and financial system,” she added.

The IMF chief suggested that rather than recognize cryptocurrency assets as legal tender, governments should create licensing and registration processes for crypto asset issuers and focus on treating their activities similarly.

Several major economies, including Japan and Russia, will roll out their pilot CBDCs this year.

Nigeria introduced the eNaira, the world’s first issued CBDC, although it has proved unpopular.

Less than 0.5 percent of citizens have said they had used the digital currency, and government efforts to encourage its use have failed.

‘The India Stack’

Meanwhile, the World Bank also praised India’s use of digital public infrastructure to “enhance financial inclusion” and delivery of public goods and services in a report written for the G20 summit.

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A Libyan official has said they will investigate to find those responsible for the dead in the recent flooding at Derna, Libya which may be more than 11,000. They don’t need an investigation to know the responsible party is US President Barack Obama, who devised and engineered a US-NATO attack on Libya in 2011 for regime change.

“The U.N. Security Council never aimed to topple the Libyan regime,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in April 2011. “All those who are currently using the U.N. resolution for that aim are violating the U.N. mandate.”

In 2016, a report found that the intervention of UK, French, and US armed forces into Libya in March 2011 was “not informed by accurate intelligence.”

The report said that the US-NATO attack had “drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change,” the result of which was “political and economic collapse, inter-militia and intertribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of [weapons] across the region and the growth of ISIL in North Africa.”

The attack was successful in removing the Libyan leader Muamar Gadhafi, destroying the civil infrastructure, preventing any recovery of the country from 13 years of armed conflict, and is responsible for the lack of government in Libya today, which failed to warn people about the weather danger from the storm Daniel, which unleashed enough rainfall to collapse two dams.

The US spent billions of dollars on destroying Libya, but they have not spent on reconstruction of the infrastructure they destroyed, such as dams, water supplies, hospitals, schools and electricity power stations.  International donations are arriving in Libya now, but the US will not be sending anything other than what they provide to USAID, which is distributed through the United Nations humanitarian relief. Tents and bandages will not help Libya to recover from what Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron did in 2011.

The Mayor of Derna, Abdel Moneim al-Ghaithi, said the dams had been unmaintained due to the armed conflict raging since 2011.

The US never justified its destruction of Libya by developing, or even imposing, a form of democracy there. Instead, the country is divided into east and west, with two separate governments, neither of which have been voted into office by the people.

In the west, there is the Tripoli based Government of National Unity, a misnomer. The officials are followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, a global terrorist group advocating the same political platform as Al Qaeda and ISIS. They are supported by the US and recognized by the UN. Their allies are Qatar and Turkey, fellow Muslim Brotherhood regimes.

In the east, there is the Tobruk based Libyan National Army, headed by Field Marshal Khalifa Hafter, which is responsible for Derna and the region. Most of the country’s oil resources are in the east.

Libya and Syria were both US-NATO attacks for regime change begun under the Obama administration, and both followed the 2003 US-NATO attack on Iraq, also for regime change, which was a success in removing Saddam Hussein, and destroying the country. Iraq still lacks water, electricity, hospitals, medicines, and schools even after 20 years. Iraq has never recovered, or been rebuilt, and we can foresee that neither Syria nor Libya will ever recover or be rebuilt. 

Like Iraq, Libya saw a huge number of civilian deaths. In over twenty thousand massive “shock and awe” aerial bombardments, major cities and civilian infrastructure were routinely targeted.

Syria suffered from a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on February 6. The US never sent even one loaf of bread, or one bottle of water to Latakia, Syria, one of the hardest hit areas, because it remains under the Damascus central government. Instead, they sent their humanitarian donations to Idlib, which is a province living under the occupation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. The HTS leader, Mohammed al-Julani, likes to wear a suit and tie these days as he tries to rebrand himself for the US public. He granted an interview to the US media PBS where he looked like a US supported statesman, even though he was formerly an officer under ISIS leader Baghdadi.

But, there is something different between Syria and Libya: in the case of Syria, the regime change the US was willing to use terrorists to fight for, failed. The central government in Damascus never fell, and the Syrian Arab Army never split. The Syrian infrastructure is destroyed and people lack electricity because of the US military occupying the main oil and gas field in Syria, thus cutting off the domestic energy resources.

In 2014, Seymour M. Hersh published “The Red Line and the Rat Line”. He exposed the Obama administration’s use of stolen Libyan weapons covertly sent to the terrorists in Syria to topple the Syrian government.

On the day Tripoli fell, the New York Times’ headline read, “The Scramble for Access to Libya’s Oil Wealth Begins”. Libya’s vast oil reserves, the largest in Africa and next door to Europe, were free for the taking. Now, the east and west based governments in Libya have used oil resources as a weapon in their war against each other.

Millions have left Syria as economic migrants looking for an income abroad. Europe took in millions, but many Syrians also found their way to Libya as workers. Now, reports are filtering back to families in Syria concerning dead or missing Syrian workers in Derna. Syria and Libya have shared suffering from the pattern of US-NATO attacks on foreign countries for the purpose of regime change, and now they share in the deaths and aftermath of the Derna flood.

*

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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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***

“When do we scare the pants off them again!” — Matt Hancock, UK Health Minister

Fear feeds on stupidity. Stupidity borne of willful personal ignorance resulting from individual apathy that too easily accepts media propaganda verbatim.

The educated, those whose efforts towards self-education and the creation of a “developed opinion” based on provable peer-reviewed facts are now under worldwide attack.

By stupidity.

As challenged in a recent article, this embrace of stupidity is “The War For Your Mind.”

Stupidity must be defined, challenged and vanquished. Examples of this growing worldwide societal malady abound. One recent case study in California serves as an example of this mounting threat, so easily metastasized into “fear.”

In the lead-up to the weekend of Aug 19-20, 2023, America’s growing embrace of said stupidity – only rivalled in the English language world by the British – was on full media display.

Suddenly, that week here in Southern California we were told that gloom and doom had arrived once again: This time in the form of “Hurricane Hilary,” slowly moving north from 500 miles south of the tip of the Baja peninsula and then 1500 miles from San Diego.

The full breadth of the media propaganda machine immediately went into similar COVID-19/Ukraine war mode, full throttle. It’s mandate: Fear.

Similarly, the resultant media distortions were particularly aimed at those who had decided beforehand that their ignorance as to Hurricanes was best filled in only by their singular media choice, rather than an effort towards a healthy dose of personal education on the subject at hand.

I live in SoCal, have for years when not in Wales. Regarding the newest proffered Armageddon titled, “Hilary,” and the media’s guarantees of pending destruction all the way up the coast to Oregon, I could not have cared less.

I had taken the time to do some research.

However, in a world boiling in stupidity SoCal residents dutifully filled sandbags, while authoritarian Governor Gavin Newsom closed state parks and schools and his minions blocked roads and imposed a state of emergency.

Dutifully, the public was loving it: Joining in wholesale while staying up to the wee hours of the morning Sunday nervously waiting for the first onslaught of wind and rain to begin. They could not sleep due to fear.

For the few possessing a working knowledge of a compass, a thermometer, a map and distance there was nothing to be concerned about at all.

But that’s not what the media said.

This left the vast majority in utter panic. They had been told to panic. To fear “Hilary” – even Democrats.

So, panic they did.

However, in the real world of fact-based reality, hurricanes move very slowly and when moving north on the West coast (in this equator) they do so into colder water where they always peter out and die a rapid death.

Hilary was no exception.

Following my own mantra regarding education of the unknown, to be sure I did a bit of checking using the best, yet utterly ignored, source of weather news, the US National Weather Service. Not surprisingly, all of MSM was not offering this regularly updated information to the public.

Flooding in Ciudad Constitución, Baja California Sur, caused by Hurricane Hilary on August 18 (Licensed under CC BY 3.0)

Updated every two hours, those putting a personal effort into weather “science” would have discovered instead that Hilary was now stuck just off Guerro Negro (500 miles south of San Diego) because it had moved into colder water. Thanks to USNWS with each update, wind and rain predictions for SoCal were dropping faster than Kevin McCarthy’s interest in a Biden impeachment.

By D-Day, Sunday morning August 20, the predictions of a huge tidal surge, up to 10 inches of rain and 70 mph winds smashing and rinsing SoCal into the sea were still being promised by MSM on all networks by the minute.

Meantime at USNWS, those predictions had been downgraded dramatically. Hour by hour.

When, as true science had predicted, only three inches of rain and 40mph wind gusts hit SoCal, and with the storm rapidly dying out far to the south off Mexico it was not surprising to those few who were actually educated on the subject.

In SoCal, we often get 50-90 mph winds due to the Santa Ana winds coming from the desert several times a year. This past winter blessedly brought the most rain in decades and 1-3 inches of rain was routine.

So, why the fear?

Frustrated at this huge disappointment and in need of bolstering the fear factor, MSM fabricated a whole new definition for dying tropical storms in order to excuse their blunder, “Post-Tropical Cyclone.” Cyclones, however, being peculiar to the southern half of the earth.

Hurricane? Not so much.

So went this round of manufactured fear, slowly petering out in the Pacific like a Blue State mask mandate.

The US media immediately returned to terrorizing a former president while fully covering up for the impeachable crimes of the current one.

This short parable of fear thus inspired to action is of small consequence. However, the irrational stupidity that pawned it is not.

But before we look in part at the fear machine of Corona past applied to the regeneration of the fear of alleged Corona present might it not be a good idea to attempt to quantify stupidity and open that definition to discussion or expansion?

Defining Modern Stupidity

In an open attempt at quantifying stupidity that so easily responds to fear perhaps reducing it to an algebraic equation may be a good place to start the discussion: S= (I x A) m

Stupidity = Ignorance multiplied by Apathy exponentially multiplied by daily Media Propaganda.

In a previous article on ignorance penned just prior to my departure to Ukraine in March 2022, “The Ignorance of War,” I examined this subset of stupidity and exposed it as a lack of personal desire for education so extreme that most people were more willing to cast aside friendships rather than accept any additional information beyond their singular MSM offerings.

Regarding apathy, in a 2017 article, “What Rats Say About Americans,” I presented clinical studies that used rats to posit that apathy was related to junk food, resultant obesity and therefore personal disinterest in self-preservation.

Anyone observing the plethora of “Puddings in Heals” of “Bloated Blancmanges” waddling about US and UK streets would attest to this prerequisite.

Of course, after the lies and the cover-up of the 2020 election, the Biden family influence peddling operation (reported in a series by the author) and the worldwide Covid-19 scam, three years hence one might think that MSM and alternative media credibility would now be challenged by the awakened now asking some very important questions.

Au Contraire.

“When do we release the new variant? When do we scare the pants off them with the new strain.”

Featured image: Matt Hancock (Source: Flickr)

These, and the quotes below are the exact words of former Covid times UK Health Minister Matt Hancock and his conspirators in the UK ministries as leaked by Isabel Oakeshott. Hired to ghostwrite a book highlighting Hancock’s successes, instead, Oakeshott was aghast at what she read when provided access to over 100,000 WhatsApp texts between Hancock and his other disciples of fear.

Hancock, it must be noted, had zero prior experience in health care.

His texts are not conjecture. They are fact.

Thanks to Isabel Oakeshott, who violated her non-disclosure agreement due to conscience, we now know that schools were closed, children masked, families and friends separated, visitors kept out of care homes and quarantine periods prolonged, less because of “science” and more for political convenience.  

Released by the UK newspaper “The Telegraph” in a multi-part series titled “Project Fear” Hancock’s own words prove that, when not shagging anyone other than his wife (sans social distancing) he was far busier shagging the UK public. His weapon of choice: Fear, ignorance, public apathy, the media, and public stupidity.

Oh, and fear they did.

When the Alpha (previously “Kent”) variant started spreading in December 2020, many were already scared. Hancock on Dec 13 told his adviser that “we [can] frighten the pants of [sic] everyone with the new strain.” And questioned, “When do we deploy the new variant”.

Five days later, Boris Johnson cancelled Christmas.

By text, the UK Cabinet Secretary told Hancock early in the third lockdown that “the fear/guilt factor” was “crucial” in keeping restrictions in place, if not going further. Cabinet Secretary Simon Case also told Hancock that the Nightingale hospitals would be full within days. The Telegraph’s data editor Michael Simmons pointed out that Nightingale admissions peaked at 57 a day (capacity 4,000 beds). But the corporations providing these tents and services reaped millions. Thanks to fear.

Chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance told Hancock that it wasn’t a bad idea for him to “suck up [a] miserable interpretation” of case numbers in front of the public, and then “over-deliver.”

The two ministers were joined at the hip over lockdowns right throughout the pandemic. Texts show Hancock asking MP Michael Gove before a cabinet meeting “What are we trying to achieve?” Gove replied: “Letting people express concerns in a therapeutic environment before you and I decided the policy”.

To this: “You are glorious”, replied Hancock in approval.

A week later Gove texted Hancock on the first anniversary of the lockdown, telling him “U r a hero. Never forget it.” Ignoring his wife and his concubine, Hancock added later that night on May 26, 2021 “I ❤️you.”

There are many more texts in the same vein.

In a commentary by “The Spectator” author Fraser Nelson writes:

“The tone of these messages matters. The idea of giving “marching orders” to police, to arrest members of the public for going about normal life, did not seem to make them at all uncomfortable. We see Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, laughing at how they will lock up people who come off flights and saying he wishes he could see the faces of those about to be incarcerated. We see them talking about fear as a legitimate government tool, to be dialed up or down – and discussing how useful it is to the government that people should be scared.” [emph.added] 

With lead roles played in the drama by Hancock, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty, and Welsh minister Mark Drakeford, (all unelected bureaucrats) and their soul-selling allegiance to Big Pharma, the UK public stupidly rolled up their sleeves for an untested and rushed to market vaccine that as of late has killed and/or maimed millions and has been outlawed in many educated countries as a result.

The UK and US governments’ own statistics clearly reflect this horror as do the actuarial studies by insurance companies paying death benefit claims in amounts never before recorded.

Although America has not benefited from internal leaks by its own co-conspirators across the pond, with the many lies of COVID-19 having been thoroughly debunked by solid investigative journalists and a brace of Nobel Prize winners, here in the “Land of the Exceptional” the educated might fill in the names of Fauci, Collins, Birx, Wallensky, Redfield etc. al.

The best link to the UK use of fear rather than science and the above-mentioned US rouges gallery is best found in the book by world-renowned US epidemiologist Scott Atlas. In, “A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America,” Atlas, who was brought in far too late in the saga by Trump- and who quit in frustration- provides behind the scene details to the educated that show the and false nature of the “Settled Science” provided to the media by these American liars.

Proving Atlas’ contentions were the results in Florida which, without a lockdown or masks did better than the most draconian state in the nation, California. Atlas highlights Gov. Ron DeSantis contacting him multiple times as he continued to educate himself as governor before applying new laws. Laws that worked without overreach.

De Santis was not predisposed to stupidity. Instead, he was a champion of personal education. The statistics don’t lie. He and Atlas were absolutely correct.

So…three years later, how is it that today mass murderer Anthony Fauci can walk the slick marble floors of Georgetown University and not fracture a hip or break a wrist or two after slipping violently on the collective spittle cast at his feet in retribution and disgust?

Stupidity.

Corona Rising?

With the Biden regime now threatening new lockdowns, mask mandates and a new untested vaccine perhaps, today, the uninformed would do well to consider- at least- this month’s revelations regarding the reality of Corona-past applied to the villains present.

It has been reported that Fauci, Collins and others reaped more than $300 million from the royalties on some of the drugs they mandated on the world.

One drug, forced on the ignorant was Remdesivir. This became possible only after Fauci and the media rebranded the 2015 Nobel Prize-winning – and proven very effective against Covid-19 – drug Ivermectin as “horse paste.” Despite being used by humans for decades this lie alone allowed for an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the untested MRNA vaccines.

The same media lie was true in branding Hydroxychloroquine as “Ineffective,” since it had been used regularly as an anti-malarial taken weekly across Africa for decades as well. Strangely, the African nations had some of the lowest rates of Covid mortality recorded.

Thanks to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s extraordinarily well-researched book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” the educated know that Remdesivir- the mandated by Fauci substitute for both these two very effective drugs- is a barbaric and utterly ineffective drug that directly contributed to the high mortality rate of Covid patients in the Western nations. And, that Fauci knew this after forcing it on patients from AIDS to SARS previously.

The FDA’s role in this outrage, as a bona fide part of this conspiracy, came under fire this week. Judge Don Willett, writing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a unanimous opinion joined by U.S. Circuit Judges Edith Brown Clement and Jennifer Walker Elrod, regarding the FDA making Ivermectin illegal for use by doctors at the most important time, stated:

“FDA can inform, but it has identified no authority allowing it to recommend consumers ‘stop’ taking medicine.”  

Previously, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown ruled against the doctors in 2022, finding that doctors had not proven an exception to sovereign immunity and that there was every indication the FDA acted outside of the authority conferred by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

The appellate court further lambasted Brown’s absurd opinion, adding;

“Nothing in the [FDA] Act’s plain text authorizes FDA to issue medical advice or recommendations.”

Dr. Robert Apter, one of the plaintiffs, called the ruling “a big win for doctors and for patients!”

Indeed. But where was that ruling three years ago?

It should be added to this ruling regarding US administrative overreach that the CDC, unlike the FDA is not a federal agency but a private corporation maintained by a staggering amount of public US funding.

This week came, unsurprisingly, the revelations that The “UK intelligence community” worked with a government unit that monitored and removed dissent on social media.

Also, this week was the news that COVID-19 cases among fully vaccinated seniors soared in 2021. This, according to newly disclosed data that was acquired by U.S. health agencies but not presented to the public.

Following the advent of many lawsuits filed by U.S. military officers who lost all their retirement benefits after being dishonourably discharged for being educated and refusing the vaccines, Humetrix Cloud Services was contracted by the U.S. military to analyze vaccine data. In part, the company performed a fresh analysis as authorities considered in 2021 whether COVID-19 vaccine boosters were necessary amid studies finding waning vaccine effectiveness.

Humetrix researchers found that the proportion of total COVID-19 cases among seniors was increasingly comprised of vaccinated people.

Results from Australia show a substantially similar cause and effect. Death.

These reports are made worse by the CDC’s recent admissions that the vaccine; 1) does not prevent communicability between the vaccinated and, 2) also does not prevent the recipient from contracting COVID-19.

Really?

Pre-COVID-19, by definition, any vaccine was required to do both.

Release the New… Corona?

We have suddenly been told that a new Corona variant again threatens our very existence in the form of the new EG.5 or Eris variant. Even though flu-like viruses regularly mutate and that this change actually fortifies the human immune system through “natural immunity,” this weekend came the news that in Los Angeles Fauci disciple Barbara Ferrer called for and is forewarning of another Mask mandate.

Said Ferrer, apparently longing for the good old days of being all-powerful in the face of stupidity:

“I’m not going to say, there’s never going to be a time when we might need to all put our masks back on.”

Ferrer is, of course, unelected.

*

I fly often. I did so before, during and after Covid-19 made plane travel even more unenjoyable. From what I have seen already media fear is working.

Walking my dogs before my departure I saw- I swear– a person driving by, windows rolled shut and fully masked up.

On the two legs of the flight, I witnessed the increased number of people who had also dutifully masked up.

After four years of authoritarian results and a year of factual science and the courts destroying the “fear”narrative, this should be shocking. Obviously, these people were willfully ignorant as to the real news and true science but were too apathetic to look for that news, and had decided to allow their minds to remain beholden to the siren’s song of the collective media.

Hence, fear had gripped them. Again.

However, by definition and the one cursory algebraic equation as referenced above these poor souls were actually infected with a far more terminal disease, a disease rapidly enveloping, nay, destroying the lives of the educated here on Earth. That terminal disease:

Stupidity!

*

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has spent the last twelve years documenting the “Sorrows of Empire.” He has authored over 200 articles all of which have been published and often republished and translated by news agencies worldwide. An archive of his published work can be found at watchingromeburn.uk.  He can be contacted at live-on-scene ((@)) gmx.com.

The author’s new book, “THERE!” is just out. 18 chapters of the best in old-style on-scene reporting. Please support my work by purchasing a copy from Amazon Books.  All donations are gratefully appreciated. Stand-up! It…Is…Time!

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

Slightly over a week ago, all major collective West news outlets carried the story of a rocket attack on a crowded market in Konstantinovka, a town which is under Kiev regime control. It was announced that as a result of the blast 17 people were killed, including a child, and 32 were injured. Within minutes of the occurrence the accusation was hurled that the missiles that hit the market were Russian and that the Russian side in the conflict was therefore responsible for the mayhem.

The attack, which occurred as Secretary Blinken was visiting Kiev, was denounced immediately and from various quarters. Zelensky claimed that it was an example of “Russian evil” that “must be defeated as soon as possible.” Along the same lines, “Denise Brown, the UN’s humanitarian envoy for Ukraine, denounced the attack as ‘despicable,’ and the European Union condemned it as ‘heinous and barbaric.’”

At the time when these statements were being made, which was literally within minutes of the occurrence to which they referred, there was no evidence whatsoever, firm or circumstantial, to corroborate them. Quite the contrary, the circumstantial evidence pointed in the opposite direction. Amateur videos from the scene posted on social networks portrayed shoppers who heard the sound of incoming projectiles turning their heads to look in the direction away from where the missileswould have come from, if they had been Russian. That strongly suggested that the missiles were launched from territory under the control of the Ukrainian military.

So far, almost ten days after the widely publicised event, no forensic investigation with verifiable data is reported to have been performed, under anybody’s auspices, Ukrainian or international. As a result, each and every statement made about the blast by Ukrainian or Western officials is unsupported by evidence and is purely conjectural.

Even more suspicious than that is the fact that initially lively and unabashedly accusatory media coverage of the Konstantinovka market blast, which vividly recalled a similar false flag market incident contrived in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, suddenly went silent. That happened literally from one day to the next. The day of the blast, September 6, and before any reliable information could have been available, a Wikipedia article accusing Russia for the incident in Konstantinovka was hastily posted. (Ludicrously, in deference to Kiev regime’s linguistic edicts Wikipedia refers to the town as “Kostiantynivka,” to stress its non-Russian character.) By Googling “Konstantinovka attack” one gets a long series of videos and articles all contending unanimously, as in the Reuters report, that “Russian attack kills 17 in east Ukraine as Blinken visits Kyiv, officials say”.

But every single one of these reports is dated September 6 or 7, 2023, and from then on, as if by magic, all references to the crime cease. Hard as one may look, after September 7 there is no mention of the event that just the day before provoked such enormous indignation and, in the opinion of the highest officials, merited the use of dramatic expressions such as “evil,” “heinous,” and “barbaric.”

Why was there no follow-up?

Why was such an initially promising false flag operation, which cost the lives of more than a few innocent individuals, suddenly dropped?

One can only speculate about the reasons. As we explained in our original piece on this subject, historically there is a very strong correlation between false flag operations and specific political events that are meant to be exploited by the falsely directed emotions that the event was provoked to generate. In this case, that is obviously Secretary Blinken’s visit, into which the Kiev regime had invested enormous hopes in terms of additional material assistance and support. However, based on everything we now know about the results of that visit, the regime received very disappointing news about its Western sponsors’ readiness to maintain their support at the expected level.

In light of these realities, the regime may have concluded that further fanfare about the Konstantinovka market blasts would be unproductive. Western sponsors, on the other hand, may have decided to cut off media coverage which would have enhanced the victim image of their proxies that they are slowly preparing to ditch, generating moral pressure to continue to back them with the same intensity. Without the logistical support of the Western propaganda machine no other outcome was conceivable and the Konstantinovka story could only die a natural death. That is exactly what happened.

We must remember, however, that besides the propaganda story there are sixteen or seventeen, by various counts, innocent people who are also dead.

Their violent death was cynically arranged by the Kiev Nazi regime to try to improve its political position as its fortunes deteriorate on every front. The victims of this outrage in Konstantinovka, as well as the victims of similar false flags in Bucha and Kramatorsk, deserve justice. The perpetrators must be punished.

As we have repeatedly argued, it is necessary to   consider without delay the issue of putting in place serious and effective legal mechanisms to identify and punish perpetrators of crimes against humanity such as we have just witnessed in Konstantinovka. The criminals may be beyond the reach of justice at the present moment, but that is bound to change soon. When that happens, justice must be ready to spring into action.

The Konstantinovka incident demonstrates once again the need for Russia to declare universal jurisdiction over all crimes against humanity committed in the context of the conflict which began in 2014, reserving the right to prosecute related crimes which may have been committed anywhere on the territory of rump Ukraine, the Russian Federation, or in any other location.

Since Konstantinovka happens to be in the Ukrainian-occupied portion of Donetsk Region, a territory which has been legally incorporated into the Russian Federation, no special jurisdiction is required to prosecute parties suspected to be guilty of this market massacre, on the basis of individual, command, or joint criminal enterprise modes of criminal liability. But elsewhere the situation may not be as simple. Bucha is an example that comes to mind immediately of a similar crime where additional jurisdictional powers would be required to prosecute.

Let us hope that the Konstantinovka false flag murder operation will be a clarion call to action to close off every remaining avenue of impunity that could be used to shield the perpetrators of such disgusting acts.

*

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image is from Fresh News Asia

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*** 

Once again, it seems clear that Ukraine is just one part of America’s ambitious war plans. According to Western media, American experts are “taking notes” of the reality of combat with electronic warfare in Ukraine. The objective is to make the Ukrainian battlefield a “testing ground” for electronic warfare techniques that can serve US interests in other conflicts – such as a possible confrontation with China in the future.

The story was published in an article on the “Defense News” outlet. Josh Koslov, leader of the US Air Force’s 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, reported that the US is impressed with the widespread use of means of electronic warfare during hostilities in Ukraine, with both sides showing “agility” and efficiency in carrying out operations. Koslov believes that these skills will be needed by the US in the future, if the country faces a major opponent on the battlefield.

“The agility being displayed by both parties, in the way that they’re executing operations in the spectrum, is awesome (…) Both sides are doing the cat-and-mouse game very, very well (…) In the future, for us, if we do confront a peer, being agile and being rapid is the key to success in the spectrum (…) Not having control of spectrum leads to fatalities, leads to getting killed. And we’ve seen that time and time again in that conflict”, he said.

Although both sides are using this type of technology, the Russians are evidently proving to be more efficient, as can be seen in the results of the special operation. For this reason, Western analysts are evaluating Russia’s performance on the battlefield and believe that Moscow’s electronic skills are one of the main reasons for the Ukrainian failure.

In fact, electronic warfare (also called “spectrum warfare“) is one of the most important topics in contemporary military sciences, even though it is often ignored by some specialists. In current military campaigns, it is essential that the sides involved in hostilities have control over electromagnetic technologies, both for defensive and offensive use.

Given the high use of advanced technology in equipment such as computers, cellphones, radars and radios and guidance systems, a large electromagnetic environment is formed around the battlefields. The side that is most skilled in investigating enemy data through this electromagnetic environment has a huge advantage, both in direct military operations and in intelligence gathering.

Many analysts believe that Russian victories are largely due to Moscow’s high capacity to use the electromagnetic environment to its advantage. Using electronic warfare techniques, the Russian armed forces have been efficient in neutralizing most enemy attacks (mainly diverting Ukrainian drones), in addition to achieving high precision in their strikes. Russian electronic warfare technologies are also vital in destroying the communication lines of Ukrainian troops, having proven to be much more efficient than the entire technical apparatus provided by the West to Kiev.

As head of the electronic warfare wing of the American armed forces, Koslov knows his country’s weaknesses and seeks on the Ukrainian battlefield the knowledge necessary to solve US’ problems. There is a “need” on the part of the US to accelerate the modernization of its spectrum warfare capabilities because the country currently sees the possibility of engaging in direct conflicts in the near future. In this sense, the Defense News’ article reads: “U.S. [spectrum] arsenal atrophied in the years following the Cold War, but officials are reprioritizing in preparation for a fight with Russia in Europe or China in the Indo-Pacific.”

This statement helps answer a series of questions about why the US continues to foment the conflict in Ukraine, even with Kiev on the brink of collapse. In addition to trying to “wear down” the Russians and generate destabilization in the Russian strategic environment, Washington is also observing the enemy, trying to gather data on its advanced war technologies to help overcome its own military weaknesses. In other words, the Pentagon is turning Ukraine into a “testing ground” for improving its own defense forces.

The only reason the US is doing this is because American officials see the start of a new conflict as imminent.

Currently, few experts believe that NATO is willing to engage in an open war against Moscow, given the catastrophic effects this would entail. However, a conflict with China seems to be more in line with American plans, as for American strategists Beijing appears to be a “weaker” target, with a greater possibility of US victory in a direct confrontation. For this reason, the US has recently promoted intense militarization of the Asia-Pacific region, increasing local tensions.

So, in practice, the Americans are noticing on the Ukrainian battlefield what they need to improve in their own forces in order to achieve victory in a war they plan to start soon – being electronic warfare one of the main points to be improved. In other words, there is no real concern about Kiev, there is only the strategic use of the conflict to serve American interests while hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are killed on the frontlines.

*

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

Featured image: UK instructors train Ukrainian marines as part of Operation Orbital in Odessa, Ukraine in January 2019. Image: Ukrainian Naval Forces

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The broad lament from commentators about global economic growth is that China is not pulling its weight. Not enough is being done to stir the sinews and warm the blood, at least when it comes to the GDP counters. And many such pundits hail from countries, most prominently the United States, which have done everything they can to clip the wings of the Middle Kingdom even as they demand greater strides in its growth. “China’s 40-year boom is over,” declared the Wall Street Journal last month in a tone of some satisfaction. “The economic model that took the country from poverty to great-power status seems broken, and everywhere are signs of distress.”

Under the Trump administration, the war against the Chinese economy began in earnest. Somewhere in the order of $360 billion in tariffs were slapped on Chinese products, a central pillar in the Make America Great Again platform. This was despite a 2019 study by economists Xavier Jaravel and Erick Sager claiming that increased trade with China raised the purchasing power of the average US household by an impressive $1,500 between 2000 and 2007. “These gains from lower prices were broadly shared across all income groups in the economy, although they were proportionally larger for low-income groups (with gains about 15 percent larger than average.”

The downside to such throbbing growth in purchasing power has been the “China Shock” phenomenon: the loss of jobs occasioned by increased trade with a country able to command an enormous low-wage workforce. This was grist to Trump’s populist mill, a spur to protectionism that has gone gonzo under the Biden administration.

Going even further than Trump, Biden has threatened Chinese companies with delisting from the US stock exchange in 2024 in accordance with the Holding Foreign Companies Act of 2020. The value at stake there: $2.4 trillion.

On August 9, President Joe Biden signed an executive order restricting outbound investment to China, Hong Kong, and Macau. Broadly speaking, China is a country “of concern” either exploiting or having the ability to exploit “certain United States outbound investments, including certain intangible benefits that often accompany United States investments and that help companies succeed, such as enhanced standing and prominence, managerial assistance, investment and talent networks, market access, and enhanced access to additional financing.”

The order proceeds to make nonsense of a core premise of US investing, forever cradled by the artificial assumption that open markets are an unhindered reality. Openness only ever makes sense if it favours the trader and investor. As the order continues to state, “certain United States investments may accelerate and increase the success of the development of sensitive technologies and products in countries that develop them to counter United States and allied capabilities.”

To that end, the advancement of such countries “in sensitive technologies and products critical for the military, intelligence, surveillance, or cyber-enabled capabilities” to their betterment with the aid of US investments constituted “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States,” a state of affairs that deserved the hyperbolic tag of “a national emergency”.

A discomforting feature of such executive actions is that they constitute provocations that feed the incentive for further conflict. On the one hand, it encourages China to pursue a more autarkic form of development, focusing on self-reliance as it weans itself off the nutriment from US investments. But such policies can also encourage a state of desperation with few options.

On the latter point, history offers a bleak example. In the lead-up to the attack by Imperial Japan on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the Roosevelt administration added a generous dose of acid to the diplomatic mix to encourage conflict. To stifle Japan’s military efforts in Asia, individuals such as Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes resoundingly endorsed a policy of economic strangulation. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, however, felt that such matters as oil sales to Japan could still continue on a case-by-case basis, a policy that came to be stomped upon by zealots in the State and Treasury departments.

A colourful streak of US historiography on this point, one dismissed by high priest orthodoxy as ambitiously deluded, even clownish, suggests that the opportunistic President Roosevelt wished to provoke Japan into an attack on the US that would also commit Washington to war with Germany. One need not endorse that view to see the dangers of the economic strangulation policy, one marked by such standouts as Washington’s termination of the 1911 commercial treaty; the signing of the Export Control Act of July, 1940 which authorised the president to license or prohibit the export of essential defence materials; and the July 26, 1941 order freezing Japanese assets in the United States. On August 1, 1941, a ban on oil exports to “aggressor countries” including Japan led to a resource crisis that eventually emboldened the militarists to strike.

The State Department entry on the subject by the Office of the Historian, hardly a den of radical rabble rousers, had to concede that, facing “serious shortages as a result of the embargo, unable to retreat, and convinced that US officials opposed further negotiations, Japan’s leaders came to the conclusion they had to act swiftly.”

Next time China’s current economic lethargy is discussed like that of a nutrition deficient patient, the relentless assault and cornering, notably in the sectors of investment now regarded as crucial for continuing US hegemony, should be considered.  It also augurs poorly for global security: economic strangulation can sweeten the instinct for war.  In the case of Xi’s China, it will most likely result in a greater, if haughtier resilience.

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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 is from The Unz Review