Morocco – Earthquake Preceded by Mysterious Blue Lights

September 14th, 2023 by Peter Koenig

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On 8 September 2023, a devastating 6.8 (richter) earthquake hit Morocco, mostly the Atlas region, killing more than 3,000 people, affecting more than 100,000 children according to UNICEF, and leaving thousands of people still missing within the heaps of seemingly endless rubble.

“Large lightening appears before the earthquake in Morocco with unknown causes”…. So says a brief Twitter message by Aprajita Choudhary, followed by a 9-second video clip.

Aprajita further comments:

“Once more, reports of enigmatic blue lights have surfaced, preceding seismic events in the land of Morocco. A similar phenomenon was witnessed earlier this year in Turkey, mere moments prior to earthquakes striking both Turkey and Syria.”

See this 3-minute clip – blue lights followed by devastating quake.

The Daily Mail also talks about mysterious lights just seconds before Morocco’s horrifying tremor hit. Speculations about the origins of the lights abound.

Geologists say the 6.8 magnitude quake was the biggest to hit the heart of Morocco in more than 120 years. See this.

Strange, hardly anybody from the “official” mainstream media likens it to the Turkey / Syria seismic event on 6 February 2023 (7.8 magnitude), of which a great number of seismologists and scientists strongly suspect it was a manmade – HAARP technology applied – phenomenon. HAARP stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program which is linked to the US Air Force.

According to HAARP’s own website, the program was conceived as

“A scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere.” And, “HAARP is the world’s most capable high-power, high-frequency transmitter…. The program is committed to developing a world-class ionospheric research facility….”

The ionosphere stretches roughly 80 to 640 km above Earth’s surface, right at the edge of space. Along with the neutral upper atmosphere, the ionosphere forms the boundary between Earth’s lower atmosphere — where we live and breathe — and the vacuum of space. (NASA)

Weather and climate phenomena are initiated at extreme – invisible – altitudes, before they play out in our life-sustaining atmosphere.

The Turkey / Syria quake death toll amounts to more than 60,000, with over half a million injured, and an area of some 350,000 km2 – about the size of Germany – damaged.

See also this.

HAARP, as the most powerful high-frequency transmitter, has developed electromagnetic laser-type beam capacities that can be shot from satellites deep under the earth’s surface and cause high-magnitude earthquakes. See this for explanation on the functioning of HAARP / ENMOD (Environmental Modification) technologies.

ENMOD methodologies are also used to modify the world’s climates, producing weather extremes – droughts, torrential rains, floods, prolonged and disproportionate monsoons, as well as destructive hurricanes, tornados, and devastating snow and ice storms and more — all to make believe the Club of Rome established narrative (see “Limits to Growth” – 1972) of “climate change” is real, and the consequences of destroyed infrastructure, crops, food shortages, leading to famine, misery and death  are “normal” calamities of much propagated man-generated CO2-caused “climate change”.

The climate change we are living for the last few years has nothing, but nothing, to do with CO2. In fact, the world needs more CO2 to sustain life, as it is food for trees which convert CO2 into oxygen – the support for all life on earth. Cutting down trees, especially rainforests, is reducing CO2 absorption and oxygen production.

The HAARP precursor and analogy to Turkey may be relevant for the Morocco earthquake.

In Morocco, the tectonic activity primarily involves the convergence of the Eurasian and the Nubian (African) plates. The Eurasian Plate pushing against the Nubian Plate. This led to the formation of the Atlas Mountains some 80 million years ago. The Atlas Mountain chain runs through Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. See this.

Speculations have it that the African tectonic plate may have moved north and collided with the Eurasian plate, causing the magnitude 6.8 earthquake in Morocco last week. It would be a rare occurrence, a remote possibility, because this 8 of September seism is by far the strongest registered in the region for the last 120 year. No pre-tremors, typical for larger seismic events, were registered.

If indeed ENMOD foul play is the cause, the purpose of targeting the Atlas fault may be thought to strengthen the belief of a “natural quake”, since the tremendous Turkey / Syria tremor took place far from any fault line; a fact that triggered scientists’ suspicions.

The Morocco seism literally split an [Atlas] mountain in two, an extremely atypical occurrence for an earthquake. See this mini-clip (38 seconds).

There is no proof yet that HAARP and possibly other ENMOD techniques were applied to cause the Morocco disaster. But suspicions grow and may soon be reaching overwhelming proportions.

The obvious question arises, why would Morocco be the victim of a manmade wanton colossal disaster, like this 6.8 killer-earthquake?

Could it be because in January 2022, Morocco was the first North African country to sign an agreement with China’s Belt and Road Initiative? Now, Morocco’s long-standing pro-U.S. affiliation is at a crossroads as Morocco has turned to China because of the potential for economic development from foreign investments.

The United States needs to reaffirm its support for the Moroccan government by increasing investments, maybe with some coercion, to maintain the political partnership. If not, Morocco may pivot to China and the Chinese government may use Morocco as a starting point for Chinese influence in North and Western Africa. This could well be Washington’s thinking.

Morocco is also of strategic importance to China, Europe, and the US, because of its access to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the African continent. But also due to her growing energy sector, which has expanded in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

See this.

Morocco has exceptional resources of wind and solar energy on land, and possibly even more potential for the development of offshore wind energy. Investing in this potential will place Morocco among the ranks of the largest clean energy-producing countries, a feast for the Green Movement freaks.

However, maybe more importantly, Morocco also has sizable shale oil deposits at Timahdit and Tarfaya in the Atlas Mountains. Exploitation of these deposits has so far not been undertaken due to the depth of the deposits and related cost factors.

Shale oil is a hydrocarbon resource, bound up tightly in impermeable rock, and requires hydraulic fracturing to be extracted. A seismic event could replace hydraulic fracturing, breaking the rock, making the oil easier – and cheaper – to exploit.

Morocco has significant Shale Oil resources, ranked sixth in the world. Reserves are estimated at more than 53 billion barrels of oil, including 22 billion barrels in Tarfaya, and 15 billion barrels in Timahdit. The two areas, Tarfaya and Timahdit, are located in the Atlas Mountain region. See this.

Could the deadly quake be a punishment cum warning, as well as providing for easier access to Morocco’s enormous shale hydrocarbon resources? Reminiscent of the 2010 Haiti killer earthquake, from which Haiti has yet to recover? Haiti has substantial offshore shale oil reserves.

Naturally, most people – the populace at large – cannot believe that such evil originates from the people pretending running the world, but are plainly killing mankind. There is a natural rejection in every normal acting and thinking human being of the idea that we, humans, have been believing and trusting in our governments, in what we call “our authorities”, while they deceived us all along – maybe for centuries.

It is now dawning.

The monstrosities against humanity, caused by a relatively small elitist death cult, are beyond humankind’s imagination. “They” know it. It is a smart, studied-for-decades, Tavistock Institute “Social Engineering” strategy, allowing them to continue fooling the people – see this.

In the end, it is all “climate change”, stupid!

Let us stop being stupid.

Let us start thinking and acting for ourselves, for Us the People, thinking and living independently, as free human beings, no longer trusting in governments, in so-called authorities, or in bought and corrupted “science”.

It is not easy. But WE MUST – if we want to safe humanity and support our civilization to survive.

We MUST steer free from all that is being imposed upon us – such as total control, digital enslavement, digitization of everything, including programmable digital money, transhumanism, the Woke-craze-crime, and much more.

We MUST resist and move out of the matrix – and start our own lives on a new independent blank plane.

No regrets – looking forward into the light.

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

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

The South China Sea’s Resource Wars

September 14th, 2023 by Joshua Frank

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It’s an ocean of conflict and ecological decline. Despite its vast size — 1.3 million square miles — the South China Sea has become a microcosm of the geopolitical tensions between East and West, where territorial struggles over abundant natural resources may one day lead to environmental collapse.

While the threat of a devastating military conflict between China and the United States in the region still looms, the South China Sea has already experienced irreparable damage. Decades of over-harvesting have, for instance, had a disastrous impact on that sea’s once-flourishing fish. The tuna, mackerel, and shark populations have fallen to 50% of their 1960s levels. Biologically critical coral reef atolls, struggling to survive rising ocean temperatures, are also being buried under sand and silt as the Chinese military lays claim to and builds on the disputed Spratly Islands, an archipelago of 14 small isles and 113 reefs in that sea. Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam have also laid claim to many of the same islands.

Perhaps no one should be surprised since oil and gas deposits are plentiful in the South China Sea. The U.S. government estimates that 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are ready to be extracted from its floor. Such fossil-fuel reserves, some believe, are helping to — yes, how can anyone not use the word? — fuel the turmoil increasingly engulfing the region.

This year, the Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative reported that several countries are pursuing new oil and gas development projects in those contested waters, which, the organization notes, could become a “flashpoint in the disputes.” Between 2018 and 2021, there were numerous standoffs between China, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries over drilling operations there, and fears are building that even more severe confrontations lie ahead.

The United States, of course, lays the blame for all of this on China, claiming its aggressive island-reclamation projects violate international law and “militarize an already tense and contested area.” Yet the U.S. is also playing a significant part in raising tensions in the region by agreeing to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines as part of its Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security pact. The goal, no doubt, is to restrain Chinese activity with the threat of Western military might. “Next steps could include basing U.S. nuclear-capable platforms — such as strategic bombers — in Australia as well as cooperation on hypersonic missiles, cyber operations, [and] quantum computing,” writes Derek Grossman for the Rand Corporation, the “paramilitary academy” of American defense policy. (And, in fact, the U.S. is evidently preparing to deploy the first nuclear-capable B-52s to that country soon.)

On August 25th, in partnership with Australia and the Philippines (where Washington is getting ready to occupy bases ever closer to China), U.S. Marines practiced retaking an “island” supposedly captured by hostile forces. In that exercise,1,760 Australian and Filipino soldiers and 120 U.S. Marines conducted mock beach landings and air assault maneuvers in Rizal, a small town in western Palawan province in the Philippines, which does indeed face the South China Sea.

“A whole lot of damage can be done to Australia before any potential adversary sets foot on our shores and maintaining the rules-based order in Southeast Asia, maintaining the collective security of Southeast Asia, is fundamental to maintaining the national security of our country,” said Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles of the joint military drills. 

Like AUKUS itself, those war games were intended to send a message: China beware. The resources of the South China Sea aren’t for the taking.

But here’s a question to consider: Is all this international saber-rattling only about fossil fuels? Trade routes through the area are also vital to the Chinese economy, while its fisheries account for 15% of the reported global wild fish catch. Yet neither its well-used shipping routes, necessary as they are to the flow of goods globally, nor those fisheries fully explain the ever-heightening controversy over the region. Having exploited that sea’s wild fisheries for decades, China is now becoming a global leader in fish farming, which already accounts for 72% of the country’s domestic fish production, It’s also increasingly true that fossil fuels have a distinct shelf life. But is it possible that another set of natural resources, arguably more crucial to the economic future of the global superpowers, could be adding to the growing territorial furor over who possesses the goods in the South China Sea?

Mining the Deep Blue Sea

You could call it a race to the bottom, with China leading the charge. In December 2022, that country unveiled its Ocean Drilling Ship, a deep sea mining (DSM) vessel the size of a battle cruiser set to be operational by 2024. Instead of weaponry, however, the ship is equipped with advanced excavation equipment capable of drilling at depths of 32,000 feet. On land, the Chinese already hold a virtual monopoly on metals considered vital to “green” energy development, including cobalt, copper, and lithium. Currently, the Chinese control 60% of the world’s supply of such “green” metals and are now eyeing the abundant resources that exist beneath the ocean’s floor as well. By some estimates, that seabed may contain 1,000 times more rare earth elements than those below dry ground.

It’s difficult to believe that devastating the ocean’s depths in search of minerals for electric batteries and other technologies could offer a sustainable way to fend off climate change. In the process, after all, such undersea mining is likely to have a catastrophic impact, including destroying biodiversity. Right now, it’s impossible to gauge just what sort of damage will be inflicted by such operations, since deep-sea mining is exempt from environmental impact assessments. (How convenient for those who will argue about how crucial they will be to producing a greener, more sustainable future.)

The U.N.’s High Seas Treaty, ratified in March 2023, failed to include environmental rules regulating such practices after China blocked any discussion of a possible moratorium on seabed harvesting. As of 2022, China holds five exploration contracts issued by the U.N.’s International Seabed Authority (ISA), allowing the Chinese to conduct tests and sample contents on the ocean floor. While that U.N. body can divvy up such contracts, they have no power to regulate the industry itself, nor the personnel to do so. This has scientists worried that unfettered deep-sea mining could cause irreparable damage, including killing sea creatures and destroying delicate habitats.

“We’ve only scratched the surface of understanding the deep ocean,” said Dr. Andrew Chin, a scientific adviser to the Australian-based Save Our Seas Foundation.

“Science is just starting to appreciate that the deep sea is not an empty void but is brimming with wonderful and unique life forms. Deep sea ecosystems form an interconnected realm with mid and surface waters through the movement of species, energy flows, and currents. Not only will the nodule mining result in the loss of these species and damage deep sea beds for thousands of years, it will potentially result in negative consequences for the rest of the ocean and the people who depend on its health.”

Others are concerned that the ISA, even if it had the authority to regulate the budding industry, wouldn’t do it all that well. “Not only does the ISA favor the interests of mining companies over the advice of scientists, but its processes for EIA [environmental impact assessment] approvals are questionable,” says Dr. Helen Rosenbaum of the Deep-Sea Mining Campaign.

This brings us back to the South China Sea, which, according to Chinese researchers, holds large reserves of “strategically important” precious metals. China has already been fervently scouting for deposits of the polymetallic nodules that hold a number of metals used in virtually all green technologies.

“Learning the distribution of polymetallic nodules will help us to choose a site for experimenting with collection, which is one of the main goals of the mission,” said Wu Changbin, general commander of the Jiaolong, a submarine that discovered just such polymetallic nodules in the South China Sea.

Unsurprisingly, the U.S., lagging behind China in acquiring minerals for green technologies, has been keeping close tabs on the competition. In 2017, a Navy P3-Orion spy plane conducted repeated flyovers of a Chinese research vessel near the island of Guam. Scientists on the ship were allegedly mapping the area and planting monitoring devices for future deep-sea exploration.

The story is much the same in the South China Sea, where the U.S. has conducted numerous surveillance operations to follow Chinese activities there. In May, an Air Force RC-135 surveillance plane was intercepted by a Chinese J-16 jet fighter, causing an international uproar. Without providing any justification for why a U.S. spy plane was there in the first place, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken quickly pointed the finger at China’s recklessness. “[The] Chinese pilot took dangerous action in approaching the plane very, very closely,” claimed Blinken. “There have been a series of these actions directed not just at us, but in other countries in recent months.”

While these quarrels no doubt have much to do with control over fossil fuels, oil, and natural gas aren’t the only resources in the region that are vital to the forthcoming exploits of both countries.

Capitalism and the Climate

Across the globe, oil and coal are increasingly becoming things of the past. A report released in June 2023 by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggested that renewables were “set to soar by 107 gigawatts (GW), the largest absolute increase ever, to more than 440 GW in 2023.” The natural resources supplying this global surge in renewables, like copper and lithium, are becoming the popular new version of fossil fuels. Markets are favoring the phase-out of climate-warming energy sources, which is why China and the United States are forging ahead with mining critical minerals for renewables — not because they care about the future of the planet but because green energy is becoming profitable.

China’s foray into the global capitalist system and the ruins left in its wake are easy enough to track. In the late 1970s, China’s leaders liberalized the country’s markets and opened the floodgates on foreign investment, making it —  at an average clip of 9.5% per year — one of the fastest-growing economies ever. The World Bank described China’s financial boom as “the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history.” It’s no surprise, then, that energy consumption exploded along with its economic gains.

Like many of its global competitors, China’s economy still relies heavily on carbon-intensive fossil fuels, especially coal, but an ever-growing portion of its energy portfolio is made up of renewable energy. Steel-making and vehicle manufacturing now account for 66% of China’s energy use, transportation 9%, and residential use 13%. And while coal is still fueling that economic engine in a major way — China uses more coal than the rest of the world combined — the country has also become a (if not the) world leader in renewables, investing an estimated $545 billion in new technologies in 2022 alone.

While China uses more energy than any other country, Americans consume significantly more than two times that of the Chinese on an individual basis (73,677 kilowatts versus 28,072 as of 2023). And while the U.S. uses more energy per person, it also gets less of its energy from renewables.

As of 2022, the U.S. government estimated that only 13.1% of the country’s primary energy was produced through renewable sources.  Even so, the energy transition in the U.S. is happening and, while natural gas has largely replaced coal, renewables are making considerable inroads. In fact, the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden in early 2022, earmarked $430 billion in government investment and tax credits for green-energy development.

The World Economic Forum estimates that three billion tons of metals and fine minerals will be needed for the world’s energy transition if we are to reach zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 — and that number will undoubtedly only grow in the decades ahead. Of course, investors love to cash in and the forthcoming explosion in the mining of green metals on land and in the world’s waters will surely be a windfall for Wall Street and its equivalents globally. BloombergNEF (BNEF), which covers global markets, claims that the demand for key metals and minerals for the energy transition will grow at least fivefold over the next 30 years, which represents something like a $10 trillion opportunity. At stake is the mining of critical minerals like lithium and traditional metals like copper, which will be used in power generation, electrical grids, energy storage, and transportation.

“[T]he energy transition could lead to a super-cycle for the metals and mining industry,” says Yuchen Huo, a mining analyst for BNEF. “This cycle will be driven by massive expansions in clean energy technologies, which would spur demand growth for both critical minerals and traditional metals.”

It should be no surprise, then, that countries like China and the United States are likely to battle (perhaps all too literally) over access to the finite natural resources vital to the world’s energy transition. Capitalism depends on it. From Africa to the South China Sea, nations are scouring the globe for new, profitable energy ventures. In the Pacific Ocean, which covers 30% of the Earth’s surface, the hunt for polymetallic nodules is prompting island governments to open their waters to excavation in a significant way. The Cook Islands has typically issued licenses to explore its nearby ocean’s depths. Kiribati, Nauru, and Tonga have funded missions to investigate deposits in the Clarion Clipperton Zone, a 1.7 million square mile area stretching between the island of Kiribati and Mexico.

“This [deep sea] exploration frenzy is occurring in the absence of regulatory regimes or conservation areas to protect the unique and little-known ecosystems of the deep sea,” contends Dr. Rosenbaum of the Deep-Sea Mining Campaign. “The health and environmental impacts of deep-sea mining will be widespread… The sea is a dynamic and interconnected environment. The impacts of even a single mine will not be contained to the deep sea.”

According to those who want to mine our way out of the climate crisis, such highly sought-after metals and minerals will remain crucial to weaning the world off dirty fossil fuels. Yet, count on one thing: they will come at a grave cost — not only geopolitically but environmentally, too — and perhaps nowhere will such impacts be felt more devastatingly than in the world’s fragile seas, including the South China Sea where major armed powers are already facing off in an unnerving fashion, with the toll on both those waters and the rest of us still to be discovered.

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Joshua Frank, a TomDispatch regular, is an award-winning California-based journalist and co-editor of CounterPunch. He is the author of the new book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America (Haymarket Books).

Featured image: 200714-N-FP334-1010 by U.S. Pacific Fleet is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 / Flickr

Modi’s Trip to Jakarta Is a Geopolitical Event

September 14th, 2023 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

The Elite’s 5,000-Year War on Your Mind Is Climaxing. Can We Defeat It?

By Robert J. Burrowes, September 13, 2023

So you think that you make up your own mind about what you will do, how you will do it, what you will buy and so on. Good, because that is what you are supposed to believe. Especially when you are thinking what others want you to think. Most of us like to believe that we have ‘a mind of our own’.

Thoughts on the False Dichotomy Between “Western Liberalism” and “Fascism”

By Megan Sherman, September 13, 2023

Propagandist techniques piloted and mastered by the nazis were studied, absorbed and replicated by allied forces, who then deployed them for their own warped agendas. In so doing the contemporary “liberal democracies” can be meaningfully described as fascist. I will continue to explain why.

Kiev Regime’s Plan to “Finish off Donbas”: A “Carbon Copy” of Croatia’s 1992 “Operation Storm”

By Stephen Karganovic, September 13, 2023

When reports from the front are bleak and things are going badly, the Balkans 1990s playbook is an unfailing source of inspiration. We have already seen how the Ukrainian plan to finish off the Donbas was conceived as a carbon copy of the Croatian “Operation Storm” of August 1995.

Opioids: Fentanyl-Related Teen Drug Overdose Deaths Triple in Three Years

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, September 13, 2023

Even as opioid deaths have become a leading cause of death among Americans younger than 50, another horrifying trend is emerging: Teen deaths caused by fentanyl-laced counterfeit drugs.

Canada Approves New and Obsolete COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Boosters (XBB.1.5)

By Dr. William Makis, September 13, 2023

Canada is RE-BRANDING obsolete and failed COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to remove the word “BOOSTER”. This is an intentional move to forcefully make COVID-19 vaccines an “annual shot” like the flu shot, which they consider wildly successful (Sep. 12, 2023).

From the History of the Ancient World: The Story of the Persian Empire

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, September 13, 2023

The story of the Persian Empire starts after the end of the Assyrian state followed by the plunder of its political center – Nineveh, in 612 BC by Babylon which retained the lowlands of Mesopotamia, while at the same time the highland territory (in fact, Katpatuka/Cappadocia), which was westward to the Halys River (today Kizil Irmak) became incorporated in the state of its allies – the Medes.

African Union’s Relations with Global Players

By Prof. Maurice Okoli, September 13, 2023

The African Union has taken up more formidable challenges by joining the Group of Twenty (G20) in September 2023. It has struggled down the years to develop, since its creation, into a dynamic continental union with a resemblance of the European Union.

Air Force Secretary Says US Military Needs to Change to Win Future War with China

By Dave DeCamp, September 13, 2023

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall warned Monday that the US military might not be prepared for a future war with China since it has spent so much time focused on counterterrorism.

Rand Paul Out to ‘Repeal and Replace’ US Interventionist Regime

By Sen. Rand Paul and Bradley Devlin, September 13, 2023

In theory, Congress has ruled that America can, so long as the president consults Congress and the monster hunt lasts for 60 days with a 30 day time period to get home. In practice, the war dogs can pursue these monsters endlessly without Congress’s supposed leash.

Zelensky Issues Veiled Threat to Destabilize Europe If Weapons Flow Curtailed

By Zero Hedge, September 13, 2023

As predicted by a number of independent geopolitical commentators, including ourselves, the emerging official narrative on why Ukraine’s counteroffensive ended in failure will be to falsely claim the West didn’t provide “enough” weapons in a timely fashion.

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Twentieth century fascism/social cleansing advanced with overt, brutal assertions of power by way of invasion of foreign territory…

Twenty-first century fascism/social cleansing advances in sly, covert clauses in legislation that cuts vulnerable people off from resources needed to survive, as well as through military adventurism in the Middle East.

If it succeeded at anything, 20th century fascism succeeded most as a pioneer of commercial/corporate advertising.

Propagandist techniques piloted and mastered by the nazis were studied, absorbed and replicated by allied forces, who then deployed them for their own warped agendas. In so doing the contemporary “liberal democracies” can be meaningfully described as fascist. I will continue to explain why.

The historical possibility of global fascist hegemony was explored by fantasy author Phillip K Dick in “The Man in The High Castle.”

Whilst his narrative differs from historical fact in that global hegemony was headed by axis powers in his narrative, rather than allies, it converges with historical fact to the extent that we certainly do live under a system of totalitarian global hegemony, completely lacking in meaningful freedom and liberty for citizens. 

The moral case against the Nazis was that they aspired to a wrongful world domination, in which they would enforce oppressive racial hierarchies.

Such policies would — and did — dispossess and brutalise the diasporas created by modern imperialism, culminating in the tragedy of the holocaust.

The allied powers, although only in rhetoric and not in deed, invoked this moral responsibility to justify war against Germany.

In all truth the utter terpitude of the Nazis derived mainly from material factors, such as a domestic political economy incorporating corporations with the state, although the influence of ideational factors also influenced the political dynamics of Hitler’s rule, such as religious and occultist belief systems adhered to by the Nazis.

After the conquest of Hitler the mood in the west was joyous and buoyant.

Seemingly, good had won. But beneath the facade of western moral victory was the apparent internal rot of imperialist systems.

For one, the victory was partly predicated on the use of nuclear weapons on Japan, an absolute aberration from humanist values that ought forever stain the reputation of the west.

Also, and less publicly recognised than the horror of nukes, is the fact leading Nazi scientists were absorbed by NASA and the CIA. Let that sink in. This occurred under the auspices of intelligence programs.

Under the policy parameters of the “War on Terror,” the US – and NATO forces subsumed under it – have established something resembling a caliphate in Middle Eastern territories, having invoked a moral panic in the wake of 9/11, the subtext for military adventurism in the region.

A point of interest in these adventures is that they were the first historical occurrence of a war fought with more private contractors on the ground than traditional soldiers.

The result was that public utilities and domestic infrastructure of Middle Eastern countries were dismantled and absorbed into the portfolios of transnational corporations, who operate with impunity, cloaked behind the terms and conditions of opaque corporate governance, which destroyed the soul and substance of Arab civic society.

Though western powers cite an absence of liberalism as a reason to invade, the post-invasion reality is an even starker absence of liberalism, rendering such justification invalid. In all truth the major motive for occupation is likely the boon of oil and drug resources.

Regional guerillas, such as ISIS, have, despite the current opposition to them in the west, been actively employed by western powers in the past, because they were perceived to be useful to western agendas and susceptible to manipulation.

Their role in destabilising the Middle East was the explicit intention of the West.

With the disclaimer that this is pure conjecture I personally suspect the reason Assange was indifferent to being perceived as a bedfellow of Trump was because Clinton armed ISIS in Libya.

Crimes against humanity are the hallmark of modern despotism and whilst the Holocaust was a uniquely evil event, the tactics and protocols which enabled it are evident in western foreign policy.

It is industrialised slaughter on a global scale made possible by the invention and trade of weapons, heinous use of force and humanity’s technological capabilities against innocent civilians.

These are committed at the behest of hypocritical governments, vainglorious and callous elites who take the insult even further by shamelessly appropriating the rhetoric of humanitarianism to cloak themselves in glory.

US crimes against humanity are not a small handful or a rare mistake, they are endemic, within both domestic society — in the form of brutal institutional racism — as well as within foreign policy, externalising and protecting white supremacist ideology — “American exceptionalism” — on the world at large. In comprehending and understanding the histories and legacies of our societies, the virtue of intellectual honesty calls upon us to condemn our rulers just as we condemn Hitler, for, as I hope to have demonstrated, it is objectively true that these systems of power are relative and comparatively similar.

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Megan Sherman is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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When reports from the front are bleak and things are going badly, the Balkans 1990s playbook is an unfailing source of inspiration.

We have already seen how the Ukrainian plan to finish off the Donbas was conceived as a carbon copy of the Croatian “Operation Storm” of August 1995.

That ghastly undertaking, which the Kiev regime was eager to emulate, resulted in the killing of thousands of civilians, forced expulsion of a quarter of a million Krajina Serbs, and the incorporation of their homeland into Croatia.

The difference is that the Croat plan was resoundingly successful in reaching its barbaric objectives.

The Ukrainian copycat plan, on the other hand, was a manifest failure. Its execution was unexpectedly thwarted by the Special Military Operation.

The Konstantinovka market incident is the latest indication that the Ukrainian regime is in full-spectrum copycat mode. They are quickly absorbing the false flag methodology of their Zagreb and Sarajevo colleagues during the Balkan conflict of the 1990s. In the multifaceted war that was waged in the Balkans, the military was only one of several fronts, all of roughly equal importance. From the beginning, the propaganda front carried great weight, having had a huge impact on the war’s progress and outcome.

In Ukraine, there is a concerted effort to re-enact Balkan scenarios, amongst which false flags were a major political tool. The false flag formula tested and honed to perfection in the Balkans presupposes the following elements.

First, the incident contrived to injure the reputation of the side deemed hostile to Western and their local satellites’ interests never happens randomly. It is always coordinated with currently significant political developments and conceived to amplify a propaganda benefit that can be derived from them.

The wartime Sarajevo regime and its foreign sponsors in Bosnia acquired rich experience in staging false flags that were integrally woven into a broader political strategy. The famous false flag in the Vasa Miskin Street in Sarajevo in May 1992 was timed to occur just before European Union ambassadors were scheduled to consider imposing sanctions on Serbs in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The indignation whipped up as a result of that staged massacre successfully achieved the objective set for it. Shortly afterwards drastic sanctions were indeed imposed on the major supporter of the Bosnian Serbs.

Source: Fresh News

Secondly, in order to rally the clueless public in Western countries behind pre-planned political or military measures, victims and culprits must be proclaimed immediately, without waiting for an investigation. A one-sided and factually unsupported interpretation of the false flag event is launched instantly and subjected to tight media control.

Critical analyses and attempts to question the interpretation that is put out simultaneously with the event itself are either ignored or calumniated as “fake news.” Western and global public are exposed to a relentless barrage of one-sided assertions not backed by any serious evidence. Moreover, if closely examined these assertions are usually found to reveal major holes and inconsistencies.

The July 1995 “Srebrenica genocide” in Bosnia, organised to precede and overshadow in the public mind the Croatian “Operation Storm,” which followed three weeks later on August 4, exemplifies this type of false flag.

Third, if reluctantly and for appearances’ sake an investigation nevertheless is allowed, efforts are made to entrust it to reliable cadres or institutions who know precisely the limits to which they may go and thresholds they may not cross. The first Markale Market massacre in Sarajevo, in February 1994, is a model incident in this category.

According to what became the improbable official version, a single mortar bomb dropped by the Serbs accounted for the death of 68 and wounding of 200 market shoppers.

Initially, during the critical time period immediately after the explosion when forensic data were still fresh, the Bosnian government refused to grant UNPROFOR, the UN observer force, access to investigate.

Later, a controlled investigation, with expert reports and forensic data kept under lock and key, was permitted, but only after CNN had the opportunity to claim world-wide and without verification that it was a Serb mortar that caused the massacre.

The inquiry was also put on hold until after President Clinton had used his global bully pulpit to confirm that it was “highly likely” that Bosnian Serbs were responsible for the carnage. (Note the use of the same tricky phrase that many years later was made famous by the British Prime Minister to incriminate Russia in the Skripal case. What a coincidence!)

The Markale Market massacre was conveniently timed to coincide with rising pressure for direct NATO involvement in the Bosnian war on the side of Sarajevo, whose army was being badly battered by the Bosnian Serbs. (Parallels with the current situation in the Ukraine require no special emphasis.)

It was therefore of the utmost importance, for the intervention to appear justified in the eyes of the global public, to remove any doubt that Bosnian Serbs were behind the massacre. Accordingly, the crime scene was immediately placed under the control of one of the parties with a vested interest in the matter – the Sarajevo government – while Western media and influential political figures were insisting on the interpretation and assignment of blame which suited their political interests. Once the desired narrative was firmly embedded in the public mind, the controlled investigation could move forward.

By all accounts, even though the stage had been meticulously set for a prearranged outcome, the investigation that was finally conducted under UN auspices and under conditions most favourable to Western interests and the Sarajevo government did not go well.

The results it reached could not quite be skewed to fit seamlessly within the preordained scenario. Consequently, the report was labelled “confidential” and in the interest of “higher politics” Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali refused to publish it. The Markale investigation final report never was made public and for all we know it is still safely gathering dust in some impregnable UN safe in New York.

To sum up. Konstantinovka has all the tell-tale signs of a classic false flag operation, and not because like Markale it also happened to be a crowded marketplace but for more indicative reasons.

True to the form of such operations, it was arranged to coincide with a political event of major importance to the Kiev regime, in this particular case the visit of Secretary Blinken, significant not only in terms of securing more financial injections but also, equally important, discussing the modalities of a more intense Western and NATO engagement in the conflict on the side of the Ukrainian regime, to save it from collapse.

For the Western public to come on board approving further sacrifices in support of a country most could not find on the map, key psychological warfare points had to be reinforced.

The foremost amongst them is to once again fix firmly in the public mind the designated status of the parties, clearly distinguishing the victims and the “good guys” from the aggressors and “bad guys.” That is the purpose for which the Konstantinovka false flag was organized.

Konstantinovka fits other false flag criteria as well.

In usual fashion, the crime was “solved” instantly, literally within minutes of commission and without bothering to credibly establish even basic facts that might point in one or the other direction. Just as quickly, data that contradicted the narrative were black holed. Soon after the market was hit, videos emerged suggesting that the projectiles that hit the Konstantinovka market originated from a direction under the control of the Ukrainian military forces. The discordant evidence was promptly edited out by the Associated Press, the inconvenient details being suppressed (at 8:34 minutes).

Will there be any, even a sham investigation of Konstantinovka?

Time will tell, but if an inquiry is ever conducted it will be under even more stringent conditions than Markale. In this conflict the stakes are much higher.

Precautions will be taken that its results do not fall apart as the Bucha and Kramatorsk narratives did earlier, evidently victim to overconfident staging on the part of the Ukrainian proxies acting probably with insufficient logistical support from their more experienced Western curators. A repetition of the embarrassment of Bucha and Kramatorsk must be avoided at all costs and if that means no investigation of Konstantinovka to reinforce the prefabricated propaganda narrative, then so be it. They may choose to get as much mileage as they can now from the bare assertions, leaving the affair ultimately to die a natural death.

Except that the death was more protracted, that was, after all, what happened to Markale, referring to both the February 1994 false flag mentioned earlier and the successor false flag operation in August of 1995, uncreatively repeated at exactly the same location.

Both of the Markale incidents had served their immediate purpose around the time when they were staged. Whether or not they would be remembered subsequently and how they would be viewed in the larger scheme of things was actually of slight significance.

Markale was one of the charges in the ICTY war crimes indictment of Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadžić, having been announced with great fanfare.

Upon closer examination of the evidence, once the trial had started, claims arising from it turned out to be embarrassingly unsustainable. Quietly, over a decade later, the Markale charge was omitted from the amended versions of the Karadžić indictment. Few noticed or asked why.

The identical fate came to be shared by the dilettantishly staged copycat Bucha and Kramatorsk “massacres,” which are no longer even talked about. Such a fate awaits also the Konstantinovka false flag, just give it enough time for all the beans to spill.

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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

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84% of all teen overdose deaths in 2021 were related to fentanyl

Fentanyl-related adolescent overdose deaths nearly tripled between 2019 and 2021, and a quarter of those deaths involved counterfeit drugs — pills like valium, Xanax or Percocet, often obtained from friends or bought through social media

Fentanyl is an incredibly potent synthetic opioid. It’s 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Just 2 milligrams, equal to 10 to 15 grains of table salt, can be lethal

Having the right tools, such as fentanyl test strips and Narcan (naloxone) in your home or school medical kit can also save lives. Never buy fentanyl tests from friends or online. Always get them from your local health department or a trusted community organization, such as addiction recovery programs, as counterfeit tests are in circulation. Also make sure they’re legal to obtain in your state

Drug makers are now working on anti-opioid vaccines, one for heroin, one for oxycodone and one for fentanyl. The fentanyl vaccine is said to work by preventing the drug from entering the brain, thus eliminating the “high” users experience, as well as the risk of respiratory depression. The other vaccines work on the same premise

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Even as opioid deaths have become a leading cause of death among Americans younger than 50,1another horrifying trend is emerging: Teen deaths caused by fentanyl-laced counterfeit drugs.2,3

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,4 84% of all teen overdose deaths in 2021 were related to fentanyl, an incredibly potent synthetic opioid. It’s 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Just 2 milligrams, equal to 10 to 15 grains of table salt, can be lethal.5 As reported by USA Today:6

“Fentanyl accounted for more than 67,000 preventable deaths in 2021, which represents a 21% increase since 2020, according to the National Safety Council.7 More than 5,600 of those deaths occurred in people ages 15 to 24.”

Other data show fentanyl-related adolescent overdose deaths nearly tripled between 2019 and 2021, and a quarter of those deaths involved counterfeit drugs — pills like valium, Xanax or Percocet, often obtained from friends or bought through social media.8

While far deadlier than other opioids, fentanyl is much easier and cheaper to manufacture, which is why it’s being used in counterfeits. It’s potency, however, makes it risky. If unevenly distributed, you can easily end up with lethal doses in some pills.

In 2022, 75,000 of the nearly 110,000 overdose deaths were fentanyl-related,9 and again, thousands of those were teens. In Hays County, Texas, nearly 40% of fentanyl-related overdoses in 2022 were among people under 1810 — a statistic attributed in part to the rise in mental health problems among teens during the COVID pandemic. 

President Biden’s open border policy has also been identified as a contributing factor, as fentanyl and other illicit drugs are flowing in unimpeded. Insufficient access to mental health care and substance abuse treatment are others.11

We Need to Revive Drug Education

Schools across the country are now struggling with how to best address this new trend. Many do not stock the overdose reversal drug Narcan, which could be helpful, but even more importantly, schools rarely educate kids and teens about the dangers of drugs anymore.

Most educational programs are currently run by families who lost a child or loved one to fentanyl. Examples include Project 1 Life, founded by Avery Kalafatas, an 18-year-old from the Bay Area whose cousin died from a fentanyl overdose after taking what he thought was a Percocet tablet.

“This isn’t like the drug crisis we were dealing with 20 years ago, it’s a completely different ballgame,” Kalafatas told NPR.12 It’s a different ballgame because students rarely intentionally go looking for fentanyl. They’re seeking out other drugs, and end up taking counterfeits laced with it.

Many also aren’t aware of just how deadly fentanyl can be, and how prevalent counterfeit drugs are. Another group focused on fentanyl education for teens is Song for Charlie, founded by Ed and Mary Ternan, who lost their son, Charlie, to an accidental fentanyl overdose.

“We need to revive drug education in America,” Ed told NPR, adding that the old “just say no” adage doesn’t work on today’s teens. They need fact-based messages, which is what Song for Charlie puts out on social media.

“Rather than focus on ‘Don’t do drugs, they might harm you,’ Song for Charlie’s messaging is: ‘You’re getting ripped off. These dealers advertising on social media do not care. They don’t know you, they’re not your friend, and they are lying to you about what they’re selling you,’” NPR writes.13

“That’s what happened to Ternan’s youngest son, Charlie … In May 2020, Charlie was on his college campus in northern California. He was weeks away from graduation, and was prepping for a job interview. He was also in pain. Ternan says his son had recently undergone back surgery.

Charlie purchased what he thought was a Percocet off of Snapchat. It contained fentanyl. ‘He actually took it a couple hours before he was supposed to have a job interview on the phone,’ Ternan says. ‘And so he died very quickly in his room at his frat house waiting for the phone to ring at about four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon.’

After his son’s death, Ternan says most of the information about fentanyl he could find was buried on government websites and in a smattering of news articles.

‘You can put that information in those places for the next 10 years, and Charlie and his friends would never have seen it because that’s not where they are.’ Where they are is on social media.

Ternan says their messages also appeal to teenagers’ strong social bonds. He’s learned that telling teens to warn their friends about fentanyl is more powerful than stoking fear of their own harm.” 

Increasing Awareness Can Save Lives

Increasing awareness about the risks of fentanyl and counterfeit drugs could save a lot of lives. According to CDC research,14 bystanders were present at two-thirds of teen overdose deaths. Had they recognized the warning signs and known how to respond in case of a suspected overdose, they may have been able to save many of those kids.

Having the right tools, such as fentanyl test strips and Narcan (naloxone) in your home or school medical kit is also part of it. Fentanyl test strips can be used to detect the presence of fentanyl in a wide variety of drugs, including pills, powders and injectables — anything that can be dissolved in water. To test for fentanyl:15

  • Place a small amount of the drug in a clean, dry container
  • Add a small amount of water and mix
  • Place the wavy end of the test strip into the mixture for about 15 seconds
  • Remove the strip and place it on a flat surface for two to five minutes
  • Read the results: A single pink line means fentanyl has been detected (positive result). Two lines mean no fentanyl has been detected (negative result)

Caution is warranted, however, because counterfeit fentanyl test strips are also in circulation. Never buy them from friends or online. Your best bet is to get them from your local health department, or a trusted community organization, such as addiction recovery programs.

Are Fentanyl Tests Legal in Your State?

Also, check your state laws. Fentanyl test strips are still considered illegal “drug paraphernalia” in most states, although several states have exceptions for fentanyl tests, and some have decriminalized them and taken them off the drug paraphernalia list.

As of January 2022, states where fentanyl test strips were still illegal included the following.16Many states are now reconsidering this ban, so be sure to double check the current status in your state.

Utah and Washington have distribution programs that allow certain entities to legally distribute fentanyl test strips, despite being otherwise banned as drug paraphernalia. Similarly, North Dakota and Vermont permit the use of fentanyl test strips by harm reduction programs only.

California, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey and Ohio also have specialized distribution programs for fentanyl tests, while still legally classifying them as banned drug paraphernalia. So, in all of these states, you have to make sure you’re getting them from a legal source. States and territories where fentanyl test strips have been legalized include:

What You Need to Know About Narcan

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved naloxone (brand name Narcan) in nasal spray form for over the counter (OTC) sale without a prescription in late March 2023.19 Naloxone is also available in injectable form, but requires a prescription.20

The drug reverses the fatal effects of an opioid (including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl) overdose. It works by displacing opioid molecules from the opioid receptors in the brain, so it won’t work if the person has overdosed on a non-opiate drug. It won’t make matters worse, however, so when in doubt, use it. People recommended to carry naloxone on their person include:21

  • People who use opioids and benzodiazepines together.
  • People who use illicit opioids like heroin.
  • People taking high-dose opioid medications prescribed by a doctor. Ideally, ask your doctor to co-prescribe naloxone. You may also want to talk to your doctor about low-dose naltrexone (LDN).

As described in “The Remarkable Benefits of Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN),” by using microdoses (0.001 milligrams or 1 microgram) of naltrexone, long-term opioid users who have developed a tolerance to the drug and are on high doses, can, over time, lower their dose and avoid withdrawal symptoms, as the LDN makes the opioid more effective. This, in turn, will lower your risk of experiencing an opioid overdose in the first place.

For opioid dependence, the typical starting dose is 1 microgram twice a day, which will allow them to lower their opioid dose by about 60%. When the opioid is taken for pain, the LDN must be taken four to six hours apart from the opioid in order to not displace the opioid’s effects.

Also, since you cannot administer naloxone to yourself, be sure to let people around you know that you have it, where you keep it and, ideally, how to use it, so they can help you in case you experience an overdose.

If you cannot afford OTC or prescription naloxone, you may be able to get it free of charge from a community-based naloxone program or your local syringe services program. Nextdistro.org22 and Nasen.org23 can help you locate naloxone resources in your state.

How to Use Naloxone

Before you use naloxone,24 first, determine whether the person has overdosed on opioids. Symptoms of an opioid overdose include:

  • Slowed breathing, gurgling or no breathing
  • Pupils narrowed to a pinpoint
  • Blue or purple lips and/or fingernails
  • Clammy skin
  • Cannot be roused by shaking and shouting

The OTC Narcan box contains two nasal sprays with plungers, each containing 4 mg of naloxone. Do not prime the plunger as this will release the contents. Wait until you’re ready to administer the dose.

  1. Get the Narcan ready, then tilt the person’s head backward and insert the spray tip into one nostril until both of your fingers are touching the nose. Push the plunger down to administer the dose.
  2. Call emergency services (911 in the U.S.) after you’ve given the first dose, as every second counts.
  3. Next, roll the person onto their side. Place one of their hands under their head and bend the leg that is on top at the knee to prevent them from rolling over. Narcan can trigger acute withdrawal symptoms, including vomiting, so make sure the airways are kept clear to avoid choking.
  4. If the person has not regained consciousness after two to three minutes, repeat the process and administer the second dose into the other nostril.
  5. Stay with them until emergency services arrive, or for at least four hours to make sure their breathing returns to normal.

A Vaccine Against Fentanyl Overdoses?

Not willing to let a crisis go to waste, the vaccine industry is now hard at work to create an injectable solution. November 14, 2022, the University of Houston announced positive results from an animal study25 in which they tested a vaccine against fentanyl.26 The vaccine is said to work by preventing fentanyl from entering the brain, thus eliminating the “high” users experience, as well as the risk of respiratory depression.

The study’s lead author, Colin Haile, described the potential vaccine as a “significant impact on a very serious problem” since the user doesn’t experience the euphoria associated with fentanyl and “can ‘get back on the wagon’ to sobriety.”27

The vaccine includes a deactivated diphtheria toxin and an adjuvant derived from E. coli called dmLT. The researchers reported this adjuvant had been combined with other vaccines in other human clinical trials, but in each of those trials, the dmLT was administered orally and therefore exposed to the digestive tract.

In this case, the vaccine is administered by injection, which means dmLT enters the muscles and bloodstream directly. The shot was given to 28 male and female mice, after which the researchers measured antibodies.

Serum testing showed antibody levels rose significantly after the third dose, between weeks four and six. They tested whether fentanyl had reached the brain by gauging pain reactions since opioids are used to dull pain sensation.

The three-shot series triggered the animal to create anti-fentanyl antibodies that bound with fentanyl, preventing it from entering the brain and allowing it to be eliminated through the kidneys. Other vaccines, based on the same premise, are being made to target heroin and oxycodone.28

No acute side effects were reported in this rodent trial, but long-term side effects remain unknown. The research team is preparing to launch Phase 1 human trials sometime in 2024 — one for a heroin vaccine and another for fentanyl. Eventually, they hope to develop a multivalent vaccine that targets both.29

If you ask me, this sounds like another Big Pharma scheme where the companies that create the opioids will end up profiting from anti-opioid vaccines, just like the Sackler family did.

They created OxyContin and fraudulently marketed it as nonaddictive, thereby sparking the opioid crisis. Then, rather than pulling back and making OxyContin harder to obtain, they created and sold an overdose antidote, a naloxone spray called Nyxoid, instead.30

Where to Find Help for Addiction

If you or a loved one is struggling with drug addiction, the Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Administration31 can be contacted 24 hours a day at 1-800-622-HELP. Your workplace Employee Assistance Program may also be able to help.

Also consider having Narcan on hand, and fentanyl test strips (where legal). While neither of these do anything to fix the problem of addiction, the test strip can prevent the accidental overdosing on a fentanyl-laced drug, and Narcan can save your or someone else’s life in case of an overdose, giving you/them another chance to make a different choice.

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Notes

1 CBS News June 6, 2017

2, 8, 12, 13 NPR August 30, 2023

3, 10, 11, 18 The New Yorker March 28, 2023

4 CDC Fentanyl May 3, 2023

5 HHS.texas.gov Fentanyl

6, 15 USA Today August 21, 2023

7 National Safety Council Drug Overdoses

9 KCRA June 8, 2023

14 CDC MMWR December 16, 2022; 71(50): 1576-1582

16 Addiction Resource January 13, 2022

17 Spectrum Local News July 7, 2023

19 FDA March 29, 2023

20 SAMHSA.gov Naloxone FAQ

21, 24 CDC Lifesaving

22 Nextdistro.org

23 Nasen.org

25 Pharmaceutics, 2022;14(11): 2290

26, 27 University of Houston, November 14, 2022

28, 29 Medicalxpress August 29, 2023

30 Fox News March 18, 2023

31 Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Administration

Featured image is from Mercola

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Canada is RE-BRANDING obsolete and failed COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to remove the word “BOOSTER”. This is an intentional move to forcefully make COVID-19 vaccines an “annual shot” like the flu shot, which they consider wildly successful (Sep.12, 2023).

“There is an Internationally agreed upon simplified dosing schedule NOW” – “It may be much like the flu vaccines where people may be on a REGULAR SCHEDULE getting an Updated vaccine” (Canada’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Supriya Sharma – Sep.12)

Click here to view the video.

Masking is being pushed again: “now is the time to get your mask ready.” (Sep. 12, 2023)

Click here to view the video.

They are going after children again (Canada’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Supriya Sharma):

  • “5 years or older should receive 1 dose regardless of COVID vaccination history”
  • “6 months to 4 years should receive 2 doses if not previously vaccinated, 1 dose if previously vaccinated”

Click here to view the video.

SAFETY: Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo warns against getting the Covid booster shot:

“There’s been no clinical trial done in human beings showing that it benefits people. There’s been no clinical trial showing that it is a safe product for people.” “There are a lot of red flags.”

Click here to view the video.

SAFETY: Newly Approved Moderna XBB.1.5 Covid-19 vaccine was tested on only 50 adult participants and only monitored over a 20-day period with no control group. Also, Health Canada states that it authorized the vaccine based on older data from the original primary series and booster vaccines.

“Safety and effectiveness of Spikevax XBB.1.5 for individuals 6 months of age and older is INFERRED from studies of a primary series and booster dose.” They did NO safety studies for children! 

NO studies done to ensure safety in pregnancy!

“Reactogenicity was similar to prior doses of the original Spikevax and Bivalent.”

USA situation is even worse: They are pushing 3 Pfizer doses on children 6 months to 4 years!

USA: “Annual COVID-19 vaccine shots” are being pushed.

Click here to view the video.

FDA Approved 13:1, the member who voted “NO”:” 

Pablo J. Sanchez, M.D., who voted no, explained, “We have extremely limited data on children and infants and other individuals, and I think that needs to be made available to the parents.

I also think that in certain circumstances, we do have to be concerned about potential side effects, especially in young adults and in young adult males. And so, I think all of that needs to be weighed. And so, that’s why I hesitate to make it just a universal recommendation.”

Click here to view the video.

Why Are New COVID-19 Boosters Obsolete? 

  • XBB.1.5 will be extinct by the time the new boosters are rolled out
  • Health Canada just approved a product that is all risk and no benefit

COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine induced myocarditis is 1 in 35 per dose, this includes young adults and children:

Click here to view the video.

My Take… 

FDA and Health Canada just approved a new & obsolete COVID-19 mRNA vaccine monovalent booster shot for XBB.1.5 variant which is almost extinct.

  • Only “safety study” done on this product was 50 adults monitored for 20 days, with no control group! This is medical fraud.
  • No safety studies done on children 6 months or older (recommended by Health Canada anyways – this is medical malfeasance and malpractice).
  • FDA Member who voted NO cited “extremely limited data on children and infants” and concerns about side effects in young adults (& young adult males).
  • No safety studies done on pregnant women (recommended by Health Canada anyways – this is medical malfeasance and malpractice).
  • Reactogenicity was similar to prior doses of the original Spikevax vaccine and Spikevax Bivalent” – this is an admission that we will see 1000s of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine induced injuries & deaths of children, young adults and pregnant women (I’ve documented thousands of these injuries & deaths on my substack and Twitter).
  • Spikevax XBB.1.5 vaccine is manufactured by the same process as the currently approved Spikevax formulations” – this is an admission that we will see potentially lethal “hot lots”, “bad vaccine batches”, metallic contamination, DNA plasmid contamination, SV40 promoter contamination and all the quality control problems of the original products! They’ve done nothing to improve quality control.

Where this is going: 

Health Canada intends to continue injuring & killing thousands of children, young adults, pregnant women, the immuno-compromised and other vulnerable groups with these new and obsolete COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine XBB.1.5 Booster shots.

There is an “internationally agreed upon” push to re-brand these toxic, failed experimental mRNA gene therapy products as “updated vaccines” or “annual vaccines” and stop using the word “booster”. This is in both Canada and the US.

The goal is to make these “annual COVID-19 vaccines” MANDATORY as a condition of being able to visit your family doctor (you don’t get to see a doctor unless you have your updated annual COVID-19 vaccine). 

They think they can implement this new kind of “vaccine mandate”. 

All doctors and nurses will be forced (mandated) to have this new COVID-19 XBB.1.5 booster and will be forced to push it on all their patients or they will be stripped of their licenses, fined and possibly jailed (already law in Bill 36 in British Columbia). 

I’ve done an extensive substack on this which you can find HERE

Finally, they want 2 or 3 of these new updated COVID-19 XBB.1.5 boosters in children under the age 5 (the only group they’re pushing multiple shots on) – EVERY PARENT should ask themselves WHY.

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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.


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

From the History of the Ancient World: The Story of the Persian Empire

September 13th, 2023 by Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović

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Preface

The Empire of Persia was the first global empire to cover the parts of the three continents (known at that time): Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The story of the Persian Empire starts after the end of the Assyrian state followed by the plunder of its political center – Nineveh, in 612 BC by Babylon which retained the lowlands of Mesopotamia, while at the same time the highland territory (in fact, Katpatuka/Cappadocia), which was westward to the Halys River (today Kizil Irmak) became incorporated in the state of its allies – the Medes. Cyrus, the Prince of Persia, rebelled in 550 BC and won over the Median king Astyges. As a political consequence, Cyrus united the eastern Persians and the western Medians (or Madas, Medes) to make Persia/Iran the dominant military-political subject in Central Asia and the Middle East. The Empire of Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II of Persia, in office from 550 to 529 BC, who established the Achaemenid Empire centered on Persia) soon became enlarged due to several successful military actions that resulted in the incorporation of Asia Minor’s Lycia, Lydia/Sparda, the Ionian Greek settlements, followed by Babylon/Babirush, and present-day Afghanistan.

The Achaemenid Empire (550−330 BC)

The Iranians who arrived from Central Asia came to dominate the territory of Mesopotamia. In fact, there were three crucial factors of their political-military success in the region:

1) Iron Age technology;

2) The knowledge to use the horse for both the military and communication; and

3) Their power and versatility which gave them the crucial advantage over the people who have been belonging to the more ritualized civilizations of the Antique. Soon after the death of Cyrus the Great in 529 BC his son Cambyses succeeded in winning over Egypt (at the same time his brother Smerdis was ruling over Iran) at the battle of Pelusium in 525 BC (at the Sinai Peninsula near the Mediterranean Sea – the territory known at that time as Arabaya/Arabia between Gaza and Alexandria).

However, Cyrus’ sons soon started to quarrel but with fatal results as the usurper took the royal throne – a cousin of theirs Darius. He led a group of his supporters who have been fighting to restore the line of the Achaemenid family. Darius the Great (ruling the Achaemenid Empire from 522 BC to his death in 486 BC) reorganized the Persian Empire into 20 tribute-paying satrapies (provinces with the head of the satrap). He also established unified control, with a general Code of Laws, a stable currency, and an efficient postal service (one of the first in world history). Darius the Great became a master in administrative/civil affairs like his uncle Cyrus the Great was in military affairs. The Darius administration introduced regular equitable taxis, accurate weights, and measures followed by profitable monetary policies.

The (ethic) religion of Iranians – Zoroastrianism, did not fight for the converts which meant in practical life that all other religious denominations within the empire were tolerated like Judaism, or various forms of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Greek polytheistic beliefs. Therefore, both the communal harmony and the loyalty to the ruler were established and functioning. It can be said that three focal factors contributed to the Persian success in creating the three-continent empire: 1) Warfare traditions; 2) Artistic sensibility; and 3) Technical knowledge, especially in military engineering. In addition, two factors helped the Persian civilization to survive chronic invasions from the outside:

1) The firm national consciousness; and

2) A total respect for monarchical legitimacy.

Darius the Great established the Achaemenid Empire which had its greatest extent in up to that time history (479 BC).

The empire stretched in Asia from across the Indus River in the East, to modern North Tunisia and Libya (Putaya) in Africa and modern Thracia/Thrace (Skudra) in Europe (the Balkans) followed by western littoral of the Black Sea with the Crimean Peninsula in the West (including the peninsula of Asia Minor), and from the River Jaxartes and the Aral Sea (lake) in Central Asia in the North to Sudan and Magan at the Arabian Peninsula (at the entrance to the Persian Gulf) in the South (including Mesopotamia, Palestine, and the Sinai Peninsula).

He tried to extend his empire in Europe by launching war on Scythians on the territory of present-day Ukraine but was repulsed in 513 BC (the Scythians used the tactic of the “burned land”). In Greece, his policy to punish Athens and Eretria for their support of the Ionian Greek rebels in West Asia Minor against Persian rule led to his abortive invasion of Greek states in 490 BC (the Battle of Marathon). His son Xerxes organized an even more serious and massive invasion of Greece in 480 BC but was beaten at the sea at Salamis (480 BC) and on the land at Plataea in 479 BC.

Nevertheless, the Achaemenid Empire of Persia/Iran remained impregnable to the Greek-speaking world for a century and a half. Even more, Persia was the real winner at the end of the Peloponnesian War (431−404 BC) between Athens and Sparta and their allies. However, the political weaknesses of the Achaemenid Empire became seen when Cyrus the Younger (as the Persian viceroy of the western provinces/satrapies) recruited in 401 a military force of Greek mercenaries of “10,000” for the purpose of using them in his revolt against the brother Persian Emperor Artaxerxes II.

The end of the empire

The practice of these Greek mercenaries in attacking Babylonia (Babirush), in fact, paved the way for Alexander of Macedon in his attack on Persia, whose destruction of the army of the Achaemenid Empire of Emperor Darius III (336−330 BC) at Gaugamela in 331 BC finally brought the existence of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia to its end by barbaric burning of its capital Persepolis to the ground (like Greeks did the same with Troy/Ilion in around 1200 BC).

Nonetheless, the Achaemenid Empire (550−330 BC) is remembered as the first state to have its borders on three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The second one was going to be of Alexander the Great followed by the Roman Empire.

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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.

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On September 11, Joe Biden concluded his visit to Vietnam, often hailed as a historic one by the mainstream propaganda machine. For instance, the BBC claims that “more than 50 years since the last American soldier left Vietnam, Mr Biden travelled to Hanoi to sign the agreement that will bring the former foes closer than ever before”. The troubled Biden administration hailed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Vietnam as a major upgrade in relations with Hanoi and the culmination of efforts Washington DC invested in over the last several years. Biden also tried to present the rapprochement as having nothing to do with containing or isolating China, but about “maintaining stability in accordance with international rules”.

“I think we think too much in terms of Cold War. It’s not about that. It’s about generating economic growth and stability,” Biden told reporters on September 10, adding: “I want to see China to succeed economically, but I want to see them succeed by the rules.”

Obviously, this is a laughable claim for anyone remotely familiar with the rabidly Sinophobic policies the United States keeps escalating, be it the strategic containment of China, the never-ending stoking of tensions in Taiwan, attempts to prevent or at least derail Beijing’s technological development, etc. And to say nothing of the vaunted “rules-based world order”, as nobody actually knows what “rules” Biden is referring to. Not even Western leaders could pinpoint or even broadly explain the meaning of this pointless phrase, as the “rules” they keep parroting about are not defined. Essentially, they just make them up as they go, depending on the geopolitical circumstances, only later trying to present them as “in line with the international law”.

Still, even the BBC had to admit that Vietnam sees this rapprochement as nothing more than symbolic. According to Le Hong Hiep from Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, “Hanoi has thought this through”, as the aforementioned agreement with the US is “symbolic rather than [one of] substance”. Washington DC was hoping to use the sizeable investments of various American corporations in Vietnam for geopolitical purposes, including the reduction of China’s economic influence and Russia’s close military cooperation with Hanoi. However, both attempts are bound to fail, as Vietnam will certainly not break close ties with either for the sake of US interests in the region, particularly not with Moscow, one of its closest allies.

Namely, on September 9, the New York Times published the contents of a leaked document issued by the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance, revealing a plan to covertly acquire advanced Russian weapons. It should be noted that the US would have to impose sanctions in the case that Hanoi goes through with the deal, which is not exactly a very good message if Washington DC wants a strategic rapprochement with Vietnam. The NYT complains that “even as the United States and Vietnam have nurtured their relationship over recent months, Hanoi is making clandestine plans to buy an arsenal of weapons from Russia”. This only reinforces the notion that the “upgraded US-Vietnam relations” are indeed largely symbolic.

“The Ministry of Finance document, which is dated March 2023 and whose contents have been verified by former and current Vietnamese officials, lays out how Vietnam proposes to modernize its military by secretly paying for defense purchases through transfers at a joint Vietnamese and Russian oil venture in Siberia,” the NYT reports, adding: “Signed by a Vietnamese deputy finance minister, the document notes that Vietnam is negotiating a new arms deal with Russia that would ‘strengthen strategic trust’ at a time when ‘Russia is being embargoed by Western countries in all aspects’.”

In other words, Vietnam is clearly determined not to turn its back on one of its oldest and closest allies. Hanoi could certainly get concessions from the US, including advanced weapons, but its leadership is perfectly aware that this would be unwise, to say the least. Russian weapons haven’t only been proven as much more robust and equally or more advanced than American equivalents, but also much more affordable and logistically less strenuous. To say nothing of the history of US aggression in Indochina, where the belligerent thalassocracy killed up to four million people in Vietnam alone. And yet, the casualties would’ve been a lot worse had it not been for Moscow’s extensive aid, both economic and military.

It was Russian SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems that brought down thousands of American aircraft, saving millions of civilians in the process. Without Russian assault rifles, tanks, artillery and other weapons, Vietnam’s chances of driving out American invaders would’ve been slim to none. Hanoi never forgot that and continues fostering close ties with Moscow. The document cited by the NYT states precisely that – “Our party and state still identify Russia as the most important strategic partner in defense and security.” Vietnam’s reliance on Russian weapons is the most geopolitically sound, as Hanoi’s complicated relationship with both the US and China prevents it from relying on either militarily. This is highly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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On July 24, it was revealed that Transparency International’s New Zealand wing had enlisted the specialist advice of some of the country’s biggest, most notorious lobbying firms on improving ethical standards in the political and corporate lobbying industry.

A local businessman, who’d independently offered to assist TINZ in cleaning up the sector, blew the whistle.

Expressing “astonishment,” they compared TINZ’s consultation of high-ranking lobbyists on how to clean up their own industry as akin to “police recruiting gang members to determine new rules on pursuit of fleeing drivers.” Yet, anyone familiar with Transparency International’s history would hardly be surprised.

Founded by World Bank apparatchiks in 1993, Transparency International (TI) has relentlessly exposed public sector corruption in the Global South while leaving government-enabled criminality in rich nations unexamined.

In other words, it is a means of perpetuating privatization overseas for the benefit of Western investors. Accordingly, the organization is financed by a welter of major corporations, including firms implicated in industrial-scale corruption and tax evasion, such as Google, Microsoft, and Siemens.

The mainstream media never subject Transparency International or its dubious annual Global Corruption Barometer and Corruption Perceptions Index to critical scrutiny, invariably giving prominent billing to the organization’s regular publications and pronouncements.

Nonetheless, a report on the TINZ controversy by New Zealand public radio contained a remarkable disclosure. The division was noted to receive sizable funding from several local government sources, including Canberra’s equivalents of the CIA and NSA, the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau.

TINZ’s CEO defended this sponsorship, arguing spying agencies “have a strong interest in fighting corruption – that is one of their primary issues, the things that they do.” Western intelligence services have indeed been heavily focused on “fighting corruption” in recent years. As we shall see, though, the objective is to weaponize the issue in order to demonize and destabilize “enemy” governments and perhaps even foment regime change. Frequently too, Transparency International has played a starring role in these efforts.

Transparency International

Transparency International’s branding belies its nefarious goals

‘Complex and Controversial’

In 2013, TI published its first Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index, measuring levels of alleged corruption in the defense sectors and militaries of 82 countries. Many of the governments that ranked poorly criticized the findings, and report methodology, under which 77 “technical questions” were posed to local state officials and representatives of think tanks and universities.

As Mark Pyman, then-head of TI UK’s Defence and Security Programme, explained in response, simply not answering these questions was sufficient to bag a country a negative rating. These queries ranged from frivolous – such as whether a country’s defense chiefs “publicly commit” to fighting corruption – to intensive interrogation of military operations and procurement. It’s quite understandable government officials in, for example, Venezuela – among the Index’s worst performers that year – would be very wary of such approaches.

Those anxieties would no doubt be maximized by TI’s Defence and Security program being at that time funded by NATO and a number of Western governments. Since then, despite not generating much in the way of press coverage, it has become a standalone division of TI, with its own website, issuing a steady stream of reports on corruption issues in the international defense sector.

These publications deploy lofty rhetoric and frequently identify very serious issues and problems. But their recommendations are typically concerned with making the art of invasion and killing more efficient, ensuring that NATO state weaponry, technology and skills can’t be accessed by the “wrong” governments, and encouraging slightly enhanced state oversight of certain areas, such as private military companies. And only then because Western governments might lose money, and risks could be posed to their “foreign policy interests.”

Transparency International’s corruption risk index focuses heavily on mitigating risks to “foreign policy interests”

Measures to seriously curtail the most dangerous, innate excesses of the international arms industry, let alone prevent conflict in the first place, are never on the agenda.

Moreover, just as TI has a blindspot to Western private sector corruption, so too does TI Defence and Security incongruously overlook the utterly routine graft and villainy engaged in by U.S. and European governments and defense contractors to market and sell lethal wares overseas.

Mark Pyman himself made this agenda very clear in 2007 when the furor over the Al-Yammah arms deal was reaching a fever pitch. Signed in the mid-1980s between Britain and Saudi Arabia, it remains the former’s largest-ever weapons export agreement, netting London 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day and BAE Systems many billions of pounds ever since. Government officials on both sides – and their relatives – improperly profited from the deal, but multiple criminal investigations were scuttled.

Pyman wrote to “The Guardian” that year arguing a “joint Saudi-British committee” to examine the two countries’ defense relationship should be founded. Albeit, “one that is focused forward” and only concerned with “ensuring the probity” of future arms deals. He actively warned against “trawling through the history” of Al-Yammah’s “complex and controversial” as it “may well have an insubstantial outcome.”

Meanwhile, to this day, the official websites of numerous British embassies abroad openly encourage homegrown arms dealers to trade with local markets and offer guidance on “how to do business” there. This extends to providing contact introductions, privileged market information, and even the British Ambassador’s private residence for business lunches and receptions “with targeted top management from government and/or private entities” in the defense sector. All for an appropriate fee, of course.

‘Non-Lethal Engagement’

This background is vital to consider, as TI UK’s Defence and Security Programme has a formal, albeit largely concealed, relationship with 77th Brigade, the British Army’s psychological warfare division. The Winter 2017 edition of Corruption Cable, TI UK’s quarterly newsletter, has a dedicated section on this suspect bond, through which members of the shadowy and highly controversial military unit are regularly seconded to the Programme for a year.

A 77th Brigade secondee was quoted at length praising the Programme, which provides “opportunities [that] extend beyond relating to the Army-related work.” This included producing material for “case studies, reports and teaching packages”:

All of this will eventually benefit the Army, as I take the knowledge I have gained back with me and the value of being surrounded by knowledgeable and passionate people cannot be underestimated!”

77th Brigade

Transparency International’s 2017 “corruption cable” heavily lauds Britain’s controversial 77th Brigade

This sounds wholesome enough, although as the secondee openly stated, the 77th Brigade’s core components include the foremost media and psychological operations divisions of British military intelligence. As such, they added, the unit is concerned “with using non-lethal engagement and non-military levers to adapt behaviours of opposing forces and adversaries.”

As was revealed during the COVID-19 pandemic, these “forces and adversaries” include average social media the world over, whose perceptions and behavior the unit seeks to “adapt” through propaganda, manipulation and informational subterfuge. It seems all but inevitable that knowledge 77th Brigade operatives gain while seconded to TI – which may include the answers to Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index questions provided by foreign defense officials – is exploited for psychological warfare purposes.

This analysis is reinforced by a series of leaked documents related to the internal workings of Integrity Initiative, a British intelligence black propaganda unit. Among the papers is a proposal for a government-funded program exposing state corruption in the West Balkans, which names none other than Mark Pyman alongside a British Army Brigadier who founded TI’s Defence and Security division, and two 77th Brigade veterans, including its founder-and-chief Alex Aiken, as potential project staff.

Aiken’s accompanying biography notes that he was personally responsible for “forming the strategic relationship with Transparency International,” a clear indication of how valuable and significant the secondment program was considered at the highest levels of the British Army and 77th Brigade. Integrity Initiative operative Euan Grant was also proposed for the project. Other leaked files indicate he concocted a variety of wide-ranging plans for “information operations,” exposing purported Russian state and corporate corruption.

One scheme entailed sourcing damaging intelligence on Russian organized crime activities from major financial institutions, then publicizing the yield via a number of sources, such as journalists at major publications and the producers of the hit TV show McMafia, but “especially” the 77th Brigade. One of Grant’s proposed information sources was HSBC, a major British bank linked to every form of corruption and malfeasance imaginable globally. Coincidentally, his contacts there included former high-ranking MI5 and MI6 officials.

Boys from Brazil

One might argue that even if corruption by governments, businesses, organizations, and individuals is exposed via intelligence agency “information operations,” the ends justify the means. After all, corruption is a serious crime for which the perpetrators should always be held accountable to the full extent of the law but rarely ever are.

Yet, the public and media appetite for righteous defenestrations of corrupt officials can easily be exploited for malign ends. This is precisely why Western intelligence agencies have so determinedly sought to foment such an appetite over many years.

In November 2009, the Brazilian Federal Police Agents Association’s fourth congress was convened. Among the speakers was Judge Sergio Moro, a minor celebrity for his recent role in busting a major money laundering operation, who led a panel on “Fighting Corruption and Organized Crime” He argued for changes in the law and more judicial autonomy to facilitate the prosecution of white-collar crime in the country.

Also present was American prosecutor Karine Moreno-Taxman, who was then based in the U.S. Embassy in Brazil. She led a panel advocating for Brazilian authorities to maintain an informal system of collaboration with their American counterparts, circumventing formal cooperation structures as set out in international treaties. Along the way, she stressed the need for manipulating public opinion in prosecutions of high-profile figures to engender loathing of those being investigated:

Society needs to feel that that person really abused the job and demand that he be convicted. If you can’t bring this person down, don’t do the investigation.”

Five years later, Moro and Moreno-Taxman were key figures in Operation Lava Jato. Publicly presented as a crusading anti-corruption effort heralding a new dawn in Brazil, in which democracy and the rule of law reigned supreme, in reality, it was a fraud directed by the CIA, FBI, and U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ). The objective was to destroy the country’s most profitable companies and prevent the left from retaking power.

For years, Lava Jato prosecutors – all graduates of FBI and DoJ training programs – along with Moro, who oversaw the effort, were hailed by Western journalists and officials. Moro was even named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” in 2016. In December of that year, TI gifted the Lava Jato team its annual “Anti-Corruption Award,” which “honours remarkable individuals and organisations worldwide…who expose and fight corruption.”

Neither “Time” nor TI acknowledged that months earlier, local media revealed Moro illegally wiretapped former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s defense team. This was one of many egregious criminal tactics in which the judge, and Lava Jato prosecutors, routinely engaged. In fact, TI Brazil ignored a great many damaging disclosures about investigators, instead giving the Operation blanket, fawning coverage, and documenting and praising their crusading efforts every step of the way.

Following Moreno-Taxman’s prescription that “society needs to feel that that person really abused the job and demand that he be convicted” to the letter, Lava Jato prosecutors went to enormous lengths to demonize Lula. In regular press conferences, prosecutors presented laughable PowerPoints depicting him at the epicenter of a grand, labyrinthine regional and international corruption conspiracy through which the former President was intimately implicated in every serious crime imaginable.

In July 2017, TI welcomed Lula’s conviction on corruption charges as “a significant sign the rule of law is working in Brazil and that there is no impunity, even for the powerful.” It added that prosecutors and judges involved in the probe were “facing attacks from all sides…proof corruption does not distinguish between ideologies or political parties.”

‘Democratic Credentials’

Yet, Lava Jato did have a heavily partisan bias. Investigations by “The Intercept,” based on the hacked communications of investigators, starkly exposed from June 2019 onwards the Operation’s fraudulent nature and intimate ties to U.S. intelligence. One prosecutor dubbed Lula’s incarceration, which disqualified him from the race and laid the foundations for far-right Jair Bolsonaro’s resultant victory, “a gift from the CIA.”

In response to these bombshell revelations, TI quickly issued a statement claiming to be “closely following the reporting.” Strikingly though, rather than condemning how Lava Jato unlawfully weaponized corruption for malign ends, the organization instead primarily praised the Operation. It had claimed TI “revealed criminal schemes” and “challenged powerful politicians and businesspeople” while “bolstering a positive anti-corruption dynamic in Latin America, which has produced significant results in several countries.”

While TI conceded Lava Jato prosecutors needed to explain “alleged irregularities and violations of the principles of equality of arms and impartiality” revealed by “The Intercept,” it considered “rigorous investigation of the violation of private communications” to be “equally crucial.” A cynic might suggest TI was concerned subsequent disclosures would directly implicate the organization in Lava Jato’s malign machinations, which they did.

Hacked communications show TI Brazil director Bruno Brandão enjoyed a very warm relationship with lead Lava Jato prosecutor Delton Dallagnol, and he was a member of several messaging app groups in which various connivances were formulated and discussed. Furthermore, Brandão personally helped produce a TI Brazil-approved list of candidates in the 2018 election who avowedly shared Lava Jato’s ethos, along with a ranking of politicians according to their legal problems and purported commitments to democracy.

Brandão has since attempted to distance himself from Lava Jato, claiming he and TI had simply made a mistake “in believing that the leaders of Lava Jato had democratic credentials.” Yet, in April 2022, Brazil’s Federal Auditing Court and Public Prosecutors Office sought to open an investigation into TI Brazil for having illegally collaborated with prosecutors. There are suggestions the organization may have stood to benefit financially from that relationship.

Questions can only abound as to whether Brandão – and by extension TI Brazil – was in on the con all along. In 2016, he made dozens of appearances in national and international media, denying that a coup was in swing after Dilma Rousseff was improperly deposed due to bogus corruption allegations. Immediately after she left office, Brasilia started auctioning off its offshore oil reserves to foreign buyers. Two of the largest beneficiaries were Shell and ExxonMobil, both donors to Transparency International.

This was just one of many examples of Lava Jato’s economic destruction. The Operation created a climate in which even vague insinuations of impropriety could damage major companies if not entire industries. It paralyzed construction, while millions of jobs and tax revenues were lost, causing the country’s GDP to contract by at least 3.6%. For the CIA, which wanted to reduce Brazil to its impoverished, authoritarian, and easily exploitable Cold War status, this was precisely the point.

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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified U.K., and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

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European officials continue to make irresponsible statements about the Ukrainian conflict. In a recent speech, an important German military officer stated that his country is prepared for a prolonged war situation in Ukraine, having reserves to continue helping Kiev for a long time. In addition to being warmongering, the statement sounds like a lie, considering the serious energy crisis in Germany.

The words were spoken by Brigadier General Christian Freuding during his speech at the Yalta European Strategy (YES) forum on September 10th. He stated that he does not believe that hostilities in Ukraine will cease in the near future, making it clear that he expects a situation of protracted conflict. In the same sense, Freuding assured that Germany is prepared to face this prolonged crisis situation.

According to Freuding, Berlin has the resources to continue supporting Kiev militarily and financially until at least 2032. The general emphasized that it is a priority for Germany that Ukraine regains its 1991 borders, which is why the country’s parliamentarians and military are allegedly united in consensus on the need to provide aid to the regime on an extended basis.

“We’ve got the support of our parliament (…) for our military support for our Ukrainian friends up to the year 2032 (…) We are ready and we are prepared to give long-term support (…) and we are ready to make time our ally, and not time become [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s ally,” he said.

For Freuding, Germany has all the necessary conditions to help Kiev until the “victory” against the Russians is fully achieved. The general stated that measures to accelerate and “better coordinate” military support are already being taken. Priority is given to equipment that is used “immediately” on the frontlines, expected to generate direct positive results for Ukrainians during the hostilities. Among these “immediate” weapons are artillery ammunitions and air defense systems.

In fact, Freuding’s statement is not the first in this regard to come from a Western official. In August, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that all leaders of G7 countries should prepare for a protracted war scenario, ensuring that Western states have sufficient resources to supply Kiev in the long term. Similar statements have already been made by other leaders recently, showing how the West really intends to maintain hostilities for as long as possible.

However, believing that time can be an ally of the West and Kiev in this conflict is naive optimism. So far, all the evidence shows that prolonging has a negative impact on the Western side, as the Russians continue to have sufficient reserves to replace casualties, while Ukraine is running out of troops to mobilize, given the high mortality rates. In the long term, Kiv will collapse and be unable to continue fighting, even if it continues to receive unlimited weapons from the West. The country tends to simply run out of soldiers to send to the frontlines.

The only viable possibility of prolonging the conflict is by internationalizing it. It is not by chance that the West is fomenting frictions in other regions of Eurasia and even on the African continent, where it hopes to involve the Russian armed forces in new hostilities to try to “wear them down”. However, a side effect of this type of scenario would be the need to produce weapons on a much larger scale, which seems difficult for NATO countries, considering that they are already facing many difficulties in continuing supplies to Kiev.

Specifically in the German case, General Freuding’s words seem like a mere bluff, without any evidence that his country is really prepared for an extended conflict. Obviously, Germany has an efficient industrial system and is capable of producing weapons on a large scale. But German manufacturing stability has always been completely dependent on Russian energy and was severely affected by the EU’s illegal and anti-strategic sanctions.

Currently, Germany faces several difficulties in maintaining its industrial capacity without Russian help. There are predictions that between 2026 and 2027 there will be a serious energy shortage in the country due to the lack of Russian gas. Obviously, without energy there is no industry – and no production of weapons to send to Ukraine. And if this energy crisis is close to reaching its worst levels in the coming years, it is very unlikely that Germany is really prepared to support Kiev until 2032.

Western leaders are bluffing to try to show stability and control in the midst of an evidently tense and dangerous scenario. More and more, the proxy war started by NATO against Russia seems to have turned into a real trap for the West itself.

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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.

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African Union’s Relations with Global Players

September 13th, 2023 by Prof. Maurice Okoli

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The African Union has taken up more formidable challenges by joining the Group of Twenty (G20) in September 2023. It has struggled down the years to develop, since its creation, into a dynamic continental union with a resemblance of the European Union. Recent developments in global great power politics have come with complex challenges and opportunities for the African continent. Nevertheless, the AU views the emerging multipolar world as an opportunity to move up, with its unified voice on pertinent issues, unto a global stage.

At the far end of the 18th summit, the African Union (AU) was finally granted the same status as the European Union (EU) at G20. This will strengthen the G20 and also strengthen the voice of the Global South. It is based on the group’s collective consensus and incorporated into the final declaration, marks a new chapter for formulating new thinking and building confidence with G20 members. 

Within the framework of the emerging new world order, the G20 Delhi declaration’s language was neutrally positive, the most significant outcomes remain the inclusion of the African Union into the bloc. The summit declaration was termed “people-centric, action-oriented and far-sighted” reflecting a “shared path for all” ensuring that countries of the Global South are not  left behind. 

The G20 declaration noted that the inclusion of the African Union into the G20 will significantly contribute to addressing the global challenges.

“Africa plays an important role in the global economy. We commit to strengthen our ties with and support the African Union realise the aspirations under Agenda 2063. We also reiterate strong support to Africa, including through the G20 Compact with Africa and G20 Initiative on supporting industrialization in Africa and LDCs. We are supportive of further discussing the deepening of cooperation between the G20 and other regional partners,” it read.

The step on AU’s inclusion was a decade-long objective, a struggle for gaining a position on global stage. It was, indeed, one of the significant milestone gestures and biggest achievements in the history of G20. Long before that, there were pleasant debates and discussions, as no key global leader raised criticisms and/or fierce objections to the proposal for a permanent seat be given to the AU.

“Thanks to the hard work of our team and your support, a consensus has been reached on the declaration from the G20 Heads of State and Government Summit in New Delhi,” Modi said, announcing the adoption of the declaration.

The contents of the joint communiqué from the G20, a group of the world’s largest economies to which the African Union was officially included as a permanent member for the first time in its history.

Current Chairman of the African Union, Comoros President Azali Assoumani thanked PM Modi for his initiative and efforts in making the African Union a permanent member of the G20. He shared his particular pleasure that this had occured during India’s G20 Presidency, considering India’s role and links with Africa. Assoumani and Modi, with the almost the same message, highlighted India’s efforts to articulate the Voice of Global South and recalled the Voice of Global South Summit convened by India in January 2023.

According to reports, G20 was first formed in the wake of the financial crisis that swept through Southeast Asian economies in the late 1990s as a forum for finance ministers and central bank governors, then it was upgraded in 2007 to include heads of state and governments.

During and after the 2008 global financial crisis, the G20’s coordinated efforts helped tamp down panic and restore economic growth. The grouping comprises 19 countries cutting across continents and the European Union, representing around 85% of the world’s GDP. The G20 also invites non-member countries, including Bangladesh, Singapore, Spain and Nigeria, besides international organizations such as the United Nations, World Health Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In comparative assessment within the complex geopolitical context of the debate over multilateral organizations reforms including that of the United Nations, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) unwavering future projections, and for AU to set out its own critical role in strengthening strategic relations combined with mobilizing both external public and private finance for Africa’s development.

It is an established fact that Africa is India’s fourth largest trading partner. India exported US$ 40 billion worth of goods to Africa, while importing US$ 49 billion worth of goods from various African countries. India’s main exports to Africa are refined petroleum products and pharmaceuticals while Africa exports crude oil, gold, coal and other minerals to India. 

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Launch of the Global Biofuels Alliance at G20 New Delhi 2023 (Licensed under CC BY 2.5 ar)

China is the topmost trading partner. More than 3,000 Chinese enterprises have invested deeply in Africa, of which over 70% are private companies, says China’s state-owned Global Times. At the same time, China has been modernizing the continent’s agricultural, manufacturing and services sectors, upgrade its manufacturing and processing techniques, and create greater value-added, contributing significantly to the stability, development and prosperity of African countries.

According to the Policy Centre for the New South, China has twenty-five economic and trade cooperation zones with China have been created in sixteen African countries. With such initiatives, the Chinese footprint in Africa has grown to approximately 12% of Africa’s industrial output—about US$ 500 billion annually. As for the infrastructure sector, Chinese companies claim nearly 50% of Africa’s contracted construction market.

In Johannesburg’s 15th BRICS summit held in August, Xi Jinping said China would continue to support Africa in speaking with one voice on international affairs and continuously elevating its international standing. It has already assisted the construction of several signature Pan-African projects, including the new AU Conference Center and the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

In order to chart the course for practical cooperation in the next stage and partner with Africa to bring its integration and modernization into a fast track, on the sideline meeting with African leaders, Xi Jinping made three concrete proposals which include (i) China will launch the Initiative on Supporting Africa’s Industrialization, (ii) China will launch the Plan for China Supporting Africa’s Agricultural Modernization, and (iii) China will launch the Plan for China-Africa Cooperation on Talent Development.

United States and a number of European nations, as G20 members, have competitively been investing in Africa. Of course, reports (White House, Briefing Report, June 2023) show that the United States has more than 800 two-way trade and investment deals across 47 African countries for a total estimated value of over US$18 billion, and the U.S. private sector has investment deals in Africa valued at US$8.6 billion. In fact, United States goods and services traded with Africa totaled US$83.6 billion in 2021.

The European Union has pledged 150 billion euros (US$170 billion) for investment in Africa as it seeks to gain influence on the continent and become its partner of choice. That compared with BRICS, during its late July summit held in Johannesburg, we further heard of the general perception amongst the BRICS nations that global trade and economics are too much synchronized to the Western powers, organised and lead by the United States.

From year to year, the BRICS members are increasing their potential. As was already mentioned, the five partner states, with a total population exceeding 3 billion, account for a greater share in global GDP than the so-called Group of Seven in terms of purchasing power parity. Over the past decade, BRICS group has doubled their investment in the global economy, and their total exports have reached 20 percent of the global total, according to reports.

Over the past decades, G20 members such as the United States and Canada, the EU with their  unique geographic and economic conditions have attracted African citizens, Diaspora remittances which the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, estimated at US$86 billion, supplements other finance sources for SMEs and women-owned businesses across Africa. After the New Delhi summit, it is however expected that G20 members will impact on the existing relationship between Diaspora businesses and SMEs there in the continent.

Besides that there are the traditional markets for some African products for which revenues are generated for their national budgets. The AU negotiating for removing barriers could collaborate to reach an entirely new level in the trade and corporate business relationship. These are aspects of the primary targets for the AU’s G20 membership.

Policy analysts are discussing many questions about the key results of the historic India’s G20 summit. But specifically for Africa, which is located in the Global South, it is the AU’s ability to engage in useful negotiations, adopt admirable efforts at shifting policy towards practical development and, most importantly make assertive steps to portray its own economic outlook. It, therefore, explicitly means AU has to back away from discriminating rhetoric, fix an unshakeable wedge between geopolitical confrontation and cooperation. It has to determine its relations in the context of current complexities and contradictions around the world.

There is food for thought as we continue discussing the AU and its external relations. Kenya’s President William Ruto, was not at the G20 summit, but at the gathering of Climate Change held in Nairobi, said  Africa’s youthfulness was “precisely the attribute that inspired African leaders to imagine a future where Africa steps onto the stage as an economic and industrial power, an effective and positive actor in the global arena”.

African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat, has stressed the recognition of sustainable development gaps while consolidating the previous achievements and demonstrate genuine commitment to the reality of working together with the African continent, whose estimated population stands at 1.4 billion. Nevertheless, the point here again is that the collective African leaders must get down to their tasks of re-evaluating and addressing existing challenges across the continent of Africa.

In order to meet the sustainable development goals by 2030, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, have indicated several times in speeches that developed nations present a clear and credible roadmap for developing nations, formulate policies for accelerating actions to improve development needs in Africa. He has always maintained that these must be a fundamental interest for wealthy nations in the entire relations with, and adopting reform measures and proactive approach towards the least-developed nations. 

In forthcoming years, there will be new partnership between the G20 members and the AU, for this matter, that of Africa. Most of the European Union members already have large investment in Africa. It implies that there will be further enormous contributions to the development of relations on diverse ways in different spheres, especially those directed at economic growth in the continent.

Today the African Union and other regional and sub regional organizations across the continent have undoubtedly embark on their transformative pathways to  play significant roles in international affairs. AU’s G20 membership now illustrates new doors to multifaceted opportunities, empowers it to pursue passions for forging new cooperation that will ultimately contribute to the betterment and the achievement of the SDGs.

African Union Becomes Permanent Member Of G20 Under India's Presidency_50.1

Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially announced the African Union’s (AU) permanent membership in the Group of 20, the world’s largest economies. Source: Adda 24/7

With G20, the AU has to set new goals and tasks for the further development of cooperation in diverse areas: politics, security, the economy, science and technology, culture and humanitarian spheres. The G20 could continue to engage in exploring the African Continental Free Trade (AfCFTA),  a policy signed by African States to make the continent a single market. As well-known, the United States and African public and private sector leaders, are seriously reviewing how to strengthen the economic partnerships within the framework of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

Arguably with G20, the AU has to effectively and largely address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It has act systemic action and further be instrumental in implementing the African Union’s strategic document, Agenda-2063. As an integrated continental organization, it has to represent Africa with a dynamic force in the global arena. Reminding finally that at G20, the AU has the same status as the European (EU).

Unlike the European Union, African Union has so much headaches arising from members’ national politics which invariably determine the level of economic development. It is interesting to note that nearly African States are plagued by divergent interests and, more or less, some internal tensions. The AU has the worth of experience in spearheading its collective agenda such as the AfCFTA. So the AU has to remain indispensable for G20 diplomacy, take multifaceted initiatives including mutually beneficial bilateral and multilateral partnerships. Without this, its G20 membership will only be a decorative ornament and a badge on the chest, as it has already been speculating inside Africa.

It is time for admirable rhetoric to be backed by calculated robust actions. Consolidating the new full-fledged membership by joining the G20 has widely appreciated and applauded, but it is necessary to begin exploring diverse opportunities this status offers the entire Africa. It should not only be engagement in geopolitical balance at the high-table but be viewed as a new window for prioritizing large-scale development in spite of the sharp incompatibility in approach and methods.

“We cannot let geopolitical issues sequester the G20 agenda of discussions. We need peace and cooperation, so have no interest in a divided G20,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in remarks. ((India Briefing, September 10). It is becoming more and more influential in the world as a growing power. By seizing this opportunity, India can strengthen its leadership and play a more active role in shaping the global agenda. 

The key economic takeaway from the two-day G20 summit, which wrapped up on September 10 in New Delhi, was the declaration of the importance of maintaining a “multilateral” approach to solving global problems, from food security to climate regulation, including a call to fully factor in the unique economic development characteristics of each nation. 

The G20 leaders also underscored the need to maintain an open trade system and fight protectionism. The G20 final statement, which was unanimously supported by all members, warned of the risks of a global economic slowdown and a reversal of progress toward “sustainable” development goals, despite the geopolitical differences.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrapped up the G20 summit that played down on geopolitical confrontations and divisions. India, the host, pressed members to agree a common statements, which finally showed a huge and successful G20 under the leadership of Narendra Modi. Probably the most intriguing views that it was, indeed, a major opportunity for India – to a considerable degree it raised its profile on the world stage. 

During its term, India held more than 200 meetings across some 50 cities involving ministers, officials and civil society, leading up to a marquee summit in New Delhi in September 2023. The G20 does not have a permanent secretariat, and one member takes over the presidency each year to steer the grouping’s agenda that is split into two tracks – one led by finance ministers and another by emissaries of leaders of member countries. After India, Brazil will take over the presidency of the G20, and to be followed by South Africa in 2025.

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Professor Maurice Okoli is a fellow at the Institute for African Studies and the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also a fellow at the North-Eastern Federal University of Russia. He is an expert at the Roscongress Foundation and the Valdai Discussion Club.

As an academic researcher and economist with keen interest in current geopolitical changes and the emerging world order, Maurice Okoli frequently contributes articles for publication in reputable media portals on different aspects of the interconnection between developing and developed countries, particularly in Asia, Africa and Europe. With comments and suggestions, he can be reached via email: markolconsult (at) gmail (dot) com

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Important Review Article by Robert J. Burrowes, providing an incisive and carefully documented scientific and historical analysis.

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“The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” – Steve Biko, South African freedom fighter, beaten to death in an Apartheid prison cell in 1977.

So you think that you make up your own mind about what you will do, how you will do it, what you will buy and so on.

Good, because that is what you are supposed to believe. Especially when you are thinking what others want you to think.

Most of us like to believe that we have ‘a mind of our own’.

But, in fact, any serious consideration of the evidence leads to the exact opposite conclusion. In the vast majority of cases, you haven’t had a mind that was yours since you were very young. At least on anything that really matters in your life.

Let me elaborate.

In recent years, I have been writing about the Elite’s 5,000-year war against humanity with the final battle in this war now being fought.

See ‘The Final Battle for Humanity: It is “Now or Never” in the Long War Against Homo Sapiens’.

Hence, I have argued, it is important to understand the Elite’s ‘Great Reset’, with its fourth industrial revolution (technocratic), eugenicist and transhumanist programs, as simply the latest manifestation of this 5,000-year war on Homo Sapiens during which Elites (local, ‘national’, ultimately global) have used a range of policies to contrive ‘great events’

orchestrated wars and famines;

slavery; human sacrifice;

imperialism and colonialism;

economic exploitation through contrived financial crises (including depressions);

‘natural’ disasters, revolutions and ‘medical’ crises to name the most obvious – to distract attention from and facilitate profound changes in world order, to kill off substantial proportions of the human population and enslave those left alive while obscuring vast transfers of wealth from ordinary people to the Elite (whether local, ‘national’ or, ultimately, global).

See Historical Analysis of the Global Elite: Ransacking the World Economy Until “You’ll Own Nothing.”

Image is from InfoBrics

This includes, for example, the Elite-orchestrated war in Ukraine which is nothing more than another manifestation of this policy – see ‘The War in Ukraine: Understanding and Resisting the Global Elite’s Deeper Agenda’

– and, for example, it is consistent with this program that depleted uranium (DU) weapons have been deployed by Britain in Ukraine, the explosion of which threatens citizens across Europe

– see ‘Britain’s Decision to Send Depleted Uranium Munitions to Ukraine Will Have Grim Consequences’ and ‘The British Gift that Keeps on Giving: Uranium-irradiated Wind and Rain for Poland, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands and London too’

– and that the United States used a nuclear weapon to destroy the Nordstream Pipelines, in this case inflicting a ‘first strike’ nuclear attack on Russia and Germany, a range of adverse environmental consequences on the populations of Scandinavia and Europe, and effectively a knock-out blow to key economies of Western Europe (by depriving them of a crucial source of energy). See Nordstream – Anatomy of Dante’s Explosion.

Both of these nuclear attacks are readily identifiable as measures consistent with the explicit Elite program to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population.

Thus, while I have previously identified four fundamental shortcomings in the efforts of anti-war activists over the past 100 years, which together account for the movement’s failure to have any impact in undermining war as an institution

– see ‘Rage Against the War Machine: What Rage? “When will they ever learn?”’

– it is also clear that another very old threat, now being embellished by new and more pernicious forms, is being ignored too.

So, as I have become increasingly aware over recent years, there is another entire dimension of war-fighting that is only being discussed at the margin and must be considered and addressed not only by those committed to ending war but by anyone who values human life, identity, freedom and free will.

Because, as is manifestly obvious to those investigating more deeply and as captured in the title of this article, there is a battle now being fought in the technocratic realm and it is being waged against all of humanity simultaneously, not just a particular population.

In essence, this battle is the final battle in the war being fought to control your mind.

To put this another way, a primary battlefield of what many now call fifth-generation warfare (5GW) is your mind and who controls it. What is 5GW? It is defined by James Corbett in the following terms:

‘Fifth-generation warfare is an all-out war that is being waged against all of us by our governments and the international organizations to which they belong.

It is being waged against each and every one of us right now, and it is a battle for full-spectrum dominance over every single aspect of your life: your movements and interactions, your transactions, even your innermost thoughts and feelings and desires. Governments the world over are working with corporations to leverage technology to control you down to the genomic level, and they will not stop until each and every person who resists them is subdued or eliminated.’ See ‘Your Guide to 5th-Generation Warfare’.

But, to reiterate the distinction in Corbett’s words: 5th Generation warfare is ‘being waged at all levels, not just the mental.’ and any review of the ‘Great Reset’ plans demonstrates the extraordinary breadth and depth of the control now being imposed.

Nevertheless, control of our minds is central to the war being fought and any successful defense in this war requires that we identify the threats to our mind and defend ourselves adequately against them. Otherwise we are poorly placed to identify and defend against all of the other threats.

Of course, using less invasive but still very effective weapons, the war to control your mind is ancient and it is this component on which this article is focused both because it is extremely advanced and is necessary if other components of the Elite plan are to be fully implemented.

Ancient? In fact, several authors have addressed this subject. For example, in their 2015 book on the subject, Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman observed that:

Mind control is probably as old as our awareness that we each had a mind of our own. Throughout the course of history, there are a number of names for mind control that describe a common goal: to take over a person’s innermost thoughts and control his or her behaviors and actions. Brainwashing, coercion, thought reform, mental manipulation, psychological warfare, programming, conversion, gas lighting, indoctrination methods, psychic driving, crowd control: They all describe a method by which a person’s individual thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions are disrupted, dismissed, and destroyed – even replaced with the thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions of someone else. Whether designed to create the perfect assassin or super soldier, indoctrinate prisoners of war, recruit members into a cult or religious belief system, or control the consuming masses and direct their behaviors in accordance to the political whims of the day, mind control has been used extensively in our past, is in use today, and no doubt will be used in the future. See Mind Wars: A History of Mind Control, Surveillance, and Social Engineering by the Government, Media, and Secret Societies.

And by 1956 Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D. had already written a book canvassing a wide spectrum of mind control techniques and technologies in a variety of categories with, for just one example, an insightful discussion on how readily justice is subverted within legal systems by such techniques and technologies. See The Rape of the Mind.

Anyway, for the purposes of this article, I have distinguished four distinct categories of mind control, which have evolved at different times historically. I then explain each in turn. In chronological order, I label these different categories as follows:

  1. psychological mind control,
  2. political mind control,
  3. medical mind control, and
  4. technological mind control.

Psychological Mind Control

By far the oldest form of mind control is graphically illustrated by what I have previously characterized as ‘the adult war on children’. See, for example, ‘Humanity’s “Dirty Little Secret”: Starving, Enslaving, Raping, Torturing and Killing our Children’.

This war, to briefly reiterate its essential nature, has its basis in the manner in which human adults – as parents, teachers, religious figures and in other roles – use a potent combination of ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence to terrorize children and adolescents into submissive obedience under the pretext of ‘socializing’ them.

See Why Violence?, Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice

and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

This works well for the Elite because it creates a human population that readily follows orders from parents, teachers, religious figures, employers, police, judges, military personnel, governments and anyone else ‘in authority’.

Hence, human societies everywhere are essentially populated with adults who are easily scared into uncritically obeying Elite directives, conveyed through a variety of its agents, as the past 3.5 years have graphically demonstrated. But because the fear is largely unconscious, most adults can easily be led to believe they are acting out of their own free will or, at worst, following ‘reasonable’ orders ‘for the good of the community’.

Moreover, this can occur for a number of reasons. Denied safe opportunities to focus on feeling their fear and terrorized out of expressing their anger and other feelings during childhood – the logical response to ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ or ‘utterly invisible’ violence inflicted by an adult – the child ‘learns’ a range of ways to suppress awareness of these feelings, almost invariably unconsciously, which is why their fear, anger and other feelings are not necessarily obvious to the person or those around them.

A variety of psychological mechanisms such as denial – denying the existence of a reality that frightens/angers in order to feel safe – and delusion – constructing a delusion in relation to a frightening/infuriating reality that cannot be denied or suppressed in order to feel safe – are everyday occurrences for most people. But these two psychological mechanisms are not the only ones. For one discussion of several key ways in which fear manifests but is unconsciously psychologically concealed by the individual,

see ‘The Disintegrated Mind: The Greatest Threat to Human Survival on Earth’.

But another outcome of suppressing awareness of how one feels – including angry – also denies the child the awareness and capacity to defend themselves against violence and other injustices. As a result most children – even those who learn to ‘bully’ – end up acting very powerlessly in the face of violence and injustice as they grow up.

And this continues into adulthood. Having ‘learned’, under threat of violence from parents, teachers and other adults, not to defend themselves against their parents, teachers and other adults as a child, the child grows into an equally powerless adult.

Thus, in the current context of threats posed by the Elite program – the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ with its fourth industrial revolution (technocratic), eugenicist, transhumanist, political and economic components – even among those who have been able to perceive the most obvious delusions being presented to them, the bulk of these individuals have proven incapable of doing little more than complaining powerlessly, begging an Elite agent to ‘go easy’ on them (by lobbying or petitioning a government or international organization such as the World Health Organization), cross-posting the latest irrelevant post from one social media platform to another, possibly advocating unspecified resistance (or strategically irrelevant action), or attending a protest demonstration.

Seeking out and applying strategic means of resistance to the ‘Great Reset’, or recognizing and acting on it when offered, has remained beyond them.

But while childhood terrorization is enough to immobilize most people into behaving powerlessly under threat, Elite agents have also invested enormous effort to work out how best to capitalize on this fear. And while fear isn’t the only psychological motivator used, it is the most powerful, with more gross or subtle versions used depending on the context. As the historical record demonstrates.

Image: COVID lockdown in Italy (Source: OffGuardian)

Obviously, as you may know, there is an extensive history of psychological manipulation of human populations particularly in relation to mobilizing national populations to support and participate in wars, which any investigation of Elite-driven propaganda prior to and during wars will illustrate. But war is only one context in which human populations are psychologically manipulated by Elites. Much of the Elite propaganda around the ‘Covid-19 pandemic’, for example, was grounded in manipulating people’s fear.

Of course, the knowledge of how to manipulate us did not drop out of the sky. But while earlier periods of human history clearly demonstrate the Elite’s intuitive understanding that triggering fear was a powerful form of behavioural control, since World War II particularly, Elite-sponsored institutions, including governments, have invested enormous sums of money to find out, as precisely as possible, how to manipulate our psychological responses to stimuli in order to control our behaviour. An excellent example of these institutions is The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in the UK, founded in 1947.

But as Dr Daniel Estulin has described in great detail in his book Tavistock Institute: Social Engineering the Masses, the Institute’s sanitized name – The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations – does not describe its real work.

‘The Tavistock Institute, in Sussex, England, describes itself as a nonprofit charity that applies social science to contemporary issues and problems. [In fact] it is the world’s center for mass brainwashing and social engineering activities. It grew from a somewhat crude beginning at Wellington House into a sophisticated organization that was to shape the destiny of the entire planet and, in the process, change the paradigm of modern society.’

The book details both the Tavistock Institute network – identifying connections to research institutes, think tanks, and the drug industry, including the Stanford Research Center, Rand Corporation, Harvard Business School and Office of Naval Research in the U.S. – demonstrating its enormous reach around the world, and exposes the methods of brainwashing and psychological warfare employed.

In the words of Estulin:

‘The essential premise of the work of Tavistock is… that certain kinds of democratic “institutions represent far more efficient instrumentalities for fascist dictatorship than the traditional, straightforwardly” authoritarian models…. The psychological sciences have followed the route initially outlined in 1945 by Dr. John Rawlings Rees, grand master of psywar counterinsurgency.’

Discussing the work of psychiatrist Rees, who wrote the book The Shaping of Psychiatry by War in 1945, Estulin observes that ‘Rees called for the development of psychiatric shock troops in order to develop “methods of political control based upon driving the majority of the human population toward psychosis” through procedures of so-called programmed behavioural modification. He proposed this to render the population submissive under the post-World War II economic world order.’ See Estulin Tavistock Institute p. 6.

Of course, the budget to research ways to manipulate us psychologically to perform Elite-desired behaviours has expanded dramatically since World War II as is evident from the number and identity of organizations conducting the research.

See, for example, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Moreover, much of this is now focused on manipulation related to the current Elite program to impose on us their ‘Great Reset’.

See ‘Government Nudge Units Find the “Best” Ways to Manipulate the Public’.

For example, a range of Elite organizations has spent millions on research to identify the most effective ways to terrorize people into submitting to injection.

See the US Social Science Research Council & National Science Foundation’s ‘Mercury Project’, ‘Mercury Project to Boost Covid-19 Vaccination Rates and Counter Public Health Mis- and Disinformation in 17 Countries Worldwide’

and ‘Rockefeller Foundation, Nonprofits Spending Millions on Behavioral Psychology Research to “Nudge” More People to Get COVID Vaccines’.

And, to highlight the point that it is our fear that is the Elite’s greatest asset in this war against our minds (and trumps intelligence, no matter how great), intellectuals who, in theory, should be more capable of investigating what is happening in relation to those key issues of concern to society – such as those discussed here: ‘The Treason of the Intellectuals’ – are routinely exposed as simply frightened (again, even if unconsciously so) and support an Elite-driven narrative that is readily exposed by serious scrutiny.

Anyway, if you would like to explore this dimension of mind control more fully, Daniel Smith has compiled a straightforward summary of what he considers those methods most frequently associated with the practice: brainwashing, hypnosis, manipulation, persuasion, and deception.

See Banned Mind Control Techniques Unleashed: Learn The Dark Secrets Of Hypnosis, Manipulation, Deception, Persuasion, Brainwashing And Human Psychology.

And in his own study of ‘mind games’, psychologist Roy Eidelson argues that ‘five issues consistently and profoundly shape the way we understand ourselves, our lives, and the world around us. They are vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. Each of these is a core concern and the basis for one of the questions I mentioned earlier: Are we safe? Are we treated fairly?

Who should we trust? Are we good enough?

Can we control what happens to us?’

Focusing on these questions which could, in theory, usefully be at the centre of an enlightened public policy, Elites specialize in producing misleading, self-serving and widely promulgated answers that usually ‘lead us away from the more equal and more humane society most of us desire’ in order to ‘exploit these concerns for the specific purpose of advancing their own narrow interests while bringing harm and suffering to so many.’

In his book, Eidelson goes on to explain these five core concerns and examines ‘the specific mind games that the 1% use to take advantage of them’. Given their power, Eidelson concludes that ‘it’s not surprising that these five concerns figure so prominently in the propaganda campaigns of plutocrats who aim to discourage resistance to their agenda.’

See Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible.

Beyond any specific measures, however, the sheer complexity and far-reaching nature of the Elite ‘Great Reset’ program is frightening for most people to contemplate, let alone investigate in detail. Thus, like some other books with a futuristic or dystopian perspective,

Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book Future Shock describes a phenomenon we are witnessing now: a population that is psychologically overwhelmed by the rate of change: ‘Future shock is a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one’s own society.’ See Toffler Future Shock p.11.

So unlike the traveler who can return home to a familiar culture, the victim of future shock cannot. There is no going back and this is fearfully disorienting for most people (and another reason why people submit to the injection: the hope that things will then ‘go back to normal’). The adverse psychological impact of the ‘Great Reset’ has been discussed by several commentators but few realized it was deliberate and why it was so.

The point is simple: as those involved in this research have long known, fear is the most important factor driving human behaviour.

And once that fear has been deeply embedded in the unconscious by childhood terrorization, it is a straightforward task, for those who know what they are doing, to manipulate it later in life in accord with Elite prerogatives.

But it also makes virtually all humans particularly vulnerable to other forms of mind control too, including those that are political.

Political Mind Control

Since the dawn of human civilization, history records a long and steady (if occasionally interrupted) process of Elite efforts to capture and control the minds of those people within their domain, sometimes coupled with efforts to expand that domain.

Whether intent on extorting labor, securing military service, payment of taxes or imposing other forms of control, a submissively obedient population made the task immeasurably easier.

And even when violence was used to impose physical control, it was occasionally accompanied, but almost invariably followed, by efforts to subdue the prospect of any further resistance using less physically violent means. For a thoughtful discussion of how illiteracy and then literacy, for example, have been historically exploited by Elites, see ‘Risen Word’.

But it wasn’t until the C19th century when ‘modern’ methods of political mind control started to be seriously developed and deployed.

Not content with the existing and highly effective psychological methods – again, all founded on terrorizing individuals throughout childhood into submissive obedience to parents, religious figures, school teachers, employers and other significant adults in the child’s life and designed to train the child for a life of servitude – development of political forms of mind control (including ‘news reporting’, advertising, propaganda and censorship) advanced dramatically during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Thus, at least since the emergence of the international news agencies that started in the 1830s, the quality of what qualifies as ‘news reporting’ has been steadily in decline although it is uncertain that there has been a time in history when news reporting actually reported any sort of objective truth. In one sense, this is understandable. Inevitably, those who own and control a media channel have a perspective and the outlet invariably reports from that perspective, declared or not. And provided we are aware of this, we may choose to consume news from a declared perspective or ignore it if not to our taste. In any case, it is a rare outlet in the C21st that publishes a range of perspectives.

In the corporate news world, however, these days we are bombarded with what is called ‘news’ through a variety of media: television, radio, newspapers and social media via the internet. But because the corporate (mainstream) news world is owned by the Elite and its agents who therefore control the major international news agencies (Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press and United Press International) as well as the major news corporations (such as Alphabet, Comcast, Disney, AT&T, News Corporation, Time Warner, Fox, Facebook, the BBC, Bertelsmann and Baidu), the population that chooses to pay attention to it is fed a uniform and carefully-crafted narrative which is designed to promote Elite interests. This is graphically illustrated in this brief video compilation.

Watch ‘Local News Anchors Repeating Same Script Compilation’. There are no genuinely alternative worldviews in this domain.

Of course, these days, the education of journalists starts the process, with most journalists now attending a tertiary institution to learn their craft. But how effectively these institutions turn out graduates committed to unearthing and reporting the truth, whatever the cost, is something worth considering. Given the way news reporting is now so tightly controlled, while this article by Professor Bill Willers might illustrate an unusually graphic example of how news reporting has been corrupted, it will come as no surprise to those familiar with corporate journalism.

See ‘What Is Taught in Schools of Journalism?’

Because the reality is that virtually every journalist in the corporate media world becomes a hack, employed to simply write and present stories from the scripts they are given that promote the Elite narrative. And any journalist with genuine integrity keen to report the truth is not employed. Or dismissed once exposed as a truth-teller.

Moreover, journalists with genuine integrity and courage – such as Julian Assange – must create outlets of their own and the Internet now features a significant number in this category. But this does not mean that their freedom to express views that contradict the Elite narrative is respected. Of course not! Just ask Assange, now imprisoned in solitary confinement for four years in Belmarsh prison following seven years imprisonment until losing his asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, for simply reporting the truth we are all entitled to know.

‘He ripped back the veil on the dark machinations of the U.S. Empire, the wholesale slaughter of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the lies, the corruption, the brutal suppression of those who attempt to speak the truth. The Empire intends to make him pay. He is to be an example to anyone who might think of doing what he did.’

See ‘The Crucifixion of Julian Assange’.

Beyond Assange, other journalists with integrity outside corporate media suffer a range of outcomes, including ‘deplatforming’: removing their capacity to communicate by reducing those outlets willing to publish them. For a range of examples, see

‘The Disappearance of Integrity: Organized Suppression of the Facts, Only Writers Who Support “Official Narratives” Are Tolerated. Americans are blue pill people’.

Needless to say, every journalist in a corporate or government media setting is well aware of Assange’s fate and, while some might make use of the tolerance occasionally afforded a slight variation on the Elite-driven narrative, cowed into submissively reporting what they know to be the permissible perspective. It is safer than risking jail. Or even unemployment.

The outcome of these combined factors is that, in essence, much of what is called ‘news reporting’ by the legacy (corporate) media is nothing more than propaganda. And this has been the case for a very long time.

This has particularly included the use of propaganda, often designed to play on unconscious fears, sophisticated enough to manipulate vast proportions of large national populations to do the bidding of those responsible for controlling the methods deployed.

See the 1928 book Propaganda.

Most notably perhaps, in this case, was Adolf Hitler’s understanding of the ‘big lie’ in manipulating the German population during World War II and its use by his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels who is (perhaps incorrectly) attributed with these words: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’ See ‘Joseph Goebbels: On the “Big Lie”’.

And, more recently, in a video interview, Professor Michel Chossudovsky thoughtfully discusses the importance of lies in various contexts, including in relation to 911, wars and the Covid-19 crisis.

Watch ‘When The Lie Becomes The Truth’.

In fact, to reiterate, it has been the case for very many decades already that even the most basic communication in government and corporate media is effectively devoid of educational material or truthful information designed to inform you so that you can make your own thoughtfully-considered evaluation in response to it. For another account of this, written in 1988, see

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Of course, this is precisely how the Global Elite wants it and why it has unfolded this way.

For example, this article by Lara-Nour Walton at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) thoughtfully identifies six different ways that prominent corporate media outlets lie in relation to Israeli violence against the Palestinians, now including the use of artificial intelligence.

See ‘Six Tropes to Look Out for That Distort Israel/Palestine Coverage’.

Of course, it is well known and has been thoroughly documented that Elite agents, including the US government, have long subverted what is euphemistically referred to as ‘the free press’. One example of this is ‘Project Mockingbird’. This project uses CIA spies as journalists in order to control the public debate. See

‘The CIA and the Media: How America’s Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up’ and

‘U.S. Government Projects & Programs That Have Included Criminal and Unethical Actions Against Civilians’.

For other work that thoughtfully teases out more of the nuances employed to manipulate our minds, you can read what the following authors have identified in their respective articles: Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein and Thomas Toppino highlight that frequency of repetition makes something seem true; Jordan Hall points out the increasing difficulty of making sense of anything given the variety of plausible explanations deliberately promulgated; John Pilger reminds us of the value of ‘omission’ of relevant history, truths and facts; and Caitlyn Johnstone, among other points, mentions Elite efforts to ‘exploit glitches in human cognition like the illusory truth effect, which causes our minds to mistake the experience of having heard something before with the experience of having heard something that is true.’

See, respectively, ‘Frequency and the Conference of Referential Validity’, The War on Sensemaking’, ‘Silencing the Lambs: How Propaganda Works’ and ‘Why Propaganda Works’.

And, in an update to the ‘bread and circuses’ trick used in ancient Rome, another simple but extremely effective method is to make sure that most people are comfortable enough economically (if not made vulnerable by their marginal economic existence) while deluging us with a huge range of issues to consider as well as many forms of entertainment (sport, cinema, theatre, art galleries, museums…) and use these to distract us from any central issues.

So, in the current context, while most people are debating the latest controversies in the recent game of football, tennis or basketball, and some others are arguing about whether or not the SARS-CoV-2 ‘virus’ exists, whether or not the various WHO-approved, government-imposed lockdowns and other measures were necessary, and whether or not the ‘vaccines’ are ‘safe and effective’, a multitude of other issues are presented (the war in Ukraine, a range of gender and sexual identity issues, environmental threats, economic and financial challenges… each with a range of subsidiary issues) to further overwhelm and confuse us.

This works very well with people who are already busy with work, families, financial obligations and other responsibilities, and draws our attention away from the fundamental threat: the Elite’s ‘Great Reset’ and its component eugenicist, technocratic, transhumanist, political and economic programs.

[Obviously, I am not suggesting that other issues – the risk of nuclear war, many environmental and human rights threats… – are not vitally important too. It’s just that the current Elite program threatens to destroy our capacity to consider and engage in all other issues, such as those just nominated, if it is not defeated.]

Anyway, with so many tools at its disposal, the Elite’s political war against our minds is invisible to virtually everyone.

As you will not be surprised to read, these days, the political mind control industry is huge, embracing substantial sections of national economies.

So, with virtually all human adults effectively terrorized out of the capacity for independent thinking and investigation at a young age, once an Elite narrative has been decided, the relevant propaganda is then prepared by its agents in the massive ‘public relations’ industry, worth $US107billion globally in 2023

– see ‘Public relations market size worldwide from 2022 to 2027’ – before being promulgated through its agents in international organizations, governments, the corporate media (and a relatively new and powerful weapon: corporate social media such as Facebook, Twitter [now X], Instagram, TikTok, YouTube…), education systems and the entertainment industry, while its vast censorship network

– see ‘Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Top 50 Organizations to Know. The citizen’s starter kit to understanding the new global information cartel’ and ‘Docs Offer Glimpse Inside Censorship Industrial Complex’

– is deployed to ensure that the truth, labeled variously by Elite agents as ‘misinformation’ (false information unintentionally created or shared), ‘malinformation’ (information based on fact but used out of context to mislead, harm or manipulate) and ‘disinformation’ (false information deliberately created to mislead, harm or manipulate)

– see ‘We’re in This Together. Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation Stops with You’ – is prevented from being widely exposed.

As you might have immediately realized, such definitions vastly expand the capacity of Elite agents to censor narratives that compete with the one that is endorsed by the Elite – that is, to suppress free speech – which, of course, is how they have been used.

For more on this, see ‘A Century of Censorship’.

For example, the latest UN report on this subject uses a classically Orwellian newspeak to justify censorship in order to maintain ‘information integrity’. For the unwary, the superficially benign wording used in the report might conceal its true intent but you can judge for yourself from its opening paragraph which calls for an ‘empirically backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge. To that end, the present brief outlines potential principles for a code of conduct that will help to guide Member States, the digital platforms and other stakeholders in their efforts to make the digital space more inclusive and safe for all, while vigorously defending the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to access information. The Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms is being developed in the context of preparations for the Summit of the Future. My hope is that it will provide a gold standard for guiding action to strengthen information integrity.’

See ‘Our Common Agenda Policy Brief 8: Information Integrity on Digital Platforms’.

Given the Elite’s extensive history of using propaganda and censorship to control what people believe in order to manipulate their behaviour – while suppressing any forum that endeavours to share alternative perspectives, arguments and critiques – the problem with an ‘empirically backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge’ is that it simply means that Elite deceit, lies and manipulation would be shielded from scrutiny. Which is why this report is just another attempt to conceal Elite propaganda and censorship, in this case by labeling the Elite-endorsed narrative as the one with ‘information integrity’.

And this is why major international organizations such as the EU, WHO and UN are putting enormous effort into clamping down on those seeking to expose the truth behind Elite manipulation and manoeuvring.

As Taylor Hudak explains in a recent article about censorship proposals in the European Union, concern has been expressed about ‘loopholes that would allow the surveillance of journalists while paving the way for unprecedented interventions in the internal media market by the European Commission.’

See ‘Centralizing Information Control! Inside the EU’s Latest Proposal to Censor the Media’.

But any straightforward interpretation of the draconian censorship measures being introduced by the European Union leads to the obvious and inevitable conclusion that free speech is being terminated in Europe.

As Ben Bartee points out in an article summarizing three previous ones he has written: ‘Nation-states under EU jurisdiction can no longer be rationally said to be “free,” to the extent that they ever truly were to begin with. They are now part of a wholly integrated slave colony of the multinational technocracy, headed by the World Economic Forum and similar organizations outside of the reach of any democratic control.’

See ‘Brutal EU Censorship Regime Takes Hold, “Free Speech” Advocate Elon Musk Folds, YouTube Adopts WHO “Misinformation” Policy’.

Not content with measures being taken by the UN and EU, the WHO has developed its own programs to censor us, carefully outlined in their document

‘Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats’.

As explained by Dr Michael Nevradakis the WHO ‘claims “misinformation” has resulted in an “infodemic” that poses a threat – even in instances where the information is “accurate.”’

See ‘WHO Initiative Would “Promote Desired Behaviors” by Surveilling Social Media’.

Of course, not to be left out, the US military is vitally concerned with what we are led to believe as well and US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) ‘has contracted New York-based Accrete AI to deploy software that detects “real time” disinformation threats on social media. The company’s Argus anomaly detection AI software analyzes social media data, accurately capturing “emerging narratives” and generating intelligence reports for military forces to speedily neutralize disinformation threats. Synthetic media, including AI-generated viral narratives, deep fakes [a digitally manipulated image to replace one person’s likeness with that of another], and other harmful social media-based applications of AI, pose a serious threat to US national security and civil society,” Accrete founder and CEO Prashant Bhuyan claimed. ‘Social media is widely recognized as an unregulated environment where adversaries routinely exploit reasoning vulnerabilities and manipulate behavior through the intentional spread of disinformation.’

But Accrete will also launch a business version of its Argus software for disinformation detection later this year. ‘The AI software will provide protection for “urgent customer pain points” against AI-generated synthetic media, such as viral disinformation and deep fakes. Providing this protection requires AI that can automatically “learn” what is most important to an enterprise and predict the likely social media narratives that will emerge before they influence behavior.’

See ‘USSOCOM to Use AI to Detect Disinformation Threats on Social Media’.

As ‘Sundance’ astutely observes however, the ‘Argus detection protocol’ is incredibly expensive so by using military funding to pay for the research under the auspices of ‘national defense’ but then allowing major corporations privileged access to the technology, the US government gains effective control of a technology to manipulate its own citizens while bypassing constitutional limits on such activity (in this case, the Posse Comitatus Act which limits the power of the US government to use federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States).

See ‘US Special Operations Command Will Deploy Argus AI Program to Scour Social Media for Disinformation, Misinformation and Malinformation, National Security Authority to Protect U.S. Internet from “Pain Points”’.

To reiterate: the purpose of this AI technology is for ‘military forces to speedily neutralize disinformation threats’; that is, anything that contradicts the Elite-driven narrative. Free speech is vanishing before our eyes.

But the threats keep accumulating.

In a recent publication on its iVerify initiative, the United Nations Development Program noted that ‘Understanding online information pollution is an urgent global challenge. Misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech threaten peace and security, disproportionately affecting those who are already vulnerable.’ Thus:

‘iVerify is UNDP’s automated fact-checking tool that can be used to identify false information and prevent and mitigate its spread.’ See ‘iVerify: Supporting actors around the world for the prevention and mitigation of disinformation, misinformation and hate speech’.

But as noted by one critic, the program’s ‘automated fact-checking service’ will be funded and conducted by Elite agents in Big Tech. See ‘U.N. Unveils “Automated Fact-Checking Tool” to Counter Disinformation with Big-Tech, Soros-Funded Orgs’.

So how reliable is fact-checking in defense of the truth?

As it turns out, one recent study concludes that censorship now sometimes masquerades under the guise of ‘fact checking’. Originally an honorable attempt to confirm something as fact, it is now just a corrupt way of concealing censorship and eliminating truthful analysis from the discourse.

In her detailed report of her research into the fact checking industry, Dr Judith Brown identified about ‘500 active fact check platforms’ – noting that it is ‘likely that the number of fact check platforms is far greater than those located’ – with about half linked to media outlets.

After explaining many aspects of the fact check industry, it is clear that it is big business. In her report she notes a long list of fact checking ‘grants and donations’ from such entities as the US National Endowment for Democracy, Ford Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society, Rockefeller Fund, the EU, American and European Embassies, large media corporations, Google, Meta, and various UN agencies. She concludes her report simply:

‘Fact checkers are the mechanism of censorship. They can only do this with immense sums of money that come from the rich and powerful to support their industry…. The fact check industry’s access to wealth and power undermines democracy throughout the world.’

See ‘Fact Checking the “Fact Checkers”’.

As  Ilana Rachel Daniel notes in a recent video presentation: ‘The very definition of living in a free world means access to a full spectrum of information and choices where discussion and debate of those facts lead us to a life of self-determination.’ But in her two-part presentation, which acknowledges the work of Antonio Pasquali –

see ‘Society can be controlled through its means of communication’ – she provides a fine overview of how mind manipulation is a polished art among those keen to control our behaviour and how their technologies (such as the television and smart phone) and tools (such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and the Metaverse) play a vital role in this. See ‘Mind Manipulation – Who is in Control? Part 1’ and ‘Mind Manipulation – Who is in Control? Part 2’.

In their analysis of censorship, John and Nisha Whitehead highlight the role of technology now too. ‘By “censor,” we’re referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.’

In fact, the Whiteheads label this phenomenon ‘technocensorship’: ‘we are technically free to speak. In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official – or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube – may allow.’

See ‘Technocensorship: The Government’s War on So-Called Dangerous Ideas’.

And this depends, in part, on direction from government intelligence agencies.

As Larry Sanger, a cofounder of Wikipedia, noted in a recent interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald, the online ‘encyclopedia’ has ‘become an instrument of “control” in the hands of the… establishment, among which he counts the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies’. Noting that this was being observed as early as 2008, Sanger reports that ‘A great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online, on websites like Wikipedia.’

Of course, earlier this year, Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter), released a trove of documents showing how the platform’s former executives colluded with the FBI to remove content the agency wanted hidden’ and ‘assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns’ on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies. And ‘Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also admitted that Facebook, the biggest social media platform on Earth, censored accurate information that was damaging to President Joe Biden’s 2020 election campaign at the direct request of the FBI.’ See ‘Former Editor: CIA Moderating Wikipedia’.

But the number of hurdles to a mind free of control by outsiders just keeps expanding.

Elite agents routinely employ ‘trolls’: People employed as part of ‘online armies’ to secretly promote particular perspectives on social media. This distorts people’s sense of what is happening, and why, towards the Elite perspective promoted by the ‘trolls’. See, for example, ‘Inside Israel’s million dollar troll army’.

And to reiterate a point illustrated earlier, the political component of the Elite war on our minds is not solely the preserve of international organizations, intelligence agencies, military forces and Big Tech. It is being waged by other Elite agents as well, including national governments. For just two of the latest examples you can check out recent efforts by the Australian and Canadian governments but they are typical.

See Online misinformation’, ‘BREAKING: The Australian Government colluded with big tech to suppress speech on Covid: The Censorship Industrial Complex Down Under’ and Canada’s censorship bill explained: A chilling law that lets the government censor user-generated content’ as well as ‘Is this the End of Natural Health Information? Google, Meta Ban News in Canada’.

Moreover, governments, including that in the United States, are resisting efforts to halt their censorship of perspectives at variance with the Elite-driven narrative.

See, for example, ‘Biden Administration Pushes Back Against Request For an Injunction Against Government-Directed Censorship’.

And even the courts, when they actually defend free speech, are resisted by governments with a range of tools. See ‘Deny, Deflect, Defend: The Censors’ Strategy on Display’.

A more blunt tool of censorship is the use of cyber attacks to close down independent news outlets, as happened to the highly reputable but unforgivably independent outlet ‘SouthFront’ on 18 August 2023, thus destroying the public record of a large body of thought on vital issues.

See ‘Cyber Attacks against Independent Media, Censorship and Double Standards’. Fortunately, after much effort, the site was restored at a new Internet address: SouthFront’.

A perfect illustration of how effectively promotion of an Elite-driven narrative, combined with massive hidden censorship (including ‘fact checking’), works occurred during the past three years when most people readily accepted that a nonexistent virus was killing off a substantial proportion of their fellows and they needed to take many experimental, toxic injections to remain healthy.

See ‘We Are Being Smashed Politically, Economically, Medically and Technologically by the Elite’s “Great Reset”: Why? How Do We Fight Back Effectively?’

Already victims of psychological mind control from childhood, and now under the barrage of Elite propaganda and the cover provided by massive censorship, relatively few people were capable of investigating the evidence for themselves: Had a unique pathogenic ‘virus’ been isolated (when none had been previously)? Were the measures taken – lockdowns, mask-wearing, PCR testing, mandatory injections – scientifically justified? What else was going on behind the scenes? Which should have led to discovery of the obscured but profound threat posed by the Elite’s ‘Great Reset’ – with its related fourth industrial revolution, eugenicist and transhumanist programs – and consideration of what it all meant for themselves and those they love.

The point is simple: Elite control of most human minds is already so extensive that most people are disinclined to even countenance an alternative to the Elite-driven narrative.

For an illustration of this, see ‘The Corona War. They’re Coming After Our Thoughts’.

But if someone does decide to challenge or expose Elite dogma in a particular context, there is yet another hurdle they might be required to navigate. Elite agents (and those in their thrall) might seek to discredit the offending individual. One way of attempting this is by applying the label ‘conspiracy theorist’ to the person concerned. This tactic has been used extensively, and effectively, since the 1950s, scaring many people into renouncing the evidence and conscientious beliefs that shaped their original perspective while scaring many others into believing that the truth-teller was lying.

As explained by academic philosopher David Coady, use of the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ serves ‘a function similar to that served by the term “heresy” in medieval Europe. In both cases these are terms of propaganda, used to stigmatise and marginalise people who have beliefs that conflict with officially sanctioned or orthodox beliefs of the time and place in question.’

See ‘In defence of conspiracy theories (and why the term is a misnomer)’.

In essence, navigating the psychological and political hurdles that stand in our way to knowing and acting on the truth is an enormous challenge. Unfortunately, these are not all.

Part 2 of this study will consider the medical and technological methods used to control our minds and explain what is necessary to “win this war”.

*

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of Why Violence? His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is licensed under Wikimedia Commons

Author’s note

“The term “environmental modification techniques” refers to any technique for changing – through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space. (Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, United Nations, Geneva: 18 May 1977)

“US military scientists … are working on weather systems as a potential weapon. The methods include the enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth’s atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or floods.” (The late Sister Dr. Rosalie Bertell)

Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) constitute a buoyant $5.3 Billion dollar business (2022) which is slated to increase to $12.9 Billon dollars by 2027. This profit-driven military-industrial market is dominated by six “Defense Contractors” including Raytheon, Northrup Grunman, BAE Systems (plc), Boeing, Lockheed Martin and L3Harris Technologies. 

Raytheon and BAE Systems are also involved in ENMOD technologies on behalf of the U.S. Air Force. (Michel Chossudovsky, December 7, 2007 August 2023)

Related Article

Multi-Billion Dollar “Directed Energy Weapons (DEW)” Market, For Military and “Civilian Use” (?). Were DEWs Used in Hawaii?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 30, 2023

***

I  initiated my research on Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) in 2001 focussing on the HAARP System of Antennas, in Gokona, Alaska. 

The HAARP facility was fully operational starting in the mid-1990s with advanced capabilities. 

While HAARP was closed down in 2014, ENMOD techniques have in the course of the last ten years become increasingly sophisticated as well as precise. Much of the documentation has become classified.

In the United States, Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) are the object of research by several agencies linked to the Pentagon, including DARPA, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research among others.

Of relevance to the assessment of recent climatic disasters, this article first published by The Ecologist, (December 7, 2007) provides an overview as well as a history. It also confirms the role of private military contractors in the development of HAARP including BAE Systems Inc and Raytheon.

For a more detailed and documented analysis see the following article:

The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: “Owning the Weather” for Military Use

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 27, 2004

***

Michel Chossudovsky, September 13, 2023 

Also See below

The CBC Video Documentary pertaining to the HAARP program and the destructive capabilities of environmental modification techniques. 

***

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’. During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative – ‘Star Wars’. [HAARP facility was closed down in 2014. Since then more advanced facilities have been developed]. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.

Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force: Weather as a Force Multiplier. Owning the Weather in 2025) ‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary’, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes:

‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’ *(Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025)

In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General Assembly which banned ‘military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.’ It defined ‘environmental modification techniques’ as ‘any technique for changing –through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.’

While the substance of the 1977 Convention was reasserted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, debate on weather modification for military use has become a scientific taboo.

Military analysts are mute on the subject. Meteorologists are not investigating the matter and environmentalists are focused on greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Neither is the possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as part of a military and intelligence agenda, while tacitly acknowledged, part of the broader debate on climate change under UN auspices.

The HAARP Programme

Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona, Alaska, is an array of high-powered antennas that transmit, through high-frequency radio waves, massive amounts of energy into the ionosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere). Their construction was funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Operated jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating ‘controlled local modifications of the ionosphere’. According to its official website, www.haarp.alaska.edu , HAARP will be used ‘to induce a small, localized change in ionospheric temperature so physical reactions can be studied by other instruments located either at or close to the HAARP site’.

HAARP array of antennas

But Dr. Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, says HAARP operates as:

“a gigantic heater that can cause major disruptions in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet”.

Physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund called it ‘the largest ionospheric heater ever built’.

HAARP is presented by the US Air Force as a research programme, but military documents confirm its main objective is to ‘induce ionospheric modifications’ with a view to altering weather patterns and disrupting communications and radar.

According to a report by the Russian State Duma:

‘The US plans to carry out large-scale experiments under the HAARP programme [and] create weapons capable of breaking radio communication lines and equipment installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke serious accidents in electricity networks and in oil and gas pipelines, and have a negative impact on the mental health of entire regions.’

An analysis of statements emanating from the US Air Force points to the unthinkable:

“The covert manipulation of weather patterns, communications and electric power systems as a weapon of global warfare, enabling the US to disrupt and dominate entire regions.”

Weather manipulation is the pre-emptive weapon par excellence. It can be directed against enemy countries or ‘friendly nations’ without their knowledge, used to destabilise economies, ecosystems and agriculture. It can also trigger havoc in financial and commodity markets. The disruption in agriculture creates a greater dependency on food aid and imported grain staples from the US and other Western countries.

HAARP was developed as part of an Anglo-American partnership between Raytheon Corporation, which owns the HAARP patents, the US Air Force and British Aerospace Systems (BAES).

The HAARP project is one among several collaborative ventures in advanced weapons systems between the two defence giants. The HAARP project was initiated in 1992 by Advanced Power Technologies, Inc. (APTI), a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Corporation (ARCO). APTI (including the HAARP patents) was sold by ARCO to E-Systems Inc, in 1994. E-Systems, on contract to the CIA and US Department of Defense, outfitted the ‘Doomsday Plan’, which ‘allows the President to manage a nuclear war’. Subsequently acquired by Raytheon Corporation, it is among the largest intelligence contractors in the World. BAES was involved in the development of the advanced stage of the HAARP antenna array under a 2004 contract with the Office of Naval Research.

The installation of 132 high frequency transmitters was entrusted by BAES to its US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc. The project, according to a July report [2007] in Defense News, was undertaken by BAES’s Electronic Warfare division. In September [2007] it received DARPA’s top award for technical achievement for the design, construction and activation of the HAARP array of antennas.

The HAARP system is fully operational and in many regards dwarfs existing conventional and strategic weapons systems. While there is no firm evidence of its use for military purposes, Air Force documents suggest HAARP is an integral part of the militarisation of space. One would expect the antennas already to have been subjected to routine testing.

Under the UNFCCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a mandate ‘to assess scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of climate change’. This mandate includes environmental warfare. ‘Geo-engineering’ is acknowledged, but the underlying military applications are neither the object of policy analysis or scientific research in the thousands of pages of IPCC reports and supporting documents, based on the expertise and input of some 2,500 scientists, policymakers and environmentalists. ‘Climatic warfare’ potentially threatens the future of humanity, but has casually been excluded from the reports for which the IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Michel Chossudovsky, The Ecologist, December 7, 2007


CBC 1996 News documentary: HAARP – US military weather weapon

 

 

 

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Below is an excerpt of the Daily Mail’s Report on Russia’s official protest regarding the training of Ukrainian hit squads.

This report is followed by an excerpt of  the U.K Ministry of Defense CONFIRMING that “British Commandos train hundreds of Ukrainian Marines in UK programme” 

M.Ch, GR, September 13, 2023

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Russia will lodge an official diplomatic protest to Britain over Vladimir Putin‘s claims that the United Kingdom trained a Ukrainian hit squad.

The Kremlin dictator offered no proof for his charges that an intercepted team was aiming to damage power lines from a Russian nuclear power plant.

He claimed the squad admitted under interrogation that they were ‘under supervision of British instructors’ and threatened dire consequences, admitting his words would be interpreted as ‘nuclear blackmail’.

Now Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said Moscow will lodge a formal diplomatic protest against London over the unproven allegations.

Russia would convey its anger over the alleged plot through both ‘open channels’ and ‘diplomatic channels’, she said.

During a speech at an economic forum in the far eastern city of Vladivostok yesterday, Putin claimed his FSB security service had interrogated a Ukrainian team operating inside Russia.

‘It turned out to be a sabotage group of Ukrainian special services,’ he said.

‘Interrogation showed they had been tasked to damage one of our nuclear stations by exploding a power line… to damage the work of the power plant.

‘And this is not the first attempt,’ he claimed.

He then alleged:

‘During interrogation, they admitted they were trained under supervision of British instructors.’

‘Do [the British] understand what they are playing with, or not? Are they provoking our response at Ukrainian nuclear sites, nuclear stations, or what?’ he said.

‘Does the British leadership, or the Prime Minister [of the United Kingdom. Rishi Sunak] know what their special services are engaged with in Ukraine?

‘Or do they have no clue at all? I assume this is possible, too. I assume it is possible British special services act on the orders of the Americans. Either way, we know the final beneficiary.

‘But do they realise what they are playing with? I am afraid they simply underestimate…. I know there will be howling that starts after my words like ‘These are threats!’, ‘Nuclear blackmail!’, and so on.’

Putin – a former KGB spy in the Cold War – told his audience at the 2023 Eastern Economic Summit:

‘I assure you this is the total pure truth. So these guys are telling this to us during interrogation.

‘I know some can say, “They will say anything under a gun”. This is not true. And the leadership of the British special services knows I am telling the truth. But I am not sure the leadership of Great Britain understands what’s going on.

‘These kinds of things are seriously concerning, because they [the UK] don’t feel the ground – which can lead to serious consequences.’

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

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British Commandos train hundreds of Ukrainian Marines in UK programme

By Ministry of Defence and The Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP, August 11, 2023

Nearly 1,000 Ukrainian marines are returning home after being trained by Royal Marines and Army Commandos, during a six-month UK programme supported by international partners.

The training, announced by the Prime Minister during President Zelenskyy’s visit to the UK in February, has seen British Commandos training Ukraine’s forces in small boat amphibious operations – conducting beach raids using inflatable boats.

It is the first programme of amphibious training delivered by the UK to Ukraine, culminating with the Ukrainian marines planning and conducting raids by both day and night.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said:

The UK has led the way in training the Armed Force of Ukraine, providing world-leading training in frontline combat skills to more than 20,000 of Ukraine’s Army recruits through Operation Interflex.

This programme of training, delivered by elite British commandos, will support Ukraine to build its own distinct marine force and expand its capability to operate in a maritime environment.

Approximately 900 Ukrainian marines have completed the course, which included training to use Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons (NLAW) and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, use of mortars and drones for reconnaissance, and explosive demolition of obstacles such as Dragon’s Teeth anti-vehicle fortifications.

Equipment used in the training is the same as some of the military support the UK has provided to Ukraine, with more than 10,000 anti-tank weapons including thousands of NLAW systems already provided.

Click here to read the full article on GOV.UK.

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*** 

[First published by MPN on September 11, 2019.]

Today the event that defined the United States’ foreign policy in the 21st century, and heralded the destruction of whole countries, turns 18. The events of September 11, 2001 remain etched into the memories of Americans and many others, as a collective tragedy that brought Americans together and brought as well a general resolve among them that those responsible be brought to justice.

While the events of that day did unite Americans in these ways for a time, the different trajectories of the official relative to the independent investigations into the September 11 attacks have often led to division in the years since 2001, with vicious attacks or outright dismissals being levied against the latter. 

Yet, with 18 years having come and gone — and with the tireless efforts from victims’ families, first responders, scientists and engineers — the tide appears to be turning as new evidence continues to emerge and calls for new investigations are made. However, American corporate media has remained largely silent, preferring to ignore new developments that could derail the “official story” of one of the most iconic and devastating attacks to ever occur on American soil.

For instance, in late July, commissioners for a New York-area Fire Department, which responded to the attacks and lost one of their own that day, called for a new investigation into the events of September 11. On July 24, the board of commissioners for the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District, which serves a population of around 30,000 near Queens, voted unanimously in their call for a new investigation into the attacks.

While the call for a new investigation from a NY Fire Department involved in the rescue effort would normally seem newsworthy to the media outlets who often rally Americans to “never forget,” the commissioners’ call for a new investigation was met with total silence from the mainstream media. The likely reason for the dearth of coverage on an otherwise newsworthy vote was likely due to the fact that the resolution that called for the new investigation contained the following clause:

Whereas, the overwhelming evidence presented in said petition demonstrates beyond any doubt that pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries — not just airplanes and the ensuing fires — caused the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings, killing the vast majority of the victims who perished that day;”

In the post-9/11 world, those who have made such claims, no matter how well-grounded their claims may be, have often been derided and attacked as “conspiracy theorists” for questioning the official claims that the three World Trade Center buildings that collapsed on September 11 did so for any reason other than being struck by planes and from the resulting fires. Yet, it is much more difficult to launch these same attacks against members of a fire department that lost a fireman on September 11 and many of whose members were involved with the rescue efforts of that day, some of whom still suffer from chronic illnesses as a result.

Another likely reason that the media monolithically avoided coverage of the vote was out of concern that it would lead more fire departments to pass similar resolutions, which would make it more difficult for such news to avoid gaining national coverage. Yet, Commissioner Christopher Gioia, who drafted and introduced the resolution, told those present at the meeting’s conclusion that getting all of the New York fire districts onboard was their plan anyway.

“We’re a tight-knit community and we never forget our fallen brothers and sisters. You better believe that when the entire fire service of New York State is on board, we will be an unstoppable force,” Gioia said. “We were the first fire district to pass this resolution. We won’t be the last,” he added.

While questioning the official conclusions of the first federal investigation into 9/11 has been treated as taboo in the American media landscape for years, it is worth noting that even those who led the commission have said that the investigation was “set up to fail” from the start and that they were repeatedly misled and lied to by federal officials in relation to the events of that day. 

For instance, the chair and vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, wrote in their book Without Precedent that not only was the commission starved of funds and its powers of investigation oddly limited, but that they were obstructed and outright lied to by top Pentagon officials and officials with the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). They and other commissioners have outright said that the “official” report on the attacks is incomplete, flawed and unable to answer key questions about the terror attacks.

Despite the failure of American corporate media to report these facts, local legislative bodies in New York, beginning with the fire districts that lost loved ones and friends that day, are leading the way in the search for real answers that even those that wrote the “official story” say were deliberately kept from them.

Persuasive Scientific Evidence Continues to Roll in

Not long after the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District called for a new 9/11 investigation, a groundbreaking university study added even more weight to the commissioners’ call for a new look at the evidence regarding the collapse of three buildings at the World Trade Center complex. While most Americans know full well that the twin towers collapsed on September 11, fewer are aware that a third building — World Trade Center Building 7 — also collapsed. That collapse occurred seven hours after the twin towers came down, even though WTC 7, or “Building 7,” was never struck by a plane.

It was not until nearly two months after its collapse that reports revealed that the CIA had a “secret office” in WTC 7 and that, after the building’s destruction, “a special CIA team scoured the rubble in search of secret documents and intelligence reports stored in the station, either on paper or in computers.” WTC 7 also housed offices for the Department of Defense, the Secret Service, the New York Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and the bank Salomon Brothers. 

Though the official story regarding the collapse of WTC 7 cites “uncontrolled building fires” as leading to the building’s destruction, a majority of Americans who have seen the footage of the 47-story tower come down from four different angles overwhelmingly reject the official story, based on a new poll conducted by YouGov on behalf of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and released on Monday. 

WTC 7 fall animation GIF

Source | Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

That poll found that 52 percent of those who saw the footage were either sure or suspected that the building’s fall was due to explosives and was a controlled demolition, with 27 percent saying they didn’t know what to make of the footage. Only 21 percent of those polled agreed with the official story that the building collapsed due to fires alone. Prior to seeing the footage, 36 percent of respondents said that they were unaware that a third building collapsed on September 11 and more than 67 percent were unable to name the building that had collapsed.

Ted Walter, Director of Strategy and Development for Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, told MintPress that the lack of awareness about WTC 7 among the general public “goes to show that the mainstream media has completely failed to inform the American people about even the most basic facts related to 9/11. On any other day in history, if a 47-story skyscraper fell into its footprint due to ‘office fires,’ everyone in the country would have heard about it.” 

The fact that the media chose not to cover this, Walter asserted, shows that “the mainstream media and the political establishment live in an alternative universe and the rest of the American public is living in a different universe and responding to what they see in front of them,” as reflected by the results of the recent YouGov poll.

Another significant finding of the YouGov poll was that 48 percent of respondents supported,  while only 15 percent opposed, a new investigation into the events of September 11. This shows that not only was the Franklin Square Fire District’s recent call for a new investigation in line with American public opinion, but that viewing the footage of WTC 7’s collapse raises more questions than answers for many Americans, questions that were not adequately addressed by the official investigation of the 9/11 Commission.

The Americans who felt that the video footage of WTC 7’s collapse did not fit with the official narrative and appeared to show a controlled demolition now have more scientific evidence to fall back on after the release of a new university study found that the building came down not due to fire but from “the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.” The extensive four-year study was conducted by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alaska and used complex computer models to determine if the building really was the first steel-framed high-rise ever to have collapsed solely due to office fires. 

The study, currently available as a draft, concluded that “uncontrolled building fires” did not lead the building to fall into its footprint — tumbling more than 100 feet at the rate of gravity free-fall for 2.5 seconds of its seven-second collapse — as has officially been claimed. Instead, the study — authored by Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey, Dr. Feng Xiao and Dr. Zhili Quan — found that “fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] and private engineering firms that studied the collapse,” while also concluding “that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global [i.e., comprehensive] failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.”

This “near-simultaneous failure of every column” in WTC 7 strongly suggests that explosives were involved in its collapse, which is further supported by the statements made by Barry Jennings, the then-Deputy Director of Emergency Services Department for the New York City Housing Authority. Jennings told a reporter the day of the attack that he and Michael Hess, then-Corporation Counsel for New York City, had heard and seen explosions in WTC 7 several hours prior to its collapse and later repeated those claims to filmmaker Dylan Avery. The first responders who helped rescue Jennings and Hess also claimed to have heard explosions in WTC 7. Jennings died in 2008, two days prior the release of the official NIST report blaming WTC 7’s collapse on fires. To date, no official cause of death for Jennings has been given. 

Still “Crazy” After All These Years?

Eighteen years after the September 11 attacks, questioning the official government narrative of the events of those days still remains taboo for many, as merely asking questions or calling for a new investigation into one of the most important events in recent American history frequently results in derision and dismissal. 

Yet, this 9/11 anniversary — with a new study demolishing the official narrative on WTC 7, with a new poll showing that more than half of Americans doubt the government narrative on WTC 7, and with firefighters who responded to 9/11 calling for a new investigation — is it still “crazy” to be skeptical of the official story?

Even in years past, when asking difficult questions about September 11 was even more “off limits,” it was often first responders, survivors and victims’ families who had asked the most questions about what had really transpired that day and who have led the search for truth for nearly two decades — not wild-eyed “conspiracy theorists,” as many have claimed. 

The only reason it remains taboo to ask questions about the official narrative, whose own authors admit that it is both flawed and incomplete, is that the dominant forces in the American media and the U.S. government have successfully convinced many Americans that doing so is not only dangerous but irrational and un-American. 

However, as evidence continues to mount that the official narrative itself is the irrational narrative, it becomes ever more clear that the reason for this media campaign is to prevent legitimate questions about that day from receiving the scrutiny they deserve, even smearing victims’ families and ailing first responders to do so. For too long, “Never Forget” has been nearly synonymous with “Never Question.” 

Yet, failing to ask those questions — even when more Americans than ever now favor a new investigation and discount the official explanation for WTC 7’s collapse — is the ultimate injustice, not only to those who died in New York City on September 11, but those who have been killed in their names in the years that have followed.

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Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

Featured image: New York, NY, September 19, 2001 — Rescue workers climb over and dig through piles of rubble from the destroyed World Trade Center as the American flag billows over the debris. Photo by Andrea Booher/ FEMA News Photo (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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*** 

 

 

 

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall warned Monday that the US military might not be prepared for a future war with China since it has spent so much time focused on counterterrorism.

“The threat of attack from violent extremist organizations still exists, and we will address those threats as they occur. But China is by far our pacing challenge,” Kendall said at an Air & Space Forces Association conference, according to Fox News.

“Our job is to deter that war and to be ready to win if it occurs,” he said. “We’re all talking about the fact that the Air and Space Forces must change, or we could fail to prevent and might even lose a war.”

Kendall’s comments are the latest example of a US official discussing openly that the US is preparing for a future direct war with China despite the risk of nuclear escalation. Last year, President Biden pledged he would send troops to defend Taiwan if China attacked the island, a highly provocative statement that was not walked back by the White House.

Kendall warned that China has been preparing for a fight in its own backyard.

“China has been re-optimizing its forces for great power competition and to prevail against the US in the Western Pacific for over 20 years. China has been building a military capability specifically designed to achieve their national goals and to do so if opposed by the United States,” he said.

Since taking his post as Air Force secretary in 2021, Kendall has been focused on China. After he was sworn in, Kendall said he wanted the US military to develop new technologies to “scare China” and said he had three priorities: “China, China, and China.”

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image: Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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“America,” President John Quincy Adams famously said, “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

In theory, Congress has ruled that America can, so long as the president consults Congress and the monster hunt lasts for 60 days with a 30 day time period to get home. In practice, the war dogs can pursue these monsters endlessly without Congress’s supposed leash.

On Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, asking what authority justifies the presence of U.S. troops in Niger and what training the U.S. gave Brig. Gen. Moussa Barmou and other forces responsible for the recent coup in that country.

“U.S. servicemembers have been stationed in Niger for about a decade, ostensibly to train, advise, and assist Nigerien forces. One of those individuals trained by the United States, Moussa Salaou Barmou, is one of the coup leaders who toppled the duly elected government of Niger on July 26th,” the Kentucky senator wrote. “As a result of the military coup d’etat in Niger, over 1,000 U.S. service members deployed there now face additional dangers to their safety.”

Beyond the aforementioned questions, Paul requested detailed accounts of U.S. forces killed or wounded in Niger since the U.S. established operations there in 2013 and asked how funding was distributed to train, equip, and otherwise support Nigerien forces, citing Title 10 of the U.S. Code.

“What steps has the Department of Defense taken to ensure that nations receiving U.S. funds, training, equipment, or other kinds of support pursuant to Title 10 are not engaged in human rights violations?” the senator added.

Following the senator’s letter, Paul gave an exclusive interview to The American Conservative about America’s presence in Niger and how America might restore a constitutional foreign policy so beautifully encapsulated by John Quincy Adams.

U.S. involvement in Niger began a decade ago.

“Initially, I think they were sent over there to support French troops,” Paul said over the phone. 

“I think their mission, like so many other military missions, has morphed into something different now and includes training and equipping the military. My concern is that in the midst of a military coup over there, with threats of war from surrounding countries, threats of retaliation to the military junta, that it’s a bad place to be, in the middle of something like that.” Paul told TAC that because of the instability plaguing Niger and the entire region, which has experienced several coups in just the last few years, “an accidental or purposeful attack could lead us and draw us into a larger war.”

“There’s always the potential for troops being involved in an escalation of the war, and to do this in the middle of a civil war, and not only potentially in the middle of a civil war,” Paul said. “The Economic Community of West African States has threatened to intervene from outside this year by sending troops in and then you’ve got Burkina Faso and Mali have threatened to respond to that on the side of the new military junta.”

“That looks almost like it could become a regional conflict,” Paul said. If it comes to that, American troops stationed in Niger would be “in a completely defensive position.” America would quickly find itself in a situation where “1,000 troops who really aren’t supposed to be fighting, really don’t know who we’re supposed to attack and how they’re supposed to defend themselves,” would be in the throes of a regional conflict likely far beyond their original mission and way beyond Congressionally approved actions. 

“The 9/11 AUMF is used to justify all of these activities. That’s a real insult to any soldier who’s asked to give his or her life around the world,” Paul argued. 

“Don’t they at least deserve a vote? If you’re going to be sent to Syria and die in Syria—there are still a couple hundred U.S. troops in Syria, we have troops in Iraq, we have got troops in probably a few dozen countries—if you’re going to give up your life, shouldn’t there have been a debate in Congress?” Paul asked. “I think if there was more debate in Congress, there would actually be less support of this,” Paul added, specifically taking aim at the continued use of the 2001 AUMF. 

“While it may not be a cure all, the debate over repealing the 2001 AUMF is an important one,” Paul suggested. “Look at our history. Throughout our history, we have not had sort of open ended, ongoing AUMFs so we didn’t have to vote. I mean, that’s 22 years ago now. Do our young soldiers who weren’t even born then not deserve a live current debate over the current situations if we’re going to send them to war?”

“We have got a long way to go to winning the argument,” Paul admited, but “it’s not all pessimism.” On the Republican side, “probably 10 percent of elected Republicans are for less or for no additional money to Ukraine,” for example, but “I think over 50 percent of the Republican primary voters are now opposed to sending more money to Ukraine,” and “the Trump administration made it easier to be a non interventionist or less interventionist Republican now than it was years ago.”

“My father began that debate and popularized it, but it still wasn’t a popular or dominant position. Trump came along and embraced quite a bit of that doctrine,” Paul told TAC. Probably a majority of the Republican primary voters actually believe in less intervention,” and “we have many more candidates running around the country who actually have those beliefs.”

As for Democrats, Paul said,

“several Democrats have come up to me have said, ‘well, you’re right, we should repeal it, we have to repeal and replace.’ My response to that is, ‘yeah, we should repeal and replace it with the Constitution,’” Paul continued, “replacing it with something that could really absolve us from another debate vote is a mistake.”

American troops in Niger have already paid the price for Congress’s unwillingness to act on its constitutional authority. In October 2017, four Green Berets were killed in an ambush by ISIS-affiliated fighters close to Niger’s border with Mali. Yet, “the so-called bipartisan consensus on foreign policy is still pretty strong,” Paul said. Refusing to take action is an action, and it is a full-throated endorsement of the status quo. America’s justification for having troops in Niger is, “the same sort of argument that has been trotted out across most of the Middle East: that is terrorism is everywhere, al-Qaeda is everywhere, and we can create a world with less terrorism by trying to stomp it out one terrorists at a time, one drone at a time.”

The Kentucky senator believes this “overstates” what’s happening on the ground. “Most of these are tribal disputes. Most of them involve disputes over land. In almost every case, “these aren’t people sitting around with the plans to come and attack New York City. These are the people that are pissed off at the people who are taking part of their goat herd. These aren’t international criminal masterminds. These are local people involved in conflict.”

Since U.S. troops were stationed in Niger in 2013, “there has actually been an escalation of activity.” Beyond the four Green Berets who perished on patrol in Niger, the U.S. military has trained several soldiers responsible for destabilizing Niger and the surrounding region. Reporting from the Intercept suggests U.S. trained military officers have played major roles in at least eleven coups in West Africa since 2008. Moussa Salaou Barmou, the leader of July’s coup in Niger, reportedly received training at Fort Benning in Georgia and the National Defense University in Washington. “We really have a bad record here,” Paul told TAC. “We think we’re training people to set up governments in the image of the American republic,” but in reality, “we’re training officers who then go home and lead a coup.”

“If ostensibly our goal is democracy and free elections, it seems we’re not having the right effect,” Paul suggested, adding that presidential administrations current and previous have been “lying by omission,” to Congress about America’s activities in Niger and other countries like it. “I think they work day and night to obscure details from Congress.”

“I see it as a recipe for disaster,” Paul says of the situation. “I’m going to force the debate. I don’t believe we’ll probably have the votes to win, but at the very least, it’s a privileged vote under the War Powers Act, which means that they can’t stop me,” Paul said. 

The vote is likely going to be scheduled in the next two weeks, conveniently buried in the fight over a potential government shutdown.

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Bradley Devlin is a Staff Reporter for The American Conservative. Previously, he was an Analysis Reporter for the Daily Caller, and has been published in the Daily Wire and the Daily Signal, among other publications that don’t include the word “Daily.” He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Political Economy. You can follow Bradley on Twitter @bradleydevlin. 

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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*** 

As predicted by a number of independent geopolitical commentators, including ourselves, the emerging official narrative on why Ukraine’s counteroffensive ended in failure will be to falsely claim the West didn’t provide “enough” weapons in a timely fashion. Despite the literally tens of billions of US taxpayer dollars sunk into Kiev’s war effort at record-breaking pace and scale, it will be the “fault” of the United States and its allies—or at least this will be solidified as the Ukrainian government’s perspective and narrative (and then will be parroted among Zelensky’s most diehard hawkish supporters). 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has this week been busy advancing this as a key talking point, first telling CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday his country “waited too long” to start counteroffensive. The reason? He blames the West for forcing his military leaders to wait so long for the necessary weaponry and equipment. 

We — look, we waited too long. It’s true. No, I’m thankful to partners, to the United States, EU, other partners,” Zelensky said. “I’m thankful very much to President Biden and to Congress, but we have to understand: We waited too long, they put mines.”

“Then when we been ready from the point of view of our partners because the decision to give us, for example, Bradley [Fighting Vehicles] and other kind of weapons, the decision, it doesn’t mean the result.”

And The Hill underscores of his remarks, “Zelensky noted that Ukraine does not get the weapons promised to it immediately after they are announced by allies.” This is not the first time Zelensky has blamed slowness in supplies and training from his Western sponsors. But behind the scenes, his Western patrons have criticized him for being “ungrateful”. 

In late March, Zelensky when asked about why the counteroffensive was being delayed said that he can’t “start yet” as he’s unable to “send our brave soldiers to the front line without tanks, artillery and long-range rockets.” And then in May he reasserted that “We can advance with what we’ve got and I think we can be successful but we will lose a lot of people, I think that is unacceptable.” He had added at the time, “We need to wait, we need a bit more time.” The offensive later belatedly kicked off in full force in June.

In another interview freshly published this week with US media, Zelensky took this theme of “blame the West” even further. In remarks to the Economist, he issued a thinly veiled threat to those countries thinking about curtailing aid in any way, warning that “millions of Ukrainian refugees in European countries” are capable of destabilizing the West. 

Here’s what Zelensky said as captured by the Economist interview published this week

Curtailing aid to Ukraine will only prolong the war, Mr Zelensky argues. And it would create risks for the West in its own backyard. There is no way of predicting how the millions of Ukrainian refugees in European countries would react to their country being abandoned.

Ukrainians have generally “behaved well” and are “very grateful” to those who sheltered them. They will not forget that generosity. But it would not be a “good story” for Europe if it were to “drive these people into a corner”.

A number of online commentators took note of his surprisingly open and aggressively accusatory rhetoric, saying he seems to be threatening Europe with terrorism if Ukraine doesn’t get its way.

“Am I misreading this or is Zelenskyy actually threatening European countries with terrorism if they don’t send the weapons he wants to Ukraine?” Arnaud Bertrand reacted. And Max Abrahms, a counterterrorism expert and professor of international relations had this to say…

 

In the same interview Zelensky tripled down on prior repeat vows to never negotiate with Putin or to contemplate ceding territory. According to more from the Economist

Tapping loudly on the table, Mr Zelensky rejects outright the idea of compromise with Vladimir Putin. War will continue for “as long as Russia remains on Ukrainian territory”, he says. A negotiated deal would not be permanent. The Russian president has a habit of creating “frozen conflicts” on Russia’s borders (in Georgia, for example), not as ends in themselves but because his goal is to “restore the Soviet Union”. Those who choose to talk to the man in the Kremlin are “tricking themselves”, much like the Western leaders who signed an agreement with Adolf Hitler at Munich in 1938 only to watch him invade Czechoslovakia. “The mistake is not diplomacy. The mistake is diplomacy with Putin. He negotiates only with himself.”

Perhaps this is precisely why defense officials in the West, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, have warned the public that the Ukraine war could last for “years”. 

Zelensky in the interview also hinted that societal transformation toward total war could be next:

Meanwhile, a long war of attrition would mean a fork in the road for Ukraine. The country would lose even more people, both on the front lines and to emigration. It would require a “totally militarized economy”. The government would have to put that prospect to its citizens, Mr Zelensky says, without specifying how; a new social contract could not be the decision of one person. Almost 19 months into the war, the president says he is “morally” ready for the switch. But he will only broach the idea with his people if the weakness in the eyes of his Western backers becomes a “trend”. Has that moment come? No, not yet, he says. “Thank God.”

This marks an interesting acknowledgement that in many ways escalation is driven by perception and reputation based on being seen in the West as ‘weak’. 

Zelensky also rolled out the “either with us or against us” rhetoric of George W. Bush, notably in remarks widely circulated on 9/11 of all days…

Meanwhile, Zelensky’s blunt remarks particularly about the possibility of refugees making life ‘difficult’ for Europe is likely to set the tone and example for many of his lower officials.

We can expect this inflammatory lashing out and these “warnings” directed at Europe and the US to grow. Already we have the spectacle of his foreign minister berating and dressing down the German FM in humiliating fashion, as we reported Monday

When will US, UK, and European leaders begin to say “enough is enough” when it comes to Zelensky’s chastising, humiliating and threatening them?

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The U.S. government has confirmed that it seized nearly a million barrels of crude oil from Iran that was allegedly bound for China.

The Justice Department (DOJ) confirmed on Sept. 8 that in April, the United States seized a shipment of crude oil from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated foreign terrorist organization.

In confirming the confiscation, the department also announced its first criminal resolution involving the illicit sale and transport of Iranian oil, which is a violation of U.S. sanctions.

“This is the first-ever criminal resolution involving a company that violated sanctions by facilitating the illicit sale and transport of Iranian oil and comes in concert with a successful seizure of over 980,000 barrels of contraband crude oil,” the announcement reads.

US Seizes Sanctioned Oil

Unsealed court documents show that in April, the United States seized from the tanker Suez Rajan contraband cargo that was allegedly being sold by the IRGC to China.

On April 19, the vessel’s owner, Suez Rajan Ltd., pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in smuggling the sanctioned Iranian crude oil. Under a plea agreement, the company agreed to pay a $2.4 million fine and face three years of corporate probation.

Greek shipper Empire Navigation, the operating company of the Suez Rajan, agreed to cooperate and transport the Iranian oil to the United States at its own expense, a task that has since been completed.

“The contraband cargo is now the subject of a civil forfeiture action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,” the DOJ stated. “The United States’ forfeiture complaint alleges that the oil aboard the vessel is subject to forfeiture based on U.S. terrorism and money laundering statutes.”

Hiding Oil’s Origin

The U.S. Treasury has stated that Iran’s oil smuggling revenue supports the Quds Force, an elite unit within the IRGC that operates across the Middle East.

The complaint accuses several groups linked to Iran’s IRGC and the Quds Force of secretly selling and shipping Iranian oil to China.

The prosecution relied on satellite images, as well as documents, to allege that the Suez Rajan attempted to disguise its acquisition of Iranian crude oil from one tanker by falsely claiming that it received the oil from a different tanker.

They allegedly hid the oil’s origin through methods including ship-to-ship transfers, as well as masking the locations and identities of the vessels involved via false reporting and false documents.

The complaint also alleged that the vessel’s charterer used the U.S. financial system to facilitate the transportation of the oil.

The court documents allege that “profits from oil sales support the IRGC’s full range of malign activities, including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, support for terrorism and both domestic and international human rights abuses,” according to the DOJ.

For months, the tanker sat in the South China Sea near Singapore’s northeast coast, before sailing for the Texas coast. The vessel transferred its cargo to another tanker, which released its oil in Houston in recent days.

At the time, U.S. authorities wouldn’t confirm that they were seizing the cargo or that the vessel was en route to the United States. But the DOJ on Sept. 8 confirmed that the U.S. government had seized the oil.

Iran Seizes Tankers

Shortly after the Suez Rajan headed to the United States, Iran seized two tankers in late April—the Advantage Sweet, flying the Marshall Islands flag and heading toward the United States in the Gulf of Oman, and the Niovi, owned by Greece traveling to the United Arab Emirates’s Fujairah from Dubai. In response, the U.S. Navy condemned Iran for its “continued harassment of vessels and interference with navigational rights in regional waters.”

The U.S. military in early July stated that it stopped two more Iranian attempts to seize commercial tankers in the Gulf of Oman.

That same month, the top commander of the IRGC’s naval arm threatened further action against anyone offloading the Suez Rajan with Iranian state media linking the recent seizures to the cargo’s fate.

Late on Sept. 6, the United States updated its warning to shippers traveling through the Middle East.

“Commercial vessels transiting through the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman continue to be illegally boarded and detained or seized by Iranian forces,” the warning reads.

With the world’s fourth-largest reserves of oil, Iran is highly dependent on oil revenue. But sanctions have restricted its ability to pump at anywhere near capacity since 2018.

This year, Iranian oil exports have mostly been above 1 million barrels per day despite U.S. sanctions, according to the commodity data firm Kpler. In May and June, it went above 1.5 million barrels per day, with figures in August sitting at 1.4 million barrels daily, Kpler’s data show. China is believed to be a major buyer of Iranian oil, likely at a significant discount.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Mimi Nguyen Ly covers U.S. and world news.

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First published on October 14, 2021

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The US conducted many attacks on foreign soil and four of them include the 2003 Anglo-American attack on Iraq, 2001 US-led military intervention in Afghanistan, The first 9/11, military coup d’etat in Chile and Atomic bombings of Japan. But why is Western Media is glossing over these incidents?, discusses Shane Quinn, a British geo-strategist.

Last year, the 75th anniversary of the US atomic attacks received sparse Western media coverage. With the bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, mankind entered the defining period of its brief existence on earth: the nuclear age.

The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.

Atomic bombings of Japan

Certain defenses and excuses, in support of the unwarranted use of atomic weapons against Japanese civilians, have been relayed obediently by mainstream scholars through the decades: that the atomic assaults saved the lives of half a million American soldiers, who otherwise would have been killed in a land invasion of Japan, that the bombings brought the war to a much speedier conclusion, that Adolf Hitler was constructing an atomic weapon and Washington had to beat him in the race.

Prior to the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in July 1945 an increasingly desperate Japan was seeking fair peace terms. Early in July 1945, the Japanese emperor Hirohito contacted the victorious Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin, and the former indicated that Japan would make peace; but not through unconditional surrender, which was against the pride of Japan and perhaps any nation. Hirohito’s peace message was eventually forwarded to the Western allies, who insisted upon unconditional surrender

Top-ranking US military personnel believed, with good reason, that it was not necessary to drop atomic weapons on Japan, such as General Dwight Eisenhower (Supreme Commander in Europe), Henry Stimson (Secretary of War), along with Admirals Chester Nimitz (Pacific Fleet Commander) and William Leahy (president Harry Truman’s Chief of Staff). Eisenhower stressed how “Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with minimum loss of face. It was not necessary to hit them with that awful thing [atomic bomb]”. By August 1945, the Japanese would be able to hold out for only another few weeks, as they were in an impossible position.

Japan was surrounded out to sea by the US Navy, while American and British aircraft had total command of the skies. Admiral Leahy wrote, “It is my opinion, that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade, and the successful bombing with conventional weapons”. As regards acquiring the atomic bomb before Hitler? America’s close ally, Britain, and her intelligence agencies were reporting in the summer of 1943 that the German atomic project “was ceasing to be a source of grave anxiety”. At the end of 1943, London had concluded that the Nazis had no such program.

In 1943 and 1944, the British intelligence findings on Hitler’s non-existent nuclear project were passed on to the US authorities, including those in charge of America’s A-bomb program (the Manhattan Project). In March 1944 US Major General Leslie Groves, overseeing the atomic bomb’s construction, said “the main purpose of this project is to subdue the Russians”. Hitler had outlined almost two years before, in June 1942, that “there was not much profit in the matter” of pursuing atomic weapons; as recalled by the dictator’s close associate Albert Speer, who was the Nazi Minister for Armaments and Munitions from February 1942 until war’s end.

Speer wrote that the German atomic bomb program was abandoned forever “by the autumn of 1942” as the Germans focused on “an energy-producing uranium motor for propelling machinery. The navy was interested in that for its submarines”. According to Speer, and also the Austrian SS commando Otto Skorzeny in his memoirs, Hitler was seriously concerned about the threat to the planet posed by nuclear weapons.

A similar reaction was forthcoming from another prominent figure in the war, General Charles de Gaulle of France. As the independent-thinking De Gaulle was distrusted and feared by the Anglo-American leaders, he learned of the atomic bomb’s existence after two were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When hearing of the bombs’ deployment against Japan, which killed around 200,000 Japanese, De Gaulle wrote that he was left with “a despair at seeing the appearance of a weapon that might destroy the human race”.

The first 9/11, military coup d’etat in Chile 

This right-wing putsch took place on 11 September 1973, with extensive CIA assistance at the behest of Richard Nixon’s White House. Through per capita (per person) terms, the coup in Chile resulted in a death toll that was at least 16 to 17 times higher than the second 9/11, the terrorist attacks against America which occurred 28 years later. However, Chile’s 9/11 may have led to a per capita death toll that was as much as 33 or 34 times greater than the 9/11 in America. Per capita, figures must be used to obtain an accurate comparison between the two tragedies, because of America’s much larger population than Chile.

Chilean justice reopens 1973 bombing of the Presidential palace — MercoPress

The Chilean 9/11 brought about other awful acts, such as the death of the country’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, and the bombing of the La Moneda presidential palace; added to the equivalent of 700,000 Americans thereafter being tortured; while an international terror center was instituted in the capital Santiago, which would go on to assassinate people across the globe that it did not like, and in addition would encourage other rightist coups in Latin America.

On the day of 9/11 against America, the White House was obviously not bombed nor the president killed, while physical torture was not committed against the public, unlike in Chile. Prior to the first 9/11, Chile had been a lively and vibrant country. This quickly ended with the installment of a puppet dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. Feelings of apprehension and anxiety subsequently gripped the Chilean masses, and fear among the people persisted into the 21st century, long after Pinochet’s exit in March 1990 after more than 15 years in power.

It tells much about a Western intellectual culture that the Chilean 9/11 is habitually overlooked each September, whereas solemn tributes are held in remembrance solely for the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. During the Pinochet years, Chile’s economy was severely damaged by the “free-market” Chilean economists, nicknamed the Chicago Boys because of their training at the University of Chicago. By 1982, the Chicago Boys had driven Chile into the worst depression the country had suffered in half a century. Come the early 1990s, no less than 7 million out of Chile’s 12 million population were poverty-stricken while inequality had soared. Under the left-leaning president Allende, only 1 million Chileans were classed as poor.

2001 US-led military intervention in Afghanistan

The 20th anniversary fell early this month (7 October 2001), and was almost entirely ignored by the Western media. Even in the scant coverage that was afforded, the BBC reported on “commemorations” which were “held to mark the 20th anniversary of the start of UK military operations in Afghanistan” as “wreaths were laid in the UK… in remembrance of 457 British personnel killed there”. The BBC account devoted no attention to the Afghan people, after a 20-year US-NATO occupation.

Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians perished during the past two decades, and Afghanistan is now among the world’s poorest nations. Ninety-five percent of households in the country do not have sufficient foodstuffs, and almost half of the state’s 38 million population require humanitarian aid, while 2 million Afghan children are malnourished and another million are at risk of starvation, etc. By the middle of next year, the UN Development Program estimates that 97% of Afghans could be destitute. This is the end result of the US-NATO “humanitarian intervention” in Afghanistan. The invasion was launched for imperial and geostrategic reasons, such as securing pipeline routes through Afghanistan and enhancing the US presence in the center of Eurasia, long regarded as crucial to global dominance.

On the invasion’s 20th anniversary (7 October 2021), the mass media instead devoted much greater coverage to the trial of an unnamed 100-year-old, low-level former Nazi concentration camp guard, who Hitler and his henchmen no doubt had not remotely heard of.

Military action against Afghanistan was planned well before the 9/11 atrocities against America, which were used as a core pretext for the invasion. Regardless of the second 9/11, the bombing of Afghanistan would presumably have gone ahead in the short term anyway.

Mainly due to outrage over the 9/11 attacks on the US, 90% of Americans questioned supported military action, as US warplanes had just finished their first air raids over Afghanistan. Across most of the rest of the world backing for the invasion was thin. The American public did not know that the offensive went ahead without evidence linking Osama bin Laden, and Al Qaeda, to the terrorist attacks against America. The FBI confirmed this 8 months later (June 2002) following an exhaustive investigation, which failed to provide definitive proof about the 9/11 perpetrators.

2003 Anglo-American attack on Iraq 

The Americans and British were supported in this air and land invasion by fellow NATO members Poland, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy, along with old Western ally Australia. The war on Iraq can, in fact, be traced to the Clinton administration’s bombing of Iraq in December 1998, before the attack was officially launched by President George W. Bush on 19 March 2003. The anniversary is virtually ignored in the West each year.

The military assault against Iraq was likewise undertaken on spurious grounds, as the country and its autocrat Saddam Hussein had nothing whatever to do with the 9/11 atrocities against America.

Nor were there weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) present on Iraqi soil. The writing had been on the wall. Nine months before the invasion the American Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, said that “No one has substantiated the allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, or is attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And of course that is the reason we have been given for going to war against Iraq – because of the threat posed by these weapons”. The conquest of Iraq was concerned largely with gaining control over the country’s massive oil reserves, in a strategically vital region, the Middle East.

The public was mostly unaware of this and that, moreover, it was Saddam’s disobedience, rather than his human rights violations, which was troubling the Anglo-American powers. Saddam had signed contracts with Russia’s energy corporation Lukoil, while he was in negotiations with the French fossil fuel company Total. He had also begun replacing the dollar with the euro as the currency for oil transactions. Brazilian historian Moniz Bandeira wrote that Saddam’s removal “would make room for the entry of American and British firms, such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and British Petroleum, in addition to other corporations”.

Among the inconvenient facts was that Saddam had been supported heavily by the Reagan administration during the 1980s, in the Iran-Iraq War; as Washington attempted to overthrow the newly independent Iran by backing Saddam. Support for the Iraqi dictator continued into the opening phase of Bush Senior’s presidency in 1989. Similar to the 2001 bombing of Afghanistan, a surprisingly high percentage of Americans supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

On 20 March 2003, a day after the offensive started, 76% of US respondents said they approved of military operations. Another CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted a few days after the invasion, showed that more than 70% of Americans continued supporting armed action against Iraq, while just 25% were opposed. In Britain, 21 polls were held throughout 2003, and they revealed on average that 54% of Britons believed it was the correct decision to intervene militarily in Iraq, and 38% felt it to be wrong. British public backing was at its highest around the time the invasion was launched.

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This article was originally published on Global Village Space.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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In 1898, the US took control of Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under the Treaty of Paris. Since then, the US has held Puerto Rico hostage as a colony. The premise for the US’s involvement in the war between Ukraine and Russia is that Ukraine deserves “sovereignty” and “self-determination”. This must only apply to European nations, as our people have gone without sovereignty and self-determination under US rule for 125 years and counting.

Instead, the US is using Puerto Rico to fight in their proxy war with Russia by using our lands as testing grounds for Ukrainian pilots and sending Puerto Rican soldiers across the world like they have done since the Foraker Act was passed in 1917.

As previously mentioned, the Foraker Act imposed US citizenship on Puerto Ricans so that they would be able to be drafted in World War I. During World War II, the US government conducted experiments with mustard gas and other chemicals on thousands of Black, Japanese, and Puerto Rican US soldiers. According to the Department of Defense’s website, about 190,700 Puerto Ricans have served in US wars since World War I. The US has continuously taken advantage of the poor economic situation that our our people have been forced to endure as a result of capitalism and colonization.

The US has used the smaller islands of Puerto Rico, Vieques and Culebra, as military testing sites – displacing the native population and poisoning the land and water. The military was ousted from Culebra in the 1970s and from Vieques in 2004, however, the US is able to use these lands without consent from the Puerto Rican people, which brings us to today. Our land is now being used to train Ukrainian pilots learning to fly F-16 Falcon jets, a process that likely won’t be finished for years. According to the article by La Claridad, the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Government of Puerto Rico and the US Navy stipulates that the United States “reserves the right to reuse the base’s facilities when it deems it necessary/or pertinent.” The airport runway of the old base is one of the longest and widest in the Caribbean, where any type of US military aircraft can be landed. The US has always used Puerto Rico, both the land and the people as a means of dominating the Caribbean and regions abroad.

As previously mentioned, the premise for entering this war was to supposedly help Ukraine fight for sovereignty and self-determination. The reality is that the US is in a cold war with both Russia and China and therefore it will do anything to maintain some sense of power as a multipolar world emerges. If the US really cared about sovereignty and self-determination, why hasn’t it released Puerto Rico? Why is it funding the Israeli military? Why has it funded coupes in Latin America and the Caribbean time and time again? The US wishes to maintain their image here in this country and abroad by positioning themselves as the “good guys”, but instead it funds right-wing groups in Ukraine. The US only supports sovereignty and self determination if it benefits themselves.

When thinking about Vieques and Culebra and the environmental damage that has been done to the land, water, and people – we have to recognize that the climate crisis, capitalism, and the US military go hand in hand. The US has spent $76 billion on the war in Ukraine thus far and has spent $816.7 billion on the military budget this past year. The US military is the biggest polluter in the world and until it is abolished, the climate will continue to decline especially in the Global South, including Puerto Rico. The US war machine would rather maintain global hegemony and allow the ruling class to gain more and more wealth, rather than save the planet which we all inhabit. It is past time for the US military to be rendered obsolete and it is past time that the money spent on war that is destroying the earth and its people go to funding social programs like housing, healthcare, and more.

The Diaspora Pa’lante Collective denounces the proxy war with Russia and all wars across the world that the US has been involved in and continues to agitate. We demand the closure of all US military bases. Until Puerto Rico is liberated from the US and is able to become its own sovereignty nation, nowhere in the Caribbean and Latin America can be free as the US will continue to use our lands and people as a means of furthering their imperialist agenda across the world.

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The Diaspora Pa’lante Collective is a group of Boricuas and allies from across Turtle Island who are committed to fighting for the complete liberation of Borikén by any means necessary for the land and for our people.

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The tear-squeeze remembering those who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington has become an annual event. In the words of US President George W. Bush, it was an attack on “our very freedom”. The US had been targeted because it was “the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.”

Five decades ago, that brightest beacon of freedom and opportunity proved instrumental in destroying a democracy in Latin America. (Others before and since followed.) The 1973 coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in favour of General Augusto Pinochet, an anti-communist, pro-Washington butcher, received abundant logistical, disruptive support from the Central Intelligence Agency.

The election of the socialist Allende had caused rippling apoplexy in the White House, with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger warning US President Richard Nixon that something needed to be done about the Allende government, given its “insidious model effect”. In ultimately destroying this model of left-democratic insidiousness, they had help from a strange quarter.

In 1983, Australia’s Attorney-General Senator Gareth Evans told the Senate that no Australian security agency had gotten its hands dirty in activities that eventually led to the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende. In what can only count as a stunning whopper of a statement, Evans stated the following:

“To the extent that some intelligence co-operation activity may have occurred at an earlier time, there is no foundation for any suggestion that Australia in any way assisted any other country in any alleged operations or activity directed against the Allende regime.”

This pricked the ears of Clyde Cameron, a former Minister for Labor and Immigration in the Whitlam government. Cameron had previously told the ABC Four Corners program that Australian agents had been involved. His views, also conveyed in a letter, did nothing to “change the substance of the answer” Evans had given.

The letter from Cameron revealed his astonishment on becoming Minister for Immigration in 1974 that the department had been providing generous overseas cover for 19 full-time Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation agents.

“I was further advised,” wrote Cameron, “that one of these so-called migration officers had been operating in and out of Santiago around the time of the military coup which murdered the democratically elected President of Chile.” 

Two points of interest are then disclosed: that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam informed Cameron that he was aware of ASIS involvement; and that Cameron, off his own bat, found that his “ASIO ‘migration’ officer, together with ASIS, had acted as liaison officers with the CIA which masterminded that coup.”

The denial by Evans is also stranger given the 1977 admission by then opposition leader Whitlam to the federal parliament “that when my government took office Australian intelligence personnel were still working as proxies and nominees of the CIA in destabilising the government of Chile.” His comments came in the context of leaks from the first 8-volume secret report, authored by Justice Robert Hope as part of the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security surveying the conduct of Australian intelligence activities. To this day, the detail on Australia’s Chilean operations in the report remains classified.

In February 1984, a Conference on Commissions, Contempt and Civil Liberties held at the Australian National University was told that Canberra had sent three intelligence officers to assist the US Central Intelligence Agency in the aftermath of Allende’s coming to power. It was also an occasion for journalist Marian Wilkinson to discuss the leaks from the second Hope report.  What it revealed was Canberra’s appetite for continuing a covert operations program encouraging international subversion without any coherent definition of that vague coupling of words “the national interest”.

As Wilkinson discussed, six Canberra mandarins had met in 1977 to endorse a program of covert action involving “‘dirty tricks’ in foreign countries, disruption, deception, destabilisation and the supply of arms.”  (Rules based orders are fine till they are inconvenient.)

Those in attendance at the meeting were the head of the Prime Minister’s Department, Sir Alan Carmody, Sir Arthur Tange of Defence, Sir Nicholas Parkinson of Foreign Affairs, Sir Clarrie Harders of the Attorney-General’s department, John Taylor of the Public Service Board and Ian Kennison, director of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. The latter was keen to impress upon his colleagues that, were the covert program to be uncovered, it would be justifiably covered up and denied.

The subtext of the meeting was that Australia would happily continue the practice of supplying its own agents to the cause of its allies, notably the United States. Australia’s national interest only mattered in the service of another power.

In 2017, Clinton Fernandes of the University of New South Wales, along with barrister Ian Latham and solicitor Hugh Macken, girded their loins in an effort to access ASIS records on the Santiago station from the early 1970s.  In their storming of the citadel of stubborn secrecy, documents began surfacing, released with teeth-gnashing reluctance.

In September 2021, the National Security Archive, that estimable source hosted by George Washington University, published a selection of Fernandes’s findings. They chart the evolution of the Santiago “station” that was requested by the CIA in the fall of 1970.  Then Liberal Party external affairs minister William McMahon granted approval to ASIS in December 1970 to open the station at the heart of Chilean power.

In June 1971, a highly placed Australian official, whose name is redacted, began having second thoughts about, “The need to go ahead with the Santiago project at all, at this stage.” The “situation in Chile has not deteriorated to the extent that was feared, when we made our submission”. ASIS officials, despite begrudgingly admitting that “Allende had so far been more moderate than expected,” still wished the opening of the station to “go forward now, and not be deferred.” The pull of the CIA was proving all too mesmeric.

Once it got off the ground, the station endured various difficulties. A report from its staff in December 1972 notes concerns about the timeliness of reporting, the problems of using telegraphed reports, and how best to get communications to the “main office” securely. There is even a reference, with no elaboration, to “two most recent incidents” regarding “biographic details concerning” individuals (redacted from the document), something that did “little for our Service reputation.”

With the coming to power of Labor’s Gough Whitlam, a change of heart was felt in Canberra. In April 1973, the new prime minister rejected a proposal by ASIS to continue its clandestine outfit, feeling, as he told ASIS chief William T. Robertson, “uneasy about the M09 operation in Chile”.  But in closing down the Santiago station, he did not, according to a telegram from Robertson to station officers sent that month, wish to give the CIA the impression that this was “an unfriendly gesture towards the US in general or towards the CIA in particular.”

Five decades on, some Australian politicians, having woken up from their slumber of ignorance, are calling for acknowledgement of Canberra’s role in the destruction of a democracy that led to the death and torture of tens of thousands by the Pinochet regime.  The Greens spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Peace, Senator Jordon Steele-John, stated his party’s position: “50 years on we know Australia was involved, as it worked to support the US national interest.  To this day, Australia’s secretive and unaccountable national security apparatus has blocked the release of information and has denied closure for thousands of Chilean-Australians.”

In calling for an apology to the Chilean people, the Greens are also demanding the declassification of any relevant ASIS and ASIO documents that would show support for Pinochet, including implementing “oversight and reform to our intelligence agencies to ensure that this can never happen again.”  With the monster of AUKUS enveloping Australia’s national security, the good Senator should not hold his breath.

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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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*** 

The Sahel region in Africa has experienced some of the worst distress in the world in recent times caused by violence, insecurity, hunger and deprivation. The recent crisis in Niger and the possibilities of its escalation have added to a situation that was already full of simmering tensions as seen in various countries of this region.

The problems of this region have been increasing steadily since the events of 2011-12 in a key neighboring country Libya. Libya was the most prosperous and oil-rich country in the neighboring area ruled for several decades by the dictator Muammar Gaddafi who may not have provided any democracy to his country but certainly provided a long period of stability. He cared for his people well enough, as is evident from the fact that under his rule Libya could top the Human Development Index in Africa. The prosperity of Libya also provided several migrants from Sahel countries good opportunities for earnings.

However the USA and other western countries had serious allegations against Gaddafi relating to terrorist acts. The proper way forward would have been to examine this in a transparent and open forum where both the allegations and the defense could be heard and then suitable action taken on this basis.

What actually happened was that the USA, UK and France collaborated to help rebels in Libya to create civil war conditions leading subsequently to the torture and killing of Gaddafi. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared with undisguised arrogance, “We came, we saw, he died.”

The western armed intervention was sought to be justified by claiming that but for this a large number of civilians would have been massacred. However this view was questioned even at that time and this questioning was subsequently confirmed later. A UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee found that this “was not supported by the available evidence”, “the threat to the civilians was overstated” and the rebels themselves had strong presence of sectarian elements who also faced allegations of being involved in massacres and cruelty.

The killing of Gaddafi was not followed by any new stability in Libya but instead by prolonged civil-war type conditions in which several rival forces fought each other and were used as their proxies by others. Deprivation and slave trade started being reported from a country that had earlier recorded the highest human development indicators in Africa. Obama agreed before he left office that it (the Libyan intervention by the USA and its allies) did not work and it had led to creating a “mess”. This is in line with the trend of western leaders to admit their mistakes too late, too little.

During a much earlier phase there had been a lot of criticism that in the garb if humanitarian intervention, the US led western powers had in fact attempted and conducted a regime change, but this criticism largely from the Global South was ignored by the west at that time. In fact even leaders of certain human rights organizations in the west had come out strongly in favor of this regime change which actually caused immense distress to local people.

Even now after a decade the administration and essential tasks of the government are badly affected as the country is divided between eastern and western regimes. At a time of climate change when protective actions are needed, such disruption of government functions has led to increasing distress and even today, as this is being written, huge floods are devastating Libya with over 5000 feared killed, with thousands reported missing, and this loss of lives would have been much lesser if essential protective tasks had not been neglected.

Meanwhile, those from Sahel countries who were earning their livelihood in Libya as migrant workers had to return, adding to the burden in their villages already suffering from much deprivation. What is more, mercenary soldiers also returned with their arms, and in addition there was a big boom in illegal trafficking of weapons. All this led to increased violence and deprivation in Sahel countries.

This is in line with the history of the Sahel region in which the colonial rule of France in particular was responsible for a lot of the exploitation and deprivation of this region and its people. Even after this region became formally free from colonial rule, powerful agribusiness companies continued to flourish in ways that increased the distress of people.  Commercial export crops were extended to many areas neglecting local food and livelihood needs. This led to highly unjust situations like vegetables and fruits being exported from this region in vast quantities while much of the Sahel region suffered from famine-like conditions.

The neo-colonial elites have been used by the former colonial masters to continue to pursue their interests, helped by special arrangements made to link currency of free countries closely to French or European currency. While the French have promised security and aid, these promises have not been fulfilled in any satisfactory way, leading to increasing discontent with French military presence in the Sahel region.

What is more, the security situation may worsen with increasing big power rivalries. With the increasingly hostile relations between the western countries and Russia, there is an increasing possibility that this may lead to proxy wars in more and more places and the Sahel region can be one such place. This would be highly unfortunate as the Sahel region has already suffered from so much violence and conflict.

With the accentuation of climate change, hunger is becoming a serious problem in many parts of Africa and the rural livelihood crisis is worsening too. Super power rivalries fought through proxies may lead to an aggravation of these problems and so must be clearly avoided.

If we take an overview of the situation of the last century, then imperialism and neo-colonialism have been the biggest cause of the high levels of distress of people in the Sahel.

If such conditions can be created in which the people of the Sahel region can, in peace and without being disturbed by outside big powers, use their resources and skills optimally for sustainable development, then very significant and durable reduction of their distress will be achieved.

*

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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Man over Machine and Protecting Earth for Children.

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*** 

Secretary of the Armenian Security Council Armen Grigoryan is pivoting the Caucasian country toward the West when his immediate priority should be securing Armenia since a conflict with Azerbaijan is seemingly close to breaking out. It is no secret that his appointment to the head of the Security Council initially caused legitimate concern among Armenians since it strayed from the traditional and longstanding relations Armenia has with Russia. However, his mission to derail Armenian-Russian ties is unsurprising when remembering that he was the former coordinator of election programs of Transparency International, a Soros-funded NGO with an obvious liberal agenda.

Grigoryan recently made another, but quite conceptual, trip to Brussels and had a working lunch with the special representative of the NATO Secretary General in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Javier Colomina. According to Armenian media, Grigoryan explained to Colomina “the security situation around Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and also discussed the consequences of Azerbaijan’s illegal blocking of the Lachin corridor.”

Under the guise of “ecological protest,” Baku first blocked, then set up its own checkpoint on the road between Goris and Stepanakert, the capital of the Armenian-populated separatist region of internationally recognised Azerbaijan. This blockade has led 120,000 Armenians in the region to face starvation and shortages.

The US, Britain, and other Western countries, particularly France, are looking for ways to level out any agreements reached with the participation of Russia. Hence, numerous rounds of consultations with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, European Council president Charles Michel, and others. This does not exclude the recently somewhat obscured negotiation format between Grigoryan, the Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan Hikmet Hajiyev, and White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

There is no doubt that Grigoryan is an active participant in the lobby aimed at both torpedoing the Joint Statement of November 10, 2020 and at Armenia’s exit from the CSTO, as he admitted himself in an interview with Novaya Gazeta in May. At this juncture, Azerbaijan is preparing for war by mobilising troops and equipment to the borders of Nagorno-Karabakh, yet this is the time when the Nikol Pashinyan government ruling in Yerevan is searching to overhaul Armenia’s security architecture completely.

This is a high-risk move, considering the outcome of the next military conflict is very clear: a major military defeat for Armenia, which will then be forced to even greater humiliation and territorial losses with the prospect of a de facto final loss of sovereignty. This option is more likely with Armenia’s complete severance of relations with Russia, which Pashinyan and Grigoryan are leading towards. The greater onus for this tragedy is on Gigoryan since he, unlike Pashinyan, is a Karabakhi Armenian.

Grigoryan announced advances in Armenia-US relations in the economic sphere about a month ago but complained that “cooperation between Yerevan and Washington in the military-political sense is not yet at the stage to be discussed.” However, on September 11, about 175 Armenian troops and 85 from the US will start exercises focusing on peacekeeping operations.

At a press conference following the G20 summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commented on the upcoming military exercises: “Of course, we don’t see anything good in the fact that an aggressive NATO country is trying to penetrate Transcaucasia. I don’t think this is good for anyone, including Armenia itself.”

According to the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry,

“wherever the Americans appear (they have hundreds of bases around the world), nowhere does this lead to anything good. At best, they sit there calmly, but very often they try to tailor everything to themselves, including political processes.”

Pro-Pashinyan media channels are oversaturated with calls from biased experts to minimise any ties with Russia. Often, they promote the fable of removing Russian military bases in Armenia and replacing them with American ones while advocating for the development of military ties with Iran despite the Islamic Republic being a sworn enemy of the US.

At the same time, by refusing to deploy a CSTO monitoring mission on the border with Azerbaijan in favour of European observers, Pashinyan and Grigoryan are minimising any meaningful contact with Moscow. The current ruling elite of Armenia views the US and their allies as reliable benefactors, believing that their dedicated service will ensure their personal and economic prosperity while securing the country from the Azerbaijani threat.

In this context, Grigoryan is almost the embodiment of pro-Western collaborationism and national betrayal.

The tendency for Armenians to believe ridiculous rumours and conspiracy theories provides fertile ground for various manipulations. But no matter what instructions Grigoryan received from his Western supervisors, further strengthening his position in Armenia does not bring anything good to the people of the republic and creates greater risks for them.

*

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Global Research was born on the same year the US embarked on its Global War on Terrorism. On September 9, 2001, just two days prior to the 9/11 attack, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky established what since has become a lifelong commitment. 

Global Research is now 22. As we look back, it appears that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” (Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr). In other words, pernicious disinformation and propaganda continue to “poison human minds”. 

Are we going to let them succeed? What kind of world will our offsprings experience — if we let them be? 

More than ten years of malign attacks, censorship, and yet we’re still here.

Our deepest gratitude to our authors and readers for their unwavering support and trust in our publication and for working with us in their pursuit of truth and justice.

On our 22nd birthday, it is our wish that more people will embrace the truth, and become beacons of hope for the future generations. We can only achieve this with your help. 

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Thank you for supporting independent media!

The Global Research Team

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Extreme Online Surveillance in the UK: Extreme :”Online Safety Bill” (OSB) Envisages Invasive Scanning of “User Files”.

By Joe Mullin, September 12, 2023

The U.K.’s Online Safety Bill (OSB) has passed a critical final stage in the House of Lords, and envisions a potentially vast scheme to surveil internet users. The bill would empower the U.K. government, in certain situations, to demand that online platforms use government-approved software to search through all users’ photos, files, and messages, scanning for illegal content.

Video: “Redacted”. Peace, War and 9/11. Graeme MacQueen

By Redacted, September 12, 2023

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The Hypocrisy of Sanctions

By Peter Koenig, September 12, 2023

A few days ago, Belgian Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten requested the European Union to reduce importing Russian gas and get rid altogether of fossil fuels by 2027. This after the Global Witness NGO released data showing that Belgium is currently the third-largest importer of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG).

FDA Clears New COVID-19 Vaccines in Bid to Counter Waning Effectiveness

By Zachary Stieber, September 12, 2023

U.S. drug regulators on Sept. 11 cleared new COVID-19 vaccines to try to counter the poor effectiveness provided by the current options. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared shots from Moderna and Pfizer that will be available to Americans as young as 6 months old later this month.

In Order to Save the Whales, We Must Kill the Whales

By Ben Bartee, September 12, 2023

That’s how The Science™ works, boys and girls. Respect it, or be made to answer to the Department of Homeland Security, bigot. If you live on the East Coast of the U.S., chances are you’ve seen and/or heard tell of the increasing-in-frequency local news reports on the dead-whale-washing-up-on-shore phenomenon.

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We are commemorating September 11, 2001 as well as September 11, 1973 (Fifty years ago) 

***

Half a century ago on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet, crushed the democratically elected Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende.

The objective was to replace a progressive, democratically elected government by a brutal military dictatorship.

The military coup was supported by the CIA. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a direct role in the military plot.1

In the weeks leading up to the coup, US Ambassador Nathaniel Davis and members of the CIA held meetings with Chile’s top military brass together with the leaders of the National Party and the ultra-right nationalist front Patria y Libertad.  While the undercover role of the Nixon administration is amply documented,  what is rarely mentioned in media reports is the fact that the military coup was also supported by a sector of the Christian Democratic Party.

Patricio Aylwin, who was elected Chile’s president in 1989-90,  became head of the DC party in the months leading up to the September 1973 military coup (March through September 1973). Aylwin was largely instrumental in the break down of the “Dialogue” between the Unidad Popular government and the Christian Democrats. His predecessor Renan Fuentealba, who represented the moderate wing of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), was firmly against military intervention. Fuentealba favored a dialogue with Allende (la salida democratica). He was displaced from the leadership of the Party in May 1973 in favor of Patricio Aylwin.

The DC Party was split down the middle, between those who favored “the salida democratica”, and the dominant Aylwin-Frei faction, which favored “a military solution”. 2 

On 23 August, the Chilean Camera de Diputados drafted a motion,  to the effect that the Allende government “sought to impose a totalitarian regime”. Patricio Aylwin was a member of the drafting team of this motion. Patricio Aylwin believed that a temporary military dictatorship was “the lesser of two evils.”3

This motion was adopted almost unanimously by the opposition parties, including the PDC, and the Partido Nacional. 

The leadership of the Christian Democratic Party including former Chilean president Eduardo Frei, had given a green light to the Military. Unquestionably, US intelligence must have played an undercover role in the change of leadership in the PDC.

And continuity in the “Chilean Model” heralded as an “economic success story” was ensured when, 16 years later, Patricio Aylwin was elected president of Chile in the so-called transition to democracy in 1989.

At the time of the September 11 coup, I was Visiting Professor of Economics at the Catholic University of Chile (Instituto de Economia, Universidad Catolica de Chile). In the hours following the bombing of the Presidential Palace of La Moneda, the new military rulers imposed a 72-hour curfew.

When the university reopened several days later, I started patching together the history of the coup from written notes. I had lived through the tragic events of September 11, 1973 as well as the failed June 29, 1973 coup. Several of my students at the Universidad Catolica had been arrested by the military Junta.

In the days following the military takeover,  I started going through piles of documents and newspaper clippings, which I had collected on a daily basis since my arrival in Chile in early 1973. A large part of this material, however, was lost and destroyed by my research assistant, fearing political reprisals in the days following the coup.

This unpublished article (below) was written 50 years ago (see below). It was drafted on an old typewriter in the weeks following September 11, 1973.

This original draft article plus a few carbon copies were circulated among a close friends and colleagues at the Catholic University. It was never published. For 30 years it lay in a box of documents at the bottom of a filing cabinet.

I have transcribed the text from the yellowed carbon copy draft [in 2003]. Apart from minor editing, I have made no changes to the original article.

The history of this period has since then been amply documented including the role of the Nixon administration and of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the plot to assassinate Allende and install a military regime.

Chicago Economics: Neoliberal Dress Rehearsal of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP)

The main objective of the US-supported military coup in Chile was ultimately to  impose the neoliberal economic agenda.  The latter, in the case of Chile, was not imposed by external creditors under the guidance of the IMF. “Regime change” was enforced  through a covert military intelligence operation, which laid the groundwork for the military coup. Sweeping macro-economic reforms (including privatization, price liberalization and the freeze of wages) were implemented in early October 1973.

Barely a few weeks after the military takeover, the military Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet ordered a hike in the price of bread from 11 to 40 escudos, a hefty overnight increase of 264%. This “economic shock treatment” had been designed by a group of economists called the “Chicago Boys.”

While food prices had skyrocketed, wages had been frozen to ensure “economic stability and stave off inflationary pressures.”

From one day to the next, an entire country had been precipitated into abysmal poverty; in less than a year the price of bread in Chile increased thirty-six fold (3700%). Eighty-five percent of the Chilean population had been driven below the poverty line.

I completed my work on the “unpublished paper’ entitled “The Ingredients of a Military Coup” (scroll down) in late September 1973. 

In October and November 1973, following the dramatic hikes in the price of food,  I drafted in Spanish an initial “technical” assessment of the Junta’s deadly macro-economic reforms, largely focussing on an engineered process of impoverishment. 

La Medición del Ingreso Minimo de Subsistencia y la Politica de Ingreso para 1974′

click link to download the report (pdf) 

Fearing censorship, I limited my analysis to the collapse of living standards in the wake of the Junta’s reforms, resulting from the price hikes of food and fuel, without making any kind of political analysis.

The Economics Institute of the Catholic University was initially reluctant to publish the report. They sent it to the Military Junta for its approval prior to its release.

I left Chile for Peru  in December 1973. The report was released as a working paper (200 copies) by the Catholic University of Chile a few days after my departure.

In Peru, where I joined the Economics Department of the Catholic University of Peru, I was able to write up a more detailed study of the Junta’s neoliberal reforms and its ideological underpinnings. This study was published in 1975 in Spanish. (Trimestre Economico, No. 166) and subsequently in English.

HACIA EL NUEVO MODELO ECONÓMICO CHILENO INFLACIÓN Y REDISTRIBUCIÓN DEL INGRESO on JSTOR

Needless to say, the events of September 11, 1973 also marked me profoundly in my work as an economist.

Through the tampering of prices, wages and interest rates, people’s lives had been destroyed; an entire national economy had been destabilized. Macro-economic reform was neither “neutral” –as claimed by the academic mainstream– nor separate from the broader process of social and political transformation.

I also started to understand the role of military-intelligence operations in support of what is usually described as a process of “economic restructuring”.

In my earlier writings on the Chilean military Junta, I looked upon the so-called “free market” reforms as a well-organized instrument of “economic repression.”

The Argentina March 1976 Coup d’Etat

Two years later, I returned to Latin America as a Visiting professor at the National University of Cordoba in the northern industrial heartland of Argentina under the auspices of an ILO project.

My stay coincided with the March 1976 military coup d’État. It was “The Dirty War”. “La Guerra Sucia”. Tens of thousands of people were arrested; the “Desaparecidos” were assassinated. The military takeover in Argentina was “a carbon copy” of the CIA-led coup in Chile.

Henry Kissinger and General Jorge Videla 

And behind the massacres and human rights violations, “free market” reforms had also been prescribed, this time under the supervision of Argentina’s New York creditors.

The IMF’s deadly economic prescriptions under the “structural adjustment program” had not yet been officially launched. The experience of Chile and Argentina under the “Chicago boys” was “a dress rehearsal” of things to come.

David Rockefeller (Centre) meets up with General Jorge Videla and Finance Minister Martinez de Hoz

In due course, the economic bullets of the “free market system” were hitting country after country.

Since the onslaught of the debt crisis of the 1980s, the same IMF “economic medicine” has routinely been applied in more than 150 developing countries.

From my earlier work in Chile, Argentina and Peru, I started to investigate the global impacts of these reforms. Relentlessly feeding on poverty and economic dislocation, a New World Order was taking shape.

(For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky,The Globalisation of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, Global Research, 2003)

This forward with minor edits was initially published in 2003 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the September 1,, 1973 military coup.

***

Today my thoughts are with the people of Chile, who are still under the brunt of neoliberal oppression. 

Flash forward to September 11, 2001

Thirty years later, September 8, 2001, a young man specialist in internet algorithms came to our home on the outskirts of Montreal, on a wheel chair (he was handicapped). I remain indebted to him. He gave me a crash course on how to use the algorithm and upload articles to the internet.

And on the following day, September 9, 2001, two days before the dramatic events of 9/11, we launched globalresearch.

We remain indebted to our readers and authors Worldwide, who have participated in the Global Research Project in the course of the last 22 years. 

 

***

Michel Chossudovsky,  September 11, 2003  [minor revisions September 10, 2013, September 11, 2021, August 31,  2023]

Notes

For details see http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KOR309A.html  and references below

2. See Interview with Renan Fuentealba at  http://www.finisterrae.cl/cidoc/citahistoria/emol/emol_22092002.htm

3. See http://www.fjguzman.cl/interiores/noticias/tema_se/2003/julio/Patricio%20Aylwin%20y%20la%20dictadura%20transitoria.pdf , See also: El acuerdo que anticipó el golpe, http://www.quepasa.cl/revista/2003/08/22/t-22.08.QP.NAC.ACUERDO.html


The Ingredients of a Military Coup

by Michel Chossudovsky

[Catholic University of Chile, Santiago de Chile, September 1973, Unpublished draft]

First published by Global Research, September 11, 2003

Original September 1973 draft: click to enlarge

The transition to a right-wing military regime in Chile on September 11 [1973] has resulted after a lengthy and drawn-out process of economic boycott, subversion within the Armed Forces and political opposition to Allende’s Popular unity government.

In October 1970, General René Schneider was assassinated in a plot of the ultra-right together with seditious elements of the Armed Forces led by General Roberto Viaux. The assassination of General Schneider was part of a coordinated plan to prevent Parliament from ratifying Allende’s victory in the September 1970 presidential elections.

Last year’s [1972] October strike which paralyzed the economy for over a month, was organized by the gremios (employers’ organizations together with opposition labor and self employed organizations), the Partido Nacional and the ultra-right nationalist front Patria y Libertad. Some sectors of the Christian Democratic Party were also involved.

The October Strike had initially been planned for September 1972. “Plan Septiembre”  was apparently postponed due to the sudden dismissal of General Alfredo Canales from the Armed Forces. Canales together with Air Force General Herrera Latoja had earlier been in touch with Miguel Ubilla Torrealba of the nationalist front Patria y Libertad. Ubilla Torrealba was said to have been closely connected to the CIA. Despite General Canales premature retirement from the Armed Forces, Plan Septiembre was implemented in October beginning with a transport strike. The Right was hoping that those elements of the Armed forces, which had been inspired by General Canales would intervene against Allende. The October “Patronal” strike (employers and self-employed) failed due to the support of the Armed Forces headed by General Carlos Prats, who had integrated Allende’s cabinet as Minister of the Interior.

Unpublished draft, September 1973

The June Failed Coup

On June 29, 1973, Coronal Roberto Souper led his tank division in an isolated attack on La Moneda, the Presidential Palace, in the hope that other units of the armed forces would join in. The June coup had initially been planned for the morning of September 27 by Patria y Libertad as well as by several high ranking military officers. The plans were found out by Military Intelligence and the coup was called off at 6pm on the 26th. A warrant for the arrest of Coronal Souper had been issued. Confronted with knowledge of his impending arrest, Colonel Souper in consultation with the officers under his command, decided to act in a most improvised fashion. At 9 am, amidst morning rush hour traffic, Tank Division Number Two drove down Bernardo O’Higgins, Santiago’s main down-town avenue towards the Presidential Palace.

While the aborted June Coup had the appearance of an insolated and uncoordinated initiative, there was evidence of considerable support in various sectors of the Navy as well as from Air Force General Gustovo Leigh, now [September 1973] member of the military junta [on 11 September General Leigh integrated the military Junta headed by General Pinochet]. According to well-informed sources, several high ranking officers in the aero-naval base of Quintero near Valparaiso had proposed the bombing of State enterprises controlled by militant left wing groups, as well as the setting up of an air corridor to transport navy troops. The latter were slated to join up with the forces of Colonel Souper in Santiago.

The June trial coup was «useful» indicating to the seditious elements within the Chilean Armed Forces that an isolated and uncoordinated effort would fail. After June 29, the right-wing elements in the Navy and the Air Force were involved in a process of consolidation aimed at gaining political support among officers and sub-officers. The Army, however, was still under the control of Commander in Chief General Carols Prats, who had previously integrated Allende’s cabinet and who was a firm supporter of constitutional government.

Meanwhile in the political arena, the Christian Democrats were pressuring Allende to bring in members of the Military into the Cabinet as well as significantly revise the programme and platform of the Unidad Popular. Party leaders of the government coalition considered this alternative [proposed by the Christian democrats] as a « legalized military coup» (golpe legal) and advised Allende to turn it down. Carlos Altamirano, leader of the Socialist Party had demanded that an endorsement of the programme of the Popular Unity coalition by the military be a sina qua non condition for their entry into the Cabinet. Upon the impossibility of bringing in the Military into the Cabinet on acceptable terms, Allende envisaged the formation of a so-called “Cabinet of Consolidation” composed of well known personalities. Fernando Castillo, rector of the Catholic University and a member of the Christian Democratic Party, Felipe Herrera, President of the Inter-|American Development Bank and other prominent personalities were approached but declined.

“The Dialogue”

Pressured by economic deadlock and the transport strike, inflation of more than 15 percent per month and mounting political opposition, Allende sought in the course of July [1973] to resume the political dialogue with the Christian Democratic Party.  After the March [1973] parliamentary elections, Patricio Aylwin had replaced Renan Fuentealba [May 1973] as leader of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). Fuentealba, who represented the progressive wing of the Christian Democratic (PDC), was known to be in favor of a rapprochement with Allende. In other words, this rightward shift and hardening of the Christian Democrats in relation to the Unidad Popular, contributed to reinforcing their tacit alliance with the ring wing National Party. This alliance was initially intended as an electoral pact in the March [1973] parliamentary elections in which the Unidad Popular obtained 43 percent of the popular vote.

The Dialogue between Allende and Alwyin was a failure. Aylwin stated :

“I have no trust in the democratic loyalty of the Marxist parties because they do not believe in Democracy. They have an inherent totalitarian conception. We are convinced that the democratic path will not solve the underlying economic problems…”

The Communist Party Senator and prominent intellectual Volodia Teitelbaum response was:

“The Christian Democrats are not that innocent. Basically they are in favor of a coup d’Etat because it constitutes a means to conveniently obtaining political power. The Christian Democrats have moved to the Right. They are not interested a Dialogue which implies a consolidation of revolutionary changes”

While the Right was becoming more cohesive, a political split of the Left was imminent. The Communist Part sided with Allende’s constitutional strategy while a section of the Socialist Party (Allende’s own Party) led by Carlos Altamirano and the MAPU (Movimiento de Accion Popular Unitaria -initially a group of Christian Democrats which joined the Unidad Popular in 1969) led by Oscar Garreton, signified their distrust in “bourgeois legality” and the constitutional process and moved increasingly closer to the leftist revolutionary front Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). MIR maintained ideological and strategic relations with Cuban revolutionary groups as well as with the Bolivian and Uruguayan Tupamaros. While endorsing many features of the programme of the Unidad Popular, the MIR rejected Allende’s “Chilean Road to Socialism” :

“We must create popular power (poder popular) based on the industrial belts (cordones industriales)” .

The cordones industriales were organized and politicized labor groups. Together with MAPU, MIR was in the process of developing the Grupos de Accion Urbana (Urban Action Groups), with the task of educating and preparing the masses for armed resistance in the case of a military coup.

Purges in the Armed Forces

In August [1973], the Armed forces initiated a series of violent search and arrests directed against the MIR and state enterprises integrated by the industrial belts (cordones industriales). These searches were conducted in accordance with the Fire Arms control Act, adopted by [the Chilean] Congress after the October [1992 employers] strike and which empowered the Armed Forces [bypassing the civilian police authorities] to implement (by Military Law) the control of fire arms. [The objective of this measure was to confiscate automatic weapons in the members of the industrial belts and curb armed resistance by civilians to a military coup].

Meanwhile, right-wing elements in the Navy and Air Force were involved in actively eliminating Allende supporters by a well organized operation of anti-government propaganda, purges and torture. On August 7 [1973], the Navy announced that a “subversive left wing group” integrated by MIR had been found out. Meanwhile, according to reliable sources, a seditious plan of the Right with the intent to bring down Allende’s government, using the Navy to control the entry of supplies into the country, had been discovered. Sailors and officers [within the Navy], who knew about these plans, were tortured and beaten.

The Role of the Political Right

[In August 1973], high ranking military officers and members of Patria y Libertad, met with Senator Bulnes Sanfuentes of the National Party. Admiral Merino now [September 1973] a member of the Junta participated in meetings with members of National Party, senators of the Christian Democratic Party and staff of the US embassy. In fact towards mid-August [1973], a motion declaring US ambassador Nathaniel Davis as persona non grata was drafted by a parliamentary committee of the Unidad Popular. Furthermore, the Armed Forces were colluding with the Ultra-Right by setting up a so-called Base operacional de Fuerzas especiales (BOFE) (Operational Base of Special Forces). BOFE units were integrated by member of the nationalist front Patria y Libertad.

BOFE units were paramilitary divisions receiving material and financial support from the Armed forces. They were intended to undertake subversive and terrorist activities, which the Armed Forces could not openly undertake. BOFE was responsible for the many bomb attacks on pipelines, bridges and electric installations in the months preceding the military coup of September 11 [1973].

General Prats’ Resignation from the Armed Forces

On August 9, Allende reorganized his cabinet and brought in the three joint chiefs of staff, Carlos Prats (Army), Cesar Ruis Danyau (Air force) and Raul Montero (Navy) into a so-called “National Security Cabinet”. Allende was only intent upon resolving the Transport Strike, which was paralyzing the country’s economy, he was anxious to gain whatever support was left within the Armed Forces.

The situation was not ripe for a military coup as long as General Carlos Prats was member of the cabinet, commander in Chief of the Army and Chairman of the Council of Generals.

Towards mid-August, the armed forces pressured Allende and demanded Prats’ resignation and retirement ” due to basic disagreements between Prats and the Council of Generals”. Allende made a final attempt to retain Prats and invited General Prats, Pinochet (now [September 1973] head of the Military Junta), Bonilla now Minister of the Interior), and others for dinner at his private residence. Prats resigned officially on August 23, both from the Cabinet and from the Armed Forces:

“I did not want to be a factor which would threaten institutional discipline… or serve as a pretext to those who want to overthrow the constitutional government”

The Generals’ Secret Meeting

With General Carlos Prats out of the way, the road was clear for a consolidated action by the Army, Navy and Air Force. Prats successor General Augusto Pinochet convened the Council of 24 generals in a secret meeting on August 28. The purpose and discussion of this meeting were not made public. In all likelihood, it was instrumental in the planning of the September 11 military coup. The reshuffle of Allende’s National Security Cabinet took place on the same day (28 August). It resulted after drawn out discussions with party leaders of the Unidad Popular coalition, and in particular with Socialist Party leader Carlos Altamirano.

The following day, August 29, Altamirano in a major policy speech made the following statement:

“We hope that our Armed Forces have not abandoned their historical tradition, the Schneider Doctrine … and that they could follow a course leading to the installation of a reactionary Brazilian style [military] dictatorship … We are convinced that our armed forces are not prepared to be instrumental in the restoration of the privileges of the financial and industrial elites and landed aristocracy. We are convinced that if the Right wing golpe (coup) were to succeed, Chile would become a new Vietnam.”

On the weekend preceding the military coup, leaders of the National Party and Christian Democratic Party made major political statements, declaring Allende’s government illegal and unconstitutional. Sergio Onofre Jarpa of the National Party declared:

“After the Marxist downfall, the rebirth of Chile! … We will continue our struggle until we see out of office those who failed to fulfill their obligations. From this struggle, a new solidarity and a new institutional framework (institucionalidad) will emerge.”

A few days later, the Presidential Palace was bombed and Allende was assassinated. The rebirth of Chile, and a new institutional framework had emerged.

Michel Chossudovsky

Universidad Católica de Chile,

Santiago de Chile, September 1973 [written in the days following the coup]


Selected References on the Role of Henry Kissinger in the 1973 military coup

Articles

Christopher Hitchens, The Case against Henry Kissinger, Harpers Magazine, February 2001,  http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/1809_302/69839383/p1/article.jhtml?term=kissinger

Henry Kissinger, US Involved in 1970 Chilean Plot, AP, 9 Sept 2001,  http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/general/2001/0909cbskiss.htm

Kissinger May Face Extradition to Chile, Guardian,  June 12, 2002, http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/wanted/2002/0614kiss.htm

Marcus Gee, Is Henry Kissinger a War Criminal? Globe and Mail, 11 June 2002,  http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0611-03.htm

Jonathan Franklin, Kissinger may face extradition to Chile, Guardian, 12 June 2002,  http://www.guardian.co.uk/pinochet/Story/0,11993,735920,00.html

Kissinger’s Back…As 9/11 Truth-Seeker, The Nation, 2003, http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=176

Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm

30th anniversary of Chile coup; Calls for justice, scrutiny of United States role, Santiago. 11 Sep 2003, http://www.newsahead.com/NewWNF/ChileCoup.htm

USA Regrets Role in Chile’s September 11 Tragedy: US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, admitted Washington’s participation in Chile coup of 1973, Pravda, 17 March 2003, http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/9766_chile.html     [this statement was made barely a week after the military occupation of Iraq by US and British troops.]

Larry Rohter, NYT, 13 Feb 2000, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDallende.htm

Websites

ICAI, Kissinger Watch, http://www.icai-online.org/45365,45370.html

The Kissinger Page, Third World Traveler, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/HKissinger.html

Wanted for War Crimes, http://www.zpub.com/un/wanted-hkiss.html

Remember Chile.org,  http://www.remember-chile.org.uk/

War Crimes Bio of Augusto Pinochet http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/pinochet.htm

Chile Information Project — “Santiago Times” http://ssdc.ucsd.edu/news/chip/h98/chip.19981116.html

Salvador Allende and Patricio Aylwin

Carta de Salvador Allende al presidente del Partido Demócrata Cristiano, señor Patricio Aylwin, publicada el día 23 de agosto de 1973
en el diario La Nación de Santiago. http://www.salvador-allende.cl/Textos/Documentos/cartaAylwin.pdf

Andrés Zaldívar, presidente del Senado: “Allende no divide a la Concertación”, Mercurio, 13 August 2003 http://www.mercuriovalpo.cl/site/apg/reportajes/pags/20030831030907.html

Salvador Allende Archive http://www.salvador-allende.cl/

Michel Chossudovsky’s Writings on the Chilean Military Junta’s Economic Reforms

Capital Accumulation in Chile and Latin America”, Yale University Lecture Series on Post-Allende Chile, North South, Canadian Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. IV, vol. XIII, no. 23, 1978, also published in Economic and Political Weekly.

“Acumulación de Capital en Chile”, Comercio Exterior, vol. 28, no. 2, 1978 (Spanish version of above article)

“Chicago Economics, Chilean Style”, Monthly Review, vol. 26, no. 11, 1975, in Spanish in a book published in Lima, Peru,

“Hacia el Nuevo Modelo Economico Chileno, Inflación y Redistribución del Ingreso, 1973-1974”, Cuadernos de CISEPA, no. 19, Catholic University of Peru, 1974, Trimestre Economico, no. 166, 1975, 311-347.

“The Neo-Liberal Model and the Mechanisms of Economic Repression: The Chilean Case”, Co-existence, vol. 12, no. 1, 1975, 34-57.

La Medición del Ingreso Minimo de Subsistencia y la Politica de Ingresos para 1974, documento de trabajo no. 19, Institute of Economics, Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, 1973, p. 37. (Initial  text on the economic reforms of the Chilean Military Junta published in December 1973)

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I am certain that most of us who had gathered on the grounds of Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, as convoys snaking across the north and south islands converged on a sunny 9 February 2022, knew that mainstream media coverage of the convoy, the gathering and whatever unfolded in the time ahead would be slanderous and untruthful. As indeed it was.

Truth, however, like a river meander, proves unstoppable over time.

Some sixteen months after the peaceful assembly of people from all areas of our country was brutally invaded and dispersed by henchmen of the political State, an extraordinary documentary film has emerged: River of Freedom.

I attended the sold-out Wellington premiere on 7 September at the Embassy Theatre and was myself transported to that relatively brief but powerful time when the citizenry reclaimed their rights, stood their ground and created, in microcosm, a society of mutual sustenance — an ideal, as it were, founded upon by charity, compassion and tolerance, and united, despite considerable diversity.

Watching the images of the multitudes who had the audacity to oppose the government’s demolition of fundamental human rights and its imposition of divisive and, frankly, illegal mandates, I was reminded of the many kindly and generous people I met, the determination to assert our unalienable rights, our requests for someone — anyone — from the elected body of Parliament simply to meet with us and to discuss our concerns, and the monolithic refusal of our politicians to engage.

I was reminded too of the creative joys that emerged from the occupants of Parliament’s terrain as we waited for a ‘representative’ to do his or her duty, such as the makeshift basketball court where I spent many an hour while on my daily rounds, the tents where music poured forth, and the meals supplied for free to all and sundry.

On one particular evening as I wound my way around, I was stopped in my tracks by a live rendition of the song I had been yearning to hear for weeks: Tom Petty’s ‘I Won’t Back Down’.

I remember too the day when victims of the mandated Jab were memorialized by a string of white crosses hung across our stage. I was honored to have said a few words on their behalf.

As the days and weeks wore on and the government’s frustration with a strong and peaceful presence grew, police actions became more aggressive and attempts to undermine our ability to continue residence became bolder. And all of this occurred during a period when a ‘vax apartheid’ state had been declared and those of us who were unjabbed were not permitted access to restaurants, churches, theatres, barbers, cinemas or gyms …

On the first of March 2022 I was part of a team that had been assembled to negotiate a peaceable solution to a situation that had become very tense. A member of the police force was slated to join, but this representative never appeared. On my way home that afternoon I happened to notice that the street next to Wellington’s main police station was filled with unmarked vans. I concluded that the police would stage a raid the next morning and I informed everyone I knew — filmmakers, protest leaders, media personnel and the like. Most — not all — told me that my fears were unfounded. They were wrong.

Fortunately the filmmakers of River of Freedom were there to record the fascistic thuggery that took place on 2 March, which included the use of tear gas and 40 mm rubber bullets against peaceful citizens. An elderly man had his hip broken thanks to a police assault and the first ambulance called to assist refused to take him to hospital.

Such were the memories that crowded upon me as I viewed River of Freedom, as I watched a brilliant and beautifully shot and viscerally moving documentary bring us a ‘real news’ account of what happened.

Watch the trailer below.

At my barber’s the other day I chanced to mention the Parliament protests — he cuts hair within a stone’s throw of the area — and I could tell by his reaction that his view of the event was the one promulgated by Radio New Zealand and the Dominion Post and the State-funded TV stations and other organs of propaganda — that a bunch of dirty low-lifes had conspired to make unnecessary trouble. I suggested he see River of Freedom; whether he will or not is another matter.

I understand that cinemas around the country, cinemas in towns large and small, have been booked out for showings of the film and that plans are underway to make the documentary available to an international audience.

Director Gaylene Barnes, producers Jared Connon and Julian Arahanga, cinematographer Mark Lapwood, and the entirety of the team deserve to be commended for presenting a genuine history of one of New Zealand’s most significant political and social events — for correcting the record, for countering falsehood and for inspiring those of us who have fought for our rights to continue our fight.

Make no mistake: that coming together in early 2022 had consequences felt within the corridors of political power. We served them notice, with peace, dignity and strength.

And if they think they can pull another fast one, they should think again. We are better prepared.

 

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from River of Freedom

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*** 

The U.K.’s Online Safety Bill (OSB) has passed a critical final stage in the House of Lords, and envisions a potentially vast scheme to surveil internet users. 

The bill would empower the U.K. government, in certain situations, to demand that online platforms use government-approved software to search through all users’ photos, files, and messages, scanning for illegal content. Online services that don’t comply can be subject to extreme penalties, including criminal penalties. 

Such a backdoor scanning system can and will be exploited by bad actors. It will also produce false positives, leading to false accusations of child abuse that will have to be resolved. That’s why the OSB is incompatible with end-to-end encryption—and human rights. EFF has strongly opposed this bill from the start. 

Now, with the bill on the verge of becoming U.K. law, the U.K. government has sheepishly acknowledged that it may not be able to make use of some aspects of this law. During a final debate over the bill, a representative of the government said that orders to scan user files “can be issued only where technically feasible,” as determined by Ofcom, the U.K.’s telecom regulatory agency. He also said any such order must be compatible with U.K. and European human rights law. 

That’s a notable step back, since previously the same representative, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, said in a letter to the House of Lords that the technology that would magically make invasive scanning co-exist with end-to-end encryption already existed. “We have seen companies develop such solutions for platforms with end-to-end encryption before,” wrote Lord Parkinson in that letter. 

Now, Parkinson has come quite close to admitting that such technology does not, in fact, exist. On Tuesday, he said

There is no intention by the Government to weaken the encryption technology used by platforms, and we have built strong safeguards into the Bill to ensure that users’ privacy is protected.

If appropriate technology which meets these requirements does not exist, Ofcom cannot require its use. That is why the powers include the ability for Ofcom to require companies to make best endeavors to develop or source a new solution. 

The same day that these public statements were made, news outlets reported that the U.K. government privately acknowledged that there is no technology that could examine end-to-end encrypted messages while respecting user privacy. 

People Need Privacy, Not Weak Promises

Let’s be clear: weak statements by government ministers, such as the hedging from Lord Parkinson during this week’s debate, are no substitute for real privacy rights. 

Nothing in the law’s text has changed. The OSB gives the U.K. government the right to order message and photo-scanning, and that will harm the privacy and security of internet users worldwide. These powers, enshrined in Clause 122 of the OSB, are now set to become law. After that, the regulator in charge of enforcing the law, Ofcom, will have to devise and publish a set of regulations regarding how the law will be enforced. 

Several companies that provide end-to-end encrypted services have said they will withdraw from the U.K. if Ofcom actually takes the extreme choice of requiring examination of currently encrypted messages. Those companies include Meta-owned WhatsApp, Signal, and U.K.-based Element, among others. 

While it’s the last minute, Members of Parliament still could introduce an amendment with real protections for user privacy, including an explicit protection for real end-to-end encryption.  

Failing that, Ofcom should publish regulations that make clear that there is no available technology that can allow for scanning of user data to co-exist with strong encryption and privacy. 

Finally, lawmakers in other jurisdictions, including the United States, should take heed of the embarrassing result of passing a law that is not just deceptive, but unhinged from computational reality. The U.K. government has insisted that through software “magic,” a system in which they can examine or scan everything will also somehow be a privacy-protecting system. Faced with the reality of this contradiction, the government has turned to an 11th hour campaign to assure people that the powers it has demanded simply won’t be used.

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*** 

Hundreds of Israeli high school students have publicly declared that they will refuse to serve in the army, in protest at the judicial reforms which have caused widespread unrest and controversy in the country in the past year.

Although it is not the first time Israelis have refused military service in protest, the decision by 230 students to boycott the service is the first organised attempt to use refusal as a specific means of opposing the current government’s judicial reforms.

In a statement released on Sunday at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium high school in central Tel Aviv, Youth Against Dictatorship also explicitly tied their cause to opposition to the oppression of the Palestinians.

“As young women and men about to be conscripted into Israeli military service, we say NO to dictatorship in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We hereby declare that we refuse to join the military, until democracy is secured for all who live within the jurisdiction of the Israeli government,” read the statement, which attracted widespread attention and controversy in Israel.

The statement said that the “dictatorship that has existed for decades in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is now oozing into Israel proper and is directed against us.

“Violent settlers now control the entire state. These are not recent developments. Undemocratic attitudes and actions are essential to maintaining this regime of occupation and Jewish supremacy. The only thing that has changed is that the mask is now off. Faced with this reality, we say NO!”

In recent months, the practice of refusing has shifted from exclusively small groups on the radical left to the heart of public discourse in Israel.

Hundreds of reservists announced that they would stop volunteering for reserve service in protest at what many claim is an effective “coup” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose judicial reforms will heavily strengthen parliament against the judiciary.

Former politicians and members of the security establishment have also declared support for the boycott. At a demonstration in Tel Aviv in July, former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said the time had come “to decide on the suspension of volunteering for the reserves until the legislation is completely stopped”.

Former Defence Minister and Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon has also said of reservists who stop their service that he “would have done the same”.

Activists gather at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium high school in central Tel Aviv for the Youth Against Dictatorship event (MEE/Oren Ziv)

Activists gather at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium high school in central Tel Aviv for the Youth Against Dictatorship event (MEE/Oren Ziv)

The statement by the 230 youths is the first organised initiative regarding refusal of mandatory service, which applies in Israel to every man or woman at the age of 18, except for ultra-Orthodox Israelis – who are exempt for religious reasons – and Palestinian citizens of Israel, most of whom are not conscripted.

“The statement makes the connection between the judicial overhaul and the occupation. Those promoting the overhaul in the Knesset are Rotman, Ben Gvir and Smotrich, who are settlers,” said 16-year-old Ella Greenberg Keidar, referring to a number of far-right legislators who have been pushing the judicial reforms.

She told Middle East Eye that the government’s legislation was enabling further construction in the occupied territories and further acts of “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians.

“Beyond criticising settlers and the settlements, we want to talk about the militarism of society that allows such a thing. In addition, the reform was designed to increase the oppression of LGBT people, women and immigrants,” she said.

‘I won’t be a soldier of Ben Gvir’

Some of the signatories said they had planned to refuse to serve even before the current far-right government was formed, while others have consolidated their position in recent months.

Tal Mitnick, 17, told MEE that despite his concerns he had planned to keep his head down and enlist in a non-combat role, so that he would be able to get a career after military service.

“When the protests started, I started to be more active and learn from people around me,” he said. “I decided to publicly refuse. I understood that these army units are backing up the combat units, giving them the intolerance to invade houses and blackmail Palestinians.”

He added that the demonstrations had caused a lot of people to wake up and see the connection between the overhaul and the occupation.

“I personally began to connect things, to see the settlers from the West Bank leading the overhaul, and why it is important for them to weaken the Supreme Court, in order to pass racist laws and annex the territories,” he explained.

Yuval Dag was the first person to be jailed since the new government was formed and the protests began in January.

Dag, who is 20, had taken the decision to refuse military service already, but decided to go public after the new far-right government was elected.

“On the personal level, my attitude has changed – I felt there was an obligation to publicly refuse, in order to present a resistance to the blunt fascist discourse,” he explained to MEE. “In the general public, the slogan of ‘I won’t be a soldier of Ben Gvir’ became acceptable, even in places where the occupation was not discussed, because now there is a demon on the other side.”

Dag served 64 days in military prison before he was released.

“It was a difficult experience in prison… I hope more will refuse and that it will become more acceptable.”

Refusal ‘Common and Accepted’

In July, the Knesset passed a key pillar of the government’s judicial reform package, abolishing Israel’s “reasonableness standard”, eliminating the Supreme Court’s ability to block government decisions it deems unreasonable.
 
Proponents of the plan say it is necessary to restore the balance of power between government branches, while opponents say it will remove checks and balances and undermine the independence of the judicial system.

Attorney Noa Levy, who represents conscientious objectors and advises Youth Against Dictatorship, said that increasing numbers of Israelis taking part in military service had contacted her since the reforms protests began.

Levy told MEE that they said they had lost confidence in the roles assigned to them, and were overwhelmed by doubts following the first mass refusals, prompted by the abolition of the reasonableness standard.

For older “refuseniks”, the new wave of Israelis refusing to serve is heartening.

David Zonsheine, 50, is co-founder of the Courage to Refuse group that refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s. 

He was jailed in 2002 after he refused to serve as a reservist in the Palestinian territories.

“More than 20 years ago, we were struggling to return Israel to the morally good place they thought it once was,” he told MEE.

“We used our uniform in order to speak to the public – they understand the army itself is the problem, as it produces all the right-wing ideology, even more extreme than Ben Gvir.”

Zonsheine said that while he was still guarding his expectations, it was a positive fact that refusal was now “common and accepted”.

“The protests against the overhaul shifted the focus from the army to the regime,” he explained. “We stated we won’t serve because of what the army is doing to Palestinians; they state that they won’t serve in an army of a regime because of its actions against Israeli Jews. Now we need to explain the problems beyond that.”

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Featured image: Activists sign a statement for the Youth Against Dictatorship event at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium high school in Tel Aviv (MEE/Oren Ziv)

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*** 

Redacted is proud to present “Peace, War and 9/11.” In this captivating documentary filmed six months before his passing, eminent scholar and lifelong peace activist Graeme MacQueen shares his final words on 9/11, the 2001 anthrax attacks, and the goal of abolishing war.

“Peace, War and 9/11” is a production of the International Center for 9/11 Justice (https://IC911.org; https://twitter.com/ic911justice). It is directed by Ted Walter and Richard Heap. Executive producers are Ted Walter and Marilyn Langlois. It is distributed by Questar Entertainment/Hipstr.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

Division Versus Unification: G20 Meeting in India

September 12th, 2023 by Peter Koenig

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*** 

Background

Security is tight in India ahead of the G20 summit at the weekend.

The two-day summit aimed to address issues of global concern like economy, food and energy security as well as the war in Ukraine. However, there are divisions at the G20 over those issues, especially the Ukraine war.

That has already raised doubts whether participants would be able to put together a final declaration.

The West, led by the US, wants a clear condemnation of the Ukraine conflict. China and Russia don’t accept that. Plus, leaders from these two countries are not attending the summit.

Instead, the Russian foreign minister and the Chinese premier are scheduled to attend. That makes things harder. Developing countries’ repayment of their debts is another thorny issue in the event.

Leaders of G20 countries gather in the Indian capital, New Delhi, for their annual summit on the weekend. The Group of 20 is an inter-governmental forum made up of the European Union and 19 rich countries.

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PressTV: What is your take on this rather divided than unified G20 summit?

Peter Koenig (PK): At the outset it looks like the meeting started off on a wrong foot.

It appears it was designed to divide the already divided world even further – rather than what the world population strives for – a world in harmony and peace.

For starters, two of the key representatives of the G20 are shining by their absence.

Russia’s President Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping will not attend the Delhi conference, instead, the countries will be represented by their Russian Foreign Ministers and by the Chinese Premier Li Qiang.

Let me just insert a little anecdote on division – isn’t it absurd that the western invented “rules-based order” in the current US tennis open, where the Russian tennis star, Daniil Medvedev, just qualified for the final tomorrow, is not even allowed to play under his country’s flag?

How is it possible that the world population allows a bunch of sick elitists to control the world population?

Back to the G20.

China and Russia are also key representatives of the new BRICS-11. The new BRICS do not even appear to be a key topic for the G20.

Just to remind – the G20 do not have the status even of an international NGO. They are nothing but a loosely assembled group of countries – mostly western countries – who pretend to be the leaders of the world and believe they are calling the shots on world affairs.

As to the G20 Agenda – looks like the key topics to be discussed are Climate Change, Debt, Multinational Corporation Taxation, currency regulation, Food and Energy Security and Sustainability, and Geopolitical Conflict.

The New BRICS do not even appear to be an agenda item.

They seem to be purposefully ignored – but can they be ignored?

This omission might as well be a new “world dividing line”.

Never mind the geopolitical numbers favor the G20 over the BRICS-11 – now. 

But this is just a temporary – and fast changing appearance.

  • G20 – Population: 4.7 billion  (but the G20 include also many of the “old” original BRICS)
  • G20 – GDP: about 86% of World GDP  (2023 est. US$105 trillion = ~90 trillion)
  • BRICS-11 – Population: 3.5 billion (~46% of world population)
  • BRICS-11 – GDP: about 30% of World GDP (~ US$ 32.0 trillion)

As many of the BRICS-11 are also members of the G20, keep in mind, the BRICS-11 – next year may potentially increase by another 6 to 8 members.

The G20 is an “assembly” created by the west – without even an NGO status – which is clearly expressed by the controversial and western made world problems (hoaxes, lies and deceits) – reflected by their agenda.

Whereas the new BRICS’s agenda and future is seeking solutions to bring peace and harmony to the world, facilitating free trade without conflicts and – especially – without sanctions.

Trade within a dollar-free monetary system is a key priority of the new BRICS.

The BRICS-11 appears to attempt cooperating with ethics and a sense of freedom, whereas the motives of the G20 – as well as the G7 – are control and submission.

Just take the debt issue which is enslaving the Global South even further, mostly by the IMF, World Bank, and the variety of regional development banks, set up to fill the gaps.

The only sustainable solution is a general debt forgiveness, to bring the world back to an even playing field, to bring a breath of justice and equality into a new multipolar world order.

Although it would be premature to predict the outcome of the summit – the signals given by planning the G20 conference on the heels of the BRICS summit – is tantamount to seeking conflict and division.

*

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

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

The Hypocrisy of Sanctions

September 12th, 2023 by Peter Koenig

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*** 

A few days ago, Belgian Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten requested the European Union to reduce importing Russian gas and get rid altogether of fossil fuels by 2027. This after the Global Witness NGO released data showing that Belgium is currently the third-largest importer of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Belgium accounts globally for 17% of Russia’s exports, behind only China and Spain.

Later in an interview with the Financial Times, Van der Straeten said she was “not happy” about the fact that Russian gas kept flowing into Europe. She then understated Belgium’s share of Russian gas, indicating it was merely 2.8% of Europe’s imports remained in Belgium, the rest was “in transit”. How wrong or misleading her statement was, is revealed by the Global Witness NGO.  

She admitted, though Belgium supports sanctions on Russian fuel, it was unlikely to happen. It would require the unanimous support of all EU members.

Earlier this week, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer admitted that Russian LNG was difficult to replace, pointing out that while it was “not cheaper than any other” gas, the way the pipeline system is arranged in Europe makes it difficult to substitute.

There is no end to excuses and pretexts in explaining why Europe must continue to import Russian hydrocarbons. Amazing. No word about the European economy which is at the brink of total collapse. Maybe Germany has already passed the point of no return. 

And no word of course that this suicidal path to follow the Washington Masters – and their overlords dictate — is due to an utterly corrupt European leadership, combined with the equally corrupt strongest economy’s leadership, Germany – something that has hardly been seen in recent history. 

How vassalic must you be to commit suicide on the orders of Washington – and the corporate financial overlords who pull the strings on Washington, pretending to run the world.

And they may, if we just stand by and watch. 

See also this by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts about the west’s lost integrity – The Disappearance of Integrity: Organized Suppression of the Facts, Only Writers Who Support “Official Narratives” Are Tolerated.

This is just the beginning. The EU Russian energy apologists start talking about energy imports from Russia – and how it is necessary for now – but also how to wean themselves off Russian energy dependence very, very soon. 

The Guardian puts it this way:

“EU countries bought 22m cubic meters of Russian LNG between January and July 2023, compared with 15m during the same period in 2021, Global Witness said. “Buying Russian gas has the same impact as buying Russian oil. Both fund the war in Ukraine, and every euro means more bloodshed.” See this.

This is, of course, a mainstream media blow on Russia. Never a reason or history on how NATO provoked the war in Ukraine.

This is just part of the story. What the holy west and particularly the vassal-EU does not mention are the other more than 100 essential products they keep importing from Russia at ever larger quantities despite the sanctions. 

This table speaks for itself 

European Union Imports from Russia Value Year
Mineral fuels, oils, distillation products $155.87B 2022
Iron and steel $5.91B 2022
Pearls, precious stones, metals, coins $3.70B 2022
Nickel $3.39B 2022
Aluminum $2.99B 2022
Copper $2.94B 2022
Commodities not specified according to kind $2.77B 2022
Fertilizers $2.70B 2022
Inorganic chemicals, precious metal compound, isotope $2.26B 2022
Wood and articles of wood, wood charcoal $1.70B 2022
Organic chemicals $1.31B 2022
Fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatics invertebrates $990.39M 2022

And the list goes on – another 82 lines of imports.

2022 EU Imports from Russia are the 3rd largest since 2013, despite sanctions. 

People are fooled.

Europe cannot live without imports from Russia.

So, what are the sanctions for?

Propaganda?

Russia bashing?

Your mind control?

Another legitimate question one may ask – why does Russia sell to the sanctioning countries?

Russia does not really need Europe and the US for trade and for economic survival.

President Putin’s Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, recently said that Russia is doing well and growing, despite western sanctions. See this. 

Russia is well integrated into the Asian complex, is a co-founder of the original BRICS and now the new BRICS-11. Russia is also a key player in the Global South which becomes ever more important on the global stage. 

Uranium imports by the US and Europe from Russia is another unwritten sheet and rarely published news.

Russia sold about $1.7 billion in nuclear products to firms in the U.S. and Europe, and this despite the western stiff sanctions, due to the western provoked war in Ukraine. The West calls it a Russian invasion. In reality, it was a NATO-triggered move for preserving Russian sovereignty – and against some 20 to 30 war-grade biolabs in the Ukraine, built and funded by the US. See this.

“The United States’ uranium purchases from Russia have doubled since last year. The U.S. bought 416 tons of uranium from Russia in the first half of the year, more than double the amount for the same period in 2022 and the highest level since 2005.”

One may question the seriousness of the US Russia bashing, especially since according to a report by RT, Russia is supplying the U.S. only with enriched uranium, a critical component for civil nuclear power generation, but also for nuclear weapons – according to a report by RT. 

How come Russia is selling Washington weapon-grade enriched uranium? 

See full report.

Given the foregoing inconsistencies with “sanctions” – mind you, highly publicized sanctions – how serious can the West be taken? 

The world must wake up. People of western countries, whose democracy has long been abolished, trampled by the tyrannical western powers “rules-based order”, must stand up against these rulers, invent alternatives to their corporate financial empires and build a world of peace and harmony outside the dictatorial matrix.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

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

Featured image is from OneWorld

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*** 

U.S. drug regulators on Sept. 11 cleared new COVID-19 vaccines to try to counter the poor effectiveness provided by the current options.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared shots from Moderna and Pfizer that will be available to Americans as young as 6 months old later this month.

“Vaccination remains critical to public health and continued protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death,” Dr. Peter Marks, a top FDA official, said in a statement. “We very much encourage those who are eligible to consider getting vaccinated.”

The FDA approved the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for people aged 12 and older. Regulators granted emergency authorization for the shots for people aged 6 months to 11 years.

There was no mention of Novavax, whose vaccine is also currently available in the United States.

The shots target XBB.1.5, a subvariant of the Omicron virus variantThat subvariant has already largely been displaced by newer strains, including EG.5, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The authorizations came despite a dearth of data from clinical trials.

Moderna stated that in a trial, its new shot induced immune responses against EG.5, also known as Eris, and other newer variants.

Pfizer stated that preclinical data have shown that antibodies generated by its new vaccine “effectively neutralize” EG.5.

The new shots were authorized based on studies on neutralizing antibody levels that appeared to show “a similar magnitude to the extent of neutralization observed with prior versions of the vaccines against corresponding prior variants against which they had been developed to provide protection,” the FDA stated. “This suggests that the vaccines are a good match for protecting against the currently circulating COVID-19 variants.”

The CDC plans to meet with its advisers on Sept. 12 to consider which populations it should recommend receive the new vaccines. If the panel recommends a vaccine, the federal government must pay for it.

Many countries have suggested that younger, healthy people not receive COVID-19 vaccinations as the disease has died down.

The United Kingdom, for instance, in August, said that vaccination this fall was recommended only for select groups, including people designated as at-risk.

The CDC scaled back its recommendations earlier this year for some populations.

CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said earlier this year that the CDC was poised to recommend annual COVID-19 shots.

Pfizer and Moderna have said the new shots will cost about $110 to $130.

Number of Shots

The new vaccinations are cleared for varying numbers of shots, depending on age group and prior vaccination.

People aged 5 years and older, whether or not they’ve received a vaccine, are eligible to receive a single dose of one of the new shots.

Children aged 6 months through 4 years who have previously been vaccinated can receive one or two doses of one of the new vaccines.

Children in that age group who haven’t been vaccinated can receive three doses of the new Pfizer vaccine or two doses of the new Moderna vaccine.

Another Replacement

The FDA cleared, and the CDC recommended, updated shots in the fall of 2022 amid waning effectiveness.

Those shots were bivalent, containing components of the Wuhan strain and Omicron.

Those shots haven’t performed well against infection or severe disease, according to observational data. They were authorized and recommended based on animal testing.

Just 17 percent of the U.S. population had received a bivalent dose as of May 10, the most recent date the CDC lists data for. Some doctors have opted against receiving them.

The FDA stated that it expects to update the vaccines on an annual basis, as it does with influenza vaccines.

A survey of more than 2,000 adults in Arizona found that the primary reason for not receiving a bivalent was having protection from prior infection.

Other common reasons included wariness about side effects and the belief that the booster wouldn’t add protection.

Novavax

Novavax said its newer shot performed well against newer variants, but the FDA didn’t clear it. Novavax said in a statement that its updated vaccine is “under review” by the FDA.

“We still expect to be available this fall and anticipate we will be a player for the season,” a Novavax spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

An FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email: “Questions about the application’s current status may be directed to the company. As the FDA has done throughout the pandemic, we will make information available as appropriate.”

Criticism

Some experts have criticized U.S. authorities for clearing the new shots without strong data.

 

“There’s essentially no data,” Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said at a recent press conference. “Not only that, but there are a lot of red flags.”

He pointed to studies finding that the effectiveness of the vaccines turns negative over time.

Other papers have found that the vaccines cause cardiac problems such as heart inflammation, the doctor noted.

“It’s truly irresponsible for FDA, CDC, and others to be championing something … when we don’t know the implications of it,” he said.

Dr. Paul Offit, an FDA adviser, suggested to the UK’s Daily Mail that younger, healthy people who have already been vaccinated don’t need one of the new doses.

“We are best served by targeting these booster doses to those who are most at risk of severe disease,” such as people older than 75, Dr. Offit said. “Boosting otherwise healthy young people is a low-risk, low-reward strategy.”

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Zachary Stieber is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times based in Maryland. He covers U.S. and world news.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

Did Musk Really Prevent ‘Crimean Mini-Pearl Harbor’?

September 12th, 2023 by Drago Bosnic

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*** 

Elon Musk is often portrayed as a controversial figure by the mainstream propaganda machine, while the more alternative media try to present him as some sort of an “anti-establishment hero”.

He was previously even targeted by the Kiev regime for allegedly refusing to provide his Starlink network assets for military purposes. It’s unclear what his exact motivation to do so was (or whether he even did it in the first place), but it can be assumed that he was afraid of stoking the anger of Russia, a military superpower armed with anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons.

What’s more, China, one of the largest and most important markets (as well as the base of operations) for several of Musk’s companies, also threatened to deploy its own ASAT weapons in case the Starlink network were to be used against Beijing’s forces in a potential confrontation in the Asia-Pacific.

In recent days, several media outlets claimed that Musk allegedly ordered SpaceX engineers to covertly turn off the Starlink network near the coast of Crimea last year to disrupt what is being described as a “mini-Pearl Harbor” sneak attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The theory is based on an excerpt adapted from Walter Isaacson’s new biography titled “Elon Musk”. According to Isaacson’s writings, sea drones launched by the Neo-Nazi junta were about to approach the ships of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, but “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”. Musk’s reasoning was allegedly based on “an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons, a fear driven home by Musk’s conversations with senior Russian officials”. There is no solid evidence for Isaacson’s claims or that Musk ever spoke to any Russian officials.

The idea that Russia would respond with nuclear weapons is a very common trope used by the mainstream propaganda machine which is trying to present Moscow as incapable of accomplishing anything without using the “nuclear card”.

However, the Eurasian giant has already demonstrated its ability to disrupt Musk’s much-touted Starlink network with electronic warfare (EW) assets. On the other hand, even Western media admitted that NATO’s ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) platforms were to provide direct support to Kiev regime forces during this “mini-Pearl Harbor”. It was due to this that Musk allegedly pulled the plug, as he believed it would’ve caused World War Three. However, had he truly disrupted such an important military operation led by the United States and NATO, the likelihood of him walking free is near zero.

In simpler terms, no sovereign country would allow a civilian to interfere with (let alone prevent) military operations, especially not those of such a scale. Thus, Musk’s claims about this “mini-Pearl Harbor” are questionable, at best. According to CNN, Musk did not respond to their request for comment, although he responded to the excerpt from Isaacson’s book on Twitter (now officially known as X). Namely, he stated that Starlink was never active over Crimea and that the Neo-Nazi junta supposedly made an “emergency request” to SpaceX, asking them to turn it on.

“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk stated, adding: “The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Not wanting to cause escalation that could turn into a world-ending thermonuclear conflict is certainly commendable – if that’s what actually happened. However, Musk’s close cooperation with the Pentagon casts serious doubts on the claims that he’s trying to “save the world”. In fact, even Musk’s insistence that SpaceX was supposedly “donating” tens of thousands of Starlink terminals to the Neo-Nazi junta proved to be bogus, as several sources revealed that the US government covertly paid for them, specifically through USAID, a State Department agency that regularly serves as a regime-change tool used by Washington DC’s extensive global intelligence network.

What’s more, even Isaacson himself admitted that SpaceX made a deal with the US and EU that resulted in another 100,000 new satellite dishes being sent to the Kiev regime in early 2023. However, as the Russian military finds new ways to disrupt the network, SpaceX signed new contracts with the Pentagon, including the official militarization of the network that is supposed to turn it into Starshield. And this is far from the only military contract Musk has. SpaceX itself relies almost solely on government contracts, particularly when it comes to putting satellites in orbit. Expectedly, civilians aren’t exactly interested (or legally allowed) to launch rockets strapped with spy satellites. But governments, especially their ministries of defense, certainly are.

SpaceX is also engaged in close cooperation with other companies from the infamous US Military Industrial Complex (MIC), such as its current flagship, the notorious Lockheed Martin. Namely, back in 2018, SpaceX was contracted to launch Lockheed Martin’s GPS satellites into orbit, a project worth over half a billion dollars. USAF claimed that the project would supposedly benefit civilians, increasing the accuracy of GPS devices, but the very fact that one of the most powerful branches of the US military was behind it tells us all we need to know. The very idea that an organization whose main purpose is killing people with its numerous airborne platforms is solely interested in providing us with better Google Maps accuracy is simply laughable.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Canada’s Freedom Convoy Truckers Go on Trial

September 12th, 2023 by Leila Mechoui

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*** 

This week, the trial of Canada’s two main leaders of the trucker protests began. The lead prosecutor has argued that Tamara Lich and Chris Barber “crossed the line” and “committed multiple crimes” while insisting that this trial will not be about the truckers’ political views. The pair face charges including mischief, counselling others to commit mischief, intimidation, and obstructing the police. They face a maximum of 10 years in prison should they be convicted.

The trial is just beginning and has so far featured testimony from Crown witnesses. As is common for criminal trials in Canada, it is not overseen by a jury and will be ruled upon by a judge only. The facts of the case are not in dispute — the protests and its leaders heavily documented their experience and spread it widely through social media. The issue at stake is whether their actions were criminal. Lich and Barber maintain that they were not seeking to commit crime.

Instead, they were exercising their Charter right of peaceful protest to oppose the years-long Covid-19 vaccine mandates. As Lich and Barber’s lawyers explained:

“We do not expect this to be the trial of the Freedom Convoy. The central issue will be whether the actions of two of the organisers of a peaceful protest should warrant criminal sanction.”

Nonetheless, the Canadian media has done much to paint the peaceful 2022 winter protest as violent, commonly using hyperbolic words such as “occupation” and “sedition” to describe the event.

Yet the demands of the truckers were fundamentally peaceful, asking for a return to the pre-pandemic status quo. Indeed, these demands were not even out of line with multiple jurisdictions at that point — for example, the United Kingdom had dropped the majority of its Covid protocols — and yet its main leaders are facing time in prison.

The Freedom Convoy was the high watermark, and for a time, many (including myself) were convinced that the truckers would finally bring the government to the table. Instead, the protestors were completely rebuffed and, eventually, violently quashed. What was meant to be an intrinsic part of the democratic process — that is, the protection of fundamental minority rights and open discourse — was replaced with undemocratic tactics involving political and physical force, trials presided over by judges, and perpetuated by both the media and politicians.

This trial will no doubt have a chilling effect on future protests against the next bureaucratic overreach, the frontier of which seems to be on the limits of free expression. The truth is that Canada can only thrive when it respects the rights and opinions of all its citizens, offering venues for an airing of differences. But with no venues remaining, the only way forward seems to be the criminalisation of reasonable deviations from the party line, which means a less peaceful and cohesive nation. This future is nothing short of frightening.

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Featured image: Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber wait for the Public Order Emergency Commission to begin, on Nov. 1, 2022 in Ottawa. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

Ukraine’s Bandera Itch

September 12th, 2023 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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*** 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 has been justified by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “special military operation” with a few barbed purposes, among them cleaning the country’s stables of Nazis. As with so many instances of history, it was not entirely untrue, though particularly convenient for Moscow. At the core of many a nationalist movement beats a reactionary heart, and the trauma-strewn stretch that is Ukrainian history is no exception.

A central figure in this drama remains Stepan Bandera, whose influence during the Second World War have etched him into the annals of Ukrainian history. His appearance in the Russian rationale for invading Ukraine has given his spirit a historical exit clause, something akin to rehabilitation. This has been helped by the scant coverage, and knowledge of the man outside the feverish nationalist imaginings that continue to sustain him.

Since his 1959 assassination, the subject of Bandera as one of the foremost Ukrainian nationalists has lacked any lengthy treatment.  Then came Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe’s door stop of a work in 2014, which charted the links between Bandera’s nationalist thought, various racially-minded sources such as Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi, who dreamed of a Ukraine cleansed of Russians, Poles, Magyars, Romanians and Jews, and the role of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was founded in Vienna in 1929 by Yevhen Konovalets and Andriy Melnyk.

Notwithstanding the cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic composition of the territories that would become modern Ukraine, the OUN specialised in the babble of homogenous identity and purity.  A hatred of Jews was more than casual: it was integral.  They were, to quote the waspish words of Yuri Lylianych in Rozbudova Natsii (Rebuilding the Nation), the official OUN journal, “an alien and many of them even a hostile element of the Ukrainian national organism.”

For his part, Bandera, son of a nationalist Greek Catholic priest, was a zealot, self-tormentor and flagellator. As head of the Ukrainian Nationalists, Bandera got busy, blooding himself with such terrorist attacks as the 1934 assassination of the Polish Minister of the Interior Bronisław Pieracki. He was fortunate that his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, not that it stopped him from bellowing “Slava Ukrayiny!”

Followers of Bandera came to be known as the Banderowzi. During the second week after the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Banderowzi, flushed with confidence, declared a Ukrainian state in Lemberg. The occasion was celebrated a few days with a pogrom against Jews in the city. It remains unclear, however, where the orders came from. With the Germans finding Bandera’s followers a nuisance and ill-fitting to their program, they were reduced in importance to the level of police units and sent to Belarus. On being transferred to Volhynia in Ukraine, many melted into the forests to form the future UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army).

For its part, the OUN, aided by the good services of the Ukrainian citizenry, assisted the Third Reich slaughter 800,000 Jews in western Ukraine. The UPA, as historian Jaroslav Hryzak writes, proceeded to fight all and sundry, be they units of the German Army, red partisans, the Polish underground army, and other Ukrainian nationalists. Volhynia and Galicia were sites of frightful slaughter by the UPA, with the number of murdered Poles running upwards of 100,000. One target remained enduring – at least for five years. From 1944 to 1949, remnants of the UPA and OUN were fixated with the Soviets while continuing a campaign of terror against eastern Ukrainians transferred to Volhynia and Galicia as administrators or teachers, along with alleged informers and collaborators.

Oddly enough, Bandera as a historically active figure played less of a direct role in the war as is sometimes thought, leaving the Banderowzi to work their violence in the shadow of his myth and influence. From the Polish prison he was kept in, he escaped after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939.  In the summer of 1941, he anticipated a more direct role in the conflict as future Prowidnyk (leader) but was arrested by the Germans following the Lviv proclamation of a Ukrainian state On June 30, 1941.

Prior to his arrest, however, he had drafted, with the aid of such deputies as Stepan Shukhevych, Stepan Lenkavs’kyi and Iaroslva Stes’ko, an internal party document ominously entitled, “The Struggle and Activities of the OUN in Wartime.” In it, purification is cherished, one that will scrub Ukrainian territory of “Muscovites, Poles, and Jews” with a special focus on those protecting the Soviet regime.

Following his arrest, Bandera spent time in Berlin. From there, he had a stint as a political prisoner of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. His time in detention did little to quell the zeal of his followers, who went along their merry way butchering in the name of their cult leader. After the war, he settled in Munich with his family, but was eventually identified by a KGB agent and murdered in 1959.

Bandera offers a slice of historical loathing and reverence for a good number of parties: as a figure of the Holocaust, an opportunistic collaborator, a freedom fighter. Even within Ukraine, the split between the reverential West and the loathing East remained.  In January 2010, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko declared Bandera a Hero of Ukraine.

In 2020, Poland and Israel jointly rebuked the city government of Kyiv via its ambassadors for sporting banners connected with the nationalist figure. Bandera’s portrait made an appearance on a municipal building at the conclusion of a January 1 march honouring the man’s 111th birthday, with hundreds of individuals in attendance.

In their letter to the city state administration, ambassadors Bartosz Cichocki and Joel Lion of Poland and Israel respectively expressed their “great concern and sorrow… that Ukraine’s authorities of different levels: Lviv Oblast Council and the Kyiv City State Administration continue to cherish people and historical events, which has to be once and forever condemned.”

The ambassadors also expressed concern to the Lviv Oblast for tolerating its celebration of a number of other figures: Andriy Melnyk, another Third Reich collaborator whose blood lust was less keen than that of Bandera’s followers; Ivan Lypa, “the Anti-Semite, Antipole and xenophobe writer,” along with his son, Yurii Lypa, “who wrote the racist theory of the Ukrainian Race.”

The stubborn Bandera itch can manifest at any given moment. In July 2022, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, as it so happens another Andriy Melnyk, misjudged the mood by airing his views about Bandera. He insisted that the nationalist figure had been needlessly libelled; he “was not a mass murderer of Jews and Poles” and nor was there evidence to suggest otherwise.   The same Melnyk had also accused the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of being a “beleidigte Leberwurst” (offended liver sausage), a delightful term reserved for the thin-skinned.

As ambassadors are usually expected to be vessels of government opinion, such conduct should have been revealing enough, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s decision to remove Melnyk from his Berlin post was put down to “a normal part of diplomatic practice.” A likelier explanation lies in the furore the pro-Bandera remarks caused in the Israeli Embassy (“a distortion of the historical facts,” raged the official channel, not to mention belittling “the Holocaust and is an insult to those who were murdered by Bandera and his people) and Poland (“such an opinion and such words are absolutely unacceptable,” snapped the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz).

Despite his removal from the post, messages of regret and condolences flowed from a number of his German hosts, suggesting that the butcher-adoration-complex should be no barrier to respect in times of conflict. “The fact that he did not always strike the diplomatic tone here is more than understandable in view of the incomprehensible war crimes and the suffering of the Ukrainian people,” reasoned the foreign policy spokesman of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) parliamentary group, Roderich Kiesewetter. Bandera would surely have approved the sentiment.

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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 Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics

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*** 

Mystery blue lights were seen flashing in the sky just moments before the horror earthquake that killed 2,000 people in Morocco.

The intriguing bursts of light were captured on CCTV at a home in Agadir approximately three minutes before the disaster.

https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=117ddy_0oRghFPy00

Mystery blue lights were spotted in the sky moments before the Morocco earthquake

https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=43WMwX_0oRghFPy00

The intriguing footage was captured on CCTV at a home in Agadir

The short clip on X shows a single blue flash on the top left corner of the shot, followed by a second burst of light seconds later.

A similar phenomenon has been observed before the earthquake in Turkey earlier this year, which claimed the lives of 45,000 people.

The first recorded instance of earthquake lights on camera dates back to 1965 during a Japanese earthquake, The Jerusalem Post reports.

The mysterious lights have also been observed in China in 2008, Italy in 2009, and Mexico in 2017.

The cause of earthquake lights, or EQLs, remains shrouded in mystery, leaving unanswered questions about whether it serves as some sort of ominous sign of impending disasters.

Scientists suggest that this may be the release of energy as a result of the movement of lithospheric plates, National Geographic reports. 

Analysing 65 earthquake light incidents for patterns in a 2014 study, adjunct physics professor and and NASA researcher Friedemann Freund described the phenomenon “as if you switched on a battery in the Earth’s crust”.

On Saturday, Morocco woke up to devastating damage following a major 7.2-magnitude earthquake – making it one of the deadliest disasters the country has seen for over 120 years.

More than 2,000 people are dead and 2,059 are injured after the monster tremor struck just after 11pm local time on Friday.

People were sent fleeing in terror from buildings, and those who could not escape were killed as houses collapsed in the quake in Morocco.

The shaking lasted several seconds and a 4.9-magnitude aftershock was recorded 19 minutes later.

The city of Marrakesh was shaken – but the villages in the country’s remote High Atlas mountains bore the brute of the devastation.

Morroco is also popular with tourists, with the country welcoming some 700,000 Brits every year.

Dozens of Brits broke off from holidays and business trips to queue for hours to give blood, with others planning supply runs into areas worst hit by the shocks.

Others were setting up field kitchens for quake victims left homeless and hungry by the 6.8 magnitude Moroccan quake, which wiped villages off the map south of Marrakesh.

Britain’s ­Foreign Office said it was sending 60 search and rescue specialists, four search dogs and equipment to the scene.

Teams are flying out on two huge RAF transporters provided by the MoD.

British NHS medics are also standing ready to airlift fully staffed mobile field hospitals to the disaster zone.

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In Order to Save the Whales, We Must Kill the Whales

September 12th, 2023 by Ben Bartee

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*** 

That’s how The Science™ works, boys and girls. Respect it, or be made to answer to the Department of Homeland Security, bigot.

If you live on the East Coast of the U.S., chances are you’ve seen and/or heard tell of the increasing-in-frequency local news reports on the dead-whale-washing-up-on-shore phenomenon.

Via Michael Shellenberger:

“A new documentary, ‘Thrown To The Wind,’ by Director and Producer Jonah Markowitz, proves that the US government officials have been lying. The full film, which is at the bottom of this article, documents surprisingly loud, high-decibel sonar emitted by wind industry vessels when measured with state-of-the-art hydrophones. And it shows that the wind industry’s increased boat traffic is correlated directly with specific whale deaths.

The documentary may not stop the industrial wind projects from being built. After all, the wind projects were going forward despite urgent warnings from leading conservation groups and a top scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

But ‘Thrown To The Wind’ exposes the reality that the U.S. government agencies, and the scientists who work for them, either haven’t done the basic mapping and acoustic research to back up their claims, have done the research badly, or found what we found, and are covering it up.”

Anyway, what’s a few thousand dead whales when a totalitarian social control agenda is on the line?  You want to make a climate change omelet, you’re gonna have to break some marine mammal eggs.

Let’s remember that, as a carbon-based life form, you — and the whales — are the carbon the technocrats want to get rid of.

Allow self-appointed depopulation commissar and psychopathic nerd Bill Gates to explain:

Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year — over 26 billion tons… And somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero… This equation has four factors, a little bit of multiplication. …

So you’ve got a thing on the left, CO2, that you want to get to zero, and that’s going to be based on the number of people, the services each person is using on average, the energy, on average, for each service, and the CO2 being put out per unit of energy. So let’s look at each one of these, and see how we can get this down to zero. Probably, one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero.  [Frame cuts to graphic of humans, audience obediently laughs at the prospect of their own demise.]

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This article was originally published on Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Unsplash

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*** 

 

 

2023 Aug.14 – Los Angeles, CA – 12 year old Cash Addy was visiting Korea with his parents when he started complaining of chest pains. He was COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated but didn’t have COVID. He was taken to the hospital, diagnosed with myocarditis, had cardiac arrest, was put on life support and eventually received a heart transplant on July 20. Sadly, he had complications post transplant, developed clotting and hemorrhage in the brain and died.

Click here to view the video.

2023 June 30 – Cardiff, Wales – 16 year old Osian Jones had three heart attacks after developing MISC-C (Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children).

Osian became unwell in Feb. 2023, had three heart attacks from a syndrome typically seen after COVID-19 Vaccination, and received his heart transplant on June 30, 2023.

Sadly, he remains in INTENSIVE CARE, a sign that the heart transplant is not doing well.

He is presumed to be COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated as BBC propagandists who wrote his story would have been all over his vaccine status if he was unvaccinated.

2023 May 19 – Lebanon, NH – 16 year old Joshua Park is the captain of his high school track team, indoor rock climber and outstanding scholar.

In Feb.2023 he was seen by doctors 5 times before being diagnosed with heart failure.

In March 2023 he was diagnosed with “idiopathic cardiomyopathy”, his heart failed and he was put on LVAD (left ventricular assist device is a mechanical pump that is implanted inside a person’s chest) on Mar.16.

He received a heart transplant on May 19, 2023 and had post-transplant complications of BLOOD CLOTS from his left clavicle to his left arm.

He was discharged on June 6, 2023.

2023 March 20 – 17 year old Markus Martinez, former Columbine High School football star, now a senior at Bear Creek High School, suffered a major heart attack November 17, 2022, received heart transplant Jan.26, 2023 and has had clotting problems ever since. In March 2023, they pulled a 9 inch blood clot out of his groin!

Click here to view the video

2021 June 11 – Evanston, Illinois – 19 year old student Simone Scott had heart failure 2 weeks after her 2nd Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccine she got on May 1, 2021, had a heart transplant on May 23, 2021, then died from complications on June 11, 2021.

Simone Scott, a 19 year old journalism student, received her first dose of ModernaCOVID-19 mRNA vaccine on April 3, 2021, and her second dose on May 1, 2021. She started feeling ill almost right away and two weeks later was unable to walk. (click here)

Doctors told her mother that Simone suffered heart failure due to myocarditis and needed immediate surgery. Simone was placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine the next day. Simone was transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital and had a heart transplant on May 23, 2021 (3 weeks after her 2nd Moderna dose).

Doctors said the new heart worked well. But Simone’s lungs endured a lot of damage from both the medications and breathing machines and she died on June 11, 2021.

A Successful Heart Transplant 

2023 March 20 – Cincinnati, OH – 18 year old Ebonie Sherwood, high level athlete at Stebbins High School, collapsed during track practice on Mar.7, 2023, her heart was not healing and she had a heart transplant 2 weeks later. She seems to be doing ok at this time.

My Take… 

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are destroying the hearts of young adults and children and we have not begun to see the full extent of these injuries.

I have documented DOZENS of such cases on my substack.

One thing you’ll notice about these cases is just how rapid the cardiac deterioration is. These kids often need a heart transplant within weeks to survive.

This is not a “mild myocarditis” or a “mild cardiomyopathy”. In the case of 18 year old Ebonie Sherwood who had a cardiac arrest at track practice, her heart was not healing and she needed a heart transplant which she got 2 weeks later.

In the case of 12 year old Los Angeles boy Cash Addy, he had chest pains, was taken to hospital where he almost died, was put on life support and got a new heart within a month.

I can do an entirely separate substack article on how many previously healthy teenagers had COVID-19 vaccines and now they are waiting for a heart transplant or will need one in the very near future; here are just a few examples:

A Heart Transplant does not fix the underlying problem, however. These kids receive a new heart that almost certainly has COVID-19 vaccine spike protein throughout – which may cause new immune reactions, while continuing to suffer COVID-19 vaccine spike protein injuries that destroyed their original heart in the first place, because their useless Transplant team never took any steps to detox them from the spike protein.

This includes blood clots, aneurysms, abnormal immune processes and more.

Quick look at the Literature:

  • 2023 Feb – Poglajen et al – Long-Term Safety and Efficacy of Mrna Sars-Cov2 Vaccination in Heart Transplant Recipients
  • 6% of heart transplant patients had WORSENING of heart function within 1 month after 2nd mRNA vaccine dose.
  • Conclusion: “mRNA SARS-CoV2 vaccination may be associated with worsening of allograft function
  • 2022 Oct – Goda et al – Efficacy and safety of the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine in lung transplant recipients: a possible trigger of rejection
  • authors examined 18 lung transplant patients who had 2 doses of mRNA vaccine.
  • 2/18 (11%) developed lung transplant dysfunction or rejection.
  • 2022 Feb – Bau et al – Acute Kidney Allograft Rejection Following Coronavirus mRNA Vaccination: A Case Report
  • 53 year old man had 2nd Moderna mRNA vaccine and started having signs of renal transplant rejection 24 hours later.
  • 2022 Apr – Hume et al – A Case Series of Patients With Acute Liver Allograft Rejection After Anti–SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination
  • 3 patients had moderate to severe rejection of their liver transplant within 2 weeks of their mRNA vaccine
  • Conclusion: “This case series suggests that there may be a causal link between the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and allograft rejection in susceptible liver transplant recipients. The temporal relationship between receipt of the vaccine, onset of symptoms, and subsequent liver biochemistry derangement is highly suggestive that the vaccine was at least partially responsible for the onset of rejection.”
  • 2022 Dec – Zeidenweber et al – Acute Endothelial Allograft Rejection After Inoculation With the Novel Messenger RNA SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines
  • Three patients presented with corneal endothelial rejection 3 weeks after the second dose of a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine
  • Conclusion: “corneal endothelial rejection associated with COVID-19 vaccines may be sufficiently severe to result in irreversible graft failure
  • 2022 Jan – Shah et al4 cases of corneal transplant rejection after Moderna
  • 2022 May – Molero-Senosiain et al 5 cases of corneal graft rejection after COVID-19 vaccine (3 of them Pfizer)
  • 2022 Aug – Marziali et al15 year old boy had corneal graft rejection 12 days after Pfizer mRNA vaccine

Conclusion

I believe we will see a disaster unfold in Transplant Medicine as a significant number of COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated transplant recipients will ultimately reject their transplants as a result of complications stemming from the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine spike protein.

In cases where someone is forced to take COVID-19 mRNA vaccines before they will be eligible to get a transplant, I believe that is medical malpractice that will result in very large lawsuits in the future. 

Right now, Transplant Medicine is mired by the same corruption, gross incompetence, and negligence we’re seeing in other medical specialties that did everything to sell themselves to Pfizer & Moderna shareholders.

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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.


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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*** 

Retired US Army Colonel Douglas McGregor highlighted that the total number of deaths in Ukraine due to the conflict has already reached 400,000 and urged Kiev to negotiate peace with Moscow. According to McGregor, also a former Pentagon adviser, there is even an internal debate in the Ukrainian Armed Forces about deposing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“There’s a lot of discussions in Ukraine, inside Ukrainian forces, about getting rid of Zelensky. They have lost 400,000 dead. I don’t know how much you have to raise that by to be horrified by it. I’ve had enough,” said McGregor in a video posted on X, formerly Twitter.

In the post accompanying the video, McGregor appeals to Kiev authorities to negotiate a peace agreement with Russia, writing, “Make peace, you fools!”

McGregor’s tweet comes only two days after former British Ambassador Alastair Crooke said Western countries led by the US admit that the Ukrainian offensive ended in failure and they cannot survive it. In the interview with the YouTube channel Judging Freedom, he said the US may consider that the best decision in this situation is to continue the escalation, which, in turn, leads to nothing. It is for this purpose, said Crooke, that Washington allows Kiev to attack Russia with drones.

Kiev launched a counteroffensive on June 4 with NATO-trained brigades. Since the beginning of the counterattack, Ukraine has suffered over 71,500 casualties, while since the beginning of the special military operation in February 2022, 467 Ukrainian planes, 248 helicopters, 6,426 drones, 435 anti-aircraft defence systems, 11,696 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 1,148 multiple launchers have been destroyed.

The so-called “spring” counteroffensive was lauded since the end of 2022 but did not launch until the summer. It will be remembered as one of the worst military campaigns in the 21st century, as Ukrainians are being fed to the Russian meatgrinder for no gain. Therefore, there is little surprise there are discussions about deposing Zelensky to end the slaughter.

Indicative of the counteroffensive’s failure is that General Mark Milley, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, told the BBC on September 10 that Ukraine’s forces have between 30 to 45 days left of fighting before weather conditions stop operations.

“There’s still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days’ worth of fighting weather left, so the Ukrainians aren’t done,” Milley said. “They haven’t finished the fighting part of what they’re trying to accomplish.”

It is recalled that the operation’s goal was to reach the Sea of Azov, an endeavour that has catastrophically failed and will not be achieved in the current conflict, let alone in 30 to 45 days. However, strategic reserves had to be deployed due to Ukraine’s heavy losses. 

This reserve, comprised of some of the best-trained and equipped forces available to the Ukrainians, was intended to exploit the gains the initial offensive operations made. The fact that the strategic reserve was committed to achieving objectives that all attacking units had not achieved only underlines the futility of the Ukrainian effort and the inevitability of its final defeat.

The special military operation is approaching the final phase, marked by the collapse of the cohesion of the Ukrainian Army, exhausted in battle after being the beneficiary of billions of dollars of aid. The fact that the Ukrainians were thrown into a battle for which they were neither organised nor trained played a huge role in the scope and scale of the meat grinder that consumed them, and it is for this reason, that discussions on deposing Zelensky will not fizzle out. This is especially true since he will be remembered as the president who oversaw the huge loss of life, territory, and dignity.

Ella Libanova, head of the Institute for Demography and Social Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, said in June that Zelensky’s popularity will inevitably suffer after the war with Russia.

“His rating will significantly decrease. First of all, people will remember everything that went wrong. Today everyone clenches their teeth,” she said.

Zelensky promised to regain all territory lost to Russia, including Crimea. Since this will not be achieved, the Ukrainian president can be used as the perfect scapegoat by the military and other top figures in Ukraine to pin all the blame on and absolve themselves of responsibility for the catastrophe they brought their country.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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Avoiding Nuclear War

September 12th, 2023 by Edward Lozansky

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*** 

During the Cold War there were similar dangerous moments, but John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, as well as Ronald Reagan and Michael Gorbachev, managed to avoid the worst-case scenario. George H.W. Bush talked in 1990 about a “Europe whole and free” and a new “security architecture from Vancouver to Vladivostok,” while Boris Yeltsin, during his 1992 address to the joint chambers of Congress, exclaimed, “God bless America.”

So, what went wrong? Why are we talking about nuclear war again? According to Washington, Putin and his desire to restore the Soviet empire are to blame. Moscow points the finger back at Washington for its vision of a unipolar world order under the U.S. hegemony.

Below is my brief take, which I would be happy to debate with those who see it differently. Perhaps during such exchanges, we could come up with some ideas for avoiding our mutual extinction.

December 25, 1991

The Soviet flag over the Kremlin comes down, Russian white-blue-red (symbolically the same colors as the American flag) comes up. It looked like the new era of peace, friendship, and mutually beneficial cooperation had arrived, but regrettably, as we see now, it hasn’t.

1993 – 2001

Bill Clinton. The greatest robbery of the 20th Century. NATO Expansion.

The term “Russiagate” entered the American media space much earlier than during Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016  presidential campaign, when she tried to blame Russia for her loss. This term was first used by Washington Post correspondent David Ignatius, who is now one of the harshest critics of Russia.

But back in 1999 in his WP article Who Robbed Russia? he highlighted some of the most damning revelations of the multi-billion robbery of Russia with the help of the Bank of New York and with the acquiescence of the Clinton administration.

“By allowing the oligarchs — in the name of the free market — to grab Russia’s resources and siphon anything of value into their own offshore bank accounts, the United States poisoned Russia’s transition from communism… What makes the Russian case so sad is that the Clinton administration may have squandered one of the most precious assets imaginable — which is the idealism and goodwill of the Russian people as they emerged from 70 years of Communist rule. The Russia debacle may haunt us for generations,” – said Ignatius.

A Congressional September 2000 report about the Clinton Administration’s misdeeds in Russia has many other details on the same subject.  

Clinton also meddled in Russia’s 1996 presidential elections. Then he started the first round of NATO expansion despite the objections of many prominent experts, including former US government officials, Members of Congress, and diplomats. For example:

Fifty members of the Arms Control Association wrote a letter to Clinton saying

“We, the undersigned, believe that the current U.S.-led effort to expand NATO is a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability.”

“We’ll be back on a hair-trigger” said Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, during the debates in the Senate. Moynihan continued: “We’re talking about nuclear war. It is a curiously ironic outcome that at the end of the Cold War,we might face a nuclear Armageddon.”

Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), while calling Moynihan “the single most erudite and informed person in the Senate,” said he disagreed with him and pushed for NATO’s expansion.

One of America’s most distinguished diplomats, George Kennan, called NATO expansion “a fatal foreign policy mistake.”

2001 – 2009

George W. Bush. Thanked Putin for help after 9/11, then paid him back with the war in Iraq, abrogation of the ABM treaty, color revolutions in the post-Soviet space, and pushing to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.

This is what Bush said in November 2001 following Putin’s support for the Afghan operation a month earlier:

“A lot of people never really dreamt that an American President and a Russian President could have established the friendship …. to establish a new spirit of cooperation and trust so that we can work together to make the world more peaceful….I brought him to my ranch because, as the good people in this part of the world know, you only usually invite your friends into your house…. a new style of leader, a reformer, a man who loves his country as much as I love mine…. a man who is going to make a huge difference in making the world more peaceful, by working closely with the United States.”

What a spirit of sanity from a man who would oversee a disastrous two terms in office which included the war in Iraq and an abrogation of one of the most strategic anti-nuclear war treaties.

Russia considered NATO’s statement during its April 2008 Bucharest summit that Ukraine and Georgia would become part of this military block to be an existential threat.

2009 – 2017

Barack Obama. Short-lived “Reset”. Gave a Ukrainian Portfolio to his VP Joe Biden which he used to coordinate the February 2014 regime change coup in Ukraine overseen by Victoria Nuland, and make lots of money for his family via Hunter, both in Ukraine, and around the world. Russiagate 2.0 orchestrated by Hillary Clinton and the Deep State derailed Trump’s presidency and his efforts to improve U.S.-Russia relations.

2017 – 2021

Donald Trump. Accused of being a Russian stooge. Four years of harassment by the Washington Swamp. Survived two impeachment efforts.  Lost the 2020 elections due to the success of Biden’s virtual campaign and corrupt media to shift the blame for Hunter’s “Laptop from Hell” on Russia.

2021 – now

Joe Biden. Rejection of Russia’s proposals in December 2021 for the mutual security guarantees that included a neutral status for Ukraine. Destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. Declared his goal of achieving a devastating strategic defeat of Russia.  Continues multi-billion dollar funding of Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

During a recent speech at the EU Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted that the war in Ukraine was the result of NATO expansionism. In his comments he stated that “in the autumn of 2021, Putin sent a draft treaty that he wanted NATO to promise, never to enlarge NATO, to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. We rejected that.”

Well, Putin only wanted NATO to honor the pledge “not to expand one inch East” given to Gorbachev by the Western leaders in exchange for allowing the reunification of Germany. The document confirming this is available in the National archives. 

By accepting at least one, I believe the most important point of Russia’s proposal, to make Ukraine neutral, Washington and NATO would show goodwill and readiness for negotiations.  Unfortunately, they rejected this plan outright.

Conclusion

The current nuclear threat will end when Washington orders Kyiv to search for diplomatic solutions.  However, as long as Biden is in the office that is unlikely. For him, too much is at stake, and the interests of American people who are in favor of ending this war are secondary. 

Therefore, we are entering two races: the U.S. presidential election, and how to avoid extinction.  The main issue is Ukraine’s neutrality. How important it is for the American people to risk the annihilation?

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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   

Was There a “War on Terror” or a War on the American People?

September 12th, 2023 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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*** 

In response to 9/11, Republican Attorney General John Ashcroft told an obedient Congress on a Wednesday to have a sweeping expansion of executive power and dramatic curtailment of American’s civil rights ready in bill form by the end of the week. As Matt Taibbi reminds us,

“Congress quickly delivered with ‘roving’ wiretaps, warrantless searches, ‘trap and trace’ searches, law enforcement and intelligence access to grand jury information, use of FISA monitoring for non-foreign situations, reduction or elimination of predicate requirements for FBI investigations, and elimination of judicial review for most of these activities, among many other things in the USA PATRIOT Act. It all passed on October 26th.” See this.

These measures had nothing whatsoever to do with fighting Muslim terror. To the contrary, these measures gave the government the power to terrorize Americans. 

Try to name Muslim terror attacks on America other than, if you believe the official narrative, 9/11. You can’t, because there aren’t any. 

Terror attacks on America were so non-existent that the FBI had to search for confused people and groups, convince them, enhanced with monetary bribes, to adopt a FBI prepared terror attack, and then arrest them before the attack could be attempted.  The FBI always explained that “the public was never in danger” as control of the operation was in FBI’s hands.

But the public is very much in danger from the police state measures that Taibbi lists. “Muslim terror” was so conspicuous by its absence that Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano announced that Homeland Security was being refocused on domestic American “extremists,” which has come to mean Trump supporters against whom the US government is deploying the police state measures.

The first part of the “war on terror” was against Americans’ civil liberties.

The second part of the war was on Israel’s opponents in the Middle East. 

In the case of Iraq and Libya entire countries were destroyed, millions killed and maimed, and displaced to Europe and the US with the strange result of importing Muslims who were said to be terrorists into the Homeland.

Ask yourself how Americans managed to fall for the propaganda that the US was under widespread attack from Muslims.

The “Muslim threat” was played to such an extent that the Attorney General said, “we need every tool available to us,” by which he meant getting rid of the US Constitution. The foundation of the American police state was established on the basis of only one attack, 9/11, falsely attributed to Muslims.

If the Muslims were really capable of outwitting the entirety of the US national security apparatus, why did they stop with the WTC? With such glorious success, why did they not continue? 

Why instead did the FBI have to create fake terror events in order to keep the public believing we were under attack?

Notice how we are always “under attack.” If it is not Muslims, it is Covid, or Donald Trump.

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

9/11 – The Onslaught of an Endless War on Humanity

September 12th, 2023 by Peter Koenig

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*** 

Yesterday, the 22nd anniversary of the NYC 9/11 – a day of global mourning, the beginning, or activation, of a crime of biblical proportions, like never before in history remembered. Activation stands for onslaught of a colossal War on Humanity. What the small supremacist elite calls War on Terror is nothing less than an endless war on mankind. A war waged by a death cult. The preparation for the war, started decades, probably 100+ years before.

Two planes hitting the twin towers of the NYC World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001 – probably remote-controlled – because most pilots admit this kind of close-curved maneuver necessary to hit the towers was impossible to carry out by a pilot.

The world was told the perpetrators were a group of some 12 Saudi terrorists. An outright lie. One of the first ones – to be followed by countless others all in the name of instilling fear to control mankind, to eventually upgrade the war to a killing machine leading onto the infamous UN Agenda 2030, alias the Great Reset and the all-digitizing, QR-code crowned Fourth Industrial Revolution, what Klaus Schwab, WEF’s founder and CEO proudly claims as his brainchild.

Who else could come up with a new world order based on linearism, digitalized transhumanism – 180-degrees opposite of what life in the universe is, an infinite multitude of dynamism, life in multiple dimensions, evolving naturally as a cog in the universe’s endless wheel?

Right there on NYC’s 9/11, more than 3000 people were killed. Thousands more followed in the immediate aftermath.

The third building, that collapsed in the afternoon  – seemingly out of the blue – was apparently ripe with documented evidence of the crime. Almost silenced by the media.

And to this day, nobody knows what happened to the people on the plane that apparently crashed into an open field in Pennsylvania. No debris and no people were ever found. Here too, no media coverage, no investigation – just destined to be forgotten.

What happened to the dozens of policemen and firefighters who were near the WTC towers and in their basements, reporting on hearing explosions, underground and in the lower strata of the extremely solid constructions – just before they collapsed in the well-known style of purposeful city demolition techniques. Most of them were never seen again. “Victims” of the accident?

Overall, since the NYC 9/11, millions of people were killed in the aftermath of the trigger to the so-called “war on terror”, which, in fact, was meant to be a “war on humanity”.

The onslaught of wars began. The US invasion of Afghanistan, barely a month after the suspected auto-coup of the 9/11 Twin Towers implosion. The pretext was Osama Bin Laden, an Al Qaeda CIA recruit, who — the George W. Bush Administration lied having orchestrated the 9/11 attack from Afghanistan — had to be eliminated by invading the mountainous and resources-rich Afghanistan, landlocked, in the center of Asia.

Al Qaeda was a CIA creation of the 1980’s – already then as an instrument to justify the coming war on terror.

True reasons for invading Afghanistan were several:

The multibillion dollar Drug Trade (opium) which the  Taliban government attempted to dismantle in 2000-2001. (See graph below)

 

The Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India Gas Pipeline

The ever-closer relations between Afghanistan and China were a thorn in the eyes for US political supremacy, and finally the extreme mineral riches, especially rare earths, vital for production of electronics – chips used for military equipment as well as for multiple civilian uses.

Afghanistan was the first “leg” on the endless “War on Terror”.

The Afghanistan invasion was followed by the May 2003 Iraq invasion – one of the hydrocarbon richest countries in the Middle East, with a leader, Saddam Hussein, who was at the point of defying OPEC rules of trading hydrocarbons in US-dollars only. Saddam wanted to trade Iraq’s hydrocarbons in Euros. Iraq was also labeled an Al Qaeda terrorist country.

A “Shock and Awe” attack should eliminate the country’s leader and bring Iraq to her knees. By now we know that it did not exactly happen that way. It was probably also planned as an endless war.

Iraq — another “War on Terror” – emanating from the 9/11 auto-attack.

Syria — from 2011 forward Washington’s secret service created a “civil war”, applying the principle of divide to conquer.

In September 2014 the conflict culminated in the US intervening, siding with the [US-created] Syrian rebels, fighting the Islamic State, the so-called “Operation Inherent Resolve” in what was labeled international war against the Islamic State.

In truth, Washington wanted to get rid of the highly popular and democratically elected Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad. Again, the interest was control over the large Syrian oil and mineral resources.

Also, under the flag of “War on Terror”.

Coincidentally – though, there are no coincidences – the Ukraine war also started in [February] 2014, by the US-instigated coup against the democratically elected Viktor Yanukovych. Remember Victoria Nuland’s recorded phone conversation with the US Ambassador in Kiev – “f**k Europe”? And the recent admission by NATO boss, Jens Stoltenberg, that the Ukraine War started already in 2014?

Other US-initiated wars and conflicts followed – in Sudan in 2006 / 2007 after the broken Darfur Peace Agreement; in Pakistan in 2011 under the pretext and on the heels of several targeted killings in Karachi, leaving hundreds of people dead. US presence never left the country, as Pakistan was attempting establishing closer relations with China.

To the “war on terror” may also be counted the October 2011 US / French / NATO lynching of Libyan President, Muammar Gaddafi – leaving the country as of this day in a state of constant civil strife and mafia-like killings and enslavement of refugees. Gaddafi was about to introducer the Gold Dinar, as a unified currency for Africa, to liberate Africa from French and US / K currency exploitation.

The NYC 9/11 was and is a war instrument that until this day has not been fully recognized as what it was supposed to be – a precursor to possibly the planned final phase for civilization as we know it, the UN Agenda 2030, alias The Great Reset, leading to the full digitization of humanity – into transhumanism – and simply a One World Order (OWO), run by full control via digitization of everything, complemented with Artificial Intelligence (AI).

It is plan. A scary plan – a plan with the purpose of instilling fear, thus, it is hoped, making the population defenseless against a tyrannical take-over.

This plan will not materialize.

Lest we forget, it is important pointing out that there was another 9/11 “event” – 50 years back that took place in Chile. It also killed instantly hundreds of people, and over the following 16 years, until General Pinochet’s demise in March 1990, tens of thousands of people disappeared and were killed.

September 11,1973. Palacio de la Moneda. Allende was assassinated

The purpose of the US-instigated and Henry Kissinger executed military coup in Chile, was to get rid of the “uncomfortable” democratically elected, socialist-leaning, President Salvador Allende, so that the United States could implement and test a “Chicago Boys” designed neoliberal economic system to run an entire country. Later to be repeated throughout Latin America – a remedy to make sure, Latin America would keep their US “Backyard” status, for a long time to come.

The “Chicago Boys” were a group of Chilean and international economists, most of whom were educated in the 1970 and 1980s by arch-conservative Milton Friedman at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago.

Also, not to forget, the major coup planner and instigator, was the then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, under Richard Nixon’s presidency. Kissinger later received the Nobel Peace Prize, for his alleged peace efforts in the Vietnam war which he also “directed”, and following his ordered bombing of Cambodia and Laos to bloody rubble – with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths. Remember the infamous “Killing Fields” in Cambodia? – Well, that was also Henry Kissinger, arguably the most notorious war criminal still alive.

Earlier this year, Henry Kissinger turned 100. This could be natural old age, or it could be old age enhanced by adrenochrome.

Is it sheer coincidence that the Santiago de Chile and the NYC Nine-Eleven massacres are exactly 50 years apart? A half a century.

There are no coincidences. Just connecting the dots.

As a reminder – 911 is the emergency number in the United States. That is hardly a coincidence.

Kissinger is a close buddy, ally and advisor of Klaus Schwab’s, CEO of the controversial World Economic Forum (WEF). As of this day, Kissinger’s advice is sought by world leaders around the world.

In July 2023, Kissinger was received by China’s President Xi Jinping, who apparently greeted Kissinger with a comment, “old friends” like him will never be forgotten. The irony is subtle. The US-initiated meeting was apparently meant to mend frayed ties between Washington and Beijing.

A tremendous attribute for President Xi – he is always open for initiatives potentially leading to improved relations, harmony, and peace.

Back to NYC-9/11.

What we, especially the western world’s humanity currently are living is a colossal crime never seen and recorded before in known history.

After 9/11 for many, and a for a long time for most – flying has become a nightmare – and a huge business for a few. The long security lines, the manual checking – often more reminiscent of groping – of passengers, who often for some medical reasons, have a hard time passing through the control machines without the red-light flashing.

The first US Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge and associates, became insanely rich by launching the manufacturing of the airport security machines – that were imposed worldwide, and which are being constantly upgraded.

Backtracking – 9/11 sparked “wars on terror” – alias on humanity, may have had several phases of activation.

The Club of Rome, first unofficially meeting in 1956 in Rome, was formally created in 1968 as an initiative of David Rockefeller with, Aurelio Peccei, Alexander King and Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, founder and President of Africa’s Agang party – and others.

The Club of Rome issued in 1972 the infamous report “Limits to Growth” (LTG), arguing against continued economic and population growth – setting the first marks for a massive eugenist agenda, a population reduction down to about 500 million people, from today’s 8 billion-plus, a reduction of about 95%.

Dennis Meadows, one of the main authors of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth, is a member of the World Economic Forum. He propagates as of this day massive population reduction. See this.

This eugenist plan is as of this day the blueprint for what we are living. It is the core for UN Agenda 2030, the Great Reset and All-digitization.

From it was born covid, the worldwide coercive vaxx mandate, possibly more lab-made “viruses” to come, as well as the climate change hoax, justifying geoengineering of weather, causing droughts, floods, never-seen-before hurricanes and tornadoes, Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) caused forest and other fires, like the destruction of Lahaina on Maui, and others – all bringing about poverty, famine, misery, and death.

Closing the circle – with NYC’s 9/11 setting the stage 22 years ago.

There is no waiting. We must resist with heart and soul – and peaceful spirits. We shall never forget 9/11 and what it triggered – and we shall overcome.

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

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

Featured image is from The Greanville Post

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*** 

NATO and the truth are antonyms, so it’s very difficult to imagine these two in one sentence, let alone several. However, no matter how impossible it may sound, even the most aggressive alliance in human history can tell the truth from time to time. Namely, during a recent speech at the European Union’s Parliament, specifically its Committee on Foreign Affairs, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg directly admitted that Russia launched the special military operation (SMO) to prevent further NATO aggression. Although he was trying to present this as some sort of a “victory” for the belligerent alliance, Stoltenberg effectively acknowledged that all this “evil Russian propaganda and disinformation” was in fact true.

“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that he wanted NATO to sign, to promise – no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And that was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that. The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign a promise never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our alliance, introducing some kind of E and B, or second-class membership. We rejected that. So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite,” Stoltenberg gloated.

Busy with trying to present recent historical events as a success for the world’s most aggressive alliance, NATO Secretary General probably isn’t even aware that the remarks he made have been repeatedly decried by the mainstream propaganda machine as “Russian disinformation” and “parroting Putin’s talking points”. Stoltenberg even mentioned Sweden and Finland, claiming that the latter’s accession to NATO is “historic”. However, this is not exactly true, as Finland has already been a member of NATO’s direct predecessor in the early to mid-1940s and we all know how that ended. Unfortunately, the political West doesn’t seem to learn from history, so it’s bound to repeat it for the umpteenth time.

Expectedly, NATO Secretary General repeated some of the regular (and laughable) propaganda claims, including that Russia supposedly “invaded Donbass” in 2014 and that 2022 was a “reinvasion”, without specifying when the 2014 one stopped, so the 2022 one could be “reinitiated”. However, the admission about the actual reasons for the start of the SMO will surely be problematic for the mainstream propaganda machine, as Western media have spent the last well over a year and a half trying to present President Putin as some sort of a madman who got up on the wrong side of the bed on February 24, 2022, and decided to attack a “sovereign” country next door simply because he had nothing better to do.

In a perfect world, this admission would immediately open the eyes of millions of Ukrainians who have been led to believe that Russia, a country with which they share unbreakable historical, cultural, civilizational and ethnic bonds, is their mortal enemy. What’s more, it is this foreign military alliance that reached Ukraine’s borders through a crawling aggression that is the true threat. NATO is the side that set up biolabs on Ukrainian soil in an attempt to develop bioweapons whose sole purpose is to target specific ethnic groups, such as Russians. And precisely Ukrainians, as genetically indistinguishable from Russians and geographically the closest, served as perfect guinea pigs.

Perfectly aware that the deployment of biological weapons would soon be followed by kinetic ones (including nuclear), Moscow realized that the time for (re)action was “now or never”. Unfortunately, Ukraine never had a truly sovereign government that would’ve anticipated this and simply given clear security guarantees to Russia. Instead, the United States and its vassals brought the Neo-Nazi junta to power, turning Ukraine into a springboard for some new “Barbarossa” in the foreseeable future. The result has been an absolute disaster that the political West keeps stoking up, showing zero remorse and no intention of stopping. What’s more, it even torpedoed peace deals in the early days of the SMO.

Meanwhile, the casualties keep piling up, robbing the Ukrainian people of their future and setting Europe as the stage and the main battlefield in yet another (highly probable at this point) world war. Cui bono? Well, it’s certainly not Ukraine, Russia or even Europe. It’s the belligerent thalassocracy across the Atlantic. And the incredibly naive Europeans are sleepwalking into the carnage, not realizing they will receive the first blow in the case of an uncontrollable escalation. Stoltenberg also bragged about the expansion of NATO’s military infrastructure further to the east. Precisely those housing such infrastructure will be the very first targets the moment Russian strategic planners see that the conflict is inevitable.

The political West keeps trying to present Moscow as some sort of a “reactionary power” that wants to “rebuild the Russian Empire”. However, such claims are simply pointless. Had Russia wanted to “keep its empire”, it would’ve never allowed the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact, let alone the Soviet Union. All Moscow ever wanted was to develop economically, as the Russian people were sick and tired of the arms race that had been preventing normal development of their country for decades. Russia hasn’t had a geopolitical break since WW1, a state of affairs that cost it well over 50 million people in the 20th century alone. Most of all, it needed peace and normal cooperation with other countries, including with what Moscow thought were “former” enemies. Unfortunately, the “partners” had other plans.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Kiev to Recruit People with Health Problems

September 12th, 2023 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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*** 

Desperate for new human resources, Ukrainian officials are now looking to recruit people with health problems. According to a local politician, Kiev is about to change its rules in order to allow people suffering from certain serious health conditions to serve in the armed forces during the conflict. The anti-humanitarian measure shows how the Ukrainian government is willing to harm its own citizens just to continue following NATO’s war plans.

The news was revealed by Dmitry Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman. In an interview with local TV, Lubinets stated that he proposed to the National Security Council the creation of a scheme to recruit people with serious health problems. According to him, most of the Council’s officials agreed with the measure, considering it important from a strategic point of view.

Lubinets believes that the situation of these recruits can be resolved simply by choosing for them the “appropriate” military professions. He assured that people suffering from serious illnesses will not be sent to the frontlines, but stated that they can serve in important rear functions, and are therefore capable of doing their military service. Among the possible roles to be played by the new conscripts, he cited the possibility of working in headquarters or even in cyberwar activities, which would allow them to significantly help the armed forces in the war effort, even if not on the frontlines.

“A citizen of Ukraine must either be fit for military service or unfit. If, for example, due to his health, he is unfit to carry out combat missions with a machine gun in his hands right on the front line, but he may be at headquarters, or may be part of the missile forces, he can do it. I made a recommendation to the National Security and Defense Council that the issue of ‘limitedly suitable’, or ‘unsuitable’, or ‘fully suitable’ needs to be resolved through the military professions”, he said.

For the official, this would also be a way to solve the bribery problem. There has been an increase in reports in Kiev of people of military age bribing the authorities to be considered “unfit”, even though they do not have any disabling health condition. It was why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently fired recruiting officers and promised to revise all military service exemption documents issued by former officials involved in corruption scandals. With these changes, this will no longer happen as practically everyone will be considered capable of working in the army in some way – either at the front or in the rear.

“Due to the corruption component, we have recorded many cases where certificates were issued to citizens without health problems (…) This requires a solution”, he added.

There are, indeed, a series of ethical problems with this measure. Forcing people with health problems to military service in times of conflict is an anti-humanitarian measure, even if the recruits work only in the rear. Fights are not limited to the frontlines, with all military facilities being legitimate targets during a conflict. In this sense, headquarters and cyberwar offices are vulnerable to Russian artillery, drone attacks, which will put the lives of these people with health problems at high risk.

It is also important to remember that recruitment limits are becoming less and less rigid. Previously, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense had already launched a decree allowing the conscription of people with tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis. Now, even more serious health conditions will be tolerated among troops, with the regime seeking to practically involve all citizens in military service.

This shows once again how the neo-Nazi regime does not care about its own people. No Ukrainian citizen is safe from NATO’s war ambitions, which are passively followed by the Kiev proxy state. The news about people with serious illnesses follows a series of recent measures, such as forced recruitment of women, teenagers and the elderly. People who should be protected by the state and kept safe from the disastrous consequences of the hostilities are being mobilized as “cannon fodder” to unnecessarily prolong a conflict that Ukraine has no chance of winning.

The fact that the West continues to support the Kiev regime, even with all these anti-humanitarian measures, shows the hypocrisy of liberal democracies. While the narrative of protecting international law and a “rules-based order” is maintained, Western countries support a neo-Nazi dictatorship that puts the lives of groups in vulnerable situations at risk, contradicting all norms of humanitarian law and the recommendations of international organizations.

In fact, if the West had been concerned about human rights in Ukraine, military support for the country would have already ceased.

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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 is from InfoBrics

Chance Encounters as the Walls Close In…

September 12th, 2023 by Edward Curtin

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*** 

“A treasure stumbled upon, suddenly; not gradually accumulated, by adding one to one. The accumulation of learning, ‘adding to the sum-total of human knowledge’; lay that burden down, that baggage, that impediment. Take nothing for your journey; travel light.” – Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body

These are “heavy” times, colloquially speaking.

Forebodings everywhere.

Everything broken.

People on edge, nervous, filled with anxiety about they know not what since it seems to be everything.

The economy, politics, elections, endless propaganda, the war in Ukraine, censorship, the environment, nuclear war,

Covid/vaccines, a massive world-wide collapse, the death of democratic possibilities, the loss of all innocence as a very weird and dangerous future creeps upon us, etc.

Only the most anesthetized don’t feel it.

The anxiety has increased even as access to staggering amounts of knowledge – and falsehoods – has become available with the click of a button into the digital encyclopedia.

The CIA’s MK-Ultra mind control program has gone digital.

The more information, the more insubstantial the world seems, but it is not an insubstantiality that connects to hope or faith but to despair. 

Across the world people are holding their breath. What’s next?

Roberto Calasso, the late great Italian writer, wrote that we live in “the unnamable present,” which seems accurate. Information technology, with its easily available marriage of accurate and fraudulent information, affects people at the fathomless depths of the mind and spirit.

Yet it is taken-for-granted that the more such technological information there is available, as well as the ease with which one can add one’s two-cents to it, is a good thing, even as those powerful deep-state forces that control the Internet pump out an endless stream of purposely dissembling and contradictory messages.

Delusions of omnipotence and chaos everywhere, but not in the service of humanity.

Such chaos plays in chords D and C – Depressing and Controlling.

In the midst of this unnamable present, all of us need to dream of beauty and liberation even as we temporarily rely on digital technology for news of the wider world.

For the local news we can step outside and walk and talk to people, but we can’t endlessly travel everywhere, so we rely on the Internet for reports from elsewhere.

Even as we exercise great effort to discern facts from fictions through digital’s magic emanations, we hunger for some deeper experiences than the ephemerality of this unnamable world. Without it we are lost in a forest of abstractions.

While recently dawdling on a walk, I stopped to browse through tables of free books on the lawn of my local library. I was looking for nothing but found something that startled me: a few descriptive words of a child’s experience.

I chanced to pick up an old (1942), small autobiography by the English historian, A. L. RowseA Cornish Childhood. The flyleaf informed me that it was the story of his pre-World War I childhood in a little Cornish village in southwestern England. The son of a china-clay worker and mother of very modest means, Rowse later went on to study at Oxford and became a well-known scholar and author of about a hundred books. In other words, a man whose capacious mind was encyclopedic long before the Internet offered its wares of information about everything from A to Z.

Since my grandfather, the son of an Irish immigrant father and English mother, had spent his early years working in a bobbin factory in Bradford, England, a polluted mill town in the north, before sailing at age 11 from Liverpool to New York City aboard the Celtic with his four younger siblings sans parents,

I had an interest in what life was like for poor children in England during that era. How circumstances influenced them: two working-class boys, one who became an Oxford graduate and well-known author; the other who became a NYC policeman known only to family and friends. The words Rowse wrote and I read echoed experiences that I had had when young; I wondered if my grandfather had experienced something similar. Rowse writes this on pages 16-17 where I randomly opened the book:

A little group of thatched cottages in the middle of the village had a small orchard attached; and I remember well the peculiar purity of the blue sky seen through the white clusters of apple-blossom in spring. I remember being moon-struck looking at it one morning early on my way to school. It meant something for me; what I couldn’t say. It gave me an unease at heart, some reaching outwards toward perfection such as impels men into religion, some sense of the transcendence of things, of the fragility of our hold upon life . . . . I could not know then that it was an early taste of aesthetic sensation, a kind of revelation which has since become a secret touchstone of experience for me, an inner resource and consolation. . . .

In time it became my creed – if that word can be used of a religion which has no dogma, no need of dogma; for which this ultimate aesthetic experience, this apprehension of the world and life as having value essentially in the moment of being apprehended qua beauty, I had no need of religion. . . . in that very moment it seemed that time stood still, that for a moment time was held up and one saw experience as through a rift across the flow of it, a shaft into the universe. But what gave such poignancy to the experience was that, in the very same moment that one felt time standing still, one knew at the back of the mind, or with another part of it, that it was moving inexorably on, carrying oneself and life with it.

So that the acuity of the experience, the reason why it moved one so profoundly, was that at bottom it was a protest of the personality against the realization of its final extinction. Perhaps, therefore, it was bound up with, a reflex action from, the struggle for survival. I could get no further than that; and in fact have remained content with that.

I quote so many of Rowse’s words because they seem to contain two revelations that pertain to our current predicament.

One a revelation that opens onto hope;

the other a revelation of hopelessness.

On the one hand, Rouse writes beautifully about how a patch of blue sky through apple blossoms (and his reading Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality) could open his heart and soul to deep aesthetic consolation. Calasso, in discussing “absolute literature” and the Bhagavad Gita in Literature and the Gods, refers to this experience with the word ramaharsa or horripilation, the happiness of the hairs.

It is that feeling one has when one experiences a thrill so profound that a shiver goes down one’s spine and one experiences an epiphany. Your hairs and other body parts stand up, whether it’s from a patch of blue, a certain spiritual or erotic/love encounter, or a line of poetry that takes your breath away. Such a thrill often happens through a serendipitous stumbling.

For Rouse, the epiphany was bounded, like a beautiful bird with its wings clipped; it was an “aesthetic experience” that seemed to exclude something genuinely transcendent in the experiential and theological sense. Maybe it was more than that when he was young, but when this scholar described it in his 39th year, this intellectual could only say it was aesthetic.

C. S. Lewis, in the opening pages of The Abolition of Man, echoing Coleridge’s comment about two tourists at a waterfall, one who calls the waterfall pretty and the other who calls it sublime (Coleridge endorsing the later and dismissing the former with disgust), writes, “The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration.”

In other words, the sublime nature of a patch of blue sky through apple blossoms in the early morn cannot be reduced to a person’s subjective feelings but is objectively true and a crack into the mystery of transcendence. To see it as a protest against one’s personal extinction and to be content to “get no further than that” is to foreclose the possibility that what the boy felt was not what the man thought; or to quote Wordsworth about what seems to have happened to Rouse: “Shades of the prison house begin to close/Upon the growing boy,” and that is that.

But we are even a longer way gone from when Rouse wrote his remembrances.

In our secular Internet age, first society and now its technology, not aesthetics or the religion of art, have replaced God for many people, who, like Rouse, have lost the ability to experience the divine. It embarrasses them. Something – an addiction to pseudo-knowledge? – blocks their willingness to be open to surpassing the reasoning mind. We think we are too sophisticated to bend that low even when looking up. “The pseudomorphism between religion and society” has passed unobserved, as Calasso puts it:

It all came together not so much in Durkheim’s [French sociologist 1858-1917] claim that “the religious is the social,’ but in the fact that suddenly such a claim sounded natural. What was left in the end was naked society, but invested now with all the powers inherited, or rather burgled, from religion. The twentieth century would see its triumph. The theology of society severed every tie, renounced all dependence, and flaunted the distinguishing feature: the tautological, the self-advertising. The power and impact of totalitarian regimes cannot be explained unless we accept that the very notion of society has appropriated an unprecedented power, one previously the preserve of religion. . . . Being anti-social would become the equivalent of sinning against the Holy Ghost. . . . Society became the subject above all subjects, for whose sake everything is justified.

For someone like Rouse, the Oxford scholar and bibliophile, writing in the midst of WW II about his childhood before WW I, an exquisite aesthetic explanation suffices to explain his experience, one that he concludes was perhaps part of an evolutionary reflex action connected to the struggle for survival. Thus this epiphany of beauty is immured in sadness rather than opening out into possible hope. Lovely as his description is, it is caged in inevitability, as if to say: Here is your bit of beauty on your way to dusty death. It is a denial of freedom, of spiritual reality, of what Lewis refers to for brevity’s sake as ‘the Tao,’ what the Chinese have long meant as the great thing, the correspondence between the outer and the inner, a reality beyond causality and the controlling mind.

Now even beauty has been banned behind machine experiences. But the question of beauty is secondary to the nature of reality and our connection to it.

The fate of the world depends upon it. When the world is too much with us and doom and gloom are everywhere, where can we turn to find a way forward to find a place to stand to fight the evils of nuclear weapons, poverty, endless propaganda, and all the other assorted demons marauding through our world?

It will not be to machines or more information, for they are the essence of too-muchness. It will not come from concepts or knowledge, which Nietzsche said made it possible to avoid pain. I believe it will only come from what he suggested: “To make an experiment of one’s very life – this alone is freedom of the spirit, this then became for me my philosophy.” And before you might think, “Look where it got him, stark raving mad,” let me briefly explain.

Nietzsche may seem like an odd choice to suggest as insightful when it comes to openness to a spiritual dimension to experience since he is usually but erroneously seen as someone who “killed God.” Someone like Gandhi might seem more appropriate with his “experiments with truth.” And of course Gandhi is very appropriate.

But so too are Emerson, Thoreau, Jung, and many others, at least in my limited sense of what I mean by experiment. I mean experimenting-experiencing (both derived from the same Latin word, expereri, to try or test) by assuming through an act of faith or suspension of disbelief that if we stop trying to control everything and open ourselves to serendipitous stumbling, what may seem like simply beautiful aesthetic experiences may be apertures into a spiritual energy we were unaware of.  James W. Douglass explores this possibility in his tantalizing book, Lightning East to West: Jesus, Gandhi, and the Nuclear Age, when he asks and then explores this question: “Is there a spiritual reality, inconceivable to us today, which corresponds in history to the physical reality which Einstein discovered and which led to the atomic bomb?”

I like to think that my grandfather, although a man not very keen on things spiritual, might have, in his young years amidst the grime and fetid air of Bradford, chanced to look up and saw a patch of blue sky through the rising smoke and felt the “happiness of the hairs” that opened a crack in his reality to let the light in.

Roberto Calasso quotes this from Nietzsche:

That huge scaffolding and structure of concepts to which the man who must clings in order to save himself in the course of life, for the liberated intellect is merely a support and a toy for his daring devices. And should he break it, he shuffles it around and ironically reassembles it once more, connecting what is least related and separating what is closest. By doing so he shows that those needful ploys are of no use to him and that he is no longer guided by concepts but by intuitions.

I have an intuition that there are hierophanies everywhere, treasures to be stumbled upon – by chance.  If we let them be.

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
It has its inner light, even from a distance –

And changes us, even if we do not reach it,
Into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
A gesture waves us on, answering our own wave. . .
But what we feel is the wind in our faces.

– Rainer Maria Rilke, “A Walk”

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Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

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“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham Lincoln

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

In the 22 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.

The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.

This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.

Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.

The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).

In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.

The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.

In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.

We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.

In this way, “we the people” continue to be terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.

The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and the like (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, and the courts)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.

Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, with the nation still suffering blowback from the permanent state of emergency brought about by 9/11 and COVID-19.

The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.

Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being persecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights and speaking out against government corruption. Activists are being arrested and charged for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a so-called government forum.

The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against red flag gun laws, militarized police, SWAT team raids, and government agencies armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.

The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or encroaching on your private property unless they have evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of governmental police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise), and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.

The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.

The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.

The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.

As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.

Thus, if there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution, which was adopted 236 years ago on Sept. 17, 1787, opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” As the Preamble proclaims:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.

In other words, it’s our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.

We are supposed to be the masters and they—the government and its agents—are the servants.

We the American people—the citizenry—are supposed to be the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

Still, it’s hard to be a good citizen if you don’t know anything about your rights or how the government is supposed to operate.

As the National Review rightly asks, “How can Americans possibly make intelligent and informed political choices if they don’t understand the fundamental structure of their government? American citizens have the right to self-government, but it seems that we increasingly lack the capacity for it.”

Americans are constitutionally illiterate.

Most citizens have little, if any, knowledge about their basic rights. And our educational system does a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Teachers and school administrators do not fare much better. A study conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis found that one educator in five was unable to name any of the freedoms in the First Amendment.

Government leaders and politicians are also ill-informed. Although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” their lack of education about our fundamental rights often causes them to be enemies of the Bill of Rights.

So what’s the solution?

Thomas Jefferson recognized that a citizenry educated on “their rights, interests, and duties”  is the only real assurance that freedom will survive.

From the President on down, anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.

Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.

Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card. Use this card to teach your children the freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to do more than grouse and complain.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have the power to make and break the government.

The powers-that-be want us to remain divided over politics, hostile to those with whom we disagree politically, and intolerant of anyone or anything whose solutions to what ails this country differ from our own. They also want us to believe that our job as citizens begins and ends on Election Day.

Yet there are 330 million of us in this country. Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.

Tyranny wouldn’t stand a chance.

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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.

Malice Aforethought on the COVID-19 Pandemic: “This is a global coup d’etat and intentional mass murder.” Dr. Mike Yeadon

By Dr. Mike Yeadon, September 11, 2023

Given a career in pharma and biotech, I knew that it was impossible to create a vaccine in under 5-6 years if they were going to demonstrate clinical safety and hone manufacturing to yield the customarily high quality manufacturing necessary to produce tightly defined final drug product. If the latter if not done, it’s pointless doing the former, because what would otherwise be injected wouldn’t be what had been used in the clinical trials.

Will Ukraine’s Western Apologists Finally Admit the Truth?

By Ted Galen Carpenter, September 12, 2023

For Western officials and their news media conduits who have carefully crafted the myth that Ukraine is a vibrant democracy, the past few weeks have been extremely challenging. First came the revelation that members of the country’s draft boards had engaged in a pervasive degree of corruption. Prospective conscripts were paying $5,000 bribes to avoid military service.

Mass Protest Against the US-backed Regime Change in Pakistan

By Junaid S. Ahmad, September 11, 2023

Pakistan is now back to the rule of the generals under a ruthless military dictator, a setup that Washington adored throughout the Cold War and has engineered once again. The population of 240 million is being terrorized and brutalized, and the Western mainstream media is criminally silent.

G20 and African Union (AU) Membership: Implications for Africa

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, September 11, 2023

In its final declaration in New Delhi, the G20 granted the African Union (AU) a full-fledged membership. The provision about the membership was included in the G20’s final declaration, but the membership for AU will be formalized only next year, when Brazil takes over the presidency of G20 from India.

J.F.K. Assassination Witness Breaks His Silence. Evidence of a Second Shooter. “The Magic Bullet” Theory Is an Outright Lie

By Peter Baker, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 11, 2023

He still remembers the first gunshot. For an instant, standing on the running board of the motorcade car, he entertained the vain hope that maybe it was just a firecracker or a blown tire. But he knew guns and he knew better. Then came another shot. And another. And the president slumped down.

The New IMEC Eurasian Rail Corridor Will Contribute to Enhancing China’s “Belt and Road”

By Karsten Riise, September 11, 2023

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) revealed at G20 yesterday 9 September 2023 is the new rail corridor planned by India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Israel, Greece, France, Germany, Italy, the EU, and the USA. The Americans hail IMEC, this new “Spice Road”. Saudi Arabia speaks of a $ 20 billion investment.

U.S. Sponsored Kurdish SDF Forces Battle with Arab Tribes in Eastern Syria. U.S. Withdrawal from Syria?

By Steven Sahiounie, September 11, 2023

On August 27, Ahmed al-Khubail, the commander of the Deir ez-Zor Military Council (DZMC), was lured to Hasakah by the US sponsored Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the pretext of a meeting. After arriving, Khubail, his brother Adham, and four other commanders were arrested and held.

Nigerian Trade Unions Stage Two-day Strike Amid Economic Crisis

By Abayomi Azikiwe, September 11, 2023

In recent weeks the two main trade union federations in Nigeria, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC), have given voice to the suffering of the workers and impoverished majority within the country. Both the TUC and NLC, among others, are demanding sweeping economic programs to ameliorate the decline in real wages due to the elimination of fuel subsidies and the imposition of higher taxes on consumer goods.

US Admits to Sending Radioactive Weapons to Ukraine that Left Thousands of Iraqi Babies Deformed

By Matt Agorist, September 11, 2023

In the annals of modern warfare, few decisions have been as controversial as the use of depleted uranium (DU). This radioactive waste, stemming from the production of enriched uranium for nuclear reactors and weapons, has long been the subject of intense scrutiny and criticism. Today, as the drums of war beat louder in Eastern Europe, a chilling specter from the past reemerges: the US’s intent to ship DU-laden armor-piercing munitions to Ukraine.

Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Vaccines Attack Bone Marrow Stem Cells and Drastically Alter Gene Expression

By Dr. William Makis, September 11, 2023

We know from the Japan biodistribution study obtained by Virologist Dr.Byram Bridle, that Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine accumulates in the bone marrow.

Will Ukraine’s Western Apologists Finally Admit the Truth?

September 12th, 2023 by Ted Galen Carpenter

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For Western officials and their news media conduits who have carefully crafted the myth that Ukraine is a vibrant democracy, the past few weeks have been extremely challenging. First came the revelation that members of the country’s draft boards had engaged in a pervasive degree of corruption. Prospective conscripts were paying $5,000 bribes to avoid military service. The political stench was so bad that an embarrassed President Volodymyr Zelensky felt compelled to fire the heads of all the draft boards.

On the heels of the bribery scandal, come news reports about the Ukrainian government’s use of assassination squads to eliminate political and ideological opponents. There were longstanding rumors, but reports of such abuses had rarely appeared in the establishment corporate press in the West. Information was largely confined to far less prominent alternative news outlets.

That de facto blackout has now lifted at least partially. A September 5, 2023, article in the Economist, described Kyiv’s systematic assassination program in some detail. Targets “have been shot, blown up, hanged and even, on occasion, poisoned with doctored brandy. Ukraine is tight-lipped about its involvement in assassinations. But few doubt the increasingly competent signature of its security services. The agencies themselves drop heavy hints.” Such behavior did not begin as a response to Russia’s February 2022 invasion. “Assassinations date back to at least 2015, when its domestic security service (SBU) created a new body after Russia had seized Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. The elite fifth counter-intelligence directorate started life as a saboteur force in response to the invasion. It later came to focus on what is euphemistically called ‘wet work’.”

The origin of the assassination program also was quite revealing about the nature of Ukraine’s so-called democracy. “Valentin Nalivaychenko, who headed the SBU at the time, says the switch came about when Ukraine’s then leaders decided that a policy of imprisoning collaborators was not enough. Prisons were overflowing, but few were deterred. “We reluctantly came to the conclusion that we needed to eliminate terrorists.” Saying that Ukrainian leaders had a very broad, loose definition of “collaborators” would be putting it mildly, since the prisons were “overflowing” with such regime opponents.

The victims of assassinations received no due process. Government authorities arbitrarily decided that they were traitors and proceeded to execute them without a trial. That would seem to be an odd way for a supposed democracy to behave. It is especially troubling since even so-called propagandists are considered legitimate targets. A May 2023 story in Business Insider highlighted that point. “A Ukrainian spy chief revealed that Kyiv has been assassinating Russian pro-war propagandists far behind enemy lines  In a series of interviews reported on by The Times, Major-General Kyrylo Budanov – the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service – said his agents have been targeting, locating, and killing Kremlin-backed propagandists who’ve cheered on Russia’s invasion.”

Thus far, such assassinations of “propagandists” have apparently been confined to individuals residing in Ukraine or Russia. It’s important to remember, though, that in the summer of 2022, the Ukrainian government’s Center for Countering Disinformation (partly funded by U.S. taxpayers) published a “blacklist” of such opponents. Numerous prominent Americans were on that list, including University of Chicago’s Professor John J. Mearsheimer, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and Doug Bandow, a Cato Institute Senior Fellow and former aide to President Ronald Reagan.

The menacing nature of the blacklist became even clearer in late September, when the CCD issued a revised roster, including addresses, of the top 35 targets. That high‐​priority list denounced accused individuals as “disinformation terrorists” and “war criminals.” Given such inflammatory rhetoric and Kyiv’s treatment of dissidents closer to home, it would be extremely naïve to conclude that Western critics would be off-limits as targets.

Despite such appalling revelations, Ukraine’s Western cheerleaders remain undeterred. European Union leaders speak openly of admitting Ukraine by 2030, even though the country clearly does not meet the EU’s professed standards on democracy and human rights. The Biden administration is taking a variety of steps to make it difficult for any successor to terminate or even significantly reduce economic or military aid to Kyiv.

Western political leaders and their media sycophants ignore mounting evidence about the corrupt, brutal, and authoritarian nature of Ukraine’s government. Ukraine is now a “democracy” in which the press is strictly censored, opposition media banned entirely, opposition political parties are outlawed, a longstanding major church is being harassed and silenced, and torture and assassinations have become routine. The Zelensky regime also appears unwilling to proceed with elections, even under such rigged conditions.

Westerners who continue to support Ukraine are guilty not just of blindness but of willful blindness. It is well past time for them to stop making excuses for Kyiv’s egregious misconduct.

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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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According to multiple press reports, President Joe Biden has rejected requests by lawyers for five prisoners illegally held by the United States, first at CIA “black sites” and then at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, that a possible plea deal include medical treatment for the physical and psychological damage resulting from years of systematic and sadistic torture.

Biden has also reportedly rejected the request of the prisoners, accused of conspiring to carry out the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York City and Washington D.C., that they not be held in solitary confinement if they agree to plead guilty in return for a life sentence.

The five men, including the alleged “mastermind” of 9/11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were abducted shortly after the 9/11 attacks under the pseudo-legal provisions of “war on terror” legislation passed overwhelmingly by Congress. This legislation sanctioned the “rendition” of “enemy combatants” anywhere in the world, including citizens of the US, and their indefinite detention, without formal charges or a trial, at CIA sites and military facilities, where they were subjected to “enhanced interrogation,” i.e., torture.

A total of 30 prisoners remain in legal limbo at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in southeastern Cuba, outside of any constitutional judicial system and subject to the rules of so-called “military commissions,” in which the prosecutor, judge and jury are all military officers. The prisoners include, in addition to the five 9/11 detainees, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national who is alleged to have helped organize the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

For the past year and a half, the US government has been scrambling to resolve the cases of the 9/11 defendants while avoiding trials, which, even under the conditions of the military tribunals, could expose damning details of the government-sanctioned torture inflicted on the defendants. This would shatter US claims to be fighting for “democracy,” “human rights” and a “rules-based international order” in the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia and the escalating provocations against China, as well as other US interventions around the world.

Moreover, the undeniable use of torture to extract confessions of guilt could undermine the prosecutions even within the prosecution-friendly confines of the tribunal at Guantanamo. Under international law, the use of torture against defendants automatically renders the process illegal and requires the release of the detainees.

Military prosecutors and lawyers for the 9/11 prisoners have been seeking to negotiate a deal that would forgo trials and drop the potential for death sentences. They have been awaiting a signal from Biden on both the overall question of avoiding trials and reaching a plea deal, as well as the terms of such a deal. The White House, itself implicated in the torture regime and fearful of attacks from Republicans and even Democrats for anything short of a show trial followed by executions, has avoided weighing in.

On Wednesday, the New York Times and other news outlets cited reports from an anonymous member of the National Security Council that Biden had rejected the above-cited plea deal conditions requested by the defendants, while remaining silent on the president’s attitude to a possible plea in itself, as well as possible life sentences for the accused rather than executions. In this, Biden was following the recommendation of his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

The five 9/11 defendants and al-Nashiri have been held by the US for more than two decades. Since 2006, when they were brought to Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo, the military has been seeking to bring them to trial. In an attempt to remove the taint of torture from confessions extracted from the prisoners, in 2007 the military prosecutors brought “clean teams” of interrogators to Guantanamo to obtain “voluntary” confessions, supposedly free of the barbaric methods previously used.

Those methods include sexual abuse, such as so-called “rectal feeding,” waterboarding, prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, the pointing of live drills at the hooded heads of prisoners, and other depraved torture techniques. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote on September 1, in relation to the torture of al-Nashiri:

The depravity of al-Nashiri’s torture exceeds the most depraved of the depraved films in the horror film genre—and is all the more horrifying because it really happened, and at the direction and with the approval of the highest levels of the US government.

Last month, in an exceptional ruling in the pre-trial phase of proceedings against al-Nashiri, the presiding judge, Army Colonel Lanny J. Acosta, Jr., threw a wrench into the “clean team” scheme of military prosecutors by ruling as inadmissible a confession supposedly obtained without coercion. In a 50-page ruling, the judge found that the “clean team” confession was categorically tainted by torture because “any resistance the accused might have been inclined to put up when asked to incriminate himself was intentionally and literally beaten out of him years before.”

The judge continued: “Even if the 2007 statements were not obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, they were derived from it.”

Acosta, Jr. is scheduled to retire next month, and military prosecutors have already filed an appeal of his ruling.

Writing on the judge’s ruling, the New York Times noted on August 26:

The government argues that Mr. [Khalid Shaikh] Mohammed voluntarily incriminated himself in his fourth month at Guantánamo Bay, nearly four years after he was taken into US custody.

By then, CIA interrogators had waterboarded Mr. Mohammed 183 times. He had also been kept in chains, left nude, deprived of sleep and isolated—many of the same techniques that were first used on Mr. Nashiri. Both men were threatened with return to “the hard times” if they did not cooperate with their captors in the black sites under the rendition, detention and interrogation program.

These methods—war crimes under international law—have left prisoners irredeemably traumatized to the point of being functionally incompetent. One of the five accused 9/11 plotters, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, has been excluded from the plea talks because of questions about his sanity. Last month, a military medical board ruled him incompetent to either face trial or offer a plea.

In August, prior to Judge Acosta, Jr.’s ruling in the al-Nashiri case, the Pentagon met with selected families of 9/11 victims and then sent a notice to all of the families alerting them to the discussions on a plea bargain that would forgo a trial of the five alleged conspirators and entail lifetime prison sentences rather than death sentences.

Aside from the fact that such an intervention would be entirely illegal in a civilian court, it was designed to elicit vocal opposition from a section of the families as well as from right-wing lawmakers.

More than 2,000 family members of victims of the 9/11 attacks signed a letter urging Biden to oppose any plea agreement with the alleged Al Qaeda plotters. This was followed two days later by an open letter to Biden authored by Republican Representative Michael Lawler of New York and signed by 32 other Republican members of Congress plus one Democrat, Representative Pat Ryan from New York’s 18th Congressional District.

Ignoring the savage torture of the accused, the letter declared: “We owe it to the victims and their families to deliver justice—and that should mean the death penalty for these murderers.”

No one has been held accountable for the systematic state torture carried out under successive Republican and Democratic administrations, including the two-term Obama-Biden administration. These latest developments once again demonstrate the criminal complicity of the entire US political establishment in war crimes and police state methods.

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*** 

As vice president, Joe Biden sent some 5,000 emails – many to his son, Hunter – using secret pseudonyms. However, without knowing exactly what these pseudonyms were, nobody could request the emails under the “Freedom of Information” Act. As of this week, that’s no longer the case: congressional investigators have discovered at least three pseudonyms and requested the documents. 

Unfortunately, they’ve been met with a stonewall – the same one that has met all their requests for information from the administration. We still don’t know what the emails said, who replied to them, and who else was copied in. That means we do not know whether Hunter Biden forwarded them to business partners either to share inside information or to demonstrate powerful connections.

Despite the official blackout, we can reasonably infer that these emails pose a real danger to President Biden, or at least that he perceives that they one day might. The documents are stored at the National Archives, and Biden need only ask to get them released. That he has refused to do so raises some uncomfortable questions. This is, after all, the very same man who promised to provide “transparency” on his first day in office. 

Republicans, perhaps predictably, believe that the secret emails will prove that the former vice president was deeply involved in his son Hunter’s lucrative influence peddling. Peeling back this veil of secrecy would be one advantage of a formal impeachment investigation, which the House of Representatives is expected to launch soon. 

Three House committees – Judiciary, Oversight, and Ways and Means – are currently investigating alleged corruption within the Biden family. While all have the power to subpoena, they face a major limitation in regards to enforcement. Let’s say one of those committees requests testimony or documents from the Secret Service. If they don’t receive them, all the committees can do is ask Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice to go to court and force compliance. But Garland, desperate to protect his boss, is highly unlikely to sign-off on their request. 

That said, if the House launches an impeachment investigation the Department of Justice will lose that blocking power.

The committee can then go to court directly and demand compliance. It doesn’t have crawl on bended knees to President Biden’s appointees and ask, in vain, for help. 

What are House Republicans really looking for in those emails? Mainly, they want proof the vice president discussed US policy with his son, who then shared that information with his business partners.

If the vice president indicated he was helping his son, that would be far worse – and if any classified information was leaked, that would be a crime in its own right.

House impeachment investigators won’t stop with the emails. They want a full range of information from the White House, Executive Branch agencies, Biden family members, their business partners, and the banks through which the family allegedly funnelled foreign income. The banks in question generated hundreds of “suspicious activity” reports on these foreign transfers, which then disappeared into a web of Biden family LLCs – a web investigators will be keen to unravel. 

In tracing these transactions, the committee will be looking out for two kinds of possible corruption.

The first and most important involves any direct involvement by Joe Biden himself. His family members matter only if their income hinged on Joe’s position and actions. Hunter and Joe’s brothers, James and Frank, made a lot of money trading on Joe’s name and his powerful position – but that’s not necessarily illegal. Nor is it illegal if Joe himself knew what they were doing and lied about it. What is illegal is if Joe knowingly aided these family efforts. 

The second involves any attempted cover up. We know that the Biden White House and multiple agencies seem to have obstructed any harmful disclosures. That’s also not inherently illegal – though it may be politically damaging if the obstruction is publicised – but any official involvement from administration officials on behalf of the president and his aides would be.

Click here to read the full article.

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Mass Protest Against the US-backed Regime Change in Pakistan

September 11th, 2023 by Junaid S. Ahmad

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*** 

Pakistan is now back to the rule of the generals under a ruthless military dictator, a setup that Washington adored throughout the Cold War and has engineered once again.

The population of 240 million is being terrorized and brutalized, and the Western mainstream media is criminally silent. 

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Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Religion and Global Politics, and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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*** 

On 11 September 1973, Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown in a CIA-sponsored military coup, paving the way for a brutal military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet.

Declassified US files show why Washington wanted to take him out. 

On 5 November 1970, shortly after Allende had won Chile’s election, US Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger noted that Allende “poses one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere”. 

The example “of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on… other parts of the world”, Kissinger added. He thus recommended that the US government “do all we can to keep him from consolidating power”.

Over the next three years, the CIA orchestrated a series of covert operations in Chile designed to destabilise the Allende government, and prepare the ground for its removal.

On 16 September 1973, just five days after the coup, Kissinger told Nixon in a private phone call that: “We didn’t do it. I mean we helped them. [Redacted] created the conditions as great as possible”. 

Over the following years, the US government supported the Chilean dictatorship, as it rounded up, tortured, and murdered its political opponents. In 1976, Kissinger privately told Pinochet: “We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here”.

While Washington’s role in the 1973 coup is notorious, less is known about Britain’s secret campaign against Allende, its support for the Chilean dictatorship, and the Labour government’s decision to protect Pinochet from extradition.

On the 50-year anniversary of the coup, Declassified sat down with Salvador Allende’s grandson, Pablo Sépulveda Allende, to discuss the sordid history of British interference in Chile.

Britain’s Hidden Hand

We met Pablo at his home in Santiago, Chile’s capital. 

Though Pablo was born after the 1973 coup, his grandfather’s legacy is clearly not forgotten. The living room table is adorned by books about the Popular Unity (UP) movement in Chile, the left-wing coalition which brought Allende to power in 1970.

Pablo is now a political activist, and a doctor. He was recently detained while providing medical treatment to protesters battling against neoliberalism and police brutality in Chile – both remnants of the Pinochet dictatorship which only ended in 1990. 

We began the interview by reading excerpts from recently declassified British files, all of which have only been released into the UK national archives during the past few years.

The files show how the CIA was not the only foreign actor which had Salvador Allende in its crosshairs. In fact, Britain’s Cold War propaganda unit, the Information Research Department (IRD), had been working to prevent Allende coming to power since at least 1962.

In the run-up to Chile’s 1964 election, the IRD had been distributing its “more serious [propaganda] material to reliable contacts and to securing the publication of certain press articles.” This was designed to delegitimise Allende and promote his main opponent, the Christian Democrat candidate Eduardo Frei.

After Frei won the election, IRD officials could not contain their joy. “I should like, if I may, to send our congratulations to all those contributing to local IRD work”, wrote the head of the IRD’s Latin America desk, Rosemary Allott, just days after the results came in.

As Allende’s electoral prospects improved during the late 1960s, Britain’s covert propaganda operations in Chile intensified. “We are concentrating on covert operations which we think could influence the result of the next elections”, noted Pat Dyer, the IRD field officer in Santiago, in 1968.

In 1970, the incoming British ambassador in Santiago, David Hildyard, was briefed that the IRD had “been concentrating on preventing an extreme left-wing alliance from gaining power in the presidential elections”.

Remarkably, Dyer also confessed that he was “not discouraging Chileans from thinking that there could be foreign intervention if the Marxists gain control here, because this could influence many independent voters, particularly women, to vote against Marxism at the next elections”.

In other words, the IRD was encouraging Chilean voters to expect a coup against Allende, and therefore to vote against him.

Between 1962 and 1970, Britain thus interfered in two presidential elections in Chile, and engaged in a range of covert operations designed to prevent Allende from ever coming to power.

‘It’s not surprising’

This was the first time that Pablo had learned about Britain’s hidden hand in Chile, but he was not surprised by the evidence.

“I didn’t have much information about the actions of the British government against Allende in Chile”, he says. “But, as you know, given the role of the US, it’s not surprising. From an Anglo-Saxon point of view, the US and Britain act as one in many respects”.

For Pablo, these operations sit within a wider context of colonial powers seeking to thwart the economic development of smaller countries. 

“The colonialist countries in general have collaborated, let’s say, so that the decolonised countries can’t become independent, so that they don’t have any real economic or political independence”.

Indeed, British covert action in Chile was often undertaken in collaboration with the US during this period, with advice and intelligence being shared with the US embassy in Santiago.

‘My enemy is dead’

With this in mind, it is not surprising that the UK government welcomed the 1973 coup.

The Foreign Office felt that the Pinochet regime had “infinitely more to offer British interests than the one which preceded it”. As Declassified recently revealed, Britain’s MI6 and its embassy in Santiago even aided Chile’s military in the aftermath of the coup.

In order to suppress domestic opposition to the Pinochet regime, Foreign Office propagandists also seemingly planted articles in the British press blaming Allende for the political chaos, and arguing that “there is no firm evidence to suggest the Americans inspired the fall of President Allende”.

Four days after the Chilean coup, The Economist similarly declared that: “The temporary death of democracy in Chile will be regrettable, but the blame lies clearly with Dr. Allende. […] Their coup was homegrown, and attempts to make out that the Americans were involved are absurd”.

One of the Economist’s writers on Latin America and a longstanding IRD contact, Robert Moss, reportedly ran through the corridors of the newspaper’s office in London chanting: “My enemy is dead!”.

‘At the service of economic power’

We asked Pablo to talk about the British media’s response to the coup, and why certain journalists would be delighted to see the death of democracy in Chile.

“The unfortunate thing is that certain parts of the press are not independent – they’re financed or form part of major economic interest groups”, he says. “And well, we can’t be surprised that certain media organisations, particularly the big ones, reacted in this way towards emancipatory movements across the world”.

He relates the British response to how the Chilean elite reacted to the coup. “They had champagne parties to celebrate”, he says. “The media are at the service of economic power. So they influence public opinion through the production of information, which then influences policy”.

The inverse is also true, he adds. When repressive governments serve powerful interests, “the media hide or manipulate” the truth, even when military regimes like that of Pinochet “consolidate their power through massacres, killings, coup d’états – the media minimises or relativises it”.

The BBC’s coverage of the Chilean coup offers a useful case in point. 

After its Panorama team visited Chile to cover what was happening, the Foreign Office privately noted that the journalists had “been extremely conscientious” such that their documentary should “be about 60 to 75% favourable to the new regime”.

Once the BBC documentary had been aired, moreover, then UK foreign secretary Alec Douglas-Home noted with apparent glee that the programme “was a well-balanced and documented piece relatively favourable to the Chilean military takeover”.

Pinochet’s Spy in Northern Ireland

After the British Labour Party returned to power in 1974, the UK government took a more hostile approach to the Pinochet regime. 

During the Harold Wilson and James Callaghan governments (1974-1979), Britain welcomed more Chilean refugees to Britain, imposed an arms embargo on the Pinochet regime, and removed the British ambassador in Santiago. 

The shift in policy was taken in response to pressure from the British trade union movement and Chile solidarity campaigners, who successfully lobbied the UK government to uphold a more ethical policy towards Chile.

Not all of the British trade union movement, however, was on board. 

Classified files released by WikiLeaks show how Norman Willis, then the assistant general secretary of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), privately briefed the US embassy in London in May 1974 that “the TUC was clearly not enthusiastic” about the “blacking” of British arms to Chile in the East Kilbride Rolls Royce factory.

Nonetheless, British hostility to the Chilean dictatorship was clearly widespread – and effective. 

In 1975, the Pinochet regime even dispatched a spy to Northern Ireland to take pictures of Britain’s internment camps there. The idea was to present the images at the UN Security Council, and embarrass the UK government into taking a more restrained position on Chile. 

The plan only failed because the images arrived too late, but the photos later appeared in Chilean daily El Mercurio.

‘That is the history of Latin America’

After Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979, British policy reversed course.

As historian Grace Livingstone wrote in Declassified, Thatcher’s government “not only lifted a British embargo on the sale of weapons to Chile imposed by the previous Labour government, it also sold arms that could be used for internal repression while training hundreds of Chilean soldiers”.

In 1982 Pinochet also provided secret assistance to the British war effort over the Falkland Islands. For this, Thatcher would go on to say that Pinochet was “this country’s staunch, true friend”.

We asked Pablo what he thought about the relationship between Thatcher and Pinochet, and the legacy it has left on Chile.

“Let’s remember how Pinochet provided air bases during Britain’s war with Argentina and gave intelligence to British forces”, he begins. “And, as they say, Chile was the neoliberal laboratory, and Thatcher was the one who really initiated those kinds of anti-trade union, neoliberal, privatisation policies in Britain”.

The two figures thus “coincided ideologically”, but Chile was still in a position of “subordination” to Britain as “a supplier of raw materials” to the global North. 

Allende, by contrast, “wanted the country to develop and industrialise, and fought with the latifundista [large landowning] right-wing which wanted to continue being subordinated to the countries of the north”.

“That is the history of Latin America, in a sense”, he adds.

Indeed, one of Allende’s major transgressions, in the view of the US and UK governments, was the nationalisation of Chile’s copper industry. 

Washington was concerned “not only about the loss to the copper companies, but also about the precedent that the Chilean action would set for the nationalisation of other big American interests throughout the developing world”, ambassador Secondé observed in 1973.

A Foreign Office brief written the same year similarly noted that Britain’s “major interest in Chile is copper”, and the UK government therefore had “a major interest in Chile regaining stability”.

Pinochet’s Extradition

Chile’s return to democratic government in 1990 followed Pinochet’s call for a national plebiscite on his dictatorship in 1988, something he was not expecting to lose. However, the “No” campaign won a resounding victory in October of that year, with 56% of the population voting to end the 15-year-old dictatorship.

Unwilling to relinquish power, the Chilean military started to make plans, “using violence as a pretext”, to suspend the plebiscite “if Pinochet appears to be losing”. Remarkably, US and British officials “passed messages of concern to Chilean military contacts”, urging them to respect the vote.

Though Pinochet eventually agreed to step down, he remained head of the Chilean military, and maintained a significant amount of political power. 

Throughout the 1990s, Pinochet made a number of visits to London, shopping at Harrods and going for afternoon tea with his long-time friend, Margaret Thatcher.

The British public had not forgotten about Pinochet’s brutal legacy in Chile, with scores of angry letters being sent to the Foreign Office demanding the government refuse his entry. 

As the letters flowed in, the UK government deliberated whether new arms deals with the Chilean military justified the diplomatic embarrassment of welcoming Pinochet to the country. He was not refused entry.

In October 1998, Pinochet was once again in Britain, this time recovering from a recent back surgery at the London Clinic. Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón saw an opportunity, and issued an international arrest warrant for Pinochet regarding crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship. 

Over the following 16 months, London became the site of a dramatic legal battle, with victims of the Pinochet regime hoping the dictator would finally be held accountable for his actions.

Indeed, many expected the New Labour government might proceed with extradition. Its leader Tony Blair had told the party conference in 1999 that he found the former dictator “unspeakable”, while his close ally Peter Mandelson declared that most British people would find it “gut-wrenching” to see him evade justice.

In January 2000, however, home secretary Jack Straw announced that Pinochet would not be extradited to Spain on health grounds. He subsequently returned to Chile, where he died in 2006.

‘A secret negotiation’

The decision not to extradite Pinochet was met by international opprobrium. Chile’s leading human rights lawyer, Hernán Montealegre, declared that “the freeing of Pinochet was a political decision taken by the British government”.

Evidence has since mounted to support Montealegre’s claim.

According to a book published by Chilean journalist Monica Pérez and Felipe Gertdtzen, the son-in-law of former Chilean president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, a “back channel” was organised to orchestrate Pinochet’s release, with the issue of his health used as political cover to avoid diplomatic embarrassment.

A recently declassified British file, meanwhile, indicates a more unusual reason for refusing Pinochet’s extradition.

In October 1998, Blair was briefed by his private secretary, John Holmes, that the circumstances surrounding the legal case were “rather more complicated than it might seem”.

“Apparently we have an understanding with him [Pinochet] from the past”, Holmes wrote, “because of our cooperation with the Chileans against Argentina at the time of the Falklands crisis, that we would help him with medical treatment in London”.

He added: “It would obviously be embarrassing if all this came out”.

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We asked Pablo about the extradition case, and whether he believes that a political solution was privately negotiated between the UK and Chilean governments.

“I believe that it was a diplomatic negotiation, so to say, a secret negotiation, not public, between the Chilean and British governments to free him.”

He added: “The Chilean government, despite being a government supposedly of the left, demanded at all cost that Pinochet should be returned and judged in Chile, even though in Chile that was never going to really happen.”

After Pinochet returned to Chile, he was determined to be mentally fit to face trial, and placed under house arrest on a series of charges relating to forced disappearances, tax evasion, and corruption. This penalty, however, was less severe than what he had faced, and escaped, in Europe.

Pablo continued that the Chilean government’s actions with regards to the extradition case were a source of “embarrassment”. “You don’t expect this from governments of the left, and especially not those of the Socialist Party, which was Salvador Allende’s party”.

Pinochet was “fundamentally an ally of the US and UK governments, so it’s not particularly strange that they did this”, Pablo adds. On a sombre note, he concludes that much of the “shame lies with Chile, who requested this and protected him”.

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John McEvoy and Pablo Navarrete are co-directing a forthcoming documentary investigating Britain’s hidden role in the death of Chile’s democracy and the rise of the Pinochet dictatorship. You can support the film’s production here.

John McEvoy is an independent journalist who has written for International History Review, The Canary, Tribune Magazine, Jacobin and Brasil Wire.

Pablo Navarrete is a British-Chilean journalist and documentary filmmaker focusing on Latin America.

Featured image: Pablo Sepúlveda Allende speaks to Declassified UK in Santiago, Chile, 2023 (Source: Declassified UK)

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*** 

Brazilian President Lula da Silva earned riotous applause from the Alt-Media Community (AMC) after saying on Saturday that

“What I can say to you is that if I’m president of Brazil, and he comes to Brazil, there’s no way he will be arrested.”

His remarks referred to the possibility of President Putin attending next year’s G20 Summit in Rio despite Brazil being a signatory to the Rome Statute and thus politically obligated to arrest the Russian leader per the ICC’s warrant from half a year ago.

Fellow BRICS member South Africa earlier balked at inviting him to attend the group’s summit last month and reached a compromise whereby he’d participate via video instead.

They completely bungled the optics of this outcome as was explained here at the time, but the event nevertheless went off without a hitch and even saw BRICS more than double its number of members. The same can be said about this weekend’s G20 Summit that President Putin also didn’t attend.

The Kremlin clumsily choreographed his decision and was constructively critiqued for that here, especially since India isn’t a signatory to the Rome Statute so the Russian leader faced no threat of arrest unlike if he would have turned up in South Africa a few weeks prior. It was assessed here that he was probably advised to give up on participating in the G20 at the leadership level in order to signal his country’s commitment to accelerating financial multipolarity processes through BRICS.

He declined participating in last November’s G20 Summit in Bali despite there being no ICC arrest warrant for him at the time so skipping the subsequent one in Delhi suggested that there’s more at play than the official excuse shared by his spokesman alleging that he’s simply too busy nowadays. Moreover, the next three years’ worth of summits will be hosted by Brazil, South Africa, and then the US, with the first two being ICC members and the last being his country’s top geopolitical foe.

By deciding to sit the latest Delhi Summit out, President Putin sent the signal that he won’t participate in person in the next such yearly event until 2027 at the earliest, and it might not even be possible during that year either if the host turns out to be an ICC member or a geopolitical foe. It was against this backdrop that Lula announced that “there’s no way he will be arrested” if he visits Brazil for next year’s event, but then he flip-flopped a full day later by saying that it’ll be up to the judiciary to decide on that.

According to Reuters, his exact words were as follows:

“If Putin decides to join (next year’s summit), it is the judiciary’s power to decide (on a possible arrest) and not my government.”

Lula also said that

“I want to know why the U.S, India and China didn’t sign the ICC treaty and why our country signed it.”

This appears to be more of a distraction to divert anger from his base over this sudden policy reversal than a sincere intent to pull out of the ICC, however, since he had two earlier terms to do so if he really wanted.

In one fell swoop, Lula made fools out of everyone in the AMC who effusively praised him for his “bravery” in earlier guaranteeing President Putin’s safety despite Western pressure to arrest him if he visits during next year’s G20 Summit.

Even those who casually follow Brazilian affairs know that the country is a largely run by the judicial system much more than by publicly elected representatives or even the military so there were credible reasons to be skeptical of his earlier promise.

Instead of waiting to see how everything unfolded, these same influencers jumped the gun by implying or even outright claiming that his words disprove prior criticism of him for condemning Russia in his joint statement with Biden and ordering Brazil to vote in support of an anti-Russian UNGA Resolution. The reality that average members of the AMC have yet to realize is that they’re being manipulated by these same leftist- and/or liberal-aligned influencers who want to cover up for the aforesaid facts.

As was explained here, the Workers’ Party (PT) has been infected with the ideological virus of liberalglobalism that’s turning this historically socialist movement into a Brazilian knockoff of the US Democrats with whom Lula reportedly plans to ally in pushing “progressivism” (“wokeism”) across the world. This accounts for PT founder Lula’s previously mentioned moves that contrast with his successor Dilma Rousseff’s decision to abstain from an anti-Russian UNGA vote during 2014’s Crimean Crisis.

The PT’s transformation from a socialist vanguard to a “woke” ally of the US Democrats was due to their leadership overreacting to the revival of far-right views during former President Jair Bolsonaro’s tenure and the resultant exacerbation of their country’s “culture war”. They could have remained faithful to socialism but gambled that it’s better to move towards “wokeism”. This had obvious socio-cultural implications but also geopolitical ones too as proven by Lula’s unfriendly political stance towards Russia.

The party’s propagandists know how unpopular this approach is across the Global South and therefore tried gaslighting about it by ridiculously claiming that condemning Russia in a joint statement with Biden and voting against it at the UNGA are supposedly secretly signals proving Lula’s support of Russia. Suffice to say, few multipolar supporters fell for this insult to their intelligence, but many of those that are leftist-aligned still felt uncomfortable calling him out lest their fellow ideologues viciously “cancel” them.

This doublethink persisted into the present and is why many of these same propagandists and leftist-aligned skeptics prematurely sang his praises on Saturday as opposed to waiting to see how everything unfolds even though they themselves know very well that the judiciary is the one calling the shots. They also willfully ignored Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira strongly implying in late March that President Putin would indeed be arrested if he visited Brazil in order to mislead their targeted AMC audience about Lula.

Returning back to Lula’s flip-flopping after having informed readers of the full context behind his words, it’s arguably the case that his initial comments were nothing but a cheap attempt to generate positive headlines among the AMC in order to further mislead average members about his worldview. He’ll continue trying to balance between China and the US, however clumsily this occurs in practice, but he’s not Russian-friendly like this latest psy-op falsely suggested as proven by his earlier anti-Russian policies.

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This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

G20 and African Union (AU) Membership: Implications for Africa

September 11th, 2023 by Kester Kenn Klomegah

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, chairing the G20 summit, has confirmed that the Group of 20 nations agreed to grant the African Union (AU) permanent membership status in an appreciable move aimed at offering the continent to have a stronger voice on important questions and to uplift its unto the higher stage.

“On the back of the hard work of all the teams, we have received consensus on the G20 Leaders Summit Declaration. I announce the adoption of this declaration,” Modi told the G20 leaders in New Delhi. He inaugurated the two-day meeting by calling on members to end a “global trust deficit” and announced that the bloc was granting permanent membership to the African Union in an effort to make it more representative.

In its final declaration in New Delhi, the G20 granted the African Union (AU) a full-fledged membership. The provision about the membership was included in the G20’s final declaration, but the membership for AU will be formalized only next year, when Brazil takes over the presidency of G20 from India.

Leaders from the world’s top economies attended summit in India under the theme: “One Earth, One Family, One Future” on September 9 – 10, but the leaders of the Group of 20 nations are riven by sharp geopolitical differences and deep-seated strategic fault lines these few years.

The G20, a forum for the world’s leading economies, discussed several themes such as supply chain resilience, digital transformation, debt distress in developing countries, and climate change goals during its gathering.

According to Russian G20 Sherpa, Svetlana Lukash, earlier told Vedomosti financial newspaper that Russia was one of the first countries to support the AU’s application, which was filed last year by Senegalese President Macky Sall, who chaired the AU in 2022 and called upon the G20 leaders to grant the Africa-wide bloc a permanent seat in the group.

“Russia believes that, once implemented, the initiative of African nations would contribute to strengthening the positions of the majority of countries worldwide and the interests of the Global South,” Lukash said.

Russia’s G20 sherpa recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin had publicly voiced his support for the AU joining the G20 at the Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg in late July. United States Joe Biden earlier in December 2022 also emphasized AU ascension during the African leaders’ summit held in Washington. So are Germany, Brazil, South Africa and Canada in full support for AU’s membership.

Putin said on July 27 that Moscow expected the African Union to become a full member of the G20 as early as this September. He stressed that Russia considered the AU “as a leading regional organization that forms a modern security structure on the continent and creates conditions for ensuring Africa’s worthy place in the system of global economic ties.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, currently chairing the G20, also emphasized, in a comment to South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper, that New Delhi was an advocate for the AU gaining full G20 membership.

Modi wrote to the leaders of the G20 nations in June proposing that the AU be given full, permanent membership of the bloc at the upcoming summit in the Indian capital. The AU will have the same status as the European Union.

In an article published across Indian and international newspapers ahead od the summit, Modi wrote,

“Our presidency has not only seen the largest-ever participation from African countries but has also pushed for the inclusion of the African Union as a permanent member of the G20”.

Supporting Africa’s application is in India’s real economic interests, as many Indian companies have a footprint on the continent, said Aleksey Kupriyanov, chairman of the South Asia group at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO).

According to him, New Delhi is also counting on earning high-profile PR points to burnish its reputation as a Global South leader.

As for the European Union, the fact that African countries have mostly maintained a neutral stance on anti-Russian UN resolutions over Ukraine is a cause for worry in Brussels, thus prompting the bloc to look for ways to influence Africa, one of which is Brussels support for upgrading the continent’s status within the G20, explained Pavel Timofeyev, head of the European Political Research Department at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

“Bringing the AU into the G20 would enhance interaction between Russia and the continent and give Russian businesses better market opportunities there,” Natalya Piskunova, associate professor at Moscow State University’s Department of World Politics, concluded.

The African Union has advocated for full membership for seven years, spokesperson Ebba Kalondo said, added that it has also been seeking reforms to a global financial system – including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and a few other entities.

The importance of this decision for the AU and Africa highlights Africa’s growing role in the global economic system. This move further represents progress from diplomatic intentions to concrete actions in making Africa more visible in the G20, with potential implications for politics, economics, and cultural relations.

In addition, speakers on African issues have strongly called for a pragmatic approach to consider irreversible geopolitical changes, particularly in international financial and economic organizations, to create a more equitable global governance system.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended as an observer, with the heads of the IMF and the World Bank also in attendance. A delegation from the only African nation in the G20, South Africa, headed by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Among the few African guests was Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

According to official documents, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped summit in the capital New Delhi. The G20 consists of 19 countries and the European Union, making up about 85 percent of global GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population.

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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.

Selected Articles: In Remembrance of 9/11 and the 1973 Chilean Coup

September 11th, 2023 by Global Research News

In commemoration of the 9/11 attack and the 1973 Chilean coup, we have compiled the following articles to serve as a reminder that democracy has long been backsliding in the Western world. 

9/11 After 22 years

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, September 11, 2023

Today is the 22nd Anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon known as 9/11. A generation of 22-year olds has grown up after 9/11, and the event probably means nothing to them. They learn that it was an attack on America like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 disappears into history.

Chile September 11, 1973: The Actuality of a Coup d’Etat. Manlio Dinucci

By Manlio Dinucci, September 11, 2023

In November 1970, Salvador Allende became President of Chile, he was elected by a coalition of democratic forces with a program of social progress and national sovereignty. Two months earlier, in September, President Nixon ordered the CIA to prepare a plan to prevent Allende from carrying out his program. Washington’s first objective was to “blow up the Chilean economy“.

September 11, 1973: The Chile Coup: The U.S. Hand

By Peter Kornbluh, September 11, 2023

Since 1970, the Nixon administration had worked to de-stabilize the elected government of Socialist Salvador Allende. The CIA had laid the ground work for the coup d’etat. In view of Pinochet’s recent arrest, the following article looks back a quarter century at the U.S. role in the political violence that shook Chile.

The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account of 911 Cannot be True

By David Ray Griffin, September 11, 2023

Shortly after 9/11, President Bush advised people not to tolerate “outrageous conspiracy theories about the attacks of 11 September” (Bush, 2001). Philip Zelikow, who directed the work of the 9/11 Commission, has likewise warned against “outrageous conspiracy theories” (Hansen, 2005).

Fifty Years Ago: Chile, September 11, 1973: The Ingredients of a Military Coup

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 11, 2023

Half a century ago on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet, crushed the democratically elected Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende. The objective was to replace a progressive, democratically elected government by a brutal military dictatorship.

9/11 attacks

The 9/11 Anniversary: Conspiracy Theory or Critical Thinking?

By Prof. Graeme MacQueen, September 11, 2023

If Bin Laden was the criminal mastermind, why didn’t the FBI charge him with the crime? In 2006 an FBI spokesperson explained: the Bureau had no hard evidence connecting him to 9/11.

9/11 Analysis: “A War in the Planning for Four Years”. Michael C. Ruppert

By Michael Ruppert, September 10, 2023

The key to controlling Eurasia, says Brzezinski, is controlling the Central Asian Republics. And the key to controlling the Central Asian republics is Uzbekistan. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Uzbekistan was forcefully mentioned by President George W. Bush in his address to a joint session of Congress just days after the attacks of September 11 [2001] as the very first place that the U.S. military would be deployed.

Remembering the Other 9/11: The Chilean September 11, 1973 Coup D’Etat

By Michael Welch, September 08, 2023

An event taking place in the South American country of Chile 50 years ago this coming week, not only claimed the life of democratically elected President Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens, but of 2,200 other Chileans, including social activists and students. Roughly 30,000 people were tortured in the National Stadium of Chile and other makeshift detention centres. Almost 1,500 more simply disappeared. 

9/11 News Coverage: How 36 Reporters Brought Us the Twin Towers’ Explosive Demolition on 9/11

By Ted Walter and Prof. Graeme MacQueen, September 08, 2023

The widely held belief that the Twin Towers collapsed as a result of the airplane impacts and the resulting fires is, unbeknownst to most people, a revisionist theory. Among individuals who witnessed the event firsthand, the more prevalent hypothesis was that the Twin Towers had been brought down by massive explosions.

9/11 Explosive Evidence. Experts Speak Out

By Richard Gage, September 07, 2023

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — which is the U.S. government agency that investigated the World Trade Center’s destruction — the Twin Towers came down “essentially in free fall.”

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A message written to a trusted campaigning friend, who is struggling to accept that what is happening is intentional. It is indeed a big step to move from justifiable criticism of presumed incompetent politicians and industrialists to putting the pieces together in such a way that they can point only to intentionality. See what you think.

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Dear X,

I find that attempting to put all the information together in such a way as to allow for the whole even to be benign or at least not wholly malevolent is impossible.

That’s because, as you’ve no doubt heard me say, I believe it is malevolent!

I too struggled early on, arguing “surely they must have known this!?” Etc.

Once I allowed for the possibility that all the bad things were intentional, I find all the rest falls into place. Obviously that alone doesn’t prove that it was intentional.

Some early clues to intentionality are the coordinated responses of scores of governments to the alleged pandemic: lockdowns, masking, mass testing of the well, the misapplication of PCR-based techniques to bulk testing of clinical samples, selective business & school closures, border restrictions etc.

Not a single country had any of this as a core part of their own pandemic preparedness plan.

Even the WHO’s scientific evaluation of NPIs concluded none of them worked & the only changes worth a dime were asking those with symptoms to remain at home until recovered & to increase the frequency of hand washing (because the route of transmission wouldn’t initially be known for sure).

I argued at the time that the only way all the countries could have adopted all these useless yet damaging & costly NPIs is if there was supranational coordination.

Whether that from WHO, WEF, etc., I don’t know. But illegitimate in any case.

We now know that they knew that imposing these restrictions would save nobody, yet the negative consequences would be devastating, even lethal for some, who would no longer have access to the medical care they needed. Additionally, the use of furlough was obviously going to be enormously damaging to sovereigns who were already borrowed to the hilt.

I note the widespread adoption of an American term, furlough, into public discourse. In U.K. we never previously used the term. Nobody remarked on its arrival, which telegraphed the leading role played by Americans.

Then we have the imposition of radically altered medical protocols.

Because of my long exposure to matters respiratory, I knew immediately they began panicking about needed 30,000 mechanical ventilators that something truly demonic was at hand. It’s never appropriate, in a patient with an unobstructed airway & an intact chest wall to sedate, intubate and ventilate them. Mechanical ventilation is certainly a marvellous, life-saving thing, but it comes with serious risks to the frail patient, in the form of ventilator acquired pneumonia, lung injury from use of pressure to inflate the lungs and more. The appropriate treatment would be an oxygen mask, single, low dose benzo, a cup of tea and a biscuit and a caring hand upon an arm.

In the USA as well many, once in this vulnerable state, were given remdesivir & not given total, intravenous nutrition. In most cases it was just a matter of time before they died.

In care homes, there was indiscriminate use of inappropriately high doses of midazolam and morphine. Not only high doses but repeatedly given to their elderly charges. They’d been told to do it by the highest medical authorities in the land and so few questioned it.

My PhD by coincidence was in this area, the effect of opiates on respiratory function. The discovery of multiple opiate receptors raised the possibility that it might be possible to invent receptor selective ligands that would relieve pain with reduced respiratory depression. Unfortunately, both are mediated primarily by mu opiate receptors, both centrally and in the periphery.

The combination of opiate agonists and benzodiazepines is contraindicated in patients unless close monitoring (for signs of respiratory depression) was in place. 

It isn’t & cannot be in a care home. They too were murdered in large numbers. 

Finally, in the community, the family doctors were cautioned not to prescribe antibiotics in cases of covid “because antibiotics cannot treat viral illnesses”. It’s well known that what is usually termed secondary bacterial infection is generally what actually leads to death in this situation. However, the records show that prescriptions for antibiotics for suspected bacterial infection of the lungs fell by 50% & large numbers of people died avoidable deaths (and rather horrible deaths, too).

It’s not possible to regard all of this evidence without concluding that malice aforethought was at work here. It’s literally diabolical, what they did.

How it was done with so little pushback still confuses me. I do know that from the late-1990s right through late-2019, there was a sequence of tabletop simulations of global pandemic scenarios & bioterrorism scenarios, which allowed the perpetrators to hone their craft in the responses & control measures imposed. I believe some of these were translated onto the ground, giving emergency response team a chance to form & to rehearse what most of them thought were appropriate, given the fictional set up, though this is speculative.

Then we come to the “vaccines”. Given a career in pharma and biotech, I knew that it was impossible to create a vaccine in under 5-6 years if they were going to demonstrate clinical safety and hone manufacturing to yield the customarily high quality manufacturing necessary to produce tightly defined final drug product. If the latter if not done, it’s pointless doing the former, because what would otherwise be injected wouldn’t be what had been used in the clinical trials.

In other words, if there was a need for a new vaccine, you would never even contemplate running such a program, because no pandemic in history lasts a fraction of the minimum time necessary to create a safe and effective new vaccine.

Yet they went ahead. This too is malevolent, let alone the extraordinary lying, censorship & smearing of dissenters.

Given my entire career used “rational drug design” principles to design and test molecules, I was able to put myself in the shoes of the designers of the jabs.

There are several, completely obvious safety issues built into these products.

One is the axiomatic induction of “autoimmune” responses, regardless of which antigen was selected.

The next was choice of antigen, where no one would pick spike protein, because it was highly likely to be directly toxic, it’s subject to the most rapid mutation (so a vaccine might lose efficacy) & also it’s the least different from human proteins (and so might trigger bystander attacks on even somewhat similar self proteins).

Yet all four leading players chose this antigen. What a coincidence! I’d have called up my peers in the other companies to endure we didn’t do that. That’s because it would be highly undesirable to have common risks to all programs.

On formulation, the mRNA-based products both selected LNPs to encapsulate their message. Yet there was industry knowledge that these not only travel all over the body including into the brain but that they accumulate in the ovaries.

Yet, knowing this, the companies & regulators went ahead and then others compounded the toxicity risk by recommending these injections in pregnant women and children.

I was still slow to piece together all this evidence of carefully thought out harms. But eventually I got there and have been speaking in what many regard as extreme terms ever since.

I’m afraid there’s no hiding from the reality that this is a global coup d’etat and intentional mass murder.

Worse, we see the encroachment of surveillance technology and legal powers to introduce digital ID & CBDC as well as to eliminate cash.

It’s not difficult to come up with scenarios where presentation of digital ID will become mandatory.

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Dr. Michael Yeadon, PhD, was Formerly Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer Allergy & Respiratory at Pfizer Global R&D. He holds Joint Honours in Biochemistry and Toxicology and a PhD in Respiratory Pharmacology. He is an Independent Consultant and Co-founder & CEO of Ziarco Pharma Ltd.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page