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The first whole job-category with 100s of thousands of employees will already lose their job to AI in 3 years:
“In three years I don’t think there’s going to be any human taking an order in any drive-through in the U.S.”
I just checked how many jobs we talk of. My AI tells me that IBIS World has reported 201,865 fast food restaurants in the USA. And 70% of their sales are from drive-through – and a chain like Wendy’s even reports 90% of their sales are from drive-through. See this.
We probably talk about 300,000 – 400,000 jobs being taken by AI – in US fast-food ordering alone.
Fortunately, in this case there is a lack of labor to fill in these positions, so the social effect will be relatively moderate here.
But the ordering of drive-through fast food is just a tiny corner of the US economy.
The broader effect will be millions and millions of US jobs – gone over the next only 3 years.
Jobs removed through automation are always replaced by new jobs – but that is over time.
Honestly, as an economist, I find it hard to believe that the US economy will be able to replace these millions and millions of jobs lost to AI as fast as these jobs will be wiped out.
What does that mean for the US competitive position in the World?
It will mean an enormous boost in US economic, tech, and military power – combined with an increase in the kind of US social fragility which resulted in Jan. 6.
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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
Over five hundred and twenty-five days ago, between the evening of February 13 and afternoon of February 14, 2022, four men were arrested for their participation in Freedom Convoy protests at the Alberta border town of Coutts.
They were charged with conspiracy to commit murder of police officers in support of a plot to overthrow the Government of Canada. They have been dubbed the ‘Coutts Four.’
The accused are self-employed fisherman Chris Carbert, who ran a landscaping and fencing business with nine employees. A Lethbridge, Alberta, resident, 42-year-old Carbert is a single father who has been raising his son since the boy was nine-months-old.
Another Lethbridge resident, and best friend of Chris Carbert since public school, is 49-year-old Chris Lysak. He is an electrician and father of two girls.
A third member of the ‘Coutts Four’ accused of conspiracy to commit murder is 41-year-old Jerry Morin. He is a lineman who grew up near Vulcan, Alberta. The CBC states he resided in Olds, Alberta, at the time of his arrest. The fourth accused of these serious charges is Anthony “Tony” Olienkick. Tony, age 40, took part of the clean-up in High River, Alberta, after the 2013 floods.[1] He has a gravel truck and is self-employed, and the CBC has reported his home is in Claresholm, Alberta.
The Coutts Four have been denied bail. They have remained in custody for over 525 days with a trial date yet to be set. More pretrial motions will be heard between July 25 to 28 by the crown and defence lawyers at the Lethbridge court house. Since the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, kingdoms and democracies have allowed those charged with a crime to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. With that provision has come the right to be granted bail and to a speedy trial. When citizens are accused of a crime and left to rot in prison without having their day in court, their spirits can be broken and be persuaded to agree to plead guilty even when they are innocent.
Bail Is Granted to Those Accused of Having Committed Murder, and Lesser Charges in Canada
In Canada, when someone is charged with committing a crime, they are released on bail. This includes for those charged with murder. For example, on September 2021, 31-year-old Umar Zameer was released on bail after being charged with first-degree murder of Toronto Police Constable Jeffrey Northrup.[2] In April 2022, Marlena Isnardy was released on bail after while awaiting her trial for the charge of murdering 27-year-old Matthew Cholette in Kelowna, British Columbia.[3] A case of double murder in the city of Mission in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, concerned the deaths of Lisa Dudley and her boyfriend Guthrie McKay. Accused of first-degree murder, Tom Holden was released on bail.[4] And in March 2023, 22-year-old Ali Mian was released on bail as he awaited trial to answer to charges of second-degree murder in the shooting death of an armed intruder, 21-year-old Alexander Amoroso-Leacock.[5]
But the Coutts Four are not granted bail.
Meanwhile others charged of first and second-degree murder are out on bail. What is going on here? Does the RCMP have a case that proves the accused pose a danger, if released on bail, and plan to violently overthrow of the government? Or, are their applications for bail being denied as part of political theatre within a larger government narrative to justify invocation of the Emergencies Act?
In 1166 the Assize of Clarendon ruling under England’s King Henry II established the tradition of habeas corpus (in Latin: “that you have the body”) which gave those charged with a crime a right to appear in court to defend themselves. The 1166 judgment declared, “No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land.”[6] And, in the Magna Carta, section 38 states “No bailiff (legal officer) shall start proceedings against anyone [not just freemen, this was even then a universal human right] on his accusation alone (on his own mere say-so), without trustworthy witnesses having been brought for the purpose.”[7] Habeas corpus rights are part of the British legal tradition inherited by Canada. The rights exist in the common law and have been enshrined in section 10(c) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states that “[e]veryone has the right on arrest or detention … to have the validity of the detention determined by way of habeas corpus and to be released if the detention is not lawful.” While section 9(c) of the Charter states that a protected right of Canadian citizens is “freedom from arbitrary detention or imprisonment.”[8]
Former Toronto Police Sergeant Detective, Donald Best, points out that it is almost unheard of in Canada for an accused to be denied bail.
Does the denial of bail mean the four must be guilty? Consider the way the RCMP gathered evidence.
The Mounties alleged that other unknown persons were still at large and connected to the plot to overthrow the government.
Yet, the RCMP didn’t fingerprint and DNA test the firearms and other items that might have originated with ‘other unknown’ suspects. If you are an investigator, you want to identify who else might be involved in a plot. If you have a weapon, getting the fingerprints and DNA evidence can point to the identities of other persons that are suspects in the larger plot. Yet, the RCMP didn’t bag each item where it was found, and protect each item for its secure transit to a forensic lab. Best wrote on his website, “Failure of police officers to adhere to fundamentals of exhibits collection and protection doesn’t just potentially weaken the prosecution’s case, it can also deny exculpatory evidence to the defense. Many times, I have seen otherwise good officers get ‘tunnel vision’ about a suspect or an investigation, and begin to pay attention only to evidence that supports their theory of the case and the crime. These officers become so focused that they will even deliberately exclude evidence that doesn’t support their vision of events.”
Best points out in the RCMP photo of the cache of weapons ‘discovered’ by the Mounties, “Items have been arranged on the floor with five of the long-guns rather precariously leaning against the table for display. No (investigator) would normally position or store firearms in such a manner where a bump of the table might cause them to fall…” A photo of the cache of weapons “had a national impact and was used by both the media and the government as justification for invoking the Emergencies Act, and the police operations to arrest and clear Freedom Convoy protesters in Ottawa.”[9]
Background
In January 2022 Canadian mainstream media and politicians described an unruly mob headed for Ottawa. On January 26, 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadians there was a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” coming to Ottawa in a “so-called freedom convoy.”[10] Protesters began arriving in Ottawa on January 28, with the majority arriving the following day.
Source: OffGuardian
Protest leaders worked with Ottawa Police Service Police Liaison Teams to ensure emergency lanes in downtown Ottawa remained open. On two occasions, an Ontario court ruled the protests in Ottawa could proceed. The second ruling, on February 16, 2022, took into account the protesters adhering to the February 7th injunction against honking of horns. There was no looting, no acts of actual physical violence, no smashing of windows. Numbers of police remarked about the lack of criminality. Nonetheless, inflammatory rhetoric coming from politicians and the media depicted the protesters as “terrorists,” “mercenaries,” “hillbillies,” “white supremacists,” “Nazis,” “insurrectionists,” “an unruly mob,” and more.[11]
Protest leaders held press conferences welcoming an opportunity to meet with government leaders, including public health officials. They wanted to have a discussion about the pandemic measures.
Could dialogue lead to a breakthrough, a win-win? Even when unions and management are in tough negotiations during a strike, there can be a breakthrough with an unexpected way forward to resolve matters. Face-to-face dialogue was always a first step to learn if there was a way forward. A 73-page plan by the Ontario Provincial Police included recommendations that the federal government enter into dialogue with the protesters. The government did so in 2020 when First Nations protesters disrupted rail service, ferry sailings, pipeline construction and blockaded an Ontario highway. But in 2022, the Liberal government was in no mood for dialogue. Policing agencies and even the Ontario Attorney-General had suggested the federal government engage in dialogue with the protesters. But the protesters were depicted as impossible, unreasonable people, incapable of participating in discussion.
On the 31st of January 2022, the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau addressed the nation regarding the Freedom Convoy protest movement at a Press Conference from an undisclosed location which was broadcast live.
He portrayed the protesters as violent people, racists and more.
On the 2nd of February, he added another layer with a tweet. (Below, See this)
Are the protesters really what he claims them to be?
I was there for four days with my camera, I never saw or witnessed anything close to what he describes.
Is it possible this is all made up? If it is, what is the purpose? (Jean Francois Girard)
VIDEO
At 4:30 p.m., February 14, Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to crush the protest. Bank accounts of some hundreds of protesters were frozen.
Yet, in an effort to defuse the situation in downtown Ottawa, on February 12, 2022 protest leaders came to an agreement with the City of Ottawa to remove seventy-five percent of protest vehicles from the city between February 14th and 16th. By 12PM, February 14, 102 vehicles had been removed, according to Serge Arpin, City of Ottawa Chief of Staff to the Mayor.[12] There were other Freedom Convoy protests that emerged during the Ottawa protests. Yet, in relation to the justification to invoke the Emergencies Act, in Windsor, Ontario, protesters and police reached an agreement to clear the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge by late on February 13th. The charges against protesters in Coutts, Alberta, across from Sweetgrass, Montana, were dealt with under the existing laws of the land on the February 14.
“Comments made publicly, by public figures and in the media (about Ottawa protests) … were not premised in fact” – Supt. Patrick Morris (Ontario Provincial Police Intelligence)
After the Emergencies Act was invoked, it triggered a mandatory inquiry as prescribed in 1988 legislation passed in Parliament. A Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC) was held over six weeks in Ottawa during the fall of 2022. But the justification for invoking the Emergencies Act began to unravel as police and intelligence officers gave testimony. At 1:00 PM on February 14, 2022, prior to the Emergencies Act invocation, an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) “Operational Intelligence Report” described the Ottawa protest. “The mood today was again calm, festive, and family oriented. Speakers were again telling people to walk away from agitators and thanked the police for remaining calm. Many of the speakers were promoting love and peaceful protest, some even taking quotes from the Bible. Speakers were also wishing everyone a happy Valentine’s.” The memo noted there were “children on Wellington Street playing hockey.”[13]
Supt. Patrick Morris, “the foremost authority in the Province of Ontario regarding Intelligence” with the OPP testified before the POEC. He said of the protest, “ … the lack of violent crime was shocking …. If there was an actual threat, then there would have been an investigation, and if it was an actual threat, I assume the Ottawa Police Service would have laid a charge for uttering threats.”
Morris testified,
“I was concerned by the politicization and I was concerned by hyperbole and I was concerned by the affixing of labels without evidence to individuals’ movements et cetera.” Morris elaborated in his testimony that his letter reflected his concern about “comments made publicly, by public figures and in the media that I believed were not premised in fact …. I was leading the criminal intelligence collection of information and the production of criminal intelligence in relation to these events. So, I believed I was in a unique situation to understand what was transpiring. So, when I read accounts that the State of Russia had something to do with it; Or that this was the result of American influence, either financially or ideologically; Or that Donald Trump was behind it; Or that it was un-Canadian; Or that the people participating were un-Canadian and that they were not Canadian views and they were extremists; I found it to be problematic, because what I ascertained from my role … I did not see validation for those assertions …. I did not see information that substantiated what was being said publicly and via the media. And I found that the subjective assertions sensationalized … and exacerbated conflict …. So the labelling was problematic to me.”
Morris further stated in a letter before the POEC, “I do not know where the political figures are acquiring information on intelligence on the extent of extremist involvement.” He was emphatic, “I want to be clear on this. We produced no intelligence to indicate these individuals would be armed. There has been a lot of hyperbole around that.”[14]
OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique, with a certificate from the University of St. Andrews in Terrorism Studies, also testified. He agreed that, “based on all OPP intelligence and the intelligence provided by the RCMP and federal intelligence agencies to the OPP…there was no credible threat to the security of Canada.” Carrique confirmed it “would be my understanding” that in order to invoke the Emergencies Act, there needs to be a “credible threat.” He agreed that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protected citizens’ rights to assemble and protest. He agreed that this includes protesting government policies. Carrique also concurred that the trucks that were arriving in Ottawa in late January 2022 “did so at the direction of police officers.”[15]
Incendiary Allegations Made About Coutts Early into the Protest
If the comments made publicly by politicians and the media about the protests in Ottawa were “problematic, being controlled and one-sided,” was this also the case in Coutts? On February 1, 2022 Alberta Premier Jason Kenney spoke to the press and residents of the province. He stated that he’d “received reports in the last hour of people allied with the protesters assaulting RCMP officers, including in one instance trying to ram members of the RCMP, later leading to a collision with a civilian vehicle in the area. This kind of conduct is totally unacceptable. Assaulting law enforcement officers who are simply doing their job to maintain public safety and the rule of law is completely unacceptable. And without hesitation, I condemn those actions …. ”[16]
But in a documentary titled Trucker Rebellion: The Story of the Coutts Blockade, Rebel News reporters Kiane Simone and Sydney Fizzard learned that Premier Kenney’s statements were not accurate. Simone spoke on his cell phone with RCMP Corporal Curtis Peters. The officer clarified, “There were no physical altercation(s) between RCMP officers and protesters. Yesterday, when we had protesters go around and breach the road block set up on Highway 4 to the north, there was some public safety concerns and officer safety concerns that took place there. Vehicles travelled through, drove through fields to get around the road block and then onto Highway 4. They were travelling southbound on Highway 4 in the northbound lanes. And that was happening at the same time we had a few vehicles leaving the protest and travelling northbound in the northbound lanes. So, we had a traffic-meeting head-on on the double-lane highway there. And we did have a collision take place. A head-on collision occurred as a result of all this between a person trying to reach the blockade and a person who was just travelling north on the highway. And fortunately, it was a relatively minor collision. But a confrontation which led to an assault took place as a direct result of that collision.”
Kiane Simone asked, “was that an assault on an RCMP officer?” Peters replied, “No. That was an assault between two civilians, between a protester and a civilian.” Kian Simone pressed, “So, Jason Kenney’s statement was not true at the press conference.” RCMP Corporal Peters emphasized, “I can tell you what I just told you, sir. You can have my name. It’s Corporal Curtis Peters. I’m the spokesperson here. My badge number is 5-2-9-5-7.”[17]
The Coutts Four in the Headlines
On February 14, 2022 the RCMP issued a press release regarding arrests in Coutts. It included a photo of an RCMP vehicle in the background, and a table in the foreground. Leaning against, on and below the table were weapons the RCMP said it “discovered” in “three trailers associated to this criminal organization.” The weapons they seized included 13 long guns, several handguns, multiple (three) sets of body armour, a machete, and high-capacity magazines. The press release did not name any of the individuals or the charges against them.[18] Global News carried the story later that day, and a reporter spoke to Alberta RCMP Supt. Roberta McHale. She said, “There was a heavy stash of weapons and these weapons were brought by people who had the intent on causing harm.” She announced that the RCMP were investigating a range of charges, including conspiracy to commit murder. McHale added, “This was a very complex, layered investigation, and some people might ask why it took so long. These investigations aren’t necessarily easy.”[19]
On February 17, 2022 the Toronto Star ran this headline: “Father of accused in alleged Coutts blockade murder conspiracy says son was radicalized online, as others dispute RCMP narrative.” Mike Lysak, whose son Chris is one of the Coutts Four, was reported to have expressed his frustration watching his son “fall further and further into an online world of COVID-19 misinformation.” The Toronto Star claimed Mike Lysak said his son had become involved in the Diagolon group.[20] But, Granny Mackay, a guest on the Good Morning with Jason podcast, rejects that narrative. She has let me know that after the Toronto Star ran their story, Mike Lysak was upset. He said the newspaper twisted his words.
Global News had reported on February 15th about tweets by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network which stressed that RCMP had seized “a plate carrier with Diagolon patches.” The tweets described Diagolon as “an accelerationist movement that believes a revolution is inevitable and necessary to collapse the current government system.” Deputy Director for Anti-Hate, Elizabeth Simmons, warned about Diagolon. “A lot of them claim to be ex-military and … have some kind of military training.” She added, “this is a very anti-Semitic group. It’s rife with neo-Nazis.” She pointed to the February 3, 2022 arrest in Nova Scotia of Jeremy MacKenzie on firearms charges.[21]
A Global News story on February 3, 2022 described Jeremy MacKenzie as the “creator of Diagolon.” An RCMP warrant to search MacKenzie’s home in Pictou, Nova Scotia on January 26, 2022 referred to a video where MacKenzie spoke about “Diagolona.” RCMP contended that MacKenzie intended to create a new nation from Alaska to Florida made up of the provinces and states with the fewest pandemic restrictions. MacKenzie, a Canadian Armed Forces veteran of the Afghanistan War, attended some of the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. But his firearms charges are not related to the Freedom Convoy. MacKenzie had a firearms license, but it was alleged he had an over-capacity magazine.[18] At the time the news story was reported, the Freedom Convoy protests were less than a week old. But, the headline, “Man who attended Ottawa protest convoy arrested on firearms charges,” inferred that the people protesting on Parliament Hill were violent. And now, here were followers of Jeremy MacKenzie in Coutts who were allegedly also violent.[22]
Radio-Canada reported on February 17, 2022 about the names of those who were charged. Chris Carbert and Chris Lysak were described as people who have “ties to Jeremy MacKenzie, of the “American-style militia movement” Diagolon, a “neo-fascist, white supremacist” and “violent insurrectionist movement.” The news story contended it was the aim of Diagolon to “establish a white nationalist state … that would run diagonally from Alaska through westerns Canada’s provinces, all the way south to Florida.” The news story cited a Facebook post in October 2021 by Carbert where he said he was “prepared to die in protest of government mandates.” Carbert apparently posted, “I’ll likely be dead soon and likely will be front page news … I will die fighting for what I believe is right and I mean this.” He added in another post, “I won’t live long. I’ve come to terms with this.” Radio-Canada stated that “Carbert has prior convictions for assault, drug trafficking and two drunk driving convictions.” However, Granny Mackay has learned from Chris Carbert that he was never convicted of assault. Another man picked a fight with him in a bar. Carbert was given a conditional sentence. He has no record of an assault conviction. The drug charge in question concerns getting some ecstasy for a friend when he was in his early 20s. Both happened prior to 2004. Jerry Morin posted on February 13, 2022 “This is war. Your country needs (you) more than ever now.”[23]
On April 25, 2022 the CBC reported that crown prosecutors Aaron Rankin and Matt Dalidowicz stated that the plan was to try all four men in one trial. Daldiowicz told the CBC that the cases for Carbert, Olienick and Morin were “moving quickly.” But there were complications with the Lysak case.[24] The Lethbridge Herald reported on June 10, 2022 that three of the Coutts Four had been denied bail, with Jerry Morin awaiting his bail hearing.[25]
In early September 2022, some of the contents of the Information To Obtain search warrant by RCMP Constable Trevor Checkley was made public in the press. The warrant in question was the one granted by an Alberta judge to allow RCMP officers to search properties. This was due to Checkley’s urgent request and belief that a serious crime was about to be committed. In the ITO, Checkley swore before the judge, “I have reasonable grounds to believe that (Tony) Olienick, (Chris) Carbert and (Jerry) Morin were part of a group that participated in the Coutts blockade and brought firearms into the Coutts blockade area with the intention of using those firearms against police.” The officer attested that “I believe (these protesters were) arming themselves for a standoff against police.”[26]
On November 30, 2022 the Calgary Herald ran the attention-getting headline “Some Coutts protesters wanted to alter Canada’s political system.” Allegedly, in conversations with undercover officers, RCMP Constable Trevor Checkley stated Anthony “Olienick described (Christopher) Lysak as a hitman, sniper and gun-fighter.” Checkley emphasized that Jerry “Morin said it was World War Three and that stripping freedoms and making everyone slaves was warfare.”[27] The next day, the CBC ran a story about how the Coutts Four were making calls while in custody directly to their bosses in “the extremist network called Diagolon.” It was inferred that bosses outside of Coutts who were directing the Coutts Four to agitate for a new order.[28]
On the Good Morning with Jason podcast, a woman named Danielle who has attended the pretrial motions in June 2023 spoke about the media coverage. A regular guest on the Good Morning with Jason show, Danielle observed “ever since Christmas (2022) mainstream media has been very, very quiet about this. Global News hasn’t reported a single thing on it (since December 2022). There’s been absolute crickets.” Jason Lavigne spoke to a staff member of the Western Standard in Alberta, who is also a friend. In addition to the publication ban requested by the defense to protect the jury pool process, there is also some sort of gag order related to the media. Lavigne’s contact at the Western Standard, who he spoke with in July 2023, is not at liberty to discuss this any further.[29]
Coutts Protests, Arrests, on the A-list to Justify Invocation of Emergencies Act
Testimony by numbers of government officials at the POEC pointed to the protests at Coutts as being on the A-list of events triggering the Emergencies Act. Clerk of the Privy Council, Janice Charette, raised the alarm about the protests in Coutts in the context of discussing the conversation about whether to invoke the Emergencies Act. “We were seeing the results of the law enforcement activity and what was happening at Coutts and we were seeing the size of the stash of firearms and ammunition that were found in Coutts amongst the protesters. So, this was new and I would say relevant information in terms of just the nature of the threat that we were worried about in terms of the risk for serious violence.”[30] Charette testified that “the situation at Coutts was more complex … It looked like it was getting fixed, then it was not getting fixed; looked like it was getting fixed, then it was not getting fixed …. The quantity of weapons and ammunition that was discovered by the RCMP conducting that law enforcement activity was more than I would have expected. So that, to me, indicated a seriousness and a scale of the illegal activity that was either contemplated at Coutts or people were ready to engage in at Coutts … that was beyond … my prior expectations …. ” When discussing the Freedom Convoy protests across Canada, including Coutts, Janice Charette warned of insurrectionist intentions. “There was talk of overthrowing the government and installing a different government with a governor general …. ” [31]
Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, Nathalie Drouin, was asked if she knew that the protesters in Coutts intended to leave the area. “Well, I was not aware of that. No, that’s not true. I have heard about the potential breakthrough in Coutts. …prior to the enforcement action, we didn’t know about the cache.”[32] Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explained one of the reasons invoking the Emergencies Act was on the table “was (the) presence of weapons at Coutts …. ” Trudeau complained that once Premier Jason Kenney removed “a number of mandates” in Alberta, “the occupation at Coutts seemed to be emboldened … ‘Let’s keep going.’” Trudeau also revealed under cross examination that he had been considering invoking the Emergencies Act in response to the Freedom Convoy protests “from the very beginning.”[33]
National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, Jody Thomas, reflected in the decision-making process on the road to invoking the Emergencies Act. Regarding “acts of serious violence,” can that include “the violence that people … of Ottawa were experiencing on the streets, … the inability of the Town of Coutts to function, is that a line? … There is a spectrum of activity and behaviour and threat in there that we need to understand …. ”[34]
One of the Liberal cabinet ministers who cited the situation in Coutts as a catalyst in the A-list of reasons to invoke the Emergencies Act was Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino. He testified that “not knowing exactly how it was that the operation in Coutts was going to play out at that time, and bearing in mind the sensitivities, the fact that the situation was combustible, that the individuals that were involved in Coutts were prepared to go down with a fight that could lead to the loss of life, that if that had happened and that occurred, it still remains an open question in my mind as to whether or not it would have triggered other events across the country. And so that’s why I – in my mind, it was very much – it was a threshold moment.”[35]
In her testimony before the POEC, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke about the protests in Coutts as accelerating the sense that the government had to respond decisively to the Freedom Convoy. She recalled that on February 12, 2022 when “we heard from the RCMP Commissioner about concerns that there were serious weapons in Coutts. …that really raised the stakes in terms of my degree of concern about what could be happening in this sort of whack-a-mole copycat situation across the country.” [36] Minister of Emergency Preparedness, Bill Blair, also echoed this view in his testimony before the POEC on November 21, 2022.
The mayor of Coutts, Jimmy Willet, also testified before the POEC on November 9, 2022. A text was entered as evidence from Mayor Willett to CTV reporter Bill Graveland. In it the mayor described the protesters in Coutts as “Domestic Terrorists.” But told Graveland in the text “You need to find someone in a protected position to call these guys what they are, Domestic Terrorists. Won’t be me. They are right outside my window. I would be strung up, literally. Just a thought.” He stated that his wife saw some protesters “moving heavy hockey bags” and said “it’s guns.”[37] Why the mayor’s wife presumed the hockey bags contained guns has not been followed up by any reporters.
Jeremy MacKenzie and Diagolon
On Tom Marazzo’s Meet Me in the Middle podcast in June 20, 2023, Jeremy MacKenzie spoke about his February 3, 2022 arrest in Nova Scotia. “They tried to play it up that I was in hiding. I had lawyers who were trying to talk to these people. What is going on. They flew four RCMP officers on their own planes and flew it from Saskatchewan to Halifax, where I spent six days in solitary confinement. And then flew me out to Saskatchewan in chains and ankle and arms and belly chains. And then I did two and a half months in jail in Saskatchewan before I could get bail. I have no criminal record. Never convicted of anything. And there was a murder while I was there, a woman stabbed another woman at a dance club. She was out on bail the next day. But, I’m too dangerous to be let out. And if it wasn’t for my lawyers and my legal team, I’d probably still be in there … on a common assault charge.” The common assault charge relates to an incident in Saskatchewan in November 2021, and not anything connecting MacKenzie to the Freedom Convoy protests. He told Tom Marazzo on the podcast that sixteen months after the protests in the winter of 2022, “I still to this day have not been asked a single question by the RCMP or CSIS … regarding any of this (Diagolon).” MacKenzie asserted that the government of Canada needed a scapegoat to justify invoking the Emergencies Act.[38]
At the POEC, MacKenzie testified from his prison cell in Saskatchewan Correctional Centre. MacKenzie confirmed that in January 2021 he drew a diagonal line on his cell phone from Alaska, through Alberta and Saskatchewan, through the Dakotas, down to Texas and across to Florida and named it Diagolon. It became a brand name for followers on his podcasts. He made a plastic goat figurine, named Philip, the vice-president of Diagolon. Philip, he explained to his viewers was a demonic time-travelling, cocaine addict. He pointed out that the official narrative about Diagolon as “militia” and “extremist, has come from the largely government-funded Canadian Anti-Hate Network. MacKenzie observed how Anti-Hate posts scary articles about Diagolon which both the media and the police take at face value.[39] While in Ottawa, Jeremy MacKenzie posted that he wanted any of his followers at Freedom Convoy protests “If there’s a speed limit (go) slower than that. Don’t even litter. Don’t sit. Don’t even throw a snowball. Don’t give anyone any excuse to point at you and say, ‘Look what you’ve done.’”[40]
In his testimony, MacKenzie confirmed that he had met Chris Lysak in person at a meet-and-greet in Saskatchewan in the summer of 2021, and at a BBQ where people were having steak on the grill. MacKenzie spoke to Lysak sometime after the charges for conspiracy to commit murder. He confirmed that the patches on some tactical vests looked like Diagolon patches. But that anyone could have made them and sold them. “I really can’t speak to their origins,” stated MacKenzie. Though he did not claim that the RCMP might have planted the Diagolon patches on the tactical vests discovered among the weapons cache in Coutts, MacKenzie stated “law enforcement (in) Canada has a history of things like this taking place. It’s not outside the realm of possibility … Could it be planted? … I would leave that open to possibility.”[41] During POEC testimony, it was confirmed that Jeremy MacKenzie has no criminal record.
A reasonable person might conclude that an organization whose vice-president is a plastic goat figurine that does time-travelling and has a narcotics addiction should not be taken seriously. Anymore, than a friend at a bar having one too many announces “one day I’ll be Prime Minister.” How might the United States government view an attempt to trigger the secession of 26 states from Alaska, and Idaho across to the Atlantic coast from Virginia to Florida?
But police and intelligence in Canada in 2021-2022 took every statement on Jeremy MacKenzie’s podcasts at face value. If Jeremy MacKenzie read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, would Canadian law enforcement issue an all-points-bulletin to be on the lookout for a little girl with blonde hair on charges of breaking and entering, and damaging personal property of the Bear family?
What Sparked the Protests?
As I have written in previous articles, the Freedom Convoy protests began in response to the Canadian government ending the truck driver exemption from vaccination in order to cross the Canadian border. [42] Truck drivers had enjoyed an exemption since the start of the pandemic were hailed as heroes by Prime Minister Trudeau. No data about COVID-19 spread and truck drivers was presented to the House of Commons Health Committee in January 2022. The infection fatality rate for Covid-19 was about 0.25%.[43]
Source: Children’s Health Defense
For truck drivers entering the United States, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh clarified the Biden Administration’s new regulations. “The ironic thing is most truckers are not covered by this, because they’re driving a truck, they’re in a cab, they’re by themselves, they wouldn’t be covered by this,” Walsh said. Though often framed as equivalent to Canadian mandates for truck drivers, American mandates were less restrictive. The US Administration mandate exempted workers “who do not report to a workplace where other individuals such as coworkers or customers are present.”[44] And there were no vaccine requirements for truck drivers entering Mexico. Canadian truck drivers were not being deprived of making a living due to regulations in the United States. During the pandemic, with other nations concerned about healthy economies and supply chains, Canada was an outlier in its vaccine restrictions for truck drivers.
Original Search Warrant Listed Only Mischief Over $5,000, No Mention of Weapons or Conspiracy to Commit Murder
A Search Warrant was issued on February 13, 2022 to RCMP Constable Trevor Checkley. The search was granted, effective 10PM, February 13th, due to the officer’s sworn oath that he had reasonable grounds to suspect “Mischief Over $5,000.” The warrant was not issued on “weapons charges” or “conspiracy to commit murder.” The search stated officers could search for “Documents and data related to planning organization and operations of the protest group’s security for the Coutts blockade.” A question the lawyers for the Coutts Four need to determine is if it is legitimate to have a search warrant for a minimum charge; if the RCMP believes a far more serious crime is about to unfold, but not name it in the search. Donald Best, a former Sergeant (Detective) with the Toronto Police, highlights that in order to get a search warrant, there are affidavits and likely photos presented to the judge to support the Information To Obtain search. [45]
Behaviour of Those Arrested Resembled Ordinary Citizens, Not Domestic Terrorists
On the Good Morning with Jason podcast, a local woman named Danielle, summarized the arrests of the Coutts Four. The first person to get arrested was Christopher Lysak at 9PM, on February 13, 2022, “in front of Smuggler’s” Saloon, in Coutts. This was in front of many other protesters. When Anthony Olienick learned that Lysak might have been arrested, “he began videotaping and posting online saying he wished the cops would put their guns down and come and have coffee with us.” What Olienick did not do was head off and grab a bunch of guns and start a standoff with the police. Then Olienick was arrested about 9:50 PM. This was “in amongst the protesters.” Danielle reports that “Chris Carbert was sleeping in his trailer when they (RCMP) did the raid on the property …. He also knew the other two had been arrested.” Yet, Carbert chose to go to bed. He didn’t try to overthrow the government. He was arrested around 12:30 AM on February 14, 2022. Later that day, after having gone to work in Calgary, Jerry Morin was arrested by the RCMP about 12PM. At the time of his arrest, Morin knew the other three had been arrested. All of the Coutts Four were unarmed when they were arrested. None of them were running or hiding.
Retired police sergeant Donald Best flags several problems with the timeline of arrests. “This is all politically driven. They (several Liberal cabinet ministers) knew about it in Ottawa before the warrant went down. We saw that from the Commission (POEC). … that means the politicians on the political side of this were involved in the creation of, and the timeline, and the date and time of execution; and if all that is true, and I believe it is … these men deserve to see their day in court. And they deserve to be out with an ankle bracelet, or whatever.[46]
Commenting on the cache of weapons displayed by the RCMP on February 14, 2022, local gun owner Zach Schmidt made these observations. “This is not what I would be choosing if I were to hypothetically (try) to take down the RCMP.” There were about 50 RCMP vehicles in the Coutts vicinity and so about a hundred officers …. This just looks like someone’s basement was raided. Numbers of the guns are rifles that would be better for hunting deer. There are no sniper rifles, no precision rifles. They’re just run-of-the-mill hunting guns …. ” Donald Best added, “When the RCMP were investigating the multiple shooting in Nova Scotia (in 2022), the lead investigators refused to release the types and photos of the weapons involved. Why? Because they’re in the middle of an investigation. They want to know where they came from. Contrast that with the RCMP action in Coutts.”[47]
There are some instances in the past where the RCMP have created a threat, or impeded ongoing investigations. On July 1, 2013 there were reports that a plot to bomb the British Columbia legislature had been averted by the RCMP. Offices acting undercover, with the support of over 200 staff working to prevent the plot, saved the day and caught the plotters red-handed. Or so the public was led to believe. When the case went to court it turned out that the RCMP was in the spotlight, and uncomfortably so. The CBC headline reported, “RCMP entrapment of B.C. couple in legislature bomb plot was ‘travesty of justice,’ court rules: John Nuttall-Amanda Korody’s convictions had been stayed due to entrapment, abuse of process.”[48]
In her verdict, Justice Catherine Bruce wrote, “Simply put, the world has enough terrorists. We do not need the police to create more out of marginalized people who have neither the capacity nor the sufficient motivation to do it themselves.” Bruce made clear that the RCMP had not foiled a pre-existing plan. The couple in the RCMPs crosshairs were not terrorists. They were not people with capacities that terrorists might want to recruit. Said Bruce, “This is truly a case where the RCMP manufactured the crime.”[49]
Writing for The Tyee, Bill Tieleman asked:
“Why did the RCMP create the July 1, 2013 B.C. Legislature bomb plot and train and equip a hapless, methadone-addicted, developmentally challenged couple to undertake terrorist actions? And why did the RCMP also break Canada’s laws in doing so? Money. Lots and lots of money. John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were freed Friday after three years in jail thanks to a stunning decision that saw a respected judge condemn the RCMP in the strongest terms possible, while overturning a jury’s guilty verdict on terrorism changes because the Surrey couple were “entrapped” by police, who also committed an “abuse of process.”
So why did the RCMP take such obviously reprehensible actions? What was their motivation in turning two sad, naïve recovering heroin addicts who barely left their basement apartment into Canada’s most famous terrorists? To get government money for its huge operations. The RCMP has a $2.8-billion annual budget and more than 29,000 employees. It depends on the federal government for its funding – and counterterrorism dollars depend on results, as I wrote in The Tyee in 2013 after covering the first court appearances of Nuttall and Korody. The RCMP is also competing with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for financial support, so it is highly motivated to show public success. And in the RCMP’s Departmental Performance Report one of the major “expected results” is “Terrorist criminal activity is prevented, detected, responded to and denied.”
In the absence of real terrorist plots to foil, the case of Nuttall and Korody indicated the RCMPs work can include manufacturing plots in order to foil them. From the success of these sting operations, the RCMP gets favorable media coverage and a subsequent boost in future yearly budgets. As long as they don’t get caught. [50]
In the past, the RCMP have engaged in policing to advance the political agendas of those in the federal government. The Halifax Examiner ran this headline in June 2022: “RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki tried to ‘jeopardize’ mass murder investigation to advance Trudeau’s gun control efforts.” The paper reported:
“RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki “made a promise” to Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and the Prime Minister’s Office to leverage the mass murders of April 18/19, 2020 to get a gun control law passed.” RCMP in Nova Scotia were left out of the loop regarding numbers of victims and release of information. The article detailed how “Contravening the agreed protocol, throughout the early hours of Sunday evening, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki agreed to a number of one-on-one interviews with reporters. At 7:36PM, CBC News quoted Lucki as stating there were 13 victims; at 7:40PM, CTV reported Lucki had said 14 victims; and at 7:56PM, the Canadian Press quoted Lucki as having confirmed 17 dead, including the gunman. The public and the press corps were both confused and alarmed.
“So how does it happen that Commissioner Lucki …. ?” Mass Casualty Commission lawyer Krista Smith started to ask Communications director Lia Scanlan during an interview last February. “I don’t know, ask National Headquarters,” retorted Scanlan. “The commissioner (Lucki) releases a body count that we (Communications) don’t even have. She went out and did that. It was all political pressure. That is 100% Minister Blair and the Prime Minister. And we have a Commissioner that does not push back.” [51]
During the FLQ Crisis in the fall of 1970, the RCMP was found to have engaged in illegal activities. As the McDonald Commission Report of 1981 found, the RCMP forged documents, was involved in the theft of the membership list of the Parti Quebecois, several break-ins, illegal opening of mail, and the burning a barn in Quebec.[52] The McDonald Commission recommended revisions to the War Measures Act. These were tabled by Perrin Beatty in Parliament in July 1988 as the Emergencies Act.
Discrepancies in Disclosure Pointed to During Pretrial Motions
Pretrial motions were heard at the Lethbridge, Alberta courthouse between June 12 and 29. At one point, there was an animated discussion between the judge, lawyers for the accused, and the Crown. One of those attending was a local woman named Danielle, who spoke to Jason Lavigne on his podcast on July 13, 2023. She described how “the Crown kept talking about the solicitor-client privilege.” A lawyer for one of the accused stopped them after a while. This lawyer said ‘Listen. This might not be the case that there’s evidence of unlawful activity. We’re talking about disclosure that has been discovered.’” Danielle described how the Crown had dumped thousands of pages of disclosure at the last minute on the defence. There was mention of “inadvertent disclosure” on a number of occasions. Danielle told Jason Lavigne, “I don’t believe they (defence lawyers) were supposed to have found it. I think she kind of found it. And she got excited that she found it. And then everybody got a lot more excited after the content of that was more apparent to them. Again, we’re not privy to exactly what’s in that conflict of disclosure. The Crown mentioned that due to the content, the disclosure conflicted not only about the disclosure. It is also in regards to two of the crown prosecutors …. This application (by the defence) coming up, (two) Crown prosecutors are going to have to be witnesses. So, they (the prosecutors who are representing the case for the Crown) are going to be part of the hearing.” This opens up the possibility that some Crown prosecutors may be defendants at some point in relation to this case.
Danielle described to Jason the importance of this moment during the pretrial motions. The defence made an application to the court during disclosure. It related to the cross examination of one of the witnesses as the case against the accused was being built. Danielle, stated, “There were notes. There were scribbled notes in one book. And there were scribbled notes in another book from the scribes that were hired for this person (witness). And there was also another scribe that had been hired that had … typed notes. … it was discovered that the typed notes were never submitted to the defence counsel. However, the witness had testified “I’ve given the Crown everything that I have.” So, it was discovered that there was a large pile of typed notes. What was problematic is the content of the scribbled notes, and the content of the typed notes contain crucial discrepancies. The defence was excited about this inadvertent discovery. What can explain these discrepancies? Were the typed notes exculpatory evidence helpful to the defense? [53]
Another guest on the Good Morning with Jason podcast Margaret “Granny” Mackay has also attended the pretrial motions in June. She also witnessed the astonishing developments in the court house that Danielle described to viewers of the podcast on July 13, 2023.
On the Good Morning with Jason podcast on July 24, Danielle discussed notes she took from the pretrial motions on June 29. That day one of the Crown prosecutors agreed to recuse themselves from the case. [54]
A Facebook group has sprung up under the name Alberta Political Prisoners. The RCMP and the Crown present themselves as having a solid case to convict the four accused on conspiracy to commit murder. But this may not be the case. It’s plausible that the case for the Crown is thin at best, as has been the case for the Trudeau governments justification for invoking the Emergencies Act. After over five hundred days without bail, more people are starting to pay attention to this case that’s been largely ignored by the media.
Chris Carbert has been leading a Bible study in the remand centre early into his custody. Jerry Morin has been leading other inmates in yoga classes. One of the guards told Morin after he’d been in custody for a few weeks, “This is weird. We were expecting a lot of different behaviour from you. We thought that you were a white supremacist.”[55] The four men in custody on conspiracy charges are looking less like insurrectionists, and more like political prisoners in Justin Trudeau’s Canada.
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Ray McGinnis is author of Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored (2021). Previously, he authored Writing the Sacred: A Psalm-inspired Path to Appreciating and Writing Sacred Poetry (2005). Since 1999, Ray has taught journal writing workshops for people dealing with grief and loss, to first responders and in health care facilities. He has also taught poetry writing and memoir workshops across North America. Ray is interested in the stories we tell, the narratives we trust, and how this shapes our world. This includes not just personal stories, but news headline like the Narrative about September 11, and other headlines that saturate citizens with slanted media messages. Earlier in his career, Ray was a program staff in education for the United Church of Canada, serving in several congregations, as well as at the denominations national office (1986-95). He lives in Vancouver, Canada.
[14] “Supt. Patrick Morris, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 19, 2022, 184-305. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/d ocuments/Transcripts/POEC-Public-HearingsVolume-5-October-19-2022.pdf
[52] McDonald, D.C.,Commission of Inquiry Concerning Certain Activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – second report, volume 2: freedom and security under the law, Privy Council Office, 1981. https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/471402/publication.html
[53] Lavigne, “The Coutts Four | Day 515” (See note 29).
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Over quarter of a century after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, though technically a sovereign state and a member of the UN, Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to limp along as no more than an international protectorate. Basic issues concerning its governance remain unresolved and/or deliberately obfuscated. One of the most fundamental of those issues is who is in charge there, the locally constituted authorities or the “international community’s” High Representative with his parallel system of authority? An equally puzzling question is why is there a “High Representative” at all in what theoretically is an independent and sovereign country?
All these and many other critical issues climaxed with the appointment in August of 2021 of Christian Schmidt as the latest incarnation of that odd office. The oddity of the office resides in the fact that, after all, Bosnia is not some distant possession of the former British Empire but, in appearance at least, is an independent country endowed with all the outward paraphernalia of sovereignty. Yet the effective centre of political power, whence elected officials can be fired, judges named, and laws arbitrarily annulled or promulgated without parliamentary interference, is not in any elective office within the country. It is located in a viceroy appointed by foreign powers who renders no account of his actions to any of the natives.
For legally compelling reasons, the legitimacy of Schmidt’s appointment is not recognised by one of Bosnia’s constituent entities, the Republic of Srpska, nor by two permanent members of the UN Security Council, Russia and China. One should expect that under normal circumstances such a rebuff ought to be a sufficient for Schmidt to politely withdraw. That however does not occur either to him or to the usual suspects who comprise the chorus of his international backers.
Recalling briefly the history of the High Commissioner’s office, it was set up in 1995, at the conclusion of the tripartite conflict in Bosnia, to assist the parties with the implementation and interpretation of the terms of the Dayton Peace Agreement. The Agreement, signed by the locals and the foreign powers instrumental in facilitating it, who thenceforth assumed the role of its guarantors, provided that the High Commissioner in Bosnia and Herzegovina would be appointed by resolution of the UN Security Council and that the mandate of his office would last for one year. Clearly, the actual duration of the mandate has been greatly exceeded beyond the one-year limit that originally had been set. As for the High Commissioner’s de facto powers, as a result of what might be called “mission creep,” they have been vastly and intrusively expanded into areas never envisioned by the original agreement.
But the crux of the current political crisis in Bosnia is not so much any of the above (though these remain valid grievances) as in what the dissenting parties regard as the intolerably abusive and flagrantly improper manner of Christian Schmidt’s appointment. To be precise, he was not appointed by resolution of the UN Security Council, as he should have been in order to be legitimate, but by a privately constituted unofficial multi-state body calling itself the “Peace Implementation Council,” or PIC for short, an entity that in pertinent legal documents has no official status nor consequently any standing whatsoever to decide upon such matters.
In an attempt to clarify Schmidt’s position, Željka Cvijanović, Serb member of Bosnia’s collective Presidency and current rotating President of Bosnia and Herzegovina, directed a formal inquiry to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres requesting proof that Schmidt was duly appointed by the Security Council. Guterres’ response was bewildering. Disregarding long-standing practice, he tried in his response to mislead Mrs. Cvijanović that the UN Security Council is not charged with responsibility in this matter and that if she has any further questions the “relevant institution” she must turn to is the aforementioned juridically non-existent Peace Implementation Council [PIC].
In a scathing commentary, Banja Luka international law professor Milan Blagojević has made mincemeat of Guterres’ amazingly ignorant or, perhaps more likely, Machiavellian reply. He points out that there is no provision in international law that recognises the legality of PIC or grants to it the right to make any binding decisions with regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Rather, he argues, the secret of its influence must be in the fact that it is comprised of states such as the US, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and others belonging to the geopolitical grouping interested in governing Bosnia and Herzegovina through the veneer of a High Representative who obeys their directives and serves their agenda. That agenda can be summarised in a few words: unitary Bosnia without the bothersome Republic of Srpska, membership in NATO, and hostility to rather than cooperation with Russia. However, Prof. Blagojević continues, their game is unequivocally prohibited by the UN Charter which prescribes in Article 2 that relations among states must be based on the principle of sovereign equality. That means that neither the UN as an organisation nor any of its member governments has the right to impose its rule on any third country. Furthermore, Article 78 of the Charter forbids member governments to treat sovereign states as protectorates. A protectorate may legally be instituted only in a non-self-governing territory, but under no circumstances over a UN member state.
The illegal and illegitimate imposition of Christian Schmidt as Bosnia’s viceroy with self-ascribed powers is in deliberate contravention of applicable principles of international law and makes a farce of the “rules based order.”
It remains to be seen how resistance to Schmidt’s unlawful operation in Bosnia will ultimately play out. But tensions there will not subside before Schmidt is driven out, not just from the office that he illegitimately occupies but from the entire country that has been given to him as a satrapy, to wantonly misrule.
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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.
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“I can’t remember what all Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against three spiders, red ants against black ants. They won’t fight unless you keep shaking the jar. And that’s what Frank was doing, shaking, shaking the jar.”— Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
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There’s a meme that circulated on social media a while back that perfectly sums up the polarized, manipulated mayhem, madness and tyranny that is life in the American police state today:
“If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti Mask. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar … and why?”
Whether red ants will really fight black ants to the death is a question for the biologists, but it’s an apt analogy of what’s playing out before us on the political scene and a chilling lesson in social engineering that keeps us fixated on circus politics and conveniently timed spectacles, distracted from focusing too closely on the government’s power grabs, and incapable of focusing on who’s really shaking the jar.
This controversy over Jason Aldean’s country music video, “Try That In a Small Town,” which is little more than authoritarian propaganda pretending to be respect for law and order, is just more of the same.
The music video, riddled with images of militarized police facing off against rioters, implies that there are only two types of people in this country: those who stand with the government and those who oppose it.
Yet the song gets it wrong.
You see, it makes no difference whether you live in a small town or a big city, or whether you stand with the government or mobilize against it: either way, the government is still out to get you.
Indeed, the government’s prosecution of the Jan. 6 protesters (part of a demographic that might relate to the frontier justice sentiments in Aldean’s song) is a powerful reminder that the police state doesn’t discriminate when it comes to hammering away at those who challenge its authority.
It also serves to underscore the government’s tone-deaf hypocrisy in the face of its own double-crossing, double-dealing, double standards.
Imagine: the very same government that violates the rights of its citizenry at almost every turn is considering charging President Trump with conspiring against the rights of the American people.
It’s so ludicrous as to be Kafkaesque.
If President Trump is indicted over the events that culminated in the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021, the government could hinge part of their case on Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which makes it a crime for two or more people to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate” anyone “with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege” the person enjoys under the U.S. Constitution.
That the government, which now constitutes the greatest threat to our freedoms, would appoint itself the so-called defender of our freedoms shows exactly how farcical, topsy-turvy, and downright perverse life in the American police state has become.
Unfortunately, “we the people” are partially to blame for allowing this double standard to persist.
While we may claim to value freedom, privacy, individuality, equality, diversity, accountability, and government transparency, our actions and those of our government rulers contradict these much-vaunted principles at every turn.
Even though the government continues to betray our trust, invade our privacy, and abuse our rights, we just keep going back for more.
And then there’s our supposed love-hate affair with technology, which sees us bristling at the government’s efforts to monitor our internet activities, listen in on our phone calls, read our emails, track our every movement, and punish us for what we say on social media, and yet we keep using these very same technologies all the while doing nothing about the government’s encroachments on our rights.
By tacitly allowing these violations to continue and legitimizing a government that has long since ceased to operate within the framework of the Constitution, we not only empower the tyrant but we feed the monster.
This is exactly how incremental encroachments on our rights, justified in the name of greater safety, become routine, wide-ranging abuses so entrenched as to make reform all but impossible.
Then there were the private prisons, marketed as a way to lower the government’s cost of locking up criminals. Only it turns out that private prisons actually cost the taxpayer more money and place profit incentives on jailing more Americans, resulting in the largest prison population in the world.
In the same way, the government campaign to spy on our phone calls, letters and emails was sold to the American people as a necessary tool in the war on terror. Instead of targeting terrorists, however, the government turned us into potential terrorists, so that if we dare say the wrong thing in a phone call, letter, email or on the internet, especially social media, we end up investigated, charged and possibly jailed.
The tactics follow the same script: first, the government lures us in with a scheme to make our lives better, our families safer, and our communities more secure, and then once we take the bait, they slam the trap closed and turn “we the people” into Enemy Number One.
Despite how evident it is that we are mere tools to be used and abused and manipulated for the power elite’s own diabolical purposes, we somehow fail to see their machinations for what they truly are: thinly veiled attempts to expand their power and wealth at our expense.
So here we are, caught in a vicious cycle of in-fighting and partisan politics, all the while the government—which never stops shaking the jar—is advancing its agenda to lockdown the nation.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, until we can face up to that truth and forge our own path back to a world in which freedom means something again, we’re going to be stuck in this wormhole of populist anger, petty politics and destruction that is pitting us one against the other.
In that scenario, no one wins, whether you live in a small town or big city.
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Throughout the day on July 26, members of the presidential guard in Niamey, the capital of the West African state of Niger, were reportedly in the process of seizing control of the government headed by a key United States and western ally, President Mohamed Bazoum.
Bazoum is an important player in the military operations of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the French Armed Forces.
The AFRICOM units in Niger operate two Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone stations ostensibly designed to fight Islamic insurgent organizations in conflict with the central government in Niamey. U.S. AFRICOM documents indicate that some 1,100 U.S. special forces are based in Niger to carry out military missions and the training of Niger troops. See this.
Several years ago in October 2017, four U.S. Green Berets were killed in a clash with armed elements operating in Niger. The U.S. government under the-then administration of President Donald Trump, never provided a clear explanation as to how the Pentagon soldiers were killed.
This seizure of state power on July 26 appears to be led by Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane who announced the formation of a National Council for the Safeguard of our Homeland (CNSP). In a television address. Abdramane declared the dissolution of the administration headed by Bazoum citing what he described as the rapidly declining security situation inside the country.
In addition, Abdramane noted the poor economic and social conditions inside of Niger, which contains large deposits of uranium. This important natural resource is largely controlled by the French through a multinational corporation, Orano, based in Paris.
An indication of the importance of Niger and its president to the U.S. imperialist project in Africa was revealed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken visit to the country in March. The administration of President Joe Biden is desperately seeking to maintain the influence of Washington and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in various geo-political regions of the African continent which has experienced five military coups since 2020.
“The White House said as the situation unfolded that the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, had spoken to the captive Bazoum and ‘conveyed the unwavering support of the United States … the strong U.S. economic and security partnership with Niger depends on the continuation of democratic governance and respect for the rule of law and human rights’
Blinken, visiting New Zealand, later said: ‘I spoke with President Bazoum earlier this morning, and made clear that the US resolutely supports him as the democratically elected president of Niger. We call for his immediate release. We condemn any efforts to seize power by force. We’re actively engaged with the Niger government, but also with partners in the region and around the world and will continue to do so until the situation is resolved appropriately and peacefully.”
In neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, the military regimes which have taken power are highly critical of the longtime alliances with France, the former colonial power. France has maintained its military presence and economic control of key sectors within these states.
In many ways Niger remains the closest West African ally of Paris and Washington in light of the shifting policies within Mali and Burkina Faso where French military and economic influence has been under attack. In Mali, the new government has demanded the withdrawal of French and United Nations troops from the country.
A coup in Burkina Faso last October was marked by mass demonstrations and violent attacks on symbols of French interests inside the country. Youthful protesters took to the streets waving Russian flags demanding that the government shift its security alliances from Paris to Moscow.
Mali’s military government headed by Col. Assimi Goita, has invited the Wagner Group to assist the state in fighting several Islamic rebel groupings in the northern areas of the landlocked country. France objected to the presence of Wagner in Mali threatening to withdraw its military forces. The Malian government welcomed this announcement from France and went on to encourage their troops in leaving the country.
Generally, the atmosphere in Mali is hostile toward Paris. The military government recently called for the removal of French as the national language of the country.
Will the U.S. and France Back Military Operations to Reinstate Bazoum?
Several reports from western media sources claim that there are elements within the military outside the presidential guard which remain loyal to Bazoum. The governments of the U.S. and France seem to be encouraging such a move to reinstate the civilian administration of its close ally.
Image: President Mohamed Bazoum (Licensed under Wikimedia Commons)
Jack Sullivan, the Biden administration’s National Security Adviser, condemned the seizure of power by the CNSP. Blinken, the top U.S. envoy at the State Department, echoed this sentiment saying that the coup represented a threat to the democratic government in Niamey.
“Bazoum supporters tried to approach the presidential complex but were dispersed by members of the presidential guard who fired warning shots, according to an AFP reporter. One person was hurt, but it was not immediately clear if he was injured by a bullet or from falling as the crowd scattered. Al Jazeera, however, could not independently verify the incident. But there was calm elsewhere in Niamey. Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Abuja in neighboring Nigeria, said there was a directive from the army for troops loyal to Bazoum to move in to quell what seemed to be a coup attempt. He said there were reports from the Nigerien capital signifying that there was ‘some form of negotiations’, with one report suggesting that the coup plotters wanted Bazoum to ‘surrender power’. ‘Right now, we also heard about mobilization in the outskirts of Niamey where military barracks are situated,’ he added.”
Other entities have condemned the coup in Niger as well. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the 15-member regional organization now chaired by the newly inaugurated President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, has called for the resumption of civilian rule. Benin President Patrice Talon has reportedly flown into Niamey in efforts to mediate a solution to the crisis of governance between the Bazoum administration and the coup makers within the presidential guard.
The African Union (AU) on behalf of the Commission Chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, issued a statement on July 26 emphasizing:
“Informed of an attempt by certain members of the military to undermine the stability of democratic and republican institutions in Niger, which is tantamount to an attempted coup d’état, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, H.E. Moussa Faki Mahamat, strongly condemns such actions by members of the military acting in total betrayal of their republican duty. He urges them to immediately cease these unacceptable actions. The Chairperson further calls on the people of Niger, all their brothers in Africa, particularly in ECOWAS, and around the world, to join their voices in unanimous condemnation of this coup attempt, and for the immediate and unconditional return of the felon soldiers to their barracks.”
Crisis of Governance Linked to Imperialist Influence
Previous military coups which have taken place in West Africa since 2020, although being condemned by ECOWAS and the AU, have not been reversed. Sanctions imposed by ECOWAS are not effective enough to apply the necessary economic pressure on the coup regimes.
Moreover, the legitimacy of the ousted civilian governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea-Conakry since 2020 have been questioned by broad segments of the civilian populations. In Guinea, protests have occurred demanding the holding of elections in order to transition to elective rule. However, the military regime of Colonel Mamadou Doumbouya has still not relinquished power to the politicians and their many political parties.
Widespread discontent over the failure of AFRICOM and the now-defunct French-dominated Operation Barkhane has provided a rationale for popular support of the military coups over the last three years. The unstable security situations in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have exposed the dubious role of western military presence in Africa.
Despite the thousands of AFRICOM and French Armed Forces troops on the continent, the purported anti-terrorism campaigns have resulted in greater insecurity and economic underdevelopment. Consequently, the African states backed by the majority of workers and farmers provide the only potential solutions to the crisis of insecurity and impoverishment.
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The fundamental aim of the text below is to deal with the concept and models of global security as one of the crucial topics of global politics studies. The question of Security Studies as an academic discipline within the scope of Global Politics has been the subject of much debate and one of the most prosperous ways to deal with global security is firstly to analyze different standpoints which are existing within the research discipline. The article, in one word, will try to provide the readers with basic approaches in the academic field of Security Studies with some necessary personal remarks by the author.
The Security Dilemma and Global Security Model
The security dilemma is based on the idea that security is a goal for which states struggle and compete between themselves. In principle, the states have to look to their own protection, especially in an “anarchical“ world system in which does not exist any supranational authority (like the UN or OEBS, for instance)[i] to be capable to impose and/or to ensure regional or global order of IR. In practice, traditionally, the states in order to achieve their security goals were striving for more and more power for the reason to escape the impact of the power and foreign policy of other states especially of the neighbors as European history clearly shows. However, such practice in turn makes the other states or other actors in IR to feel themselves more insecure and therefore it encourages them to be prepared for the worst scenario (conflict, aggression, war). As any state cannot ever feel entirely secure, the security competition among the states is an endless process that is resulting in constant power rising. In other words, a security dilemma provokes a policy to firm the security of a (nation)state which has a direct effect of threatening other states or actors in IR and, thereby, provoking power (usually military) counter-actions. This endless process is, in fact, decreasing security for all states especially if we know that in many cases offensive (imperialistic) foreign policy is justified by national arming with “defensive“ weapons (the case of the US, for instance).
Global security as a concept has to be essentially founded on the idea of human (individual and group) security. However, IR in practice are based on the right to self-preservation of the states (i.e., of their political regimes and social elites in power). This idea is born by Englishman Thomas Hobbes (1588−1679) who argued that the right to self-preservation is founded on natural law, requiring at the same time a social harmony between the citizens and state authority. Therefore, global security has to be founded primarily on the concept of (a nation)state security as the states are natural forms of political associations by the people and still are the fundamental actors in IR. The idea is that, presumably, both the individual and civil rights of the citizen would be effectively secured only if the individual consented to the unchecked power of the state ruling elite. Therefore, we can say that a modern philosophy of state totalitarian regimes is de facto born by Th. Hobbes.
Based on Th. Hobbes’ security philosophy, states will stress the necessity of social collectivization for the protection of their security interests – it is how the concept of Collective Security (CS) was institutionalized as a mechanism that is used by the states in one bloc not to attack or proclaim the war to other states within the same bloc of coalition.[ii] The member states of the same bloc accept the practice to use their collective armed forces and other necessary capabilities in order to help and defend a fellow member state in the case of aggression from outside. Such “defensive“ collective action has to continue until the time when “aggression“ is reversed. The essence of such a concept, therefore, is a claim that an “unprovoked“, aggressive attack against any member of an organization is going to be considered as an attack on all member states of that organization. In practice, any really provoked attack of aggression can be easily claimed as “unprovoked“ as it happened, for instance, with the case of Pearl Harbour in 1941 as we know today that the US regime did everything to provoke “unprovoked“ Japanese action on December 7th. Nevertheless, while the concept of CS became the tool to count state aggression, it left a very open question of how best to promote individual or group (minority) security.[iii]
It has to be clarified that the very idea of human security is not opposing concern of national (state) security – the requirement that the state must protect its own citizens from aggression from the external world, i.e. by a foreign actor. The human security idea argues that the most important focus of security has to be put on individuals, not on the state but the state has to protect all its citizens as the protection umbrella from the outside threat. This approach takes an individual-centered view of security that is a basis for national, regional, and finally global security. In essence, the protection of human (individual and group) rights is giving the main framework for the realization of the concept of human security that advocates “protection against threats to the lives and wellbeing of individuals in areas of basic need including freedom from violence by terrorists, criminals, or police, availability of food and water, a clean environment, energy security, and freedom from poverty and economic exploitation“.[iv]
The chief purpose of collective security organization is to provide and maintain peaceful relations within the bloc which is composed of sovereign states but dominated by a hegemon. The concept of CS has declaratory as a main task to maintain peace between the key actors in IR which practically means the states, but in practice, the real purpose of the CS system is just to maintain peace and order among the members of the system, however not between the system and the rest of the world. The best example of a CS system today is the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) which is not any kind of global security bloc but rather only a political-military alliance that is primarily serving the US national interests (global imperialism) across the globe. Nevertheless, the practical implementation of the concept is fluctuating between two models:
1. Traditional and more realistic model of Balance of Power; and
2. A new post-Cold War and more utopian model of World Government.
The idea of CS is for sure very attractive for academics as it seeks to bring about important benefits of a “global government“ but without altering the fundamental essence of the traditional state-system of anarchy. The concept of CS from a global perspective, therefore, means a “system of international security under which all states agree to take joint action against states that attack“.[v] Anyway, formally, the concept of CS wants to apply a set of legally established mechanisms that are designed to prevent possible aggression by any state against any other state at least without the formal permission of the UN.[vi]
Three Possible Models of Global Security
Different theorists explain in different ways using different arguments the benefits or disadvantages of one of three possible global security models: Unipolar, Bipolar, or Multipolar. Debates are, basically, going around the arguments about which one of these three models is the most stable and above all most peaceful in comparison to all other models.[vii]
Those who advocate the Unipolar Security Model (USM) claim that this model gives the most security guarantees as in this case there is simply one power (state) to be in a position of a dominant actor in global politics having a role of a global hegemon or world policemen. It is a belief that world politics can be mostly peaceful if there is a single dominant state that is strong enough to enforce peace as a global hegemon. The hegemon is going to be so powerful that no other global actor can challenge its superiority in world affairs and IR. This model of global security was adopted by the US administration immediately after the Cold War 1.0 and mainly was advocated by Zbigniew Brzezinski who was trying to lay down the academic foundations of the American hegemonic position in global politics which had the primary goal to destabilize, dismember and finally occupy Russia for the sake of free of charge exploitation of her natural resources according to the Kosovo pattern from June 1999 onward. If the US administration succeeds in the realization of such a goal, the global geopolitical game over the Eurasian Heartland would be finally resolved in favor of Washington.
NATO was, is, and going to be from the very beginning of its existence (est. 1949) the fundamental instrument of the US policy of global hegemony concept that is known also as Pax Americana. Up today, NATO remains the most powerful military alliance in the world that was allegedly established “…to provide security for Western Europe, NATO became an unprecedented peacetime alliance with a permanent secretariat and a military headquarters that represents the US commitment to deter Soviet aggression”.[viii] However, the very existence of the NATO after the dissolution of the Soviet Union clearly prove that the ultimate goal of its creation and functioning was not “to deter Soviet aggression” while its (only eastward) enlargement from 1999 onward indicates that, in fact, Russia was, is and going to be the chief object of the fundamental point of the NATO’s policy of the US expansionism and global hegemony. The 1998−1999 Kosovo War, in which NATO forces became deeply engaged for the first time after its establishment in 1949, marks the beginning of the direct US policy of brutal and open gangsterism (at least) after the Cold War on the global level of IR and world politics.[ix]
The USM is necessarily founded on an idea of hegemony in global politics. The word hegemonia comes from the ancient Greek language (as many other words used today by the Western academic world) with authentic means of “leadership”. In IR, a notion of a “hegemon” is used as a synonym for “leader” or “leading state” within the system (bloc) composed of at least two or several states. However, the bloc member countries have to establish and maintain certain relations between themselves which practically means that one of the member states became de facto a hegemon within the whole bloc concerning decision-making policy and procedure (for example, the USA in NATO, the USSR in the Warsaw Pact or Germany in the EU). A leadership or hegemony within the system implies a certain degree of order, collective organization, and above all hierarchy relationships between the members of a system. However, political hegemony in IR is not existing by itself as it is a phenomenon that exists within some interstate system, that is itself the product of specific historical, political, economic, ideological, or other circumstances. All hegemonic states within the system enjoy “structural power” which permits the leader to occupy a central leading position in its own created and run system. All other member states are collaborators to the leading role of the hegemon expecting to get a proper reward for their service. On the other hand, a hegemon has to mobilize its own economic, financial, technical, political, human, and other resources in order to perform a role of a leader and, therefore, this is why only some (rich) states have a real potential to be hegemons (like the USA in the NATO, for instance).
The USA is today the world’s most powerful and imperialistic single state ever existed in history. Washington is after WWII using NATO as a justification of its global hegemonic designs and the American ability and willingness to resume a hegemonic role in the world are of crucial importance for IR, world order, and global security. In principle, the majority of studies dealing with hegemony and imperialism point to the British 19th-century empire and the US empire after WWII as the two most successful hegemonic cases in the world’s political history.[x] Both of these two empires formally justified their policy of global imperialism within the framework of the concept of USM.
Probably the most important disadvantage of USM is that a unipolar world with a strong global hegemon will all the time tempt either one or several powers to try to challenge the hegemon by different means. This is, basically, an endless game till the hegemon finally lost its position as such and the system of security became transformed into a new form based on a new security model. That is exactly what happened with the Roman Empire as one of the examples of USM.
Nevertheless, in the unipolar system, a hegemon faces few constraints on its policy, determines the rules of the game in global politics, and restricts the autonomous actions of others as was exactly the case by the US as a “world policeman” at the time of the New World Order in 1990−2008.[xi] But on the other side, such a hegemonic position and policy of terrorizing the rest of the world (or system) provokes self-defense reactions by others which finally results in a change in the distribution of power among the states (or actors) that can be a cause of war on a larger scale of intensity and space. For the matter of comparison, the US hegemonic, Russophobic, and barbaric global policy at the time of the post-Cold War 1.0 New World Order can in the end cause a new world war with Russia (and probably China) as the Peloponnesian War (431−404 BC) were caused by the hegemonic policy of the Athens which provoked the fear and self-defense reaction by Sparta.[xii]
The champions of the Bipolar Security Model (BSM), however, believe that a bipolarity of global politics could bring a long-time peace and world security instead of USM. In the case of BSM, the two crucial powers in the world are monitoring each other’s behavior in the global arena and therefore removing the biggest part of the security uncertainty in world politics, international relations, and foreign affairs associated with the possibility of the beginning of war between the Great Powers.
A Multipolar Security Model (MSM) looks like the best option for dealing with the prevention of war and protecting global security as a distribution of power is as much as “multi” as there are lesser chances for the outbreak of war between the Great Powers. In essence, MSM can moderate hostility among the Great Powers as they are forced to create shifting alliances in which there are no permanent enemies. Nevertheless, for many researchers, MSM is, in fact, creating a dangerous uncertainty for the very reason as there is a bigger number of the Great Powers or other powerful actors in world politics.
Conclusion
Finally, there are many arguments over what the research and referent object of Security Studies have to be, whether military power is fundamental for state security, who is going to be mainly responsible for providing security, or what the studies as an academic field have to consider as its research subject matter and focus. The fundamental aim of this article was to present the main route through the (mine)field of Security Studies as an academic research discipline.
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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
[i] Supranational means to be above the sovereign state or “over the nation”.
[ii] However, this mechanism is not providing absolute security within the same bloc as the case of Italy and Austria-Hungary showed in 1917.
[iii] According to the 1994 Human Development Report (an annual publication of the UNDP), human security is composed by the next seven elements: 1. Economic security or freedom from poverty; 2. Food security or access to food; 3. Health security or access to health care and protection from diseases; 4. Environmental security or protection from environmental pollution; 5. Personal security or physical safety from torture, war, and drug use; 6. Community security or survival of traditional cultures and ethnonational groups; and 7. Political security or protection against political oppression (Martin Griffiths, Terry O’Callaghan, Steven C. Roach, International Relations: The Key Concepts, Second edition, London−New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008, 147).
[iv] Richard W. Mansbach, Kirsten L. Taylor, Introduction to Global Politics, Second edition, London−New York: Routledge, 2012, 578.
[v] Richard W. Mansbach, Kirsten L. Taylor, Introduction to Global Politics, Second edition, London−New York: Routledge, 2012, 574.
[vi] However, this concept lost its moral ground in 1999 when the NATO made an aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for 78 days without a resolution by the UNO launching the “illegal war” on a sovereign state (Пјер Пеан, Косово: „Праведни“ рат за стварање мафијашке државе, Београд: Службени гласник, 2013, 95−105 [translation from the French original: Pierre Pean, Sébastien Fontenelle, Kosovo: Une Guerre „Juste“ pour Créer un Etat Mafieux, Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2013]).
[vii] Security Studies as an academic discipline belong to a wider subject of International Relations (IR) that is the study of total political relations between different international actors but fundamentally between the sovereign states. The main concern of Security Studies is the global securuty and its maintainance (Peter Hough, Understanding Global Security, Second edition, London−New York: Routledge, 2008, 2).
[viii] Richard W. Mansbach, Kirsten L. Taylor, Introduction to Global Politics, Second edition, London−New York: Routledge, 2012, 345.
[ix] As a direct result of the NATO’s aggression on Serbia and Montenegro in 1999, Kosovo became transformed into the American colony (see more on this issue in: Hannes Hofbauer, Experiment Kosovo: Die Rückkehr des Kolonialismus, Wien: Promedia Druck- und Verlagsges. m.b.h., 2008).
[x] For instance, Joshua S. Goldstein, International Relations, Fourth edition, New York: Longman, 2001, 92.
[xi] A term New World Order is originally coined by the ex-US President George Bush Senior in 1991as a consequence of the First Gulf War in 1990−1991 when the US administration started its post-Cold War imperialistic policy of a global hegemon hidden behind an idea of globalization of liberal internationalism that was allegedly impossible without the US hegemonic role in world politics. Nevertheless, the concept of New World Order „…was short-hand for US policy preferences and further American imperialism“ (Jeffrey Haynes, Peter Hough, Shahin Malik, Lloyd Pettiford, World Politics, New York: Routledge, 2013, 712). Many academics and politicians have at the beginning hopes that New World Order will bring a better future in IR and global politics but very soon the idea became very criticized and, therefore, the idea lost any rational and moral background.
[xii] Михаил Ростовцев, Историја старога света: Грчка и Рим, Нови Сад: Матица српска, 1990, 112−120; Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1999.
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Dr Chris Alan Shoemaker in Canada.
A Shocking Revelation.
A 20% occurrence of Myocarditis proven in those who took the vaccine. 200,000 people per million.
"50% or 100,000 of those will die within 5 years. That's a medical fact."
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.
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
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“For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government.” Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd U.S. President,(1945-1953), (in an editorial titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence“, The Washington Post, Dec. 22, 1963, p. A11).
[The CIA] “has become so removed from its intended role… I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations… The last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.” Harry S. Truman (1884-1972). Ibid.
“I think [the creation of the CIA] was a mistake.And if I’d known what was going to happen, I never would have done it.” Harry S. Truman (in an interview with his biographer Mr. Merle Miller, in the 1960’s).
“Let’s remember, the CIA’s job is to go out and create wars.” Jesse Ventura (James George Janos) (1951- ), American former wrestler, actor, author and Governor of Minnesota, 1999-2003, (in ‘Jesse Ventura suggests US may be behind Middle East violence’ Sept. 15, 2012).
On Friday, July 21, 2023, President Joe Biden (1942- ) made an ominous decision: He elevated William Burns, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), to the level of a member of his Cabinet. This made the CIA Director the second intelligence officer in the Biden Cabinet, alongside the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines.
This could be more than a symbolic move to reward a political ally. In fact, this could be a message that the Biden administration plans to be more heavily involved in foreign affairs in the near future, especially if the Ukraine war were to escalate from a proxy war to a more open U.S.-Russia military conflict.
This could also indicate that the U.S. president, mired in a low approval rating in public polls, has concluded that the only way for him to win a second term would be to wage a political campaign as Commander-in-Chief. That worked very well for President George W. Bush (1946- ) during the 2004 presidential campaign, after his administration’s military invasion of Iraq in March 2003, under false pretenses. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that it is easier for American politicians to win reelection during wartime elections.
A Quick History of the CIA
President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. His initial aim was to form a small information gathering office to keep the U.S. president informed on world affairs. Today, the CIA has evolved into the equivalent of a secret government for foreign affairs, within the U.S. government. Its annual budget, close to $100 billion, is larger than the budgets of three quarters of the world’s countries.
One of the CIA’s missions over time, besides collecting information and spying, has been to carry on covert operations and illegal acts to advance narrow American interests around the world. Most Americans are unaware of such secret operations conducted in their name.
President Harry S. Truman, Founder of the CIA, Wrote that He Was Deeply Disappointed About How the Agency Had Evolved
On December 22, 1963, only one month after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, former President Truman wrote an editorial in the Washington Post, in which he revealed that he had serious misgivings about the increasing role of the CIA within the U.S. government.
Indeed, the former president and initiator of the CIA feared that it had been “diverted from its original assignment” (intelligence collection and analysis) and that it had “become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.”
Truman’s conclusion was quite damning: “There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it”.
What President Truman and other American thinkers have feared is that the United States be turned into a lawless military empire with a self-serving imperial hubris. Indeed, a military empire in a perpetual state of war, however well disguised, cannot remain a democracy, because this would contradict the values of freedom and liberty at home.
Conclusion
President Truman’s words and warnings reverberate today, considering that the current American president is elevating the CIA Director to the level of a Secretary in his Cabinet.
President Joe Biden does not seem to have the same apprehensions about the danger to American democracy by having the CIA directly involved in the making of American foreign policy. This is not the first time that Joe Biden has distanced himself from American traditions. In fact, while forming his Cabinet, in 2021, he reneged on the tradition of naming a civilian as Secretary of Defense when he instead chose to name retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin to the post.
With such decisions, President Joe Biden reveals his preference for an imperial America, in contradiction to what President Harry S. Truman intended when he created the CIA. Biden may be more of a militarist and a warmonger than many people think.
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay.
Humanists have long contended that morality is a strictly human concern and should be independent of religious creeds and dogma. This principle was clearly articulated in the two Humanist Manifestos issued in the mid-twentieth century and in Humanist Manifesto 2000, which appeared at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Now this code for global ethics further elaborates ten humanist principles designed for a world community that is growing ever closer together. In the face of the obvious challenges to international stability-from nuclear proliferation, environmental degradation, economic turmoil, and reactionary and sometimes violent religious movements-a code based on the “natural dignity and inherent worth of all human beings” is needed more than ever. In separate chapters the author delves into the issues surrounding these ten humanist principles: preserving individual dignity and equality, respecting life and property, tolerance, sharing, preventing domination of others, eliminating superstition, conserving the natural environment, resolving differences cooperatively without resort to violence or war, political and economic democracy, and providing for universal education. This forward-looking, optimistic, and eminently reasonable discussion of humanist ideals makes an important contribution to laying the foundations for a just and peaceable global community.
The only prospective study ever done for COVID-19 mRNA vaccine induced myocarditis in young men: Thailand study (2022, Mansanguan), of 202 boys ages 13-18, from two different schools, 7 of them developed subclinical myo/pericarditis after 2nd Pfizer dose. That’s a ratio of 1 in 30 per Pfizer vaccine dose.
On the eve of the second Russia-Africa summit scheduled for July 27–28 in St. Petersburg, President Vladimir Putin explained in article published on his Kremlin website that Moscow would continue supporting strategic ways for establishing sustainable peace and political stability in conflict-ridden African countries.
Since the 1990s, the United Kingdom has been one of the staunchest supporters of Albanian expansionism (mostly fueled by their unrelenting narco-terrorist tendencies). At the time, London sent its intelligence services to Albania where they worked closely with their American, German and other NATO counterparts to set the stage for a terrorist insurrection in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia.
All-cause mortality by time (day, week, month, year, period), by jurisdiction (country, state, province, county), and by individual characteristics of the deceased (age, sex, race, living accomodations) is the most reliable data for detecting and epidemiologically characterizing events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge or collapse in deaths from any cause.
Look today at the current film “Oppenheimer”. The whole story of that man revolves around dilemmas about nuclear weapons flooding into his life. But that is skipped over – because it is not politically acceptable to raise such discussions in the US anymore. An article points to the phantastic drama which the film “Oppenheimer” should have been about. See this.
Faced with the failure of the overrated Ukrainian “counteroffensive”, Western analysts are trying to find excuses for the humiliation of the neo-Nazi forces. In the opinion of a researcher linked to the Royal United Services Institute, the bureaucracy of NATO states damaged the Ukrainian moves, preventing the counterattack from achieving the desired objectives.
Despite repeated warnings over a decade by the Amsterdam-based Mali Dili, contracted to manage email accounts of the West African state, traffic from the US military continued to find its way to the .ml domain, the country identifier of Mali. (For all we know, this may still be happening.) This arose because of a typing error, with .mil being the suffix for US military email addresses.
Neurontin, the trade name for Gabapentin, is a popular drug used for the treatment of seizure disorders or to relieve nerve pain. Developed by Parke-Davis, a unit of Warner-Lambert (which Pfizer acquired in 2000), Neurontin was patented in 1977 and approved for use in 1993.
Had it not been for the September 1945 plan to “wipe the Soviet Union of the map” (66 urban areas and more than 200 atomic bombs), neither Russia nor China would have developed nuclear weapons. There wouldn’t have been a Nuclear Arms Race.
Mongolia’s recent decision to adopt SpaceX’s Starlink internet services is stirring security concerns across the border in China, both as a potential military threat and a possible way around Beijing’s strict censorship regime on perceived as “harmful” foreign websites.
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On the eve of the second Russia-Africa summit scheduled for July 27–28 in St. Petersburg, President Vladimir Putin explained in article published on his Kremlin website that Moscow would continue supporting strategic ways for establishing sustainable peace and political stability in conflict-ridden African countries. In fact the expected large-scale summit is held under under the slogan “For Peace, Security and Development” – a repeat from October 2019.
Oleg Ozerov, Ambassador-at-Large at the Russian Foreign Ministry, Head of the Secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, spoke in an interview with RIA Novosti and also explicitly pointed to the fact Russia has no military bases not military troops in Africa.
“We don’t have a military presence there. There are appeals to the Russian side for help in ensuring security. This is not a military presence. Military presence is when troops are sent. We send instructors at the request of the African states themselves. But all this is not a military presence,” Ozerov said.
With regard to the fight against terrorism, it is also necessary to formulate more precisely. We are talking not only about the fight against terrorism in Africa, but in general about the joint fight against terror, because it has a cross-border character, which is a serious problem for the African continent: in Somalia, the Sahara-Sahel region, where terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda,” the diplomat added in his interview.
CEO of the Russian arms export agency Rosoboronexport Alexander Mikheev, during pre-summit discussions, indicated that his agency has singed over 150 military contracts with African countries, its order booked stands more than $10 billion since 2019.
For Rosoboron export, the July summit is a unique event enabling to find new growth points in military cooperation with partners, find reliable customers and start developing new market segments, especially those conflict-ridden and war-torn African countries. According to him, Moscow is ready to assist with uninterrupted supplies to fight increasing terrorism, crime, and all kinds of threats in the continent.
For fear and concerns about the new rise of terrorism, the Sahel-5 countries are turning to Russia. After the political power changed hands in Mali, a former French colony with a fractured economy and a breeding field for armed Islamic jihadist groups, Russia offered tremendous assistance.
By showing support for the military government in Mali, Russia has utterly ignored or violated the protocols for implementing the “Silencing the Guns” agenda in West Africa, a flagship programme of the African Union’s Agenda 2063. Now Russia is capitalizing on this loophole opportunity, eyeing Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali as possible conduits, to penetrate into the entire Sahel and West Africa.
There are frequent narratives that some these African leaders have signed non-transparent agreements, routinely ignored both the executive and legislative decisions on tendering national projects and natural resources. The barter agreement involves exchanged of mineral deposits for military weapons and equipment from Russia.
In the case of in Central African Republic (CAR), Russia donated weapons to CAR’s weak military and initially provided 175 military instructors. Since then, the number of Russian instructors has grown to 1,200. The situation in CAR is very precarious, a lot of fighters are not military instructors. In Mali and CAR, instructors are allowed into civilian zones.
Malian interim military leader Col. Assimi Goita and his government have halted relations with France, moved closer to Russia. Mali is a shady remote country and Moscow is highly interested in exploring natural resources, has mining concession agreements in exchange with military weapons and equipment. The military is keen on fighting what it termed “active terrorist groups” in the country. On the other hand, Moscow aggressively moving its military-technical cooperation shows the desire to ensure the country’s defense capabilities, especially in the face of the persisting terrorist threat in the region.
According to several reports especially from Associated Press, AFP, Reuters and DW as well as BBC, Mali’s authorities have an agreement with the Russian private military company Wagner Group that replaced the French military. Reuters further reported that the contract could be worth $10.8 million a month. Mali has taken delivery of military equipment and hundreds of military experts and instructors are operating in the country. These military instructors move around the country including civilian quarters.
As has been in the past, under the new military leadership harrowing accounts of human rights abuses have emerged. In addition to the previous abuses, the late March massacre of about 300 people in the village Malian village of Moura became very questionable, called for international condemnation. Most importantly, it must be thorough systematic investigations to ascertain the primary causes, the implications and possibly to take punitive actions.
For the African Union and ECOWAS, the scale and gravity of Mali’s military leadership violating human rights, of course, is a strong signal to hold them for responsible for this crimes which many have described reports and images of civilian killings as disturbing.
Joseph Siegle, Director of Research and Daniel Eizenga, Research Fellow at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, co-authored an article headlined “Russia’s Wagner Play Undermines the Transition in Mali” in which they highlighted Wagner’s potential entry into Mali, and it reminds how the group started operating, and later grossly involved in human rights abuses in the Central African Republic.
The two researchers have several times suggested to the Security Council of the African Union and ECOWAS to invoke the African Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism, which went into effect in 1985, prohibiting states from allowing mercenaries into their territories. Declaring Wagner a mercenary force identifies them, appropriately, as an illegal entity, one that should be categorically prohibited from operating in Mali (and other parts of Africa).
Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted that Malian forces and foreign fighters killed 300 civilians in Moura, late March. The report described as “the worst single atrocity reported in Mali’s decade-long armed conflict.” Several witnesses and other sources identified the foreign soldiers as Russians to HRW.
According to the report, the massacre took place over four days, with the vast majority of the victims being ethnic Fulanis group. Moura is small provincial town, which has a population of around 10,000, has been the epicenter of conflict-related violence. “The soldiers patrolled through town, executing several men as they tried to flee, and detaining hundreds of unarmed men from the market and their homes. The incident is the worst single atrocity reported in Mali’s decade-long armed conflict,” the HRW report said.
“Abuses by armed Islamist groups is no justification at all for the military’s deliberate slaughter of people in custody. The Malian government is responsible for this atrocity – the worst in Mali in a decade – whether carried out by Malian forces or associated foreign soldiers,” the report said.
Russia has assigned, what officially described as military instructors to Mali. There are no doubts that neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger are also looking for such deals with Moscow. The United States, France and European Union say the instructors are operatives from the Russian private security firm Wagner.
Russia has blocked a request put forward by France at the UN Security Council for “independent investigations” into the alleged massacre of several hundred civilians in Mali by the Malian army and Russian paramilitaries, diplomatic sources said. That was followed widely shared social media reports of a civilian massacre in the country.
That however, Moscow congratulated Mali on an “important victory” against “terrorism” and it described as “disinformation” allegations about the massacre, as well as claims about the involvement of Russian mercenaries. The statement posted to the official website noted that “such a large-scale liquidation of terrorists became possible as a result of carefully conducted reconnaissance and coordinated actions of the units of the Malian army.”
According to media reports, the arrival of Russian mercenaries in the Sahel – of which thousands are expected – would jeopardize other external commitments to fighting terrorism, and limit development assistance from international organizations. For example, Reuters has reported that a possible contract could be worth $10.8 million, or estimated more per month, depending on the contract, working with the Russian private military company Wagner Group.
Down the years, Kremlin has been saying the Russian government has no ties to the business of Wagner Group. Then at the same time, the Russian authorities have fiercely defended Wagner Group’s military business in countries facing conflicts that it has the legitimate right to work and pursue its business interests anywhere in the world as long as it did not break Russian law.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has often spoken against such collaboration, the use of Russian mercenaries in Africa. The best is to consider bilateral and multilateral mechanisms to work towards operationalizing and implementing the United Nations Security Council resolutions on the Sahel, and primarily aim at attaining regional peace, and further to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS) and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.
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Since the 1990s, the United Kingdom has been one of the staunchest supporters of Albanian expansionism (mostly fueled by their unrelenting narco-terrorist tendencies). At the time, London sent its intelligence services to Albania where they worked closely with their American, German and other NATO counterparts to set the stage for a terrorist insurrection in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia. The KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), an Albanian terrorist organization that was based on a volatile mix of radical Islamism and narco-terrorism, was formed with NATO’s direct participation, particularly the UK and US intelligence services.
This support reached its peak in early 1999 when NATO initiated its illegal bombing of Serbia and Montenegro (then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) in support of its favorite terrorist puppets. Just prior to NATO attacks, in the 1998-1999 timeframe, the Al Qaeda-linked Albanian KLA started attacking both the Serbian security forces and civilians in Kosovo and Metohia. These attacks were coordinated directly with NATO, as previously mentioned, particularly the UK and US intelligence. After 78 days of indiscriminate bombing by NATO, Serbia was forced to pull out of its southern province, leaving it at the mercy of Albanian terrorists and their NATO handlers.
Seemingly, the belligerent alliance promised that the territory will formally remain a part of Serbia, albeit administered by NATO. As per usual for the political West, their word was worth less than the paper it was written on. The promises were never kept and the “legalized” narco-terrorist KLA proclaimed independence in 2008. The political West immediately recognized this so-called “independence” and claimed that it was supposedly “in line with the international law” as it was a “special case”. This was one of the firsthand accounts of what the wanton “rules-based world order” is. The result has been that this illegal NATO-backed entity became a safe haven for all sorts of illegal activities.
Since then, as per usual, NATO’s support for various kinds of ultraradical groups and organizations has started backfiring. Namely, the Albanian narco-terrorist groups that were directly supported by NATO are now spreading like a plague among the most prominent members of the belligerent alliance, particularly the UK. Whether it’s drug smuggling, forced prostitution, gunrunning or radical Islamic terrorism (including the sending of fighters to NATO-backed terrorist groups in Syria and elsewhere), the UK is getting the “full service”. Hundreds of thousands of Albanians have moved to the UK since the 1990s and tens of thousands of them are still entering the country illegally.
This illegal immigration includes people from both Albania and the NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia. While the actual numbers are nearly impossible to determine, current statistics show that tens of thousands of Albanians in the UK are members of countless ethnic gangs that are engaged in all of the aforementioned criminal activities across England, particularly London. They usually enter the UK on small boats coming from France, representing roughly 30% of the total illegal arrivals in 2022, according to police estimates. Albanian asylum applications last year stood at approximately 16,000, which was a 300% increase in comparison to 2021.
The official data was released by the UK’s Ministry of the Interior, based on the data collected by the Migration Observatory. Still, the actual numbers could be several times higher. The data has also caused political upheaval in the UK and contributed to additional pressure on the government under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. UK authorities launched yet another anemic campaign to “deter migrants” by placing banners in their countries of origin that read: “If you enter the UK illegally, you risk being detained and deported.” The banners were set up in Albania in late June and early July, but resulted in no more than ridicule from Albanian criminals.
Worse yet, various leftist and “human rights” groups protested the move, calling it “xenophobic” and “useless”. According to their “logic”, if the government wants to put an end to organized crime and suppress gangs, it must “create safer ways for refugees to seek asylum”. Still, these Albanian gangs have a lot of influence, even in police and justice departments. The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) revealed in mid-May that hundreds of lawyers are linked to a human trafficking network originating in Albania. These networks are also directly connected to drug smuggling, which itself is a major part of prostitution rings run by Albanian criminal organizations based in the UK and other countries.
According to the Epoch Times, Albanian narco-terrorists now dominate the UK’s cocaine market. In an interview with Tony Saggers, former head of the NCA’s Drugs Threat and Intelligence Department, the Epoch Times revealed that Albanian gangsters have considerable control over the UK’s booming drugs trade. Several months ago, even the UN warned that Albanian narco-terrorists are “exerting excessive control of the UK’s drug trade — with the ability to ship in huge illicit consignments of cocaine via southeast England seaports”. The UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its 2023 report that migration from Albania has allowed gangs to set up in key cities across Europe and take over drug trafficking networks.
The UNODC also stated: “The important destination of the UK, where Albanian-speaking groups have also been assessed to exert considerable control across the drug market, is also supplied to a large extent via ‘roll-on, roll-off’ freight reaching ports in the southeast of the UK from nearby European ports.”
In a very similar manner to how NATO (particularly the UK) handled ultraradical groups such as Al Qaeda, causing a surge in terrorist attacks, as well as the emergence of numerous other similar terrorist groups, staunch support for Albanian extremism has resulted in almost identical disastrous consequences. The only difference is that these Albanian narco-terrorists have managed to gain a stronger foothold through various criminal activities, particularly drug smuggling, something that even Al Qaeda considered immoral. Still, as the UK directly participated in the creation of this Albanian monstrosity, the way this has backfired cannot be considered anything but a well-deserved poetic justice.
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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
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***
July 24, 2023 – Lebron James’ 18 year old son Bronny James suffered a cardiac arrest during practice at 9:30am and had to be rushed to the hospital and ICU.
Was he COVID-19 vaccinated?
Young people having cardiac arrests and surviving:
July 7, 2023 – Narooma, Australia – 17 year old Tom Haynes went into cardiac arrest while at school. Students & staff at Carroll College used a defibrillator. Tom is captain of football team U17 Narooma Lions.
July 3, 2023 – 17 year old Long Island High School football player Robert Bush on life support after collapsing on July 3, 2023 “He had been on the field for 4 minutes before he bent over, then passed out due to a cardiac event at about 5pm” He received CPR & defibrillator but his brain went without oxygen for 45 minutes.
Mar. 12, 2023 – Raleigh, NC – 17 year old cheerleader Keianna Joe, had a cardiac arrest during a competition warm-up. She was saved with CPR & AED (click here).
Feb. 15, 2023 – Kaseem Vauls, a 21-year-old defensive lineman from Jackson State’s football team in 2022, suffered cardiac arrest Wednesday morning, prompting doctors to resuscitate him and put him on a ventilator.
Jan. 31, 2023 – Detroit, MI – 18 year old basketball player Cartier Woods collapsed on the basketball court.
Dec. 2022 – Oakland County, MI – 18 year old Ben Kane had a heart attack in Dec.2022 with troponin enzymes of 3500+, he was fully COVID-19 vaccinated. (click here)
March 23, 2023 – Spokane, WA – 16 year old Justus Danielli collapsed at calculus exam on Mar. 23, 2023 – shocked back to life with defibrillator 5 times! (click here)
Feb. 24, 2023 – Illinois – 16 year old Moline High School student Maddox McCubbin collapsed during study hall on Feb. 24, 2023 with a cardiac arrest while sitting at his desk in class (click here).
Nov. 2022, Bradenton, FL – 19 year old decathlete Nick Migliarese went into cardiac arrest at track practice (click here).
Sep. 10, 2022 – 17 year old Tennessee athlete Gabe Higginbottom suffered a heart attack after a race.
Aug. 5, 2022 – 18 year old Drew Strasser, tennis player, collapsed during warm up at tennis practice, with a cardiac arrest. His teammate performed CPR while his coach used a defibrillator (AED) to shock him (click here).
Aug. 2, 2022 – Kansas City, MO – 17 year old baseball player Davis Dwight collapsed at baseball practice with cardiac arrest (click here).
My Take…
The only prospective study ever done for COVID-19 mRNA vaccine induced myocarditis in young men:
Thailand study (2022, Mansanguan), of 202 boys ages 13-18, from two different schools, 7 of them developed subclinical myo/pericarditis after 2nd Pfizer dose. That’s a ratio of 1 in 30 per Pfizer vaccine dose.
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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
Featured image is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
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
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***
Europe’s industrial giant Germany is among the countries hardest hit by the West’s sanctioning of Russia for its special military operation in Ukraine, with industrial production falling and the country sinking into a recession in early 2023 after losing access to cheap and reliable supplies of Russian hydrocarbons. German business, administration, and government leaders expressed widespread dissatisfaction with the government’s energy and economic policy. They also expressed fears that the economy may be past its zenith, with its best days behind it.
A survey for the German media by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research of 484 company board members, managing directors, government ministers and other senior decision-makers found that only 24% of the country’s management class are satisfied with the performance of Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck, a massive drop from 91% just a year ago.
Less than a quarter of respondents expect things to improve over the next six months, with two-thirds saying there is “little chance” of the country regaining its lost international competitiveness and 76% saying they do not believe Habeck or the Ministry of Economic Affairs has German business interests in mind to a sufficient degree.
Among the top five issues cited by managers as hampering Germany’s competitiveness are high energy costs (77%), shortages of skilled workers (70%), excessive government regulation (68%), lagging digitalisation programs (65%) and crumbling infrastructure (61%). Satisfaction with the coalition government has dropped from 62% in 2022 to 21% now, with 65% of respondents suggesting that the coalition’s policies are “weakening the country,” with just 22% expecting the economy to pick up again.
The German economy officially entered a recession in May after economic growth shrank by 0.3% in the first three months of 2023.
Following the launch of the special military operation, Germany faced all the problems other Western countries linked to the decision to economically separate from Russia, such as high inflation and rising energy prices. Despite being Europe’s leading industrial economy, Germany’s crisis was still painful for local companies, who expressed concern about losing competitiveness to other global giants such as the US and China due to the energy-intensive nature of their products.
Last month, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner announced that budget cuts had forced Berlin to suspend additional contributions to the European Union’s budget. Germany is a major supplier to other European countries and a major buyer, meaning that a lasting downturn in the German economy will significantly affect France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the wider bloc.
If this energy crisis lasts until next spring, the economies of the mentioned countries will also go into recession, which in turn will further weaken the German economy.
Data from the US agency Bloomberg indicate a contraction in industry and services in Germany and France, the second largest economy in the European bloc. Germany and France started the third quarter with contractions in their private sector economies, the agency reported on July 24.
As a result, the S&P Global Flash Purchasing Managers’ Index for Germany fell to this year’s low of 48.3 in July, with levels below or above 50 representing contraction and growth, respectively. The negative performance was driven by the manufacturing sector, which has been below 50 for over a year and is now close to levels last seen at the start of the pandemic in 2020. Meanwhile, services growth slowed for a second month.
“There is an increased probability that the economy will be in recession in the second half of the year,” predicts Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank. “Over the last few months, we have seen a jaw dropping fall in both new orders and backlogs of work, which are now declining at their fastest rates since the initial Covid wave at the start of 2020. This doesn’t bode well for the rest of the year.”
According to the report, France performed the worst since November 2020, even more so than Germany. In France, the manufacturing sector, particularly services, suffered further contractions.
“The data signal a noticeable cooldown of the economy, showing the sharpest reduction of business activity since November 2020, which preceded a contraction in GDP [in France],” said Norman Liebke, an economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank.
The numbers for both countries were worse than predicted by any economist in Bloomberg polls, according to the agency, which does not see this as a good sign for the European Union economy.
There is, of course, a solution to alleviate much, not all, but certainly much of the problems – lifting sanctions on Russia. It has been proven beyond a doubt that sanctions against Russia have boomeranged and affected the EU much worse, bringing to question just how much longer Germany and other countries can maintain this economically suicidal policy.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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The US is in an era of loss.
Look today at the current film “Oppenheimer”. The whole story of that man revolves around dilemmas about nuclear weapons flooding into his life. But that is skipped over – because it is not politically acceptable to raise such discussions in the US anymore. An article points to the phantastic drama which the film “Oppenheimer” should have been about. See this.
Nothing makes us care about the historic person Julius Robert Oppenheimer other than his personal role in developing the nuclear bomb, the killing of 100s of thousands of innocent Japanese, and the nuclear arms race it started. And the subsequent personal and grand political upheavals inside and around J. Robert Oppenheimer that followed.
This is an existential story. A story of human destiny, and a story of politics and intrigue. A story of morals. Of personal doubt. Feeling of guilt (though some say he defended the use on Japan). Of religion (he was into Indian philosophy). Of power play. Of folly. Of anger. And the killing of 100’s of thousands of Japanese – perhaps for no reason, because Japan was already about to surrender. Of efforts to change the course of history by stopping the arms race into the hydrogen-bomb. The story about the beginning to the ever more complicated efforts to control the possibility of nuclear, as these weapons become more advanced. The story of the birth of the US nuclear war lobby. This story may be centered on one man “Oppenheimer”, but its about much more than one person.
I can easily imagine a tense movie of just normal 1½ hours – half the length of the tea-cup story served over 3 hours. But in the degraded US culture, the big story about life and human existence and the deep questions and big politics that follow is not relevant anymore. It has to be degraded to a comic book. The New York Times (NYT) in its “critic” serves the “Oppenheimer” as a soap-opera.
That is the NYT conception of a “Hollywood success”: No teeth, no bite, but a wash-out of the real theme. And indeed, that is what Hollywood has become. Then better watch “Barbie” – that is at least an honest story, not pretending to be more than it is. Tellingly, the maker of the “Oppenheimer” movie decided NOT to show any scenes from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Don’t show the audience what this is ALL about!
And the NYT agrees openly. Don’t show the disturbing pictures of destroyed lives and cities which resulted from J. Robert Oppenheimer’s creation. We can discuss back and forth about nuclear weapons. Some say nuclear weapons risk humanity – which may be true. Others say that nuclear weapons since 1945 have saved the northern part of the World from war – which may be true as well. We can discuss back and forth about whether it was justified to use nuclear weapons to kill a massive number of innocent Japanese civilians. We can discuss back and forth about the hydrogen bomb and the arms race that has followed. And we should. Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece “Dr. Strangelove” from 1964 does precisely that. The moral sin of the “Oppenheimer” movie is a sin of covering up: Serving soap instead of digging into this fundamental human dilemma, which is the real story, and the only reason why the rest of us should care at all about the figure called “Oppenheimer”.
Russia’s President Putin saw the real movie about this existential dilemma for humanity – the Dr. Strangelove film about “incidental” nuclear destruction of the planet. Putin replied about the nuclear issue:
“It has become even more difficult, more dangerous.”
But not for Hollywood anymore – and neither for the NYT liberals.
The US loss is not only about culture. It is about morals too.
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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: J. Robert Oppenheimer. Credit: James Vaughn. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Accessed via Flickr.
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***
Israel’s sovereign credit rating on Tuesday was lowered by credit rating agency Morgan Stanley, and Moody’s warned of a “significant risk” that political and social tensions will lead to “negative consequences for Israel’s economy and security situation,” following the Knesset’s vote to pass the first law of its controversial judicial reform on Monday.
Morgan Stanley updated Israel’s sovereign credit to a “dislike stance,” noting that the government has reaffirmed the trajectory of its economy in a direction that is likely to scare off investors.
“We see increased uncertainty about the economic outlook in the coming months and risks becoming skewed to our adverse scenario,” the agency said. “Markets are now likely to extrapolate the future policy path and we move Israel sovereign credit to a ‘dislike stance.’”
They added that recent events indicate “ongoing uncertainty” in Israel and that the shekel is likely to continue depreciating alongside the Tel Aviv Stock Market, which has lost nearly 10% since November of last year.
Screenshot of stock market activity the day after the first law of the judicial reform passed. July 25, 2023 (credit: screenshot)
Shoveling More Problems Onto the Pile
Moody’s warned that there is “a significant risk that political and social tensions over the [judicial reform] will continue, with negative consequences for Israel’s economy and security situation.”
The credit rating agency warned that it believes that “the wide-ranging nature of the government’s proposals could materially weaken the judiciary’s independence and disrupt effective checks and balances between the various branches of government, which are important aspects of strong institutions.”
The agency added that “the executive and legislative institutions have become less predictable and more willing to create significant risks to economic and social stability.”
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Featured image: View of screens showing falling stocks at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, in the center of Tel Aviv, December 23, 2018. (Photo credit: MIRIAM ALSTER/FLASH90)
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***
Faced with the failure of the overrated Ukrainian “counteroffensive”, Western analysts are trying to find excuses for the humiliation of the neo-Nazi forces. In the opinion of a researcher linked to the Royal United Services Institute, the bureaucracy of NATO states damaged the Ukrainian moves, preventing the counterattack from achieving the desired objectives. In fact, these assessments sound like mere attempts to omit the evident truth that Kiev is militarily collapsed and unable to launch major maneuvers.
Jack Watling in an article for The Observer said that the Ukrainian government has been clear about its needs during dialogue with Western partners, explaining since last year which equipment it would need to win on the battlefield. There was great demand for artillery weapons and anti-aircraft defense systems, as well as for investments in military infrastructure, mobility, and engineering. He said that not all weapons were sent to the regime’s troops, thus weakening the counteroffensive.
“What the Ukrainians would need in order to conduct successful offensive operations was clearly communicated to western capitals from July to September last year (…) But despite the requirement being identified in September 2022, the decision to proceed was not taken until January 2023 and has only been partially implemented. Months of delays gave Russian forces time to build their defences, significantly complicating the task for the Ukrainians. The upshot is that Ukrainian forces had around two months to master a panoply of western systems in varying states of repair, and to take new troops and try to prepare them for some of the hardest tactical tasks that can be demanded of a force”, he said.
Watling believes that this Western bureaucracy also damages NATO itself. He says that the slowness in support for Ukraine increases European insecurity, since Kiev’s forces would be preventing Russia from advancing into western European territory. With this, he endorses the mainstream media’s narrative that Moscow plans to “invade” other countries, needing to be “stopped” through military means.
“These bureaucratic constraints highlight a serious problem for Ukraine’s partners. While not actually fighting a war, the future of European security depends upon the outcome of Ukraine’s struggle. And yet western capitals continue to be process-driven and slow, applying peacetime approaches to much of their activity. Western militaries have made progress in adapting their practice since the start of the war. The rest of government has been slower to realize what must be done”, he added.
Indeed, trying to find “reasons” for the Ukrainian failure seems to have become commonplace both in Kiev and in the West. Some analysts and officials suggest that the lack of weapons is to be blamed, while others suggest that the absence of NATO direct involvement is the real reason. And some others, like Watling, blame the bureaucracy. It is understandable that there is so much effort to “explain” the defeat. Western and Ukrainian media invested heavily on propaganda by predicting a victorious offensive in this year’s spring-summer season, so public opinion’s expectations were simply not met with the results.
The collective disappointment with Kiev simultaneously affects the Ukrainian troops, who have their morale hampered, and the Western governments themselves, which lose popular support for the policy of military assistance to the neo-Nazi regime. Liberal NATO governments “justify” sending arms with the excuse that they are necessary for Ukraine to “win”, but citizens are more and more convinced that Kiev simply cannot win and that this is an already lost war, not worth investing in the delivery of weapons.
The main problem is that all these “explanations” given by Western analysts are wrong. The Ukrainian counteroffensive failed simply because the neo-Nazi regime’s armed forces no longer have significant operational capability, being severely destroyed after one year of persistent fighting. The Ukrainian army is currently represented mostly by inexperienced, poorly trained and forcibly recruited soldiers, without any real motivation or ability to fight. Troops of this type are incapable of being successful in any “counteroffensive” attempt, always tending to lose in clashes against experienced forces.
In the same way that this season’s counterattack was neutralized by Russia, it is most likely that all of Kiev’s future offensive plans fail, since the neo-Nazi forces are evidently weaker day after day. To avoid a new “meat grinder” in the future, the best thing to do is to stop Western interventionism as soon as possible. Contrary to what Watling says, Russia does not pose a threat to western nations and there is no need for NATO to help its proxy with the excuse of ensuring “Europe’s security”. Violence will end and stability will be achieved only when Ukraine stops serving NATO’s interests and accepts Russian peace terms.
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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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Fleet-footed agility and sharp thinking rarely characterise the plodding bureaucrat. An argument can be made that different attributes are prized: cherished incompetence, spells of inattentiveness, and dedication to keeping things secret with severity. What matters is not what you did, but what you pretended to do.
Even with maintaining secrecy, the plodding desk-job hack can face problems, all falling under the umbrella term of “human error”. Papers and files can stray. The occasional USB stick can find its way into unwanted hands. And then there is that damnable business about the cloud and who can access it.
Despite repeated warnings over a decade by the Amsterdam-based Mali Dili, contracted to manage email accounts of the West African state, traffic from the US military continued to find its way to the .ml domain, the country identifier of Mali. (For all we know, this may still be happening.) This arose because of a typing error, with .mil being the suffix for US military email addresses.
Other countries also seemed caught up in the domain confusion. Over a dozen emails intended for the Dutch military also found their way into the Mali Dili net, with .ml being confused with .nl. Eight emails from the Australian Department of Defence, intended for US military consumption, also met the same fate. These include problems about corrosion in Australia’s F-35 and an artillery manual “carried by command post officers for each battery”.
The man most bemused by this is not, it would seem, in the Pentagon, but a certain Dutch entrepreneur who was given the task of managing the domain. Johannes Zuurbier has found himself inconvenienced by the whole matter for some years. In 2023, he decided to gather the misdirected messages. He currently holds 117,000 of them, though he has received anywhere up to 1,000 messages a day. He has been good enough to badger individuals in the US national cyber security service, the White House, and the local defence attaché in Mali.
The Financial Timesreports that the contents of such messages vary. Much of it is spam; a degree of it comprises X-Rays, medical data, identity documents, crew lists for ships, staffing names at bases, mapping on installations, base photos, naval inspection reports, contracts, criminal complaints against various personnel, internal investigations on bullying claims, official travel itineraries, bookings, tax and financial records.
While not earth shaking, one of the misdirected emails featured the travel itinerary of General James McConville, the US Army’s Chief of Staff, whose visit to Indonesia was noted, alongside a “full list of room numbers”, and “details of the collection of McConville’s room key at the Grand Hyatt Jakarta.” Not the sort of thing you necessarily wish your adversaries to know.
Another email from the Zuurbier trove came from an FBI agent and was intended for a US Navy official, requesting personal information to process a visitor from the Navy to an FBI facility.
Lt. Commander Tim Gorman, a spokesperson from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, has put a brave face on it. “The Department of Defense (DoD) is aware of this issue and takes all unauthorized disclosures of Controlled National Security Information or Controlled Unclassified Information Seriously,” he outlined in a statement to The Verge. He further claimed, without giving much away, that emails sent from a .mil domain to Mali are “blocked”, with a notification being sent to the sender “that they must validate the email addresses of the intended recipients.”
To keep things interesting, however, Gorman confesses that there was nothing stopping other government agencies or entities working with the US government from making the mistake and passing on material in error. His focus, rather, was on the Pentagon personnel, who continued to receive “direction and training”. The Defense Department “has implemented policy, training, and technical controls to ensure that emails from the ‘.mil’ domain are not delivered to incorrect domains.”
The whole affair is becoming a thick parody of administrative dunderheadedness. It follows a pattern of inadvertent exposure of data, the sort that would, if published, probably lead to harassment and prosecution by the Department of Justice. But the incompetent are almost never found wanting; only the well-intentioned deserve punishment. Instead, IT misconfigurations are blamed for what happened, for instance, in February, when three terabytes of US Special Operation Command unclassified emails were made available for public consumption for some two weeks.
Even as the typo-leaks continue, the United States has imposed sanctions against, of all individuals, Mali’s own defence officials, including the defence minister, Colonel Sadio Camara. The two other individuals in question are Air Force Chief of Staff Colonel Alou Boi Diarra and Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant Colonel Adama Bagayoko. In one of his tedious moral fits, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused the trio of facilitating and expanding “Wagner’s presence in Mali since December 2021”, claiming an increase of civilian fatalities by 278 percent since the Russian mercenary group established itself in the country.
The Mali authorities, as of July 25, should have assumed control of the domain. This worries retired US admiral and former director of the National Security Agency and US Army’s Cyber Command, Mike Rogers. “It’s one thing when you are dealing with a domain administrator who is trying, even unsuccessfully, to articulate the concern. It’s another when it’s a foreign government that … sees it as an advantage that they can use.”
Zuurbier, at the conclusion of his decade-long contract, may still have a few juicy numbers for safe keeping, though he will be mindful about what happens when such contents are published, namely, the Assange-WikiLeaks precedent. Mali’s officials, in the meantime, will simply anticipate the dotty domain business to continue.
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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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Michel Chossudovsky’s book is one of the very few solid, i.e. professionally researched and historically contextualized, English-language publications on the Yugoslav conflict in which the author is brave enough to draw honest conclusions about its root causes, narrative repercussions and moral implications.
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Alexander Wolfheze received his MA in Semitic Languages and Cultures in 2004 and his cum laude PhD in the Humanities in 2011, both from Leiden University, Netherlands. With extensive research experience in the fields of Assyriology and Cultural Anthropology, he subsequently authored several publications in the field of Near Eastern cultural history. His current interdisciplinary specializations are pre-modern epistemology and Traditionalist philosophy; his earlier book The Sunset of Tradition and the Origins of the Great War applies these specializations to the cultural-historical background of the First World War.
Book Preface
by Michel Chossudovsky
Twenty-four years ago in the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. “The operation was code-named “Allied Force ” – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker” according to Nebosja Malic.
When Belgrade was bombed, the children’s hospital was the object of air attacks. It had been singled out by military planners as a strategic target.
NATO stated that to “save the lives” of the newly born, they did not bomb the section of the hospital where the babies were residing, instead they targeted the building which housed the power generator, which meant no more power for the incubators. What this meant was that the entire hospital was for all sakes and purposes destroyed and many of the children died.
I visited that hospital, one year after the bombing in June 2000 and saw with my own eyes how they did it with utmost accuracy. These are war crimes using NATO’s so-called smart bombs.
The causes and consequences of this war against the people of Yugoslavia have been the object of a vast media disinformation campaign, which has sought to camouflage NATO and US war crimes.
Today, our thoughts are with the People of Serbia and the Former Yugoslavia.
-Michel Chossudovsky, Belgrade, October 21, 2022
On the 21st of October 2022, the book was launched in Belgrade under the auspices of The Belgrade Forum, Conference Centre of the Moskva Hotel,
The main reason Chossudovsky manages to avoid standard-narrative pitfalls, such as ‘end of history’ teleology or ‘clash of civilization’ schematism, is that he manages to consistently maintain an older and more realistic analytic model, viz. the Marxist model of capital accumulation and imperialist expansion as important geopolitical factors.
Especially useful contributions by Professor Chossudovky are his depth-analyses, case studies of specific episodes from the long-drawn out agony of Yugoslavia, such as the strategic and financial foundations of Camp Bondsteel (appendix to his Ch. 5), the eco-warfare bombing of the Panchevo petrochemical plant (his Ch. 6) and the human impact of NATO’s uses of depleted uranium ammunition in a de facto campaign of low-intensity nuclear warfare (his Ch. 7).
Chossudovsky ruthlessly exposes a number of deeply disturbing – and equally deeply memory-holed – ‘hybrid warfare’ strategies of the West’s war on Yugoslavia, including the West’s deliberate and extensive employment of drug mafias and terror networks, and he shows how the West’s take-down of Yugoslavia was in some ways a ‘test run’, after which they became standard instruments in the globalist cabal’s foreign policy tool kit.
Above all, this review aims to ‘operationalize’ the lessons of Chossudovsky’s book, i.e. to show how they are useful in exposing the main strategies and the overall aims of the West-based globalist cabal in their ‘inverse crusade’ to make the world ‘safe for tyranny’ ever since the end of the Cold War.
The Contemporary Era
If what the West did to Yugoslavia in the ‘90s is taken as a comprehensive ‘test run’ of full-spectrum ‘hybrid warfare’, then what the West is now doing to Russia in the ‘20s may be looked at as the ultimate test of the ‘hybrid warfare’ tools and mechanisms ‘tested’ in Yugoslavia.
It should be noted that this perspective in no way diminishes the sufferings and injustices inflicted upon the people of Yugoslavia: rather, the lessons that can be learnt from the globalist cabal’s successful dismantling and recolonization of Yugoslavia in the ‘90s should be taken to heart by those tasked with preserving the integrity and independence of Russia in the ‘20s – and by all those dedicated to the defence of all authentic forms of state sovereignty and national identity.
Above all, the various means and mechanisms of the globalist cabal’s ‘hybrid warfare’ should be understood as mutually reinforcing, continually improved and carefully selected tools and mechanisms from within a fairly standard ‘tool kit’. Their ultimate aim is nothing less than ‘multi-dimensional’ and ‘full-spectrum’ dominance: not merely the subjugation of nations, groups and individuals and the achievement of political and economic control, but their essential alteration and the utter destruction of their original identities.
The ever more transparently anti-human, trans-human and post-human nature of the globalist hegemon’s policies is explained by the ever more consistent, sophisticated and invasive application of these tools and mechanisms in pursuit of total control.
Currently, the globalist cabal is engaged in a crucial campaign in its quest for world dominance: its ‘Ukraine War’ campaign against Russia aims at taking down its single most important state-sovereign challenger in the international agenda. It cannot afford to lose this campaign and is bound to use its entire ‘multi-dimensional warfare’ arsenal: it is important that those entrusted with the defence of state sovereignty and national identity in the face of the globalist onslaught, now reaching its climax in the West’s war on Russia, a take full cognizance of the precedents and antecedents of the West’s war on Yugoslavia. This applies especially to those operating in the very vanguard of cognitive warfare – above all, the Eurasianist movement.
The lessons to be learnt from the West’s war on Yugoslavia are inevitably shaped by historical and geopolitical settings and well-educated and tradition-informed readers will appreciate the importance of a firm grasp of history and geography as the necessary basis of classical international diplomacy and politics, i.e. the realm of pre-globalist international relations and statecraft. But this appreciation – and this may seem to be a contradiction but is anything but – also constitutes a grave danger in the sense that it may skew the reader’s view, blinding him to the fact that the globalist cabal acts, thinks and feels in direct defiance of history and geography – and of reality itself. It insists upon altering reality, completely and forever: it seeks to rule the world and reshape it, erasing history, overcoming geography and destroying reality.
The more intelligent of the globalist cabal’s puppets and mouthpieces, the Blinkens, the Nulands, the Sunaks, the Macrons, are not blind ignoramuses: they just deliberately chose to ignore history, geography and reality. They are driven by a ‘greater’ vision that is stamped upon them and maintained in the very peculiar ‘cultic bubble’ void in which they ‘live’. Essentially, it is an anti-human, trans-human and post-human vision – a vision that undoubtedly anticipates and prepares the as-yet-unrealized vision of the Antichrist, who long ago deliberately set himself up against the reality of creation. Thus, the tools and mechanisms of the globalist cabal’s arsenals are deliberately applied against history, geography and reality.
The entire package – military aggression (from ‘humanitarian intervention’ to ‘regime change’), economic warfare (from ‘sanction regime’ to ‘market reform’), bio-leninist subversion (from ‘women’s suffrage’ to ‘critical race theory’), psycho-social deconstruction (from ‘MK Ultra’ experiments to ‘transgender’ legislation), biotechnical control (from to ‘morning-after pill’ to ‘vaccination mandate’) – has only one direction and one exit. The anti-globalist East now experiences the ruthless real-world application of these tools and mechanisms to its collective body and mind, but it should know that there is something still worse than being killed and maimed in body and mind. The still-standing East only has to look to the already-fallen West, to look at its zombified masses, and it will know what it means for the soul to be killed and maimed:
fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul
but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell
– Matthew 10:28
Tools and techniques
After showing how the demolition of Yugoslavia was planned by the US-led West as far back as the early ‘80s (tracing such planning back to the Reagan administration’s 1982 National Decision Directive 64), Chossudovsky groups the tools and mechanisms by which this demolition was achieved into two main categories: (1) economic-financial and (2) political-military.
(Ad 1) The West’s economic-financial assault on Yugoslavia involved the ‘opening up’, through a combination of bullying, bribery and blackmail at the highest policy-making levels, of the Yugoslav economy to neo-liberal (‘Reagonomic’/’Thatcherite’) ‘free market’ mechanisms.
The dictates of the high finance-directed ‘international institutions’ (International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Bank of International Settlement), always imposed with the help of and for the benefit of ‘venture capitalist’ ‘investors’ such as George Soros, resulted in a round of economic ‘shock therapy’ (‘market reforms’, ‘austerity programs’) that destroyed the Yugoslav economy and Yugoslav society as well as – indirectly – the Yugoslav state.
The de-regulation of foreign trade led to grotesque ‘dumping’ practices: markets were flooded with cheaply imported commodities, elbowing out domestic producers. The abolition of protective trade barriers led to the mass insolvency of state- and worker-owned enterprises: these found themselves suddenly and artificially ‘indebted’ and forced into fire-sale liquidation. These state- and worker-owned assets, including real estate, industrial facilities and inventory stocks, were then sold off to foreign ‘vulture fund’ investors at bargain prices: local currency-nominated ‘book values’ were signed off by corrupt bureaucrats and managers who were either bribed or ‘partnered in’. These – largely communist party – apparatchiks were directly complicit in the economic demolition of their own nation’s economy and state.[i] In the course of ‘liberalizing’ foreign investment legislation, state revenue became collateral for foreign debt servicing, which meant that a sovereign economic policy was no longer possible.
At the same time, foreign donor support and international reconstruction loans were made conditional on the implementation of legal and political ‘structural reforms’, allowing foreign powers to effectively impose their legal frames and political ideas on Yugoslavia. Yugoslav federal government control was systematically degraded and thwarted as loan conditions were imposed, credit lines were threatened and budget controls were imposed. Crucially, transfer payments by the federal government funds to Yugoslavia’s constituent republics and autonomous regions were interrupted and federal government tax powers were devolved to these republics and regions: federal government authority was fatally compromised.
At the same time, Yugoslavia’s social fabric started coming apart under sheer economic pressure: plant closure and budget cuts led to mass unemployment, ‘austerity’ imposed wage freezes and ‘privatization’ imposed utility price-rises led to collapsing living standards.
Faced with reform-mandated currency devaluation, shrinking government tax revenue and ballooning foreign currency-denominated external debt the federal government resorted to money printing, leading to skyrocketing inflation. Between 1990 and 1994, Yugoslavia went through five currencies and multiple cycles of hyper-inflation, ending only when the final Yugoslav dinar (Novi Dinar), the YUM, was pegged to the Deutsch Mark, replacing the previous dinar, the YUG at a rate of 1 YUM to 13 million YUG (some months before, the YUG had itself replaced the earlier YUO at a rate of 1 YUG to 1 billion YUO).
Over this time, the destruction of industry, the roll-back of workers’ rights and the dismantling of the welfare state, meant that the mass of people lost their rights and livelihoods: rights and livelihoods that had been carefully built up over decades were erased in the course of a few months. Ordinary people, wage-earners, the unemployed, the sick, and pensioners, were exposed to pre-modern living conditions, often thrown into Dickens-style poverty and squalor. The social fall-out was catastrophic, as evidenced by mass emigration, spiking crime rates, endemic substance abuse and widespread prostitution.
Even today, Yugoslavia’s successor states still struggle to overcome the impact of Yugoslavia’s ‘controlled demolition’: the legacy of mass emigration, the ‘brain-drain’ of young professionals, the exodus from the countryside, the degradation of honest work and dignified retirement, the mafia culture of gangster survivalism and the culture-distorting impact of decades of negative birth-rates are heavy mortgages, weakening the successor states’ social fabric and stunting their socio-cultural development.
As usual, however, history is written by the victors:
Administered in several doses since the 1980s, NATO-backed neo-liberal medicine has helped destroy Yugoslavia. Yet, the global media [and academia] ha[ve] carefully overlooked or denied its central role. Instead, they.. sing.. the praises of the ‘free market’… The social and political impact of economic restructuring in Yugoslavia has been carefully erased from our collective understanding. Opinion-makers instead dogmatically present cultural, ethnic, and religious divisions as the sole cause of war and devastation. …Such false consciousness not only masks the truth, it also prevents us from acknowledging precise historical occurrences. Ultimately, it distorts the true sources of social conflict. When applied to the former Yugoslavia, it obscures the historical foundations of South Slavic unity, solidarity and identity in what constituted a multiethnic society. (p. 43-4) …The eventual ‘reconstruction’ of Yugoslavia formulated in the context of the ‘free market’ reforms and financed by international debt largely purport to create a safe haven for foreign investors rather than to rehabilitate the country’s economic and social infrastructure. The… national economy will be dismantled, [Western] banks will take over financial institutions, local industrial enterprises which have not been totally destroyed will be driven into bankruptcy. The most profitable state assets will be transferred into the hands of foreign capital under the World Bank sponsored privatisation programme. In turn, [this]
‘strong economic medicine’ imposed by external creditors will contribute to further boosting a criminal economy… which feeds on poverty and dislocation. (80-1)
(Ad 2) The West’s initial political-military strategy involved the systematic fostering of secessionist political movements and the undercover organization of armed secessionist militias in the constituent republics and autonomous regions of Yugoslavia, which was a federal state inhabited by a large number of different ethnicities with widely diverging languages, religions and culture. This strategy aimed at undermining Yugoslavia’s relatively young and tenuous state identity, which dated back to the assertion of a common Southern Slav national idea during the weakening and the collapse of the Ottoman and Hapsburg rule throughout the Balkans between the early 19th Century rise of the independent Serbian state and the early 20th Century fall of the Austria-Hungarian state.
Yugoslav state identity was based on the shared history, the common culture and the Serbo-Croatian lingua franca. After Yugoslavia’s liberation struggle during World War II, this state identity was expanded to include a state ideology of moderate ‘market-socialism’ at home and ‘non-alignment’ abroad. As ‘market socialism’ allowed Yugoslav society a balance between the extremes of capitalism’s Darwinist ‘war of all against all’ and communism’s all-levelling ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ domestically, so ‘non-alignment’ allowed the Yugoslav state to balance between the West Bloc and the East Bloc internationally. Thus, Yugoslavia managed to remain truly independent during the Cold War, when almost all of Europe was effectively reduced to vassal status under either the United States or the Soviet Union.
Yugoslavia also gained diplomatic leverage and international prestige as the de facto centre of the Non-Alignment Movement, founded in Belgrade in 1961 at the initiative of President Tito, supported by international heavy-weights such as India’s Nehru, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Egypt’s Nasser and Ghana’s Nkrumah: it effectively led much of the Third World on the ‘third way’ of non-alignment.
As the Cold War drew to a close and as the communist East Bloc started to dissolve, however, Yugoslavia could no longer sustain its ideological and geopolitical balancing act: its sovereignty at home and its status abroad had been a function of the ‘bipolar’ Cold War global balance of power and were no longer sustainable at the start of the ‘unipolar’ era: after the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, Yugoslavia faced the full, unchallenged might of Atlanticist power alone.
The Western purpose was to split Yugoslavia, a medium-size, semi-autarkic state of considerable demographic, economic and military weight, into a patchwork of small-size, import-dependent vassal-states unable to challenge the hegemonic power of Anglosphere-based Atlanticist hegemon. Divide et impera.
Ideally, from an Atlanticist perspective, would be an ex-Yugoslavian space crowded by a maximum number of sub-sovereign successor states, thoroughly alienated from each other and each separately subject to ‘foreign debt rescheduling’ and ‘structural readjustment negotiations’. From a larger historical perspective, the ‘leaders’ of these successor states would be nothing but collaborators with an informal but no less real Atlanticist occupation regime.
As Chossudovsky points out repeatedly, these ‘leaders’ are nothing but vassals in a system of globalist colonial rule imposed on the former Yugoslavia, as proven by the fact that they enthusiastically lined up to join globalist trans-nationalist power structures – EU, NATO – as soon as possible. In those cases where successor states are so grossly artificial that joining these formal structures is problematic, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, openly neo-colonial regimes are imposed, with globalist-written ‘constitutions’, globalist-cloned legal systems and un-elected, non-native UN ‘high representatives’.
The West’s political-military campaign to achieve Yugoslavia’s formal division into successor states, more or less along ethnic and religious lines, began with covert sponsorship of separatist politicians and militias (ranging from intelligence and funding to military training and equipment), it continued with overt propaganda for separatist movements (including ‘atrocity propaganda), it expanded to include diplomatic pressure (newly-united Germany obliged its Atlanticists masters by initiating the ‘diplomatic recognition’ of break-away states) and it finally peaked in direct military intervention (in Bosnia and Kosovo).
Of course, the West’s political-military campaign ran simultaneously with the West’s economic-financial campaign: the latter undermined Yugoslavia’s civilian economy and it destroyed Yugoslavia’s social cohesion to such an extent that its people lost their trust in the old system, the old state and the old leadership, making them susceptible to the Western-sponsored narratives of ‘market reforms’ and ‘national self-determination’.
Even so, the demolition of Yugoslavia was far from easy: the Yugoslav state died hard and it only did so after the application of the full force of Western military might. The greatest challenge to the Western campaign of demolition was Serbian nationalism: in many ways, the first Yugoslav state had been the natural extension and crowning achievement of Serbia’s struggle for independence. After a series of ferocious freedom fights against its old-empire Ottoman and Hapsburg overlords and a series of brutal border wars against its new-nation Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Albanian neighbours, Serbia had effectively created Yugoslavia as the logical expression of its maximal territorial aspirations (the unification of all Serbs and their fellow South Slaves in one state) and its maximal strategic needs (the creation of a land-corridor to allied Greece, broad access to the Adriatic Sea and a territorial buffer around its capital).
The Western demolition of Yugoslavia, however, required more than the mere roll-back of Serbia’s gains: it also required the permanentimpairment of Serbia’s status as a regional power. This means permanently ‘disabling’ and ‘handicapping’ Serbia, which is why it has been reduced to a small land-locked state, why it has been isolated as an island surrounded by a sea of EU-NATO enemies and why it has been made to suffer the amputation of sacred soil in Kosovo – so that it can never recover and stand up again. Aside from the fact that the Serbian state’s tradition of political independence and military prowess was bound to make Serbian revanchism inevitable, the main reason for the West’s implacable animosity towards Serbia was Serbia’s natural alliance with Russia.
Throughout its existence, which overlapped with the late 19th and early 20th Century ‘Great Game’ period and Russia’s expansion towards Tsargrad-Constantinople and the Turkish Straits, the Serbian state had been Russia’s most consistent ally: fellow Slav and fellow Orthodox Russia had been Serbia’s faithful sponsor, ally and protector. It was, in fact, Russia’s commitment to the preservation of Serbian independence in the face of the Hapsburg intervention that triggered the outbreak of World War I. At the level of nationalist sentiment, Serbia’s historically intimate ties to Russia did survive Russia’s switch from devout Orthodoxy to communist atheism: the first Yugoslav state gave shelter to large numbers of White Russian refugees and the second Yugoslav state was founded on the strategic partnership between its founders and the Soviet Union.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and communism, Serbia and Russia are again naturally aligned. This alignment follows from simple geo-political logic: they have a common enemy, viz. the Atlanticist hegemon invading the former Serbian and Russian imperial spaces. But this also follows simple cultural-historical logic: both are crowned with the double-headed eagle of Byzantium and both are called to defend Europe and Christianity against the double-tongued Atlanticist-globalist Empire of Lies:
they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength
they shall mount up with wings as eagles
they shall run, and not be weary
and they shall walk, and not faint
– Isaiah 40:31
Time-lines and fault-lines
This review of Chossudovsky’s book does not need to reconstruct the entire time-line of the prolonged agony of ex-Yugoslavia at the hands of its Atlanticist tormentors. Of course, Chossudovsky’s book focuses on the culminating stage of Yugoslavia’s defeat: the ‘Kosovo War’ of 1999, but he does repeatedly pay attention to its earlier (Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian) and the later (‘Bulldozer Revolution’, ‘Macedonian Insurgency’) stages.
It is important to note that Chossudovsky does so in terms of ‘parallel viewing’ and ‘pattern recognition’: he clearly shows how it is useful to view the entire process of Yugoslavia’s demolition – spread out over one and half decades if formally defined by the state’s break-up from 25 June 1991 (Slovenian and Croatian independence) to 3 June 2006 (Montenegrin independence) – as one single campaign. Or rather as a coherent ‘rolling operation’ showing consistent strategy patterns:
…Washington’s military-intelligence ploy is… to replicate pattern[s]: …to fracture… territory, foster internal social divisions and fuel ethnic strife. The design is to destroy all social and political ties between [groups], who have coexisted for more than half a century within a multi-ethnic society. These socio-ethnic divisions are deliberately created so as to curb all forms of social resistance [and], more importantly, …to prevent the development of a broader ‘common front’ against the enemy. (p. 139)
One very specific strategy pattern was the re-use of the personnel employed by Atlanticist organizations for the neo-colonial occupation and administration of various parts of Yugoslavia: [NATO] personnel and UN bureaucrats previously stationed in Croatia and Bosnia have been routinely reassigned to Kosovo. (p. 96) Many strategic patterns can be discerned within the domain of ‘information warfare’.
On the one hand, the Western MSM consistently portrayed Atlanticist military aggression as ‘justified’ as a response to refugee crises that were actually deliberately engineered and to atrocity stories that were entirely fabricated. Thus, NATO air strikes against Yugoslav targets were consistently portrayed as ‘humanitarian interventions’ meant to ‘save’ Bosniaks in 1992 and Kosovars in 1999.
On the other hand, the Western MSM consistently ignored the massive refugee crises and very real atrocities caused by Atlanticist-sponsored anti-Yugoslav militias. Thus, the systematic reign of terror unleashed by the KLA (‘Kosovo Liberation Army’, the ethnic Albanian militia set up by Western intelligence services to destabilize south-west Serbia) during the Kosovo crisis was deliberately glossed over. The massacres of civilians in Kosovo [we]re not disconnected acts of revenge by civilians by so-called ‘rogue elements’ within the KLA, as claimed by NATO and the UN. They [we]re part of a consistent and coherent pattern. The intent and result of the KLA sponsored atrocities have been to trigger the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Serbs, Roma and other minorities in Kosovo. (p. 89)
In the reviewer’s opinion, however, the most important strategy pattern distinguished by Chossudovsky is the economic strategy pattern by which Yugoslavia’s successor states were effectively turned into Western colonies, with (‘privatized’) natural resources plundered and (‘debt interest’) tribute extracted to boost the profits of Western ‘venture capital’.
An important part of the Western economic war strategy vis-à-vis Yugoslavia was to let war pay for itself: neo-colonial profits extracted from Western-conquered parts of Yugoslavia were used first to pay for the maintenance of occupation troops, (‘peacekeepers’, ‘security presence’) and then for the build-up of the armed forces of the newly ‘independent’ successor-states, with handsome profits boosting the Western military-industrial complex, including many private military contractors.
Chossudovsky gives a particularly insightful analysis of how Camp Bondsteel (the grande dame in a network of US bases running both sides of the border between Kosovo and Macedonia – p. 106) was funded, making the fortunes of the defence contractors involved, including US Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton company (cf. appendix to his Ch. 5).
In the final analysis, the West managed to make the chunk-by-chunk conquest and occupation of Yugoslavia pay for itself. In passing, Chossudovsky mentions that this very same strategic pattern, virtually ignored by Western historians and journalists, also applies to other – earlier and later – Western wars of aggression: few people realize Vietnam and Iraq were both billed for the West’s war expenses as a condition for the lifting of economic sanctions and the resumption of diplomatic relations.
This review of Chossudovsky’s book does not need to reconstruct all the ethnic, religious and cultural fault-lines that the Western aggressors managed to exploit during their campaign to bring down the Yugoslav state. It is important to note, however, that he sheds light on many frequently overlooked episodes in the long-drawn out Western campaign against Yugoslavia. Thus, he reminds the reader of the true background, the true nature and the true impact of ‘Operation Storm’, i.e. Western-backed Croatian conquest of the internationally unrecognized Serbian break-away proto-state of Kraina in August 1995.
‘Operation Storm’ involved foreign investors (eying newly-discovered coal and oil deposits) guiding Croatian policy making, foreign specialists (including retired US generals and German mercenaries) guiding Croatian military actions and foreign media ignoring massive suffering among the Kraina Serb civilian population (at least 420 killed and up to 180.000 displaced).
Chossudovsky also reminds the reader of the equally overlooked episode of the ‘Macedonian Insurgency’, i.e. the Western-backed terror campaign by the NLA (‘National Liberation Army’, the ethnic Albanian militia set up by Western intelligence services to destabilize Macedonia) between January and November 2001. Similar to the KLA, its equivalent in Kosovo, the NLA was set up by Western intelligence services, funded by Western-facilitated drugs networks, trained by Western military contractors and, once put in action, directly supported by Western armed forces. The NLA’s terror campaign in north-west Macedonia served a similar purpose to the KLA’s terror campaign in south-west Serbia: to create ethnically cleansed base territories for these groups, which are meant to serve as safe zones for criminal activities and Western military bases, to weaken the central government and, last but not least, to generate long-term revenue for the West’s military-industrial complex.
For Western policymakers, the ‘Macedonian Insurgency’ was a far easier operation to pull off than the ‘Kosovo War, because it was aided and abetted by corrupt Macedonian government officials and treacherous Macedonian army officers. The cost in terms of civilian suffering, however, was considerable: at least up to 100 dead and 140.000 displaced, almost all ethnic Macedonians and Bulgarians – this in one of Europe’s smaller countries, inhabited by only 1,8 million people. Once again, the true background, true nature and true impact of this campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing were either entirely ignored or thoroughly distorted in the Western press.
Lest we forget the true depths to which the West’s Empire of Lies has sunken over the last decades, it is only proper that we occasionally remind ourselves of all the injustices and crimes described in Chossudovsky’s book. And of the fact that we should not despair of justice:
the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good
– Proverbs 15:3
Pirates and prostitutes
Over the last four or three decades, under the impact of transnationalist power accumulation covered by liberal-normative ideology, all the formerly sovereign states of the West have undergone a slow but steady – albeit recently ‘reset’-accelerated – process of politicide. The power once vested in these states, and by extension the political power once held by the nations represented by their governments, has been almost entirely erased, to be replaced by a faceless ‘globalist’ power, increasingly overtly totalitarian in character as the ‘reset’ progresses.
The power of the globalist regime ruling the West is financial and economic in nature, it is embodied in international banks and multi-national cooperations, and its interests are served by trans-national institutions, ranging from truly global organizations such as the UN, the IMF and the World Bank to large regional organizations such as the NATO, the EU and the ECB. Under this transnational level, the globalist regime’s political agenda is entirely negative: it aims at preventing, thwarting and undermining all forms of political action that would threaten the maximal exploitation of natural and human resources.
Any exercise of political power that threatens the interests of globalist high finance and globalist big business – effectively the unrestrained and borderless rule of bankster usury and capitalist exploitation – is anathema to the globalist regime: any sovereign state threatening open borders, any religious institution threatening social atomization and any traditional family-structure incompatible with narcissist consumerism is will inevitably find itself the target of globalist demolition.
Under the trans-national level of globalist control, the true aim of the globalist regime is the creation and maintenance of an anarcho-tyrannical anti-order: a permanent ‘free for all’ economic ‘jungle war’ of ‘all-against-all’, creating a ‘market-society’ in which literally everything is for sale, including people and ideas. To put it bluntly: the ideal globalist ‘state’ – referring to the psycho-dynamic ‘state’ of a people rather than a government – would only have gangsters and prostitutes as its inhabitants, with minor variants within the first category (pirates, pimps) as well as the last (pop-stars, porn-stars). Ideally, such a ‘pirate republic’ would be ‘charismatically’ led by the 21st Century equivalent of the 20th Century ‘five family’-style mafia council: a WEF/Davos-style Chief Executive Officer/Public Relation Manager congregation of compradors-in-chief.
In such an ideal ‘state’, which may be provisionally termed the Gangster-Prostitute State (GPS) – of course, Made in USA – any deviation would be considered an anachronism and an obstacle: it would not leave any space for non-materialist vocations and non-hedonistic ideas. In the GPS, there would be no place for martial heroism, knightly honour, priestly piety, monastic celibacy, philosophical contemplation, scholarly wisdom, paternal responsibility, maternal love, marital fidelity or pre-marital chastity. There would be no love of any object except the ‘self’, baby boomer-style inflated into the narcissist stratosphere: no love for nation, tribe, family, spouse – least of all God. To the extent that any such anachronistic notions would still marginally exist, the GPS would be bound to erase them from the public sphere for the sake of the undisturbed ‘bubble life’ of the masses: it would be bound to impose an all-levelling weight of hyper-egalitarian legislation, to instil an anti-meritocratic ethos and to create an all-smothering blanket of perversion-propaganda.
Throughout the Western world, huge strides towards the GPS utopia have already been made on each of these three fronts: tradition-killing matriarchy and xenocracy (the rule of post-gender ‘women’ and post-racial ‘immigrants’), ethos-killing plutocracy and idiocracy (the rule of the corruption-only ‘rich’ and the paper-only ‘higher educated’) and civilization-killing kakocracy and pornocracy (the rule of the lowest and dirtiest) are already facts of life. Throughout the Western world, however, there remains a significant residue of ‘legacy institutions’ (be it monarchic, parliamentary, ecclesiastic, academic, artisanal, entrepreneurial, literary or artistic in nature), delaying the full flowering of the GPS.
Of course, the early ‘20s’ Great Reset has greatly accelerated the take-down of these institutions: ‘Covid’ lockdowns undermined the economically independent small business sector and the cognitively conservative middle class, ‘BLM’ activism undermined public safety and the rule of law, the ‘Biden’ coup undermined representative government and freedom of speech and the ‘Ukraine’ campaign undermined the economic system and global security – but the West has yet to achieve full-blown GPS utopia.
For a sneak preview of GPS utopia in action, it is necessary to look East, to ex-Yugoslavia, where a ‘model GPS’ of sorts has already been created in Kosovo, a.k.a. the ‘black hole of Europe’. In some ways, Kosovo may be considered the geopolitical equivalent of an anti-gravity experiment: within this ‘black hole’ the rules of geopolitics are suspended. The founding of the entirely artificial statelet of Kosovo constitutes the crowning achievement in terms of globalist ‘state building’: it embodies the highest achievemeny of what the globalist ‘rules-based order’ may achieve if left unopposed.
Chossudovsky analyses the genesis of the Kosovo ‘state’ in great detail, describing it as a mafia-run pirate-state ‘safe haven’ for globalism’s many grey and black channels, created as a de facto safe zone for drugs traders, arms dealers, organ traders, people smugglers, money-launderers and terror-funders, and as a ‘safe house’ for compromised, redundant or retired ‘assets’.
It is an arrangement that equally benefits the local mafia underlings, who are promoted to ‘legit’ status and gain legal immunity in charge of their own ‘state’, and their globalist overlords, who can ‘skim’ Kosovo for resource profits and showcase Kosovo as a model achievement of ‘international governance’.
Western big business was able to buy up Kosovo’s mines (copper, zinc, gold, silver, coal) and industry (metal smelting plants, power plants, battery plants) at fire sale prices, Western high finance was able to take-over Kosovo’s currency (imposing the Deutsch Mark and then the Euro) and banks (taking over expropriated and excluded Yugoslav banks) and Western NGOs were able to sign lucrative ‘assistance’ and ‘training’ contracts (as in George Soros’ Open Society branch office in Pristina in support of ‘governance development’.
The vital link between the Kosovo mafia ‘government’ and its globalist overlords is found in the narcotics trade, which started with the KLA being funded from the highly lucrative Balkans narcotics route, linking corrupt Turkish officials to the East with Albanian emigrants to the West:
…the KLA is sustained by organised crime with the tacit approval of the US and its allies. Following the pattern set during the war in Bosnia, public opinion has been carefully misled. The multibillion dollar Balkans narcotics trade has played a crucial role in ‘financing the conflict’ in Kosovo in accordance with Western economic, strategic and military objectives. (p. 48) …Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed covert operations. …The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan, where ‘freedom fighters’ were financed through the laundering of drug money. (p. 50) …The extensive links of the Kosovo Liberation Army to organized crime and the Balkans narcotics trade were not seen by the ‘international community’ as an obstacle to the installation of ‘democracy’ and ‘good governance’. (p. 41)
The narcotics trade, however, was not the only ‘cash cow’ that was milked to raise the KLA: since the early ‘90s, with the international embargo on Yugoslavia and the Greek blockade of Macedonia, a triangular narcotics-oil-arms trade network had developed in the Balkans, expanded to Western Europe through the increasing corporation between Albanian and Italian crime syndicates in arms smuggling and prostitution racketeering. Soon, not only simple light arms but sophisticated anti-aircraft, anti-armour and electronic surveillance systems (the latter connected to NATO satellites) found their way to the KLA. At the same time, the KLA was provided with professional and motivated cadres through the enlistment of mujahideen fighters, often trained by Al-Qaeda affiliates in secret camps in Afghanistan and Bosnia. All this took place with the full knowledge of, and indeed at the instigation of, Western intelligence services.
The build-up of the KLA, its funding, equipment, intelligence and training were all instigated, funded and facilitated by the West and the same applies to the KLA’s terror campaign: in fact, Chossudovsky states that
“[t]he KLA killings [of civilians] were ordered by NATO. Blamed on Serbian police and armed forces, th[ey] were used as a pretext and justification to wage a ‘humanitarian war’ on Yugoslavia. The ties of the KLA to organized crime were actively fostered by the US and NATO. The result was the formation of what is best described as a ‘mafia state’. (p. 45)
In the aftermath of the NATO air war, the Western occupation powers aided and abetted the KLA’s subsequent reign of terror, protecting KLA commanders responsible for crimes committed against the Serbian, Roma, Gorani and Turkish minorities, under the pretext of suspected collaboration with the Yugoslav authorities but often just as a simple settling of personal scores. Those Western-created organizations that were specifically supposed to uphold law and order, the peace-keeping ‘Kosovo Force’ (KFOR) and the ‘International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’ (ICTY) above all, consistently turned a blind eye to the systematic campaign of confiscation, looting, arson, abduction, rape and murder by the KLA, with the Western MSM either ignoring or white-washing these atrocities as ‘regrettable but justifiable acts of vengeance’.
Thus, through their direct involvement in NATO’s military action (in a particularly cowardly form, viz. a push-button air war), their indirect involvement in the KLA’s terror campaign and their deliberate inaction in the face of the KLA’s subsequent lawlessness, “Western governments… bear a heavy burden of responsibility in the deaths of civilians, the impoverishment of both the ethnic Albanian and Serbian populations and the plight of those who were brutally uprooted from towns and villages in Kosovo as a result of the bombings.” (p. 56) Thus, the geopolitical void in which the ‘Kosovo’ CPS took shape was created by the West: Chossudovsky’s analyses leave no room for ‘plausible deniability’ cover stories.
After the Kosovo War and the KLA take-over, Chossudovsky describes how Kosovo became a true ‘narco-democracy under NATO protection’ (Chossudovsky, 79):
[n]arcodollars from the multibillion dollar Balkans drug trade [were] recycled towards servicing the external debt as well as ‘financing’ the costs of ‘reconstruction’. The lucrative flow of narcodollars thus ensures that foreign investors involved in the ‘reconstruction’ programme will be able to reap substantial returns. In turn, the existence of a Kosovar ‘narco-state’ ensures the orderly reimbursement of international donors and creditors, [who] are prepared to turn a blind eye [because t]hey have a tacit vested interest in installing [and maintaining] a government which facilitates the laundering of drug money. (p. 99)
Following Chossudovsky’s analysis, Kosovo truly represents a GPS utopia: there, the West has truly created an ‘anti-state’:
While calling for democracy and ‘good governance’ in the Balkans, the US and its allies have installed in Kosovo a paramilitary government with links to organized crime. The… outcome [has been] the outright ‘criminalization’ of civilian state institutions and the establishment of what can be best described as a ‘mafia state’. The complicity of NATO and the alliance governments, namely their relentless support of the KLA, points to the de facto ‘criminalisation’ of KFOR and of the UN peacekeeping apparatus in Kosovo. The donor agencies and governments providing financial support to the KLA, e.g. the funds approved by the US Congress in violation of several UN Security Council resolutions, are in this regard also ‘accessories’ to the de facto criminalisation of state institutions. (p. 96) …Under NATO occupation, the rule of law has visibly been turned upside down. Criminals and terrorists [have] become law enforcement officers. (p. 87)
With the KLA pirate regime in place, the “prostitution” of Kosovo began. Its resources, its industry and its infrastructure were ‘pimped out’ – sold to the lowest foreign bidder. Its Serbian, Roma and Gorani minority communities were ‘shunned’ – demoted to dispossession, displacement and discrimination. Its old and sick, its village folk and its working people were left ‘to fend for themselves’ – exposed to the elements (container ‘housing’, electricity ‘black-outs’), to disease (depleted uranium poisoning, land-mine injury) and to grinding poverty (record unemployment, sky-rocketing prices). Most of the middle-aged population, previously raised, educated and shielded by Yugoslavia’s semi-socialist system, was suddenly thrown into a free-for-all cauldron of b/gangster-style capitalism, mostly suffering utter ruination. Youngsters, to the extent that they did not join, or liaise with, the gangsters and mobsters ruling the streets and the ‘state’, were left waiting on the gangster, doing expat laundry or otherwise ‘servicing’ the NATO-UN-NGO (more specifically: KFOR-UNMIK-OSCE) crowd. To this crowd, the lands, riches and people of Kosovo are nothing but ‘spoils of war’. This is what Kosovo, the ancient cradle of the Serbian state and a model of peaceful multi-ethnic coexistence in the Yugoslav state, was reduced to under Western occupation – a Gangster Prostitute State:
How is the faithful city become a harlot! It was full of judgment, righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water. Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards. They judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. Therefore saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies – Isaiah 1:21-4
Echoes and omens
Undoubtedly, the most powerful message of Chossudovsky’s book is the importance of pattern recognition: readers are bound to be struck by its pin-point accuracy in recognizing certain strategic warfare patterns that recur throughout the West’s campaign against Yugoslavia.
The historical patterns discerned by Chossudovsky in the Atlanticist take-down of Yugoslavia in the ‘90s may be said to constitute direct precursors to the fully-integrated strategy of fully-fledged multi-dimensional warfare waged by the Atlanticist West against the Eurasianist East in the ‘20s.[ii] It takes but a small step to project Chossudovsky’s pattern recognition forward, to the West’s current multi-dimensional ‘Ukraine’ campaign against Russia. As another reviewer of Chossudovsky’s book succinctly put it:
time has confirmed [Chossudovsky’s] fear of the [Western] intervention [in Yugoslavia] being used to set a pattern, establish a principle to be used later on whenever convenient for the US. There have, in fact, ensued preventive and even preemptive wars, so-called ‘humanitarian bombings’ or colored revolutions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Venezuela, Belarus. …[Chossudovsky] examines the consequences of such approach, and matters that the protagonists do not wish to discuss at all. Underlying the grand ideals of defending the human rights and freedoms of endangered people, are cruel operations which use depleted uranium-filled missiles, ecocides, and pacts with drug cartels or colorful radicals and fundamentalists. …[Chossudovsky’s] monograph, therefore, is more than a testimony in the search of truth, it is also a sort of warning. When the facts are ignored, there remains propaganda whose purpose is to conceal the truth, all that in order to enable various interest groups, be those official or behind the scenes, state, para-state or non-governmental ones, to achieve their goals even if they had, in the process, to violate international law, commit ecocides and war crimes, or cooperate with mobsters and terrorists. (Dushan Prorokovicj apud Chossudovsky, p. 162-3)
Following up on this important point of the West’s ‘information warfare’ – in other words: its war on the truth – it can be argued that the greatest value of Chossudovsky’s book is found in its break-out from the Western MSM ‘narrative bubble’. In the final analysis, the statement of truth about the Western campaign against Yugoslavia will be quite an important nail into the coffin of the Western Empire of Lies: the Yugoslav campaign was an important stepping-stone in the Western MSM’s achievement of ‘disinformation supremacy’ – it was its first systematic application of ‘inverse journalism’. For the first time, Western MSM’s blanket censorship of truthful reporting was systematically combined with deliberate and sustained disinformation: for over a decade, it managed to maintain a constant ‘firehose of falsehood’ on the topic of Yugoslavia, imposing a narrative of falsehood befitting the Western elite’s shift into fully-fledged ‘post-truth politics’.
One of the mechanisms by which the poison of the fork-tongued Western Lügenpresse worked its way into the Western collective psyche was the emotive and seductive use of ‘soothing’ and ‘therapeutic’ language, carefully calibrated to appeal to its key audience: the effeminate and reality-averse Western consumer masses. This sickening jargon, mixing ‘motivational’ management talk with ‘femo-feely’ psycho-babble, was designed to systematically prevent critical thoughts, sabotage realpolitik assessments and deceive gullible (‘midwit’, gutmensch) tv-audiences.
In a mind-bending exercise of truly Orwellian proportions, ‘peace-keeping’ came to mean warfare, ‘good governance’ came to mean mafia rule, ‘confidence building’ came to mean word-breaking and ‘inter-ethnic reconciliation’ came to mean legal discrimination. The Western MSM, supported by well-paid academics and purged of honest journalists, deliberately engineered a ‘consensus’ that was so far removed from the truth that it may perhaps best be described as a ‘reality distortion field’.
This war [wa]s also a war against the truth. …NATO has reinforced its clutch over the mass media. [Alongside] a stylized ‘wag the dog’ media masquerade, a full-fledged ‘cover-up operation’ has been set in motion with a view to thwarting public debate on the war. …[A]nti-war commentators have been carefully removed from mainstream public affairs programmes, TV content is closely scrutinised… [and] journalists are under tight supervision.…Public ‘disapproval’ of NATO bombings is immediately dismissed as ‘Serb propaganda’. Those who speak out against NATO are branded as ‘apologists of Milosevic’. …The hidden agenda is to ‘silence the silent majority’. The Western media heeding to the alliance’s demands has blatantly misled public opinion. (p. 61-3)
By and large, the Western MSM’s ‘information war’ during the Yugoslav campaign achieved its purpose. Undoubtedly, its most drastic cognitive effect was the utter erasure of the last remnants of geopolitical realism in the Western public sphere.
Drowned in the barrage of media images and self-serving analyses, the broader strategic interests and economic causes of the war go unmentioned. The [West’s strategic goals] largely consisted in ‘installing a Western-style regime in Yugoslavia and reducing the geographic areas, power and influence of Serbia to a minimum’. In this context, the installation of American power in southern Europe and the Mediterranean also constitutes a step towards the extension of Washington’s geopolitical sphere of influence beyond the Balkans into the area of the Caspian Sea, Central Asia and West Asia.
In this regard, NATO’s military intervention in Yugoslavia, in violation of international law, also sets a dangerous precedent. To achieve its strategic objectives, national economies are destabilized, regional conflicts are financed through the provision of covert support to armed insurgencies… The conflict in Yugoslavia creates conditions which provide legitimacy to future interventions of the alliance into the internal affairs of sovereign nations. (p. 59)
At the time that this review is written, Chossudovsky’s warning, that the West’s successful demolition of Yugoslavia would create a dangerous precedent in international relations, has been proven most accurate. The West’s ‘getting away’ with the demolition of Yugoslavia has merely whetted its appetite: it has since set its sights on much larger quarry.
In fact, at the time of writing, the West’s multi-dimensional warfare arsenal is fully engaged in an all-out assault on the ultimate geopolitical prize: Russia. In hindsight, the Western campaign to divide and colonize the ex-Yugoslavia in the ‘90s was just a small-scale test run for the division and colonization of the ex-Soviet Union in the ‘20s. Much is at stake now: now in ex-Soviet space, as then in the ex-Yugoslav space:
[i]n the name of global capital, borders [are being] redrawn, legal codes rewritten, industries destroyed, financial and banking systems [are being] dismantled, social programs eliminated. …At stake… are the lives of millions of people. [Globalist] macroeconomic reform combined with military conquest… [is] destroy[ing] livelihoods and [is making] a joke of the right to work. It put[s] basic needs such as food and shelter beyond the reach of many. It [is] degrading culture and national identity. (p. 44)
Now, all the tools and techniques applied in the ex-Yugoslav space of the ‘90s are applied to the ex-Soviet space of the ‘20s, of course with slightly updated technology and on a hugely amplified scale. The same proxy strategy, now with Ukrainian instead of the Kosovar freedom fighter cannon fodder and ‘Azov’ instead of ‘mujahideen’ foreign volunteers. The same undeclared ground war, with the same ‘plausible deniability’ employment of the same ‘advisors’, ‘trainers’ and ‘special forces’. The same atrocity propaganda, now with a ‘Bucha Massacre’ instead of a ‘Ratchak Massacre’. The same ‘international outrage’, now with (cheaper) blue-yellow social media posts instead of Bosnia fundraising dinners. The same ‘international justice’ agenda, now indicting the Russian president instead of the Yugoslav president. The same nauseating self-righteousness, now starring ‘Biden’ and Johnson instead of Clinton and Blair.
But there is a difference: the sheer staleness of the West’s utterly worn-out slogans and the obvious futility of the West’s utterly predictable motions indicate that, after a long string of victories from Yugoslavia to Libya, the West has finally – and fatally – overreached itself. All indications are that it has fallen into the same age-old trap of triumphalist hubris and imperial overreach that finally brought down such once-invincible empires as Napoleon’s and Hitler’s.
The West’s take-down of Yugoslav was possible in the limited regional setting of the Balkans, pitting the then substantial industrial and military resources of the combined West against a vastly outmatched enemy that lacked strategic depth and major power allies. None of these conditions apply now.
Against Russia, the West operates in unlimited space on a global stage, possessing the world’s ultimate strategic depth in the Heartland of the World Island, and it is backed up by an ever-lengthening list of allies, including China, the world’s greatest industrial power.
The West, on the other hand, has ‘outsourced’ its industry, ‘wokefied’ its military and ‘diversified’ its populace. The latter factor, ‘diluting’ the nations of the First World by decades of ‘immigration’ from the Third World, has fatally compromised the internal cohesion and core identity of the West: it is now but a shadow of its former self.
This ex-West is rapidly decomposing in plain sight, transforming into a scary-looking but substance-less vampire, unable to substantially handle anything approaching a substantial ‘reality check’. Those that have to fight the ‘zombified’ ex-West would do well to remember that the ex-West has already largely abandoned actual reality: its people have largely retreated into virtual reality.
The ex-West now bears all the classic hallmarks of the vampire, leading a ghostly existence of ‘virtualized’ experience, shunning the day-light of truth, leaching off the lifeblood of others and preying on the naive and vulnerable. That means, first of all, that the ex-West needs to be exorcized as much as it needs to be fought. For this to be accomplished, the ex-West’s now in-human nature and its now anti-human trajectory need to be properly understood. It needs to be understood that to collectively and consistently indulge in trans-human experiments – infanticidal ‘birth control’, black magic ‘transgenderism’, mRNA ‘gene-therapy’, AI technology ‘second life’ – is to abandon human rationality. It needs to be understood that to collectively and consistently indulge in sub-human experiences – eco-system destroying ‘conspicuous consumption’ gluttony, family-destroying ‘sexual revolution’ lust, society-destroying ‘Wolf of Wallstreet’ greed, world-destroying ‘rules-based order’ pride – is to abandon the human heart. Such things trigger a permanent severance from humanity.
After the ex-West severed itself from the Creator, it was just a matter of time before it severed itself from creation, first from the natural world and then from the human world – and, ultimately, from reality itself. Caught in a downward spiral of evil and madness, the West has now conclusively severed itself from the rest. De facto, the West is now at war with the rest. The rest must allow this harsh reality to sink in: reality must be accepted before it can be handled. The rest must choose – whether or not to follow the West on its chosen path. The echoes of the past and the omens of the present point to the end of that path – the path of
Severance:
the birds of leaving call to us
yet here we stand
endowed with the fear of flight
overland
the winds of change consume the land
while we remain
in the shadow of summers now past
indifference
the plague that moves throughout this land
omen signs
in the shapes of things to come
– Dead Can Dance, ‘Severance’
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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.
Notes
[ii] The Communist Party bureaucracy, most notably its military and intelligence sector, was… specifically… offered political and economic backing on the condition that wholesale scuttling of social protection for Yugoslavia’s workforce was imposed. (Ralph Schumann, ‘Divide and Rule Schemes in the Balkans’, The Organizer, 11 September 1995, apud Chossudovsky, The US-NATO War, 30)
[iii] For an up-to-date assessment of Atlanticist multi-dimensional warfare strategy, cf. Leonid Savin, Ordo Pluriversalis. The End of Pax America and the Rise of Multipolarity (Black House: London, 2020). For an in-depth review of Savin’s book, cf. Alexander Wolfheze, ‘Anima Mundi’, Geopolitica.ru 1 April 2022.
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July 23, 2023 – 54 year old Former Premier League goalkeeper Shaka Hislop dropped in the middle of a live broadcast in California. He began wobbling before falling forward into his ESPN broadcast partner, Dan Thomas.
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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
Sometimes reality surpasses fiction. In a way, this is the case with the Cuban revolution. Seventy years ago, a few dozen young rebels stormed a barracks. Even though the attack failed completely, it was the beginning of a revolutionary process with far-reaching consequences not only in Cuba, but also far beyond.
The damage Israel is causing to its support base in the United States is becoming more apparent. A very bright warning flare went up this weekend, appearing once again in the New York Times. This time, it was columnist Nicholas Kristof who took a much bolder and far less speculative step than his colleague, Tom Friedman did last week by suggesting that the very heart of AIPAC’s mission—annual military aid to Israel—should be phased out.
The ground-breaking movie Oppenheimer, despite its unsympathetic protagonist, packs a powerful anti-nuclear punch that makes it hard, if not impossible, to sleep after watching the film. For this reason alone, the movie should be shown on the floor of Congress and in the White House as required viewing by all in DC bent on spending $1.7 trillion over the next decades to build new nuclear weapons to kill us all.
The Senate version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which provides funding for the Department of Defense military activities, military construction and the Department of Energy nuclear programs was adopted on July 20th and now needs to be reconciled with the House version.
New developments make it imperative to refocus attention on the predicament of Metropolitan Pavel, a distinguished ecclesiastical figure in Ukraine, a prince, so to speak, of that country’s Orthodox Church and abbot of its most important religious sanctuary, the Kiev Caves Monastery.
Intentional use of the faulty PCR test, intentional false reporting of Covid deaths as a result of World Health Organization guidelines and financial incentives to hospitals to report all deaths as Covid deaths, and prohibited treatment by known cures together produced a high level of fear that drove the masses to accept the Covid “vaccination” that generated huge monetary gains for Big Pharma and associated shills such as Anthony Fauci and massive inroads on civil liberty by governments.
Earlier this month, the 2022 Nobel Physics Laureate Dr. John Clauser slammed the ‘climate emergency’ narrative as a “dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people”. Inevitably, the punishments have begun. A talk that Dr. Clauser was due to give to the International Monetary Fund on climate models has been abruptly cancelled, and the page announcing the event removed from the IMF site.
The Fukushima disaster of March 2011 resulted in 16,000 deaths, causing some 165,000 people to flee their homes in the Fukushima area. Both the Japanese and Western media have downplayed the impacts of nuclear radiation which has spread to vast areas in Northern Japan, not to mention the contamination of the food chain.
Due to the CARES act, medicare paid hospitals a 20% “add-on” to the regular payment for COVID-19 patients. Remember that the people who became sick from COVID were generally the elderly and on medicare. Ergo: the incentive to put people on ventilators. There was a financial incentive to put people on ventilators and yet ventilators contributed to many of the COVID-19 deaths.
One might think that since Honest Joe Biden declared his latest war entitled the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism in May the media has certainly taken up the task of exposing evil in these United States by reporting every affront to Jewish groups or individuals and to the Jewish state, Israel.
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At one time or another, most of us have been subjected to a cornucopia of television commercials, colorful doctor’s office brochures, and physicians “advice” all making grandiose claims about the benefits of the latest-and-greatest pharmaceutical “blockbuster” pills and potions. The TV endorsements trail off with the all-too-familiar auctioneer’s rapid-fire warnings of possible adverse reactions, and the print ads sneak in a few lines of microscopic text alerting us to the panoply of potential “side effects.”
While the monolithic pharmaceutical marketing machine is an acknowledged, impossible-to-ignore presence, the mechanisms that bring to life these well-orchestrated promotional productions are not always understood.
So, to gain a full appreciation of Big Pharma’s maneuverings and machinations—all of which develop into the industry’s “finished products” presented to the public—we will take a close-up look at the ignominious path one prominent drug traveled to “get to market.”
Neurontin, the trade name for Gabapentin, is a popular drug used for the treatment of seizure disorders or to relieve nerve pain. Developed by Parke-Davis, a unit of Warner-Lambert (which Pfizer acquired in 2000), Neurontin was patented in 1977 and approved for use in 1993.
Although it was approved for use in patients with epilepsy, by 2001 “over 80% of its $1.8 billion in sales were for indications unapproved by the FDA.”
How is it possible that the primary purpose for this drug had come to represent only a fraction of its actual usage, whereas unapproved—and presumably illegal—applications had grown to represent the majority of its use? Let us find out.
To tell the story of the illicit practices associated with Neurontin, we must start with the numerous deceptive marketing tactics that are part and parcel of the pharmaceutical industry—an industry that holds the distinction of being the biggest defrauder of the federal government.
This method of marketing Neurontin “helped propel its sales to nearly $3 billion a year before it lost patent protection in 2004.” While off-label prescribing of a drug is allowed; off-label marketing of that same drug is not.
The case of Neurontin came to light when whistleblower David Franklin became concerned that he “was participating in illegal marketing.” On April 16, 1996, at a seminar for “medical liaisons,” Franklin was told that the FDA strictly prohibited the promotion of any drug for off-label uses.
One week later, a Parke–Davis executive reportedly told Franklin:
I want you out there every day selling Neurontin. . . . We all know Neurontin’s not growing for adjunctive therapy, besides that’s not where the money is. Pain management, now that’s money. Monotherapy [for epilepsy], that’s money. . . . We can’t wait for [physicians] to ask, we need [to] get out there and tell them up front. Dinner programs, CME programs, consultantships all work great but don’t forget the one-on-one. That’s where we need to be, holding their hand and whispering in their ear, Neurontin for pain, Neurontin for monotherapy, Neurontin for bipolar, Neurontin for everything. I don’t want to see a single patient coming off Neurontin before they’ve been up to at least 4800 mg/day. I don’t want to hear that safety crap either, have you tried Neurontin, every one of you should take one just to see there is nothing, it’s a great drug.
Three months later, Franklin would leave Parke–Davis and file a lawsuit, United States of America ex rel. David Franklin vs. Pfizer, Inc., and Parke-Davis Division of Warner-Lambert Company, against his former employer, alleging it “engaged in a fraudulent scheme to promote the sale of the drug Neurontin for ‘off-label’ uses.”
The case would be settled in May 2004, when Pfizer unit Warner-Lambert admitted it had “aggressively marketed the epilepsy drug by illicit means for unrelated conditions including bipolar disorder, pain, migraine headaches, and drug and alcohol withdrawal.”
The $430 million settlement was one of the largest False Claims Act recoveries against a pharmaceutical company in U.S. history. The lawsuit also became a landmark case for revealing how publication bias distorts randomized controlled studies conducted by pharmaceutical companies.
Of the many things this case put on full display, perhaps none were more important than the detailed revelations of the “marketing plan” for Neurontin—a plan that, we would discover, utilized every manipulation in the Big Pharma playbook.
A short list of the dirty tricks implemented includes:
promoting Neurontin use among high prescribing physicians;
cultivating thought leaders, recruiting and training local physicians and paying them to serve as speakers in “peer-to-peer selling” programs;
soliciting academic leaders with educational grants, research grants, and speaking opportunities, and paying some of them up to $158,250 over a four-year period;
establishing teleconferences moderated by physicians who were paid as much as $176,100 over a four-year period;
forming speakers bureaus with “strong Neurontin advocates and users to speak locally for Neurontin”;
making “unrestricted educational grants” available to for-profit medical-education companies that produced programs to discuss unapproved uses of Neurontin;
designing a “publication strategy” to increase the use of Neurontin for neuropathic pain and bipolar disorder, both off-label indications with great revenue potential.
Amidst the array of vulpine schemes used to promote Neurontin, perhaps none was quite as insidious as the little-known Pharma ploy of “seeding trials.”
Seeding trials, often designed by marketing departments, “are clinical trials, deceptively portrayed as patient studies, which are used to promote drugs recently approved or under review by the [FDA] by encouraging prescribers to use these medications under the guise of participating as an investigator in a clinical trial.”
In the case of Neurontin, a large seeding trial was conducted, with 772 physicians enlisted as “investigators” for a study ostensibly aimed at determining the efficacy of Neurontin. Precisely 2,759 patients were enrolled in the study. Of them, 11 patients died and 73 others experienced serious adverse events.
These aggressive and dubious marketing tactics would pay dividends:
In 2003, Neurontin accounted for $2.3 billion of Pfizer’s sales and was one of the company’s top-selling drugs. Pfizer said in court papers that more than 78 percent of Neurontin prescriptions in 2000 were written for unapproved uses. [Emphasis added.]
Even after Pfizer pled guilty to charges of falsely marketing Neurontin and defrauding the federal government—and even after fines related to Neurontin escalated to $945 million—the popularity of Neurontin continued, mostly, sad to say, for off-label uses.
In 2020, Neurontin was the 10th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 49 million prescriptions.
Similar marketing tricks and underhanded tactics by other companies have been well documented over the years. A skeptic would be right in calling this “business as usual” for the pharmaceutical industry, as evidenced by:
the $1.4 billion settlement and criminal fines paid by Eli Lilly for illegally marketing Zyprexa in 2009;
the $2.3 billion paid by Pfizer in 2009 for illegally marketing 13 different drugs, including Lyrica, Geodon, and Bextra;
the $3 billion paid by GlaxoSmithKline in 2010 for illegally marketing Paxil, Wellbutrin, and Avandia;
the $2.2 billion paid by Johnson & Johnson for illegally marketing Risperdal in 2013.
Indeed, the significance of the Neurontin case lies not in its singularity but in the graphic images portrayed in the 8,000 pages of corporate documentation that are now in the public record. That documentation is illustrative of the measures pharmaceutical companies take to get their products to market.
The story of Neurontin demonstrates in graphic detail how Big Pharma, with no compunction, will unleash a plethora of unscrupulous tactics in order to get a product to market, and how, once that product hits the market, the industry throws all ethical standards out the window in service to the lords of profit.
Once we understand how the magician does a trick, we are immune to his sorcery. We are no longer spellbound. Similarly, now that we’ve seen a snapshot of the Neurontin saga, we can no longer be fooled by the dark arts of Big Pharma’s marketing machine.
This machine has no interest in creating a cure for disease. Its only desire is to create a customer for life.
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***
The damage Israel is causing to its support base in the United States is becoming more apparent. A very bright warning flare went up this weekend, appearing once again in the New York Times. This time, it was columnist Nicholas Kristof who took a much bolder and far less speculative step than his colleague, Tom Friedman did last week by suggesting that the very heart of AIPAC’s mission—annual military aid to Israel—should be phased out.
Friedman, you might recall, floated the idea that a “reassessment” of the United States’ relationship with Israel might be on the horizon, if not already starting. As I noted, that was meant as a warning to Israel, not a reflection of any actual steps by Joe Biden’s White House to launch a policy process of reassessment. Indeed, as subsequent events confirmed, and as was indicated by the fact that Friedman cited no sources, even anonymous ones, this was the columnist trying to use his column to get Israel to back off because political winds are shifting. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not heed the warning, instead moving forward uncompromisingly on his domestic agenda and misleading the media about his conversation with Biden. Needless to say, that didn’t sit well in Washington.
A Liberal Zionist Argument for Ending Military Aid to Israel
Kristof launched his next volley on Saturday, the Sabbath. That was likely not a coincidence, as it meant that many religious Jews in the U.S. would not see it for a while and Israel would be slower to respond than usual, much like when the U.S. government releases controversial statements late on Friday afternoon.
Kristof’s column strikes at the very heart of the lobbying might of pro-Israel forces, and uses noted liberal Zionists to do it. Former Ambassadors to Israel Dan Kurtzer and Martin Indyk, former diplomat Aaron David Miller, and J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami all chime in on why they think it would be a good idea to stop sending billions of dollars in military aid to Israel every year.
These voices, all appearing in the New York Times under the byline of one of the United States’ most prominent columnists calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel is no small thing, although it’s tempered a bit. Kristof is quick to note, “…the reason to have this conversation is that American aid to another rich country squanders scarce resources and creates an unhealthy relationship damaging to both sides.” In other words, it’s not that we don’t still love you, Israel, it’s just that we think you’ve grown up and don’t need the money anymore.
But that is absurd on its face. There’s nothing about this moment that is any different for Israel economically than it’s been for at least the past thirty years. Israel’s economy has been capable of paying for its own military for a very long time.
Kristof also claims that the money sent to Israel each year could instead be used to aid countries in much more dire need. That’s true, but doing so would hardly necessitate cutting aid to Israel. The annual $3.8 billion that Israel gets is a drop in the ocean of annual U.S. spending, which totaled $6 trillion in 2022, and that was a significant downgrade from the $7.25 trillion spent in 2021. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. ranked 22nd out of 24 developed countries in the amount of aid it gives as a percentage of GDP. So we can, and should, be giving more without cutting anything.
Digging deeper into Kristof’s piece, we see the real reasons behind his thinking. Dan Kurtzer, ambassador to Israel during George W. Bush’s first term, told Kristof, “Aid provides the U.S. with no leverage or influence over Israeli decisions to use force; because we sit by quietly while Israel pursues policies we oppose, we are seen as ‘enablers’ of Israel’s occupation.”
How seriously we oppose those policies is a matter of debate, but Kurtzer is not alone in his concern over how aid to Israel makes the U.S. look to people around the world. Although by now, it is a mundane point, and taken as normal, American officials have voiced such concerns in the past. Still, the relationship has endured for all these decades, and even now, when Israel’s public image in the United States is at a historic low, criticism directed at it is perilous, as Pramila Jayapal saw just last week.
Yet the voices of people like Kurtzer and Martin Indyk, ambassador to Israel under Bill Clinton, might have been mildly critical of Israel in the past, but they had always stopped well short of calling for even slowing U.S. military aid. Obviously, the current far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to irritate Israel’s more liberal supporters in Washington in a way Israel has never done before.
Netanyahu Escalates the Insults
The proposed judicial reform is the key reason, of course. Netanyahu’s attempt to render Israel’s judicial system unable to do anything but obey the Knesset’s every word threatens all the propaganda about “democracy” and “shared values” that are the only way Democrats have to justify their lockstep support of Israel regardless of its many crimes. But it is more than that.
Netanyahu has made a mockery of the United States as its patron. While the Biden administration has fallen over itself to keep the cash flowing to Israel; to shield Israel at the United Nations and other international fora; and to promote the truly evil myths that anti-Zionism and BDS are nothing more than forms of antisemitism, Israel has responded by making commitments to Washington it never intended to keep, often abrogating them as soon as the meetings where they were made were over. Netanyahu also misled the media about the phone call the two had last week. That didn’t sit well with Biden at all.
All of this has led these key figures in the liberal Zionist, Washington community to beat the drums on the most sacred of cows on Capitol Hill — U.S. aid to Israel. Yet even there, the calls are tempered with a sense that they don’t believe it to be possible.
Aaron David Miller, who coined the phrase “Israel’s lawyer” in reference to former U.S. “Peace envoy” Dennis Ross, told Kristof, “Under the right conditions and in a galaxy far, far away, with U.S.-Israeli relations on even if not better keel, there would be advantages to both to see military aid phased out over time.” Clearly, he does not believe it to be possible, even if cutting off the aid to Israel might be desirable.
Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street offered a similar sentiment. “There’s a serious conversation that should be had ahead of this next memorandum of understanding about how best to use $40 billion in U.S. tax dollars. Yet instead of a serious national security discussion, you’re likely to get a toxic mix of partisan brawling and political pandering.”
Ben-Ami is certainly correct when it comes to Congress. The shameful display of Israeli President Isaac Herzog addressing a joint session of Congress right after the debacle of Democrats joining Republicans to browbeat Rep. Pramila Jayapal for daring to point out that Israel, which deprives millions of Palestinians of freedom, rights, property, and often their very lives for no reason other than their ethnicity, is a racist state, shows that Congress, with a few notable exceptions, remains unwilling to challenge Israel and its American supporters.
Given the tidal shift the current Israeli government is causing, that can change, but it would require two things. One is time, as that sort of entrenched support doesn’t turn around overnight. The second is leadership, and that must come from the White House. Joe Biden is both personally and politically disinclined to provide that leadership. He’d much rather grit his teeth and bear the humiliations, as he has in the past. But Netanyahu is pushing it so hard he may not leave Biden much choice.
Even as Republicans absurdly blast Biden as “antisemitic” for trying to convince Israel to stop record-setting settlement expansion and expanding its brutal authoritarianism from Palestinians to its own Jewish citizens, they will have a much stronger case in describing him as weak if he continues to allow Netanyahu to spit in his face with only a metaphorical “thank you, sir, may I have another?” in response. They won’t say it directly as that might imply that they think Biden should not do as Netanyahu says. But they will capitalize on Biden’s kowtowing to Netanyahu’s extremism in roundabout ways.
In any case, Biden is not there yet. In a recent speech to the Atlantic Council, his Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the audience that “I think we’ve seen Israeli democracy in all of its vibrancy. It’s telling a remarkable story right now. That’s playing out, and I’m confident the system will be able to deal effectively with it.” As I asked last week, how the mere existence of protests, which are seen frequently in authoritarian states, demonstrates the existence of a “vibrant democracy” is, at best, unclear.
But Blinken is setting up the narrative the Biden administration wants to use if Netanyahu’s judicial reform fails. They will double down on Israel’s democracy, shout to the heavens about the shared values that were demonstrated, and how the bond between us is more “unbreakable” than ever.
Opening the Door to Ending Military Aid to Israel
That might be starting even now. Just hours after I wrote these words on Monday, the Knesset voted on the first major bill in the overhaul process. It passed, and now the Israeli judiciary’s power to check any excesses of the government has been erased. In an effort to stop this, President Herzog tried to broker a compromise with the considerable added leverage of the threat of some 10,000 military reservists refusing duty—an unprecedented threat in Israeli history—along with a planned strike called by a forum of some 150 Israeli businesses. These factors were also bolstered by another public statement from Biden calling for Netanyahu to stop the bill from moving forward.
But still, the bill passed. Now, it must be used by advocates for Palestine in Washington to press forward with calls for the end of aid to Israel.
The current Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which laid down the terms for ten years of aid to Israel, runs through September 2028. The negotiations for the next one will likely start to gather steam in late 2025. Netanyahu has given advocates in the U.S. an opening to build political momentum against a new MOU, and that could have the effect of either diminishing it, placing conditions on it, or even stopping it altogether. The time to start building that momentum is now, taking advantage of the opening this moment provides.
Even if future parts of the judicial reform doesn’t pass, the topic has been broached, and that opening must be exploited. For decades, AIPAC has succeeded in its founding goal, its prime directive: to sustain and maximize aid to Israel. It built an impenetrable wall around that aid.
That wall has finally begun to crack. This is the moment people who want to see that aid stopped have been waiting for. Now is the time to go after U.S. aid to Israel, but not for the reasons Kristof proposes. That aid should stop for one reason above all others: because it is used to fund the oppression of the Palestinians, whether one wants to term that occupation or apartheid. It’s the argument that can’t be countered, and its time has finally come to Washington.
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Featured image: Daniel Kurtzer (Left), Aaron David Miller (Center), and Martin Indyk (Right) (Source: Mondoweiss)
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The Senate version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which provides funding for the Department of Defense military activities, military construction and the Department of Energy nuclear programs was adopted on July 20th and now needs to be reconciled with the House version.
Some of the more significant amendments included:
Senator Rand Paul (SC) introduced an amendment to the 2024 NDAA (S 2226) that was a “sense of the Senate” in clarifying that “Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty does not supersede the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war before the United States engages in war.”
Article 5 is a key pillar of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty is based on the principle of collective defense. It means that an attack on one member of NATO is deemed to be an attack on all. The Senate vote was 83 – 16 against the amendment with all Democrats voting No and twenty eight Republicans joining the Democrats to vote in favor of NATO and against the Constitution.
Those twenty eight Republican Senators are
Sens. Blackburn (Tenn.)*, Britt (Ala), Boozman (La.) Budd (NC), Graham (SC), Grassley (Iowa), Hoeven (ND), Hyde Smith (Miss.), Ricketts (Neb.), Risch (Idaho), Romney (Utah,)* Round (SD), Scott (SC), Scott (Fl.),* Capito (W.Va.), Collins (Me.), Cornyn (Texas), Cassidy (La.) Crapo (Idaho), Ernst (Iowa), McConnell (Ky,) Fischer (Neb.),* Moran (Kansas), Young (Ind.)*, Wicker (Miss.)*, Tillis (NC), Thune (SD), and Sullivan (Alaska).
The Senators* are seeking re election in 2024. Two days after Sen. Paul offered the amendment, his Kentucky office was firebombed.
Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.) introduced an amendment to require an act of the Senate to suspend, terminate or withdraw from NATO which was adopted 65 – 28 with seven Not Voting. The 65 Aye votes included eighteen Republicans while the 28 Nay votes were all Republican with seven Not Voting.
Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) offered an amendment limiting the availability of financial assistance to Ukraine which failed 71 – 13 with sixteen Not Voting. The Aye vote included forty two Democrats, twenty six Republicans and three Independents. All the Nay votes were Republicans and the Not Voting were six Democrats and ten Republicans.
Final passage vote on the NDAA was 72 – 25 with twenty six Republicans voting Aye. Three Democrats voted Nay along with seventeen Republicans and one Independent.
The Senate’s version of the NDAA must now go to the House in an attempt to resolve differences between the two bills.
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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC.
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Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley on Sunday weighed in on the FBI document Senator Chuck Grassley released showing Joe Biden was involved in a $10 million bribery scheme with a Ukrainian oligarch.
Grassley on Thursday released the FBI document showing Joe Biden was involved in a $10 million bribery scheme with Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky.
The FD-1023 form alleged then-Vice President Joe Biden FORCED Zlochevsky, a Ukrainian oligarch, to pay himself and his son Hunter Biden a total of $10 million.
According to the document, Biden’s bribery arrangement was described as “poluchili,” which is Russian crime slang for being “forced or coerced to pay.”
Also, according to the document, Zlochevsky claims to have text messages and recordings that show he was FORCED to pay the Bidens to ensure Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.
Zlochevsky also retained two documents, presumably financial records, as evidence of the arrangement, according to the document.
Joe Biden publicly bragged about bribing Ukraine with $1 billion to fire Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General who was investigating Burisma corruption.
I “said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired,” Biden said in 2018.
FLASHBACK to 2018 when Joe Biden bragged about bribing Ukraine with $1 BILLION to fire the prosecutor who was investigating his son, Hunter Biden's company. pic.twitter.com/SKkRGtwQCW
Despite the mountain of evidence showing Joe Biden was involved in a multi-million bribery scheme with a Ukrainian oligarch, the FBI is still stonewalling and protecting the Biden Crime Family.
Fox News host Shannon Bream told Turley she asked IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler if he has ever seen the FD-1023 form Grassley released.
“I’d never seen that document before, so I’d never seen that 1023…the form is important because it could further validate some other evidence that we are trying to prove in the case,” Ziegler said.
Bream asked Turley to assess why the FBI document never landed on Joseph Ziegler’s desk.
“It increasingly seems like the FBI is the place where evidence goes to die,” Turley said. “I mean you send evidence to the FBI, if it has the name Biden on it, it dies a very rapid death.”
.@JonathanTurley on the FBI evidence Grassley released showing Biden corruption: “It increasingly seems like the @FBI is the place where evidence goes to die.” pic.twitter.com/FB9ir6WDJw
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***
“Hypocrite” is a concept that is much overworked but lately it has gained a new freshness thanks to the serene indifference of the collective West to the trampling of its most cherished values whenever those it does not favour are affected. It happens, oddly enough, that in the Iranian political lexicon the word “hypocrite” is a favourite expression when referring to Western governments. In Farsi, for all we know, that word may serve as some sort of derogatory epithet with many interesting, culturally conditioned layers. But whatever the subtleties in Farsi, in relation to much of the current public behaviour in the West the English-language equivalent fits the bill perfectly.
New developments make it imperative to refocus attention on the predicament of Metropolitan Pavel, a distinguished ecclesiastical figure in Ukraine, a prince, so to speak, of that country’s Orthodox Church and abbot of its most important religious sanctuary, the Kiev Caves Monastery.
The persecution he has meekly endured has caused not even a ripple in the “city on a hill”, aka the fabled collective West, the promised land of “values” where advocacy of human rights, respect for dignity, and most importantly freedom of belief, are said to be bedrock principles.
Just a few days ago, after being forcibly ejected from the premises of the Kiev Caves Monastery, which on behalf of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church he is charged with supervising and administering, and after spending two months under house arrest at a different location with a humiliating ankle bracelet like a common criminal, the Metropolitan was finally given the semblance of a hearing. He was arraigned on charges that had never been made very clear since the proceedings against him were started, but which vaguely revolve around allegations of provoking religious discord and insinuations of sympathy for Russia.
On 13 July, when he was transferred from home detention in a village near Kiev to a pre-trial detention facility, the Metropolitan’s position deteriorated significantly once he was subjected to a harsh prison regime. His contact with the outside world is now greatly reduced and there is no guarantee that his serious diabetic condition would be medically attended in any meaningful sense. In prison, he is awaiting the filing of further criminal charges that were recently announced by the authorities. In cynical emulation of their Western overlords’ judicial practice, pending trial the Ukrainian judges have generously consented to set bail for the Metropolitan’s provisional release. The amount was fixed at the modest sum of 33 million hryvnias, or nearly $900,000 which, naturally, the prisoner does not have. It is uncertain whether in all of Ukraine there is a bail bond agency or pious oligarch prepared and bold enough to front this amount of cash for a man so deeply in disgrace with the country’s democratic government and its equally irreproachable institutions.
Technically however, and is that not all that counts, all the bases have been covered. In the exemplary rule-of-law democracy that is Ukraine, the presumption of innocence obviously must be fully in effect and the theoretical possibility of mounting a defence while outside prison bars has admirably been affirmed. As in the advanced democracies that stand with Ukraine and serve as its model, until the legal process runs its course there is no necessity for an unconvicted suspect to languish in prison. There is just one catch. It is that notwithstanding the laudable desire to emulate advanced foreign models, Ukrainian judges probably were not properly briefed on what the Eighth Amendment actually holds. It prohibits excessive bail, defined as an imposition disproportionate to the prisoner’s means, and it further mandates that the bail amount be set in relation to evidence of whether or not the prisoner poses a flight risk. It contains also some bizarre language prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishment.” But that should hardly impress officials of a government whose armed thugs routinely and with impunity kneecap war prisoners as well as commit a raft of other unspeakable atrocities, while making video recordings of it for their own entertainment.
Metropolitan Pavel is unlikely to have squirreled under his mattress nearly a million dollars he needs to post bail, never mind the preposterous notion that a man who had to be dragged by the police out of his Kiev Caves monastery refuge should now suddenly be regarded as a flight risk. So it is the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who are currently collecting hryvnias on his behalf, in the prayerful hope of at least securing their ailing hierarch’s temporary release.
All this poignantly recalls St. Paul’s “collections for the saints” in Romans 15:26 and elsewhere in the Gospels, but in secular terms it has another profound significance as well. In an epoch less poisoned than our own Metropolitan Pavel’s circumstances would be a human interest story of the first order. A genuinely free mass communication media, which in the collective West does not exist, would run with the story and make sure that everyone on the planet was made aware of the unjustly persecuted Metropolitan and his deplorable predicament. But alas! a thorough internet search fails to disclose any mention of it in that part of the world where human rights and freedom of conscience are so unctuously venerated.
And if, where it is falsely claimed that it flourishes, anything resembling a free press truly existed, this human interest story would be complemented urbi et orbi with the scandalous account of the plunder of holy relics from the Kiev Caves monastery which the incarcerated Metropolitan is unlawfully impeded from administering. That heist is of a magnitude assuredly unseen since the Crusaders’ pillage of Constantinople many centuries ago. Sacred objects from the ancient Ukrainian monastery are now being forcibly expatriated abroad by the Kiev Nazi regime to collective West museums and the Vatican, and it is being done in a manner not witnessed in Ukraine even in the days of German occupation. The official explanation for this outrage is that it is being committed not out of moral turpitude but for the good of the Church. We are asked to believe that the sacred objects are not being brazenly stolen but merely removed far from the perils of war, to “safety” (exactly as Greek artefacts from the Acropolis had been shipped for “safekeeping” to the British Museum).
One wonders if the silent treatment given to the incarcerated Orthodox Metropolitan Pavel would have been different were he of the same persuasion as Cardinal Mindszenty or, closer to home, the Ukrainian Uniate prelate Josyf Slipyj. Would non-entities like Lindsay Graham or Mike Pence then have felt moved to take notice and to make inquiries of their hosts in Kiev about the reasons for his incarceration? Would the media be extolling his innocent suffering and instead of ignoring his plight would dignitaries be singing dithyrambs in his honour?
Quite likely, yes. Except that Metropolitan Pavel refused to heed the threats of regime tormentors as well as the “Christian” entreaties of Epiphanius, the head of the heretical and uncanonical Ukrainian pseudo-church to which the Metropolitan’s monastery will shortly be turned over, both demanding of him just one thing in return for freedom – to betray his Orthodox flock and join the fraudulent outfit. That makes it extremely dubious that Pavel will benefit from good press or enjoy the benevolence of the corrupt dignitaries who personify Western values.
So we return again to the word that is the leitmotiv of this text. Among other foolish things that Mike Pence told Tucker Carlson, he said without batting an eye that recently he had visited Ukraine and was assured by a priest that there was no religious persecution and no imprisoned churchmen in that idyllic land.
Who might have been Pence’s source for this demonstrably false information? Could it perchance be one of Epiphanius’ men?
Pence claims to be a devout Christian so on his next visit to Kiev he would do well to insist that his hosts take him to the Pre-trial Detention Centre, to check for himself.
We really should not bother with the nuances of “hypocrisy” in Farsi. The word as it is used in English will do perfectly, because it hits the nail on the head and with devastating accuracy.
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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: Pavel Lebed, the abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Monastery and Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, attends a court hearing in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Saturday, where he was accused of being linked to Russia. Photo by Oleg Petrasyuk/EPA-EFE
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***
Background of Italian Recent Politics
In October 2022 Ms. Giorgia Meloni, became Prime Minister of Italy. Her extreme right-wing party, Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), won the September 2022 elections with 26% of the vote, even though it had polled only 4.3% four years earlier. Ms. Meloni co-founded the party in 2012 and led it since 2014. See this.
Such an increase in voters meant that Italians were sick and tired from the so-called “democratic” neoliberalism coming out of the EU in Brussels, notably out of the non-elected dictatorial European Commission (EC), known to most serious analyst to be but a lackey of Washington’s.
But Italians had also enough of the steady NATO influence of Italian politics. Italy is currently arguably the country in Europe with most US / NATO military bases. Most Italians are strong NATO opponents.
In brief, Italians welcomed the promising “new wind” coming out of the newly elected right-wing party – expecting a departure from the ongoing US / EU – submissive neoliberal Italian politics.
In October 2022, Italian President Mattarella appointed Giorgia Meloni as Italy’s first female Prime Minister, following the resignation of Mario Draghi amidst a government crisis and as a result of the September 2022 general election. Messrs. Mattarella as well as Draghi are affiliated to the “Independent” party. Mr. Draghi is a former president of the European Central Banks, and a close ally of the WEF’s CEO, Klaus Schwab.
Sergio Mattarella OMRI, an academic and lawyer, has served as President of Italy since 2015. The attribute OMRI stands for Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and might be considered the Italian equivalent of knighthood.
Back to Giorgia Meloni
A clue to her priorities came in an animated speech she gave in Spain last June.
“Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology… no to Islamist violence, yes to secure borders, no to mass migration… no to big international finance… no to the bureaucrats of Brussels!”
In another well-quoted speech from 2019 she said: “I am Giorgia, I’m a woman, I’m a mother… I’m Christian.”
For the role of Italy’s new family and birth rate minister, she has picked Eugenia Roccella who has spoken out against abortion and threatened to reverse recently agreed rights for same-sex parents.
Nevertheless, Ms. Meloni has promised to govern “for everyone”. She had to assure Italy’s allies in both NATO and the EU that there will be no change in direction in foreign policy. This is an important point, as both her coalition partners, Matteo Salvini, heading the League and the late Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right party, Forza Italia, have been strong supporters of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“Giorgia Meloni comes from a post-fascist cultural background but recently she’s taken a very moderate position and stated she won’t change [predecessor Mario] Draghi’s policy on Ukraine,” Italian political scientist Prof. Roberto D’Alimonte told the BBC. “She did this because she had to build her credentials to be a legitimate candidate for prime minister.”
Recent – Italy-China Relations
On February 17, 2023, President Mattarella met with China’s Mr. Wang Yi, in Rome. Mr. Wang Yi is a member of the Political Bureau of China’s Communist Party (CPC) Central Committee. He is Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, basically acting as Foreign Minister.
It was a most cordial and what looked like a constructive and productive meeting. They were talking about strengthening their relations through BRI (Memorandum of Understanding [MOU) signed in 2019) and jointly promoting multilateralism.
Conveying President Xi Jinping’s warm greetings to President Mattarella, Wang Yi said that China will bring new opportunities for China-Italy cooperation. He noted that China and Italy should resume exchanges at all levels in an all-round manner, and promote mutually beneficial cooperation across the board. Wang Yi stressed China and Italy are natural partners in Belt and Road, a strong impetus for further development of their bilateral relations.
This left a positive signal for strengthening China-Italian BRI relations – Italy being the only EU and G-7 member as part of the BRI.
Recent Events
At the recent NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania (11/12 July 2023), Ms. Meloni confirmed in a press conference from Vilnius, that at the invitation of President Biden she will travel to Washington to meet with the US President on 27 July 2023.
The Italian PM highlighted Rome’s support to the NATO Alliance and to Kyiv’s accession to NATO. She praised NATO’s “important steps forward [towards Ukraine’s] future accession to the Alliance. She stressed this point by mentioning Italy’s leadership in 2024 of the G7. “NATO mustn’t lose focus on its Southern Flank and the Global South.”
Ms. Meloni went even further in supporting the warrior alliance, NATO, saying that “Our freedom has a cost. What we invest in defense comes back tenfold in terms of defending our national interests.”
She further argued for increased cooperation among NATO Allies, a drive that must extend to Indo-Pacific matters and, most notably, China, noting the importance of tackling the “systemic rival” holistically – i.e., considering issues such as supply chain security, especially in the field of critical raw materials, and safeguarding technological advantage.
These considerations come as her government tends to dropping out of China’s BRI, a matter that will certainly come up in her forthcoming Washington visit. For more details see this (12 July 2023).
This is a 180-degree turn-around from Ms. Meloni’s earlier position on NATO and from President Mattarella’s discussion in February 2023 with Mr. Wang Yi from China. It also demonstrates the US / EU pressure the Italian Government is under.
Clearly, Ms. Meloni is not free to follow her campaign promises and even her party’s ideology – of cooperation for multilateralism, a departure from the neoliberal globalist dominance exerted by Washington, EU, the WEF and the entire bought and corrupted UN system throughout the world.
Italian freedom, national sovereignty – has been flushed down the drain, like that of so many other nations – and that against the will of most of the concerned nations’ people.
To Stay or Not to Stay in the BRI
Ms. Meloni’s government under pressure from the US, but also from the EU, is leaning towards exiting the Belt and Road. In a recent article by the Chinese state-owned Global Times, Beijing expresses its concern about Italy’s abandoning the BRI cooperation agreement with China.
The BRI-Agreement is based on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of 2019 which is set to be auto-renewed in March 2024, unless one of the parties resigns from the agreement three months prior to the deadline.
This gives Ms. Meloni enough time to present the case to the Italian Parliament, to transfer this decision and responsibility to the presumably democratic parliamentary body.
When putting this possibility forward, Ms. Meloni also said that one could have “excellent relations with China without being part of a strategic plan” such as the BRI.
To add fuel to the fire, Italy’s Enterprise Minister Adolfo Urso told Radio24 that the Meloni government “is not being pressured by the US, nor China, on the [BRI] Memorandum.” But he added that since the MOU was signed, “our trade with China has worsened considerably, in contrast to what has happened with France or Germany, which have instead implemented [new] business with China. This should give us pause for thought.”
In the meantime, China is seeking alternative means to promote commercial and cooperation opportunities directly with the Italian business community.
Senator Stefania Craxi, member of the governing coalition party Forza Italia and chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said she would support the full involvement of Parliament on the BRI decision.
She praised PM Meloni’s “institutional” approach, “which recalls the need to involve Parliament on a sensitive issue such as the BRI MOU, whose approval at the time impacted on the dynamics of our country’s strategic alliances”. She remarked that the MOU was not presented to Parliament for approval before signing.
Senator Craxi added that the BRI “clearly doesn’t only have commercial implications” – as some had depicted it when it was signed in 2019. Proof of this is the fact that despite being the only Western European country to have signed it, Italy’s trade with China is less that of other EU nations.” She implied that signing it was a mistake, as it brought only negative consequences.
When PM Meloni recently spoke to Parliament, she reiterated that Italy could have “excellent relations with China, “without being part of a strategic plan”, meaning BRI. But she also said, the decision had not yet been made, that evaluations are under way – and that the final say would be that of the people, “seeking solutions in view of our interests”.
With a significant Parliamentary mandate of her party, Ms. Meloni – leaning towards exiting BRI – would make the decision as one of the Italian people.
In the five months before the deadline to decide on the ceasing or continuing the BRI-MOU, it is time now for the Chinese business community to enter into direct contact with the Italian Business community to either lobby for staying in the BRI, or to establish solid commercial and business relations with Italian entrepreneurs outside of BRI.
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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: Meloni speaking at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida (Licensed under Vox España , CC0)
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***
Sometimes reality surpasses fiction. In a way, this is the case with the Cuban revolution. Seventy years ago, a few dozen young rebels stormed a barracks. Even though the attack failed completely, it was the beginning of a revolutionary process with far-reaching consequences not only in Cuba, but also far beyond.
The Assault
On July 26, 1953, a hundred young rebels led by Fidel Castro stormed a barracks in eastern Cuba. It was supposed to be the beginning of an armed uprising against the dictatorship. The aim was to obtain weapons and distribute them to the local population. The revolution would then be proclaimed over the radio.
On July 26, 1953, the rebels stormed the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The barracks have now been converted into a school and a museum.
In a second phase, the rebel army would retreat to the mountains and start a guerrilla war. The bold plan failed due to setbacks and above all due to lack of experience. Fidel was barely 26 years old. Most of the rebels were brutally slaughtered, only a few managed to escape. Fidel, his brother Raúl and several others were rounded up and put on trial.
Why an Assault?
The rebellion did not come out of the blue. A year before, Fulgencio Batista had staged a coup. Cubans lived under a military dictatorship, inequality between rich and poor was extremely high and the living and working conditions of the majority of the population were miserable.
Moreover, the country was under the control of the US. Officially, the country had gained independence in 1898, but all along the Cuban bourgeoisie had been too weak to establish a stable political system and to chart its own sovereign course, independent of the US. Batista’s increasing grip on society only exacerbated that situation.
Discomfort was very high. Many longed for a different, just society. Fidel Castro was one such person. He was a young lawyer and had been politically active since his student days. Originally, he thought of using parliament as a springboard for a revolution.
Young Fidel during a political speech in 1951. Photo: Cuban government
Together with the most radical persons of the party he belonged to (the Ortodoxos), he would propose a revolutionary program from the parliamentary benches. That would then be the platform for mobilizing the masses to take armed action and to overthrow the government.
However, the coup shattered those plans and it was clear to Fidel that there was no other option than direct armed uprising. Initially, young Castro expected that the revolution would be prepared from various quarters and he intended to join them. But after seeing very little progress he started his own movement.
He built a disciplined, clandestine movement from scratch, without financial resources and without support from any political party. He mainly recruited young people among the Ortodoxos and after a good year he had twelve hundred men at his disposal.
Political Victory
The attack on July 26 failed, but Fidel managed to turn this military defeat into a political victory. The assault of the barracks was the start of a revolutionary process with far-reaching consequences in Cuba, but also in Latin America and Africa.
At his trial, Fidel Castro made an impressive plea that would later be published as History Will Absolve Me.
The trial was a real turning point: his movement gained strong public awareness and recognition. When in prison the revolutionary lawyer consolidated and educated his movement. His popularity gradually increased among the population. When presidential candidate Grau gave a speech in late 1954, Fidel’s name was chanted.
Soon after, a pro-amnesty campaign was launched. There were demonstrations in several cities and the press also called for his release. The call for amnesty increased and on May 15, 1955, Fidel and his comrades were allowed to leave prison.
Once free, Fidel broadened his 26th of July Movement to include a number of key revolutionary leaders. The violence continued and things became too dangerous for him. That was why Fidel decided to go to Mexico to prepare the armed struggle from there.
Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Photo: Cuban government
In Mexico, Argentine doctor Che Guevara joined the rebel group. The rebels prepared for a protracted guerrilla uprising in the mountains, supported from the towns, with the intention of eliminating the army.
Armed Insurrection
At the end of November 1956, about eighty of them made the crossing with the Granma, a small yacht. The whole operation turned into a complete fiasco. Shortly after landing on December 2, they were spotted, hunted, harassed and beaten apart. In the end they were left with barely sixteen inexperienced and poorly armed comrades-in-arms. Facing them was the best-equipped army in Latin America.
In other words, the situation was hopeless, but they did not give up. They received support from the local farmers and were able to consolidate. They managed to stay out of the grip of the army and after a few weeks they won their first small victories. Herbert Matthews, a top New York Times journalist, was invited to the jungle in mid-February 1957. He was impressed by what he saw there and reported about it in his newspaper. That gave the rebel army’s prestige a huge boost.
The July 26 movement in the Sierra Maestra. Photo: Cuban government
As the rebels achieved military successes, Fidel also gained more political support. In the summer of 1958, dictator Batista launched a summer offensive to deal a final blow to the guerrilla.
The numerical superiority was huge: 300 rebels against 10,000 heavily armed soldiers. After a month of fierce fighting, the rebels managed to beat back the army. That was a decisive turning point in the armed insurrection. With victory in sight, large sections of the national bourgeoisie also sought rapprochement with the 26th of July Movement.
In August, the guerrilla’s final offensive began. Entire parts of the country became ‘liberated territory’. After Che Guevara conquered the city of Santa Clara and destroyed an armoured military train, Batista fled on January 1, 1959. The revolution was a fact.
Washington’s Obsession
A broad transitional government with a moderate program emerged. But even that was not acceptable for Washington. The US controlled important parts of the Cuban economy and it did not want to lose that. But above all, it was inadmissible for a country barely 180 km from the US to take a progressive course. Moreover, that could encourage other countries to follow suit.
That is why this revolution had to be nipped in the bud. In July 1959, six months after taking power, President Eisenhower approved a program to undermine the revolution. This ranged from supporting counter-revolutionary groups, air and sea strikes, assassinations of Fidel, to jamming radio and TV channels and clandestine radio broadcasts.
Meeting in the US between Fidel Castro and Vice President Nixon on April 19, 1959. Photo: Cuban government
But more was needed. A memo in 1960 by Lester D. Mallory, of the US State Department, states:
“The majority of Cubans support Castro … The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. … every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.”
According to the memo, the aim was “to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government”. Shortly afterwards, the Eisenhower administration imposed an embargo that would later result in an economic blockade (which also puts pressure on third countries to end their economic relations with Cuba).
The first aim of economic sanctions is to overthrow the revolution, and if that fails, to hurt the country as much as possible so that socialism would not be an example for other countries. Chomsky describes this as “Washington’s hysterical dedication to crush Cuba”.
The Role of the Soviet Union
For its economic development and security, Cuba initially sought the support of Western countries which, under the pressure from Washington, refused their support. Given the embargo, the military threat and the reluctance of Western countries, Cuba therefore very quickly relied on the SU for foreign trade and arms purchases.
The cooperation did not always run smoothly and after the missile crisis in 1962 it even came to a real crisis between the two countries. Nevertheless, cooperation with the SU largely compensated for the losses caused by the economic blockade.
Economic Disaster
Hence the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was dramatic for the Cuban economy. In barely thirty years, the island twice lost its privileged economic partner and had to look for new partners.
For any country, such a thing is disastrous, and for Cuba it was compounded by the US tightening the economic blockade in the hope of draining the country economically. Without the blockade and without the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba would have a standard of living comparable to that of Italy.
In socio-economic terms, the 1990s were extremely difficult anyway. But the country trudged through, and from the start of the millennium it could count on the support of Venezuela. That gave the economy a boost. But, unfortunately and not coincidentally, Venezuela was in turn hit by economic sanctions from the US from 2017 onwards.
This situation came on top of the further tightening of the blockade since Trump and the Covid crisis, which hit Cuba hard due to the shutdown of tourism. As a result, the current socio-economic situation is particularly difficult as it was in the 1990s.
Look After the People
It is therefore all the more remarkable that, despite these precarious economic conditions, Cuba has a very high level of social development. The island has a health system that can compete with rich countries, while having a GDP per capita that is at least five times lower. Child mortality is lower than in the US and the education system is the best in Latin America.
“Cuba has become internationally recognized for its achievements in the areas of education and health, with social service delivery outcomes that surpass most countries in the developing world and in some areas match first-world standards. Since the Cuban revolution in 1959, and the subsequent establishment of a communist one-party government, the country has created a social service system that guarantees universal access to education and health care provided by the state.
This model has enabled Cuba to achieve near universal literacy, the eradication of certain diseases, widespread access to potable water and basic sanitation, and among the lowest infant mortality rates and longest life expectancies in the region.”
According to the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), Cuba is the only country that has managed to combine an ecologically sustainable footprint per capita with an acceptably high quality of life as measured by the UN Human Development Index. That’s a comforting thought: if Cuba can do that without the latest and most economical technology, how much easier must it be for us?
The Tenderness of the Peoples
Cuba not only cares for its own inhabitants. “Solidarity is the tenderness of the peoples,” said Che Guevara. The Cubans give shape to this in an impressive way. From the beginning of the revolution, Cuba has supported sister countries in the Global South. Since the beginning of the revolution, Cuban medical personnel have treated nearly 2 billion people worldwide.
When Italy was hit very hard at the start of the corona pandemic, they were assisted by a brigade of Cuban doctors. Photo: Italian Development Cooperation Agency
Today, Cuba single-handedly deploys more doctors worldwide than the UN World Health Organization. If the US and Europe made the same effort as Cuba, the shortage of health workers in the Global South would be solved overnight.
Neither did Cuba hesitate to undertake dangerous military missions. For example, there were international missions in Vietnam, Syria, Algeria, Ghana, Congo (Brazzaville), Zaire, Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, South Yemen, Tanzania, Angola, Namibia and Guinea-Bissau and support for various guerrilla movements in Latin America.
On the African continent, tiny Cuba was an important counterweight to the US superpower from the 1970s to the 1990s. The Cuban army dealt a decisive blow to the apartheid regime of South Africa in Angola. Mandela recognized it as “a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!”
Along with Venezuela, Cuba was the pacesetter for the integration of Latin American countries at the expense of Washington’s hold on the region.
Decision-making
Our economy and political systems are dominated by multinationals and large capital groups. In Cuba, that power was broken and has been replaced by the CTC, the umbrella organization of the various union federations. There is no doubt that decision-making in Cuba is highly streamlined. But that is compensated by a form of direct democracy.
In addition to five-yearly parliamentary elections, there is a fairly unique consultation system. For all important decisions, the population is extensively consulted and a consensus is sought. No measures will be taken in Cuba without broad support.
This explains, among other things, why the Cuban government can count on an enormous popular support despite often very difficult circumstances and the fact that it managed to hold out all these years against the largest and most aggressive superpower ever.
If we had this decision-making system, a wealth tax would have been implemented long ago and pensions would not have been raised to the age of 67.
Errors and Challenges
A revolution is not made by angels. It is evident that mistakes have been made in the past 60 years. Just think of the humiliating treatment of believers and homosexuals at the beginning of the revolution, the failure to diversify the economy and to enhance productivity. The Cubans themselves are the last to claim that their journey has been without problems.
Many weaknesses and problems remain to be addressed. Perhaps the most important challenge is this: the high level of social and intellectual development creates high expectations among the population. But there is no economic basis for this, and that leads to frustration. This problem has become very acute in recent years.
This is closely related to another phenomenon. Due to the collapse of the currency after 1991, wages are no longer sufficient. As a result, there is no longer a real link between labour, salary and purchasing power. This is very detrimental to labour motivation and productivity. It also causes corruption and discontent.
The only answer is accelerated economic growth, but promoting growth is easier said than done, because the foreign context is a strong determinant here. Will Biden ease the blockade for now and who will be the next US president? How is the situation in Venezuela and Latin America evolving? How are economic relations with China, Russia and Europe evolving? What will be the impact of the increasing number of droughts and devastating hurricanes?
The future will show whether Cuba will be able to solve these challenges. In these times, with the rise and spread of alt-right, solidarity with a country that, for 60 years, has demonstrated ‘the tenderness of peoples’ and where the focus is on people, not on profits, is more necessary than ever.
The process that the rebels led by Fidel Castro started 70 years ago with the attack on the Moncada barracks remains a beacon for the world. Hasta la victoria siempre!
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Katrien Demuynck and Marc Vandepitte wrote several books on Cuba.
Featured image: Every year the storming of the Moncada barracks is commemorated in Cuba. (Source: Katrien Demuynck and Marc Vandepitte)
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***
The accumulated evidence is overwhelming that Covid was an orchestrated pandemic.
Intentional use of the faulty PCR test, intentional false reporting of Covid deaths as a result of World Health Organization guidelines and financial incentives to hospitals to report all deaths as Covid deaths, and prohibited treatment by known cures together produced a high level of fear that drove the masses to accept the Covid “vaccination” that generated huge monetary gains for Big Pharma and associated shills such as Anthony Fauci and massive inroads on civil liberty by governments.
Hardly anyone died from Covid itself.They died from lack of treatment.The protocol was that if you became infected and if you worsened after a week, go to the hospital where you were put on ventilators, an incorrect treatment that usually was deadly.
Doctors who saved the lives of their patients with Ivermectin and HCQ were punished.Corporate doctors were fired, and those in private practice suffered attacks on their medical licenses by authorities, resulting in loss of license to practice medicine.Highly distinguished medical scientists who blew the whistle on this death-maximizing approach were demonized, and every effort was made to silence them and to destroy them professionally.
The greatest number of deaths, which continue day by day, is from the Vax. Everywhere every day sports stars and entertainers who served as advertisements for the safety of the Covid “vaccine” are suddenly dropping dead. The corrupt medical establishment turns a blind eye.
The lockdowns, the masks, the “vaccine” did extraordinary harm to people and benefitted no one except Big Pharma’s profits and government’s agenda to weaken civil liberty.
All of this is known, and there has been no accountability.
A program of mass murder and injury to the world population is being ignored.
Medical authorities are still recommending the Death Jab, even for babies.
This guarantees that a second and a third round of death and injury is coming from more orchestrated pandemics.Bill Gates has promised as much. Such gullible populations can expect no less.
Why is this murderous plot against humanity being ignored?
Thousands of medical scientists and doctors are not ignoring it, but the media continues to accuse the leading experts in the world of spreading “misinformation.”Efforts continue to be made to silence science and suppress information.Universities and medical schools themselves are part of the effort to prevent the truth from being acknowledged.
Another part of the problem is that many of those who were deceived and who so adamantly defended the Vax, lockdowns, and masks to family and friends are too embarrassed to admit their mistake.They are too fragile to say:I made a mistake and have destroyed the health of my child and killed my mother.The authorities know the weaknesses of people and use their weaknesses to protect and to further the authorities’ agendas.
The insouciance, gullibility, and weakness of the majority of the population is inconsistent with the continuation of civil liberty.Totalitarianism is setting in, and it is being tolerated by the masses and joyfully welcomed by Democrats and the Left-wing.
Below are more reports of evidence that the Covid “pandemic” was a mass, murderous deception.
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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from NaturalNews.com
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
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Earlier this month, the 2022 Nobel Physics Laureate Dr. John Clauserslammed the ‘climate emergency’ narrative as a “dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people”. Inevitably, the punishments have begun. A talk that Dr. Clauser was due to give to the International Monetary Fund on climate models has been abruptly cancelled, and the page announcing the event removed from the IMF site.
Dr. Clauser was due to speak to the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office this Thursday under the title: “Let’s talk – How much can we trust IPCC climate predictions?”
It would appear that “not a lot” isn’t the politically correct answer. Clauser is a longstanding critic of climate models and criticised the award of the Physics Nobel in 2021 for work on them. He is not alone, since many feel that climate models are primarily based on mathematics, and a history of failed opinionated climate predictions leave them undeserving of recognition at the highest level of pure science. Not that this opinion is shared by the green activist National Geographic magazine, which ran an article: “How climate models got so accurate they won a Nobel.”
Last week, Clauser observed that misguided climate science has “metastasised into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience”. This pseudoscience, he continued, has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other related ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies and environmentalists. “In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis,” he added.
Clauser is the latest Nobel physics laureate to dismiss the notion of a climate crisis. Professor Ivar Giaever, a fellow laureate, is the lead signatory of the World Climate Declaration that states there is no climate emergency. It further argues that climate models are “not remotely plausible as global policy tools”. The 1998 winner Professor Robert Laughlin has expressed the view that the climate is “beyond our power to control” and humanity cannot and should not do anything to respond to climate change.
The Australian climate journalist Jo Nova was in fine form reporting on Clauser’s recent comments. “The thing about sceptical Nobel Prize winners is that they make the name-calling ‘climate denier’ programme look as stupid as it can get,” she observed. She noted the lack of any mainstream media interest in Clauser’s recent comments, asking: “How much damage would it do to the cause if the audience finds out that one of the highest ranking scientists in the world disagrees with the mantra?” A question of course with an obvious answer. Quite a lot.
The same team that tells us that we must ‘listen to the experts’ won’t listen to any experts they don’t like. They rave about ‘UN Experts’ that hide the decline, but run a mile to avoid the giants of science. They’ll ask high-school dropouts about climate change on prime-time TV before they interview Nobel Prize winners. It’s a lie by omission. It’s active deception. And the whole climate movement is built on it.
The IMF is heavily involved in international money flows and one can only hope it shows a greater willingness to ‘evaluate’ this subject matter than it does the predictions of climate models. Dr. Clauser secured his Nobel Prize for groundbreaking work in the field of quantum mechanics – the study of matter and light at a sub-atomic and atomic level. In 2010 he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics, considered the second most prestigious physics award after the Nobel. In addition to this work, he has also made suggestions as to how to improve current climate models.
Attempts to model the chaotic and non-linear atmosphere suffer on many fronts. They fail to predict future temperatures with mostly laughably degrees of inaccuracy, and in the process do little more than guess the effect of natural forces such as volcanoes and clouds. In Clauser’s view, climate models greatly underestimate the effect of the clouds that cover half the Earth and provide a powerful – and dominant – thermostatic control of global temperatures. More recently, Clauser also told the Korea Quantum Conference that he didn’t believe there was a climate crisis, noting: “Key processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times.”
The cynical might add that this degree of exaggerated inaccuracy might be fine in the land of economics, but more robust standards should be encouraged in the world of science.
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Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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For close to a year and a half, the German economy has been going through a sort of unraveling, primarily due to suicidal subservience to its masters in Washington DC. Since the start of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe, Berlin has been experiencing a plethora of major economic problems that soon translated to societal and political ones, causing further instability in the country. In turn, this has started causing issues with investments and the overall business climate in Germany, as relevant people and companies started losing confidence in Berlin’s capacity to keep its economy stable.
“The German economy is losing its DNA as a place to do business and foreign investors are keeping their distance, instead focusing their attention on developing markets as a result,” Toralf Haag, the CEO of German Voith Group, warned.
Haag, the head of the German technology company, gave an interview to Die Welt, in which he discussed the rapidly emerging economic problems affecting Germany. He told the newspaper that his Voith Group has been able to weather the storm so far and protect itself from the recession the German economy has been in since the last quarter. However, Haag also expressed worry regarding the German economy’s future, specifically in terms of competitiveness, energy security and foreign investment. He complained about “Germany’s aggressive energy transition away from traditional energy production such as coal and nuclear to renewables”, calling it “problematic”.
“There are ambitious goals, but only insufficient incentives and support to be able to achieve these goals. What we need is less bureaucracy, faster approval procedures and faster implementation. The way it is currently running, it will not work in the long run,” Haag stated.
When asked about the current state of business and investment opportunities in Germany, he wasn’t very optimistic, not only about the prospects for his company (based in Heidenheim, operating primarily in energy, automotive and paper industries), but the overall situation.
“Investment decisions in Germany are becoming increasingly difficult,” Haag said, adding: “To be honest, at the moment we tend to choose Eastern Europe, Asia or the USA when it comes to new production facilities because the costs for energy and personnel are particularly high in Germany while at the same time bureaucracy and regulation are increasing.”
He lamented that the Voith Group was forced to hire another 30 people in the management in the last year or two just to be able to handle all the new regulations and obligations introduced due to the ever-growing red tape.
“I would like to invite the employees from the ministries to check what effect their specifications have directly inside a company – whether they are practicable and sensible. In order for Voith to make significant investments in Germany again, the framework conditions must change fundamentally. Unfortunately, I don’t see that at the moment,” Haag stated.
He said that the danger of Germany’s further deindustrialization is “very great”, primarily because of the reduction of industrial activity due to the tendency of many German companies to relocate to other countries.
“We now see almost every day that industrial companies are no longer investing in Germany but in other regions of the world. Administration and engineering may remain in Germany, but production, which is particularly valuable for an economy, is increasingly taking place elsewhere,” Haag complained, further adding: “As a result, the German economy is not only losing its DNA but also any potential for the future. With its well-paid jobs, industry is the guarantor of prosperity. The prosperity achieved so far cannot be maintained with administrative jobs and the service sector alone.”
Indeed, Germany’s deindustrialization is an ongoing process that is virtually irreversible at this point. Haag’s concerns are backed by the official data and statistics on the actual state of Germany’s economy, particularly its industrial capacity. German industry has always been the main driving force of its economy, particularly its automotive and high-tech industries, all of which are highly dependent on stable energy supplies. However, while Haag blamed the obsessive transition to alternative energy sources (particularly renewables) for the major issues Germany is experiencing, he failed to mention Berlin’s subservience to Washington DC and the resulting halt in Russian energy imports.
By February this year, Germany has experienced a “price shock” of over 40% due to its anti-Russian sanctions policies, in what can only be described as perhaps the worst case of a boomerang effect in the history of Western sanctions warfare against the world. Russian energy imports were probably the best possible energy source for Germany, particularly as Berlin was trying to increase the share of renewables in its energy production. These imports made it possible to rely on natural gas as a relatively clean source, while renewables played an auxiliary role. However, with the suicidal anti-Russian sanctions in place, as well as the US terrorist attack on the Nord Stream pipelines, Germany’s energy security was gone virtually overnight.
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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
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Introductory Note
The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.
The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:
“This time no one dropped a bomb on us … We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.”
More than 12 years later, the evidence amply confirms that the Fukushima disaster has by no means been resolved.
“Unimaginable” levels of radiation still prevail. In the words of Dr. Helen Caldicott, “one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer”.
Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer”. (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age, April 26, 2011)
The Fukushima disaster of March 2011 resulted in 16,000 deaths, causing some 165,000 people to flee their homes in the Fukushima area.
Both the Japanese and Western media have downplayed the impacts of nuclear radiation which has spread to vast areas in Northern Japan, not to mention the contamination of the food chain.
The continued dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, which is now envisaged by TEPCO (with the tacit endorsement of of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)) constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. In recent developments, TEPCO is planning a release of “1.3 million tons of treated wastewater.
Amply documented the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has been involved in a coverup. And so has the Japanese government. The Abe government had casually pointed to “harmful rumors”. The present government’s stance remains notoriously ambiguous. Already in 2021, TEPCO acknowledged that the decommissioning of the Fukushima facility could last until 2051.
The Worldwide public health impacts which includes the contamination of the Pacific Ocean extending to the Western Hemisphere are incalculable.
The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war.
Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap.
Michel Chossudovsky, July 25, 2023
Below is the incisive and carefully documented article by Julia Conley
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With the Tokyo Electric Power Company planning to begin a release of 1.3 million tonnes of treated wastewater from the former Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan next month, reports of radioactive fish in the area have raised alarm in recent years—and new reporting on Sunday revealed that the problem is far from mitigated, prompting questions about how dangerous the company’s plan will be for the public.
The plant operator, known as TEPCO, analyzed a black rockfish in May that was found to contain levels of radioactive cesium that were 180 times over Japan’s regulatory limit, The Guardian reported.
The fish was caught near drainage outlets at the plant, where three nuclear reactors melted down in March 2011 during a tsunami.
Rainwater from the areas surrounding the reactors flows into the area where the fish was caught.
The high level of cesium—which, depending on the level of exposure, can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding, coma, and death in people who eat contaminated food—was discovered as TEPCO prepares to begin the discharge of treated wastewater which has been used to cool fuel from the melted reactors. The wastewater has mixed with rainwater and groundwater since the tsunami.
TEPCO has acknowledged that fish near the drainage outlets have been unsafe for consumption, as the concentration of cesium in seabed sediment in the area has measured more than 100,000 becquerels per kilogram. The maximum legal level is 100 becquerels per kilogram.
“Since contaminated water flowed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station port immediately after the accident, TEPCO has periodically removed fish from inside the port since 2012,” an official for the company told The Guardian.
A fish was detected to have high levels of radiation near Fukushima in January 2022, with authorities positing that the fish had escaped from the drainage outlet. Shipments of black rockfish caught off the coast of Fukushima prefecture were promptly suspended and have not been resumed.
More than 40 fish with cesium levels over the legal limit were found in the plant’s port between May 2022 and May 2023, and 90% came from the inner breakwater where water flows from the area around the melted reactors.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan and the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have both given their approval of TEPCO’s plan to release the wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, which it says it needs to do to secure space for decommissioning the plant. The discharge process, using an Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), would take decades to complete.
While the IAEA said earlier this month the plan will have a “negligible radiological impact to people and the environment,” Paul Dorfman of Ireland’s Radiological Protection Advisory Committee said Monday that reports like the one about the contaminated rockfish are likely “far from over.”
Fukushima fish with 180 times legal limit of radioactive ceasium fuels water release fears.
“Believing [and] pretending some things are not harmful because it is convenient is literally killing the planet,” said American University sociologist Celine-Marie Pascale, comparing the ecological and climate crisis to authorities’ insistence that the water discharge is safe. “Corporate interests triumph at global expense once again.”
Officials in Hong Kong have said they will ban food imports from 10 prefectures in Japan if the release moves forward in August, and some Chinese wholesalers have stopped accepting seafood imports from the country.
In addition to concerns about cesium, TEPCO has admitted that the ALPS it plans to use may not eliminate isotopes including ruthenium, cobalt, strontium, and plutonium. The system is also not able to remove tritium, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen.
Masanobu Sakamoto, president of JF Zengyoren, Japan Fisheries Cooperatives, said in June that the group “cannot support the government’s stance that an ocean release is the only solution.”
[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]
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With Britain and America supplying the toxic ammunition to Ukraine, Declassified investigates the long-term health impact on one of the few countries where the weapon has been fired in anger.
A convoy of Mercedes with tinted windows speeds down the motorway as drivers rush to cross the border – a gateway to Albania’s stunning Mediterranean beaches. Resisting the temptation to join the sunbathers, I turn off half a mile from the frontier and take a winding mountain road for ten minutes, driving past a glistening lake until I reach a sleepy village.
Jutting up from the roadside are tattered American and NATO flags around a camouflaged stone column bearing the twin headed eagle emblem of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The rebel movement took the territory nearly a quarter century ago, after US jets pummelled Serb soldiers on the surrounding Ceja mountain with at least 286 rounds of depleted uranium – a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal made from nuclear waste.
Such airstrikes were repeated all across the border zone in 1999, driving the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army out of Kosovo within 78 days. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair relished the victory, basking in their newfound popularity. Roads and children would bear their names, spelt locally as Klinton and Tonibler. But this “humanitarian intervention” – designed to protect Kosovar Albanians from ethnic cleansing – has left a bitter legacy in the very communities it was meant to save.
Sipping a macchiato at a roadside cafe opposite the KLA monument, Adil is pleasantly surprised when he hears a journalist has come to ask about cancer in the village. “My father has just died from it,” he tells my translator, as he gladly pays for our drinks. “We have 20 to 30 people a year with cancer here.”
Without prompting, he links the illnesses to weapons used in the war. “We had so many bombs dropped here because we are near the border. A small bomb infects the whole surrounding area.” When told Britain is sending depleted uranium tank shells to Ukraine, Adil exclaims: “I feel sorry for them. I wouldn’t want anyone to experience it.”
Our conversation arouses interest from KLA veterans at the cafe. One of them, who normally works abroad, volunteers to show us a bomb crater. The others fear reprisals if they publicly criticise NATO.
Jumping in my rented Vauxhall Corsa, we gingerly head off road through several fields to a heap of soil sprinkled with wild flowers. “This is one of the spots that was hit six times with depleted uranium,” the veteran informs us. “The crater was five or six metres deep and seven metres wide. We brought healthy soil to put on top, in order to reduce radiation for the people.”
Despite a warning from a Danish NGO, villagers were growing vegetables in the vicinity. The veteran puts the number of local cancer cases even higher than Adil – claiming there are 50-60 patients in the village, many of them young people.
At the last census in 2011, Zhur had a population of under 6,000 – suggesting a cancer rate of around 1%. That would be three times the worst rate in the European Union. The veteran had likely made an overestimate, but I was to hear similar disturbing stories throughout this former conflict zone.
Hidden Hazards
NATO’s use of depleted uranium (DU) in Kosovo was not confirmed until the year after the war, amid panic over ‘Balkan syndrome’. Italian peacekeepers who took over many of the bombed out Yugoslav army bases were going down with leukaemia.
In March 2000, NATO’s chief, Labour peer George Robertson, belatedly told the UN’s Kofi Annan that “approximately 31,000 rounds” of DU had been fired “throughout Kosovo during approximately 100 missions”. He said the weapon was deployed “whenever the A-10 engaged armour”, referring to the US air force’s Warthog ‘tankbuster’.
One of the most powerful aircraft ever built, the Warthog’s giant gatling gun can fire a blizzard of 30mm bullets with ultra-dense depleted uranium cores, knocking out tanks in seconds. But its speed is superior to its accuracy. Typically, 90% of rounds miss the target. They spread out over 500 square metres, burying several metres into soft ground.
Upon impact, the rounds partially vaporise and produce a dust that is dangerous for those nearby to inhale, posing a risk to surviving Serb soldiers, local communities and incoming peacekeepers.
The gatling gun on an A-10 Warthog. (Photo: Willard E. Grande II / USAF)
Lord Robertson’s admission that the weapon was used paved the way for the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and World Health Organisation (WHO) to inspect target sites – although scientists struggled to find them.
After months of intense internal chicanery over obtaining more accurate maps, they spent 24 days during 2000-1 surveying Kosovo for the twin threat posed by DU: radiation and heavy metal toxicity – which could cause cancer or birth defects.
Much hinged on their findings. A negative outcome would undermine NATO’s humanitarian credentials and hamper the return of refugees from their temporary asylum in western Europe.
Ultimately, their reports were fairly inconclusive. When the WHO came to where I was now in Zhur and the Ceja mountain, they found the “precise location of the targeted site was difficult to pinpoint since access was restricted due to the presence of unexploded cluster bombs” – another controversial weapon dropped by NATO.
This meant scientists were only able to study an area in which they found just two out of nearly 300 rounds of the depleted uranium ammunition fired here. Based on tests of this small sample, the UNEP dismissed any radiation risk but said “from a toxicological point of view the exposure might be significant.”
The experts lamented: “It is unsatisfactory that the risk cannot be assessed quantitatively because the targeted area could not be investigated in its entirety” and warned “it would be prudent to complete the investigation after the area has been made safe.”
Judging by the agricultural approach towards the blast craters that I found in Zhur, there has been no follow up survey. The UNEP’s press office confirmed to me their organisation had never returned to the site, despite their own recommendation, nor has it done any long term monitoring of the community’s health.
The NATO public affairs office in Kosovo also could not confirm it had followed up on UNEP’s recommendation to reinspect Zhur. Instead, the Atlantic alliance seized on some United Nations documents that suggested “sites with depleted uranium pose no significant health risks to the population”.
NATO told me: “This is the scientific evidence. And it has been consistent.” Yet many of these same reports urge precaution and long term monitoring – something those concerned with “scientific evidence” would surely be keen to undertake?
William Walker Road
Hoping that Zhur’s cancer crisis is a one off, I drove ten minutes down William Walker road – named after a US diplomat who paved the way for NATO’s bombing campaign – towards the mediaeval Ottoman city of Prizren.
Turning off at Rikavac roundabout opposite Kosovo’s answer to B&Q, I parked up on a derelict forecourt that looked like a graveyard for broken down trucks. It was deserted apart from a young man selling watermelons from the back of his orange flapped lorry. He was blissfully ignorant that in the space of a week in June 1999, more than 500 depleted uranium rounds were fired in this location.
The only signs of the war were three crumbling concrete walls that resembled a bombed out Serb barracks. As I stood near the site, a passerby pulled over to talk. Despite being unaware of what was fired here, he explained that 20-30 people a year were dying from cancer in his nearby village. “The state of Kosovo isn’t doing anything to help the community,” he complained, before driving away.
“This happens every time I visit a site where NATO fired depleted uranium,” my interpreter Dzafer Buzoli commented. “In all the villages nearby people will tell you about a high rate of rare cancers.”
Dzafer Buzoli at a site hit by depleted uranium rounds in Rikavac. (Photo: Phil Miller / DCUK)
Buzoli has worked for many of the international NGOs that descended on Kosovo after the war, from the Red Cross to Norwegian Church Aid.
Importantly, he is not from either side of the country’s ethnic conflict. Speaking both Serbian and Albanian, Buzoli is from the Roma minority and was heavily involved in resettling Roma refugees who the UN housed near a former lead mine, a scandal which saw hundreds of people poisoned.
He fears depleted uranium is the next tragedy for Kosovo, ever since his mother died in 2015 from a short battle with cancer aged 52. Buzoli turned to their local oncologist for answers. “He told me very informally it was because of what they had thrown at us during the war,” alluding to depleted uranium.
The doctor then emigrated from Kosovo, concerned for his family’s health.
“I asked myself what this is all about, knowing the Balkans has hard smokers and lignite power plants near our capital,” Buzoli recalled. Two sites on the outskirts of Pristina provide 97% of Kosovo’s electricity by burning ‘brown coal’, creating among the worst sources of air pollution in Europe. After spending just five days in the country, my lungs felt noticeably worse.
But Buzoli believes lignite is not the gravest health risk. “The power plants were operating at full capacity before the war and we never had this number of cancers,” he insists. “I believe depleted uranium is the cause. When you read about how hard it is for the population in Kosovo, southern Serbia and northern Albania – all these towns near the border where the weapon was fired have almost the same problem of high cancer.”
Reliable statistics are hard to obtain as Kosovo’s cancer registry was disrupted for a decade after the war, meaning there’s no accurate data from a crucial time period. The most recent official figures are from 2021 when there were 2,991 cancer patients out of a population of 1,773,971. That would suggest a cancer rate of around 0.17%, which is on par with the global average.
However, these figures do not record cancer cases in Kosovo’s ten municipalities with a Serb majority, which boycott Pristina’s healthcare system. When the population of those municipalities is removed from the total, the cancer rate is slightly higher – at 0.18% – but still not exceptional.
The director of Kosovo’s main oncology clinic in Pristina, Dr Ilir Kurtishi, warned last month that 890 new cases of cancer had been detected already this year, which local media described as “alarming”. Kurtishi was not at the clinic when I called by and did not answer questions I sent him via email. Kosovo’s health minister, Dr Arben Vitia, did not respond to a request for an interview.
A breakdown by village is not available, preventing a precise comparison with somewhere like Zhur. When mapped by municipality, Pristina has the highest number of cancer cases in the country – perhaps due to the lignite plants. Zhur falls under the area of Prizren, which has some of Kosovo’s cleanest air, and yet the second highest number of cancer cases – although when adjusted for population size, Prizren’s cancer rate is below average.
Buzoli believes many people simply don’t report their tumours to national health authorities, and instead seek alternative therapies. He said there’s a regular queue at a fountain in Albania where Kosovars believe the drinking water is particularly pure.
Drenica Valley
The day after visiting Zhur I headed west out of Pristina, leaving Bill Clinton Boulevard behind in exchange for the Drenica Valley. Flanked with forests, this KLA stronghold saw some of the fiercest fighting and earliest rebel victories. After an hour I turned off in the village of Llapushnik, which the KLA liberated from the Yugoslav army a full year before NATO intervened.
Winding through the village, whose main street is named after the rebel movement, I searched in vain for the spot where NATO fired 370 rounds of depleted uranium in June 1999. The map took me into the middle of some fields being used to grow corn.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence, which also tried to find the site, noted the NATO grid references were only accurate to “plus or minus one nautical mile” (1,852 metres). Dejected, I returned to the main road and stopped in a cafe adorned with KLA memorabilia.
Its proprietor, Migjenii, welcomed me inside. I was a little apprehensive. The WHO report said “almost all” ethnic Albanian medics they met in 2001 believed concerns about depleted uranium “were politically motivated and fuelled by those who were against the NATO intervention.”
But Migjenii was visibly relieved to hear someone was investigating cancer cases, just like the people I had met 30 miles away in Zhur. “My father was in the KLA,” he explained, plying me with free coffee. “I was six in 1999 and still remember everything. NATO fired cluster bombs from the sky. Some of the biggest battles with the Serb army were here.”
While proud of his neighbourhood’s rebel past, he was worried about their future health. “My best friend’s mum died last year from a rare lung cancer. She was 56.”
Migjenii continued to unburden: “My sister’s school friend, Labinot, died from a rare diagnosis when he was in his late 20s. And one of my relative’s wife was diagnosed with cancer five months after giving birth.
“I think more and more young people have a problem with rare diseases but the government doesn’t care about it. It’s good you are exploring this issue because we need help from other places.
“Why is cancer spreading so fast?” He asked, before offering his own answers: “This is from the war, the uranium bombs – and probably the water we buy from Serbia,” he mentioned for good measure.
Despite his community fighting so hard to liberate Kosovo, Migjenii lamented the cost of healthcare provided by his government. In communist Yugoslavia, medical treatment was free. But in capitalist Kosovo, chemotherapy is often prohibitively expensive (unless you are one of the few remaining Serbs, whose healthcare is subsidised from Belgrade).
The main clinic in Pristina is a cramped, wedge shaped, double-storey building with blue windows and grubby concrete facade. Money is so tight that when the hospital’s kitchen was renovated last year, it was funded with US military aid.
Migjenii’s friends and family face bills of hundreds of euros for simple appointments, with full treatments running into tens of thousands. They are often told to travel abroad to seek remedies at private clinics where he believes Kosovar doctors earn commission for referrals.
‘Gift that keeps giving’
Parting ways with Migjenii, I drove deeper into the Drenica valley, passing cemetery after cemetery of fallen KLA fighters with elaborate murals or mosques. Eventually I reached the steep slopes around Vraniq, where an estimated 600 kilos of depleted uranium are embedded into a sandy glacial ridge 30 metres above the village.
In June 1999, the US fired more than 2,320 depleted uranium rounds at Serb anti-aircraft batteries on the hill top. When the UN visited nearly 18 months on, their lichen sample did find “clear indications of DU contamination”.
However, they failed to locate any of the ammunition – suggesting it must have burrowed into the soft ground. The scientists suspected “some penetrators ricocheted and came to rest hundreds (or even thousands) of metres away from the top of the hill.”
Vraniq’s mosque and KLA cemetery. (Photo: Phil Miller / DCUK)
I scrambled half way up the ridge, avoiding sections where it looks like a recent landslide occurred. The view was spectacular, panning across to the carefully ploughed fields below. It dawned on me that like in Llapushnik and Zhur, many areas NATO liberated with depleted uranium are where Kosovo now relies upon to grow its food.
The irony of this was pointed out to me later in the day when I visited Decani, a Serb Orthodox monastery in the west of Kosovo surrounded by KLA heartlands. Guarded by Italian peacekeepers to protect it from attack by Albanian arsonists, the UNESCO site has survived since the 14th century.
It had a narrow escape in 1999 when NATO fired an unknown number of depleted uranium rounds at targets about half a mile up the hill from the monastery.
Inside, my guide, Branko, confirmed the monks were concerned about the possible health consequences, which have featured heavily in Serbian media. “Depleted uranium is the gift that keeps giving from the US,” he noted sarcastically. “And now they’re giving it to Ukraine, one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat.”
Gjakova
Leaving the monastery’s fragile rural tranquillity, I meandered south to the city of Gjakova, parking near St Paul’s catholic church with its tall twin spires. Just down the road is a grubby concrete yard used by cheap car washes, tire shops and a disused motor racing track.
An arch-shaped bunker is the only reminder that this was once a Serb garrison and ammunition depot, where NATO fired 300 rounds of depleted uranium.
The WHO said it was “a few hundred metres from the regional hospital and close to the last houses at the end of town. The area was totally destroyed and heavily bombed…There were (and are) people living close to this site. Of all the sites visited this is the one closest to a large populated area.”
Italian peacekeepers had conducted extensive demolition work there after the war, before discovering DU rounds in the wreckage. In the decades since, hundreds of Italian veterans who served in Kosovo have successfully sued their defence ministry for cancers their courts accepted were linked to DU exposure in the Balkans.
A Yugoslav army bunker in Gjakova was hit with depleted uranium. (Photo: Phil Miller / DCUK)
But sitting in a pizza restaurant opposite, the teenage waiters have no idea what happened there in the war. That’s despite the UNEP warning in 2001 “it is advisable to inform people about the possible presence of [DU] penetrators” in case children pick them up as toys.
Outside, workers blast cars with pressure washers, constantly causing water to run off near the site. They seem oblivious to another recommendation in the UNEP report, that the concrete should be covered with a new layer.
This was because “many penetrators may remain hidden in the ground and therefore vulnerable to solution and ultimate dispersal into the groundwater”, creating a risk that “drinking water from some nearby wells could become contaminated in the future”.
The International Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), which conducted its own study in the Balkans, said “sites may require ongoing testing of groundwater”, warning that “estimates of how long this may need to be done run into centuries”.
The group believes “no systematic decontamination has been undertaken on any sites in Kosovo”. Even if authorities in Pristina wanted to embark on that route, they may struggle to afford it.
In neighbouring Montenegro, where NATO fired depleted uranium at just one site, the clean up costs are daunting. To decontaminate 480 rounds, which took just 12 seconds to fire, Montenegro spent over a quarter of a million US dollars and devoted 5,000 working person days.
Kosovo has more than 100 such sites.
Radoniq
Six miles north of Gjakova lies Lake Radoniq, a vast reservoir that supplies drinking water for the city and many of southern Kosovo’s 200,000 inhabitants. Yet even this breathtakingly beautiful location was not spared from attack with depleted uranium.
On 7 June 1999, the US fired 655 rounds near its dam, apparently targeting Serb artillery dug into a ridge and a radio mast. When the UNEP went there, they could only recover a single round, noting the “more probable scenario that most of the penetrators are hidden in the ground means that drinking water could possibly become contaminated in the future.”
However, they felt the volume of water in the lake would dilute the uranium enough to make contamination insignificant. Hopefully they are right, because when I visited there was a luxury waterfront hotel built right on top of where the airstrike occurred.
A tourist couple from the Gulf with a young baby parked up next to me and took selfies as the sun began to set. Rather than ruin their holiday with questions about DU, I left them in peace and headed back to Pristina before it got too dark to drive safely on Kosovo’s precarious roads.
US jets fired 655 rounds of depleted uranium at this site on Lake Radoniq. (Photo: Phil Miller / DCUK)
Ferizaj
No trip to Kosovo is complete without meeting admirers of Tony Blair. To maximise my chances, one day I headed to Ferizaj, a city south of Pristina where a road is named in his honour. For good measure, the local council upgraded the street to a square.
I fully intended to pay my respects to New Labour’s supremo, but Buzoli suggested a more serious sightseeing spot. This was ten minutes drive east of Tony Blair street/square, where our map of airstrikes suggested NATO unleashed 480 rounds of DU in May 1999.
Today it’s a petrol station, school and plumbing shop. The plumber’s merchant, Bahri Hyseni, who also works as a building inspector, welcomed us inside. He spent the war sheltering in Manchester and is eternally grateful to England, asking me to convey his good wishes – not least to our former prime minister.
But Bahri was suspicious about the conflict’s legacy on local health. “My uncle recently died from a six month battle with lung cancer. He was 67 and quit smoking 15 years ago,” he conveyed. “A teacher at the school has just died from lung cancer. They were 64.”
Bahri estimated that in the last year, his village of around 400 families had lost 12 to 13 people to cancer. While the numbers might not seem exceptional, he worried there could be a connection with depleted uranium.
“NATO knew people lived here,” he pointed out. “Why would they destroy the country and leave people with cancer so long afterwards? Why did they choose Kosovo and not Belgrade?”
Although the US did fire some depleted uranium in Serbia, it was all dropped along the southern border with Kosovo and never in the capital. As a result, Kosovo accounts for the vast majority of DU fired in the Balkans.
“It was better not for NATO to intervene,” Bahri insisted, remarkably. “We would have had more casualties from gun fights, but after the war we would have had fewer people with cancer. Most of us won’t be able to live beyond 60 due to the health conditions and stress from war we lived under.
“Many young people have died from heart attacks and the families didn’t do autopsies to see what the underlying cause of death was. If they did, they might have found some were due to depleted uranium.”
He is also suspicious of what Serb doctors did to ethnic Albanian patients in 1990, finding an archive newsclip on YouTube showing children suffering from poisoning in a hospital ward. “Imagine nine years later NATO bombed us with depleted uranium. It will take decades for our health to recover.”
Keen to show us exactly where the weapon was used, Bahri calls the Hyseni family who live behind his shop. Raif, Hafez and their elderly father Ismet escorted us onto their property. “We fled to another village during the war,” Ismet explained. “When we came back, we found Serb soldiers had slept in our houses.”
The Yugoslav army stationed tanks in the fields between their homes, making them a prime target for the Warthog’s depleted uranium. As I admired his flourishing vegetable patch, Ismet let slip: “This is the spot where NATO fired. I’m very surprised to hear what type of weapon was used in my garden. But fortunately my family haven’t suffered from cancer. I don’t know about other people in the village.”
Such anecdotal evidence is all I had to go on. This site in Ferizaj – marked as target 57 on the NATO strike list – was never inspected by the World Health Organisation or UNEP, which only examined 11 out of around 100 sites in Kosovo where depleted uranium had been fired.
But at least one prestigious person had visited the area, Raif proudly assured me. It had been graced by Tony Blair on his victory lap of Kosovo.
Beau Road
If NATO really wanted to monitor the long-term impact of the weapons they fired in Kosovo, the alliance would not have to go far out of its way. A few miles from the Hyseni’s vegetable patch is the one of the largest US military bases in the world: Camp Bondsteel. Its sprawling barbed wire fences slice the horizon as far as the eye can see.
When Joe Biden called by in 2016, Kosovar authorities renamed the highway leading to the base after his late son, Beau. Meant as a tribute to Biden’s foreign policy and Beau’s stint as an attorney in Kosovo, for me it had other connotations as I drove past.
Beau served as a soldier in Iraq, where he was exposed to US military ‘burn pits’ – vast piles of smouldering trash. He died a few years later, aged 46, from an aggressive brain tumour. Biden has publicly linked his son’s death to burn pits, and passed a law last year to expand health care for millions of other veterans he believes suffer as a result.
If the US commander in chief can accept some of his military’s practices cause cancer, then why won’t he take a closer look at depleted uranium before shipping it to Ukraine?
Kosovo’s cancer cases – if connected – could just be the tip of an iceberg. For the 31,000 rounds of DU fired here, the Warthogs unleashed 783,500 rounds on Iraq in the first Gulf War.
When I told the World Health Organisation about my interviews in Kosovo, they claimed to have been reviewing the health effects of depleted uranium on local communities “for several decades” – but then confusingly said they published their report on Kosovo in 2001. Given that was less than two years after the weapon was fired, the timescales do not add up.
The agency also pointed me to another UN report it said was from 2018, but is actually dated 2016, which “concluded that there was no convincing evidence of an association between exposure to DU and clinical outcomes, including any type of cancer and congenital malformations.”
However, when I read that report, it seems that no one cited has done a long-term study of people’s health in the parts of Kosovo where the weapon was used.
Buzoli is sceptical that these international agencies which rely so much on Western funding can be impartial on such a sensitive subject. He admits he doesn’t have all the answers, but rightly insists that’s not his role.
“If you are a doctor or a scientist, please come to Kosovo to do research,” he appeals. “Take soil samples, take air samples, take water samples, and come out with a neutral report that helps us understand how bad it is.”
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Phil Miller is Declassified UK’s chief reporter. He is the author of Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes. Follow him on Twitter at @pmillerinfo
Featured image: A KLA veteran shows where fresh soil was piled on top of land hit by depleted uranium rounds. (Photo: Phil Miller / Declassified UK)
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The Pentagon inspector general found the arms Washington sent to Kiev did not undergo the required inspections. A report from the inspector general found weapons the US sent to Ukraine in the hands of criminals and on the black market.
The Arms Control Act requires the White House to establish an inspection system for weapons the US sells or gifts to third countries. The law mandates the monitoring continues to the end-use of the weapon. In Ukraine, the embassy in Kiev has been assigned responsibility for monitoring the weapons transfers.
The Department of Defense inspector general report on American weapons transfers to Ukraine from February to September of last year found that legally required monitoring was not taking place.
“The DoD is unable to conduct [End Use Monitoring] in Ukraine because completing [End Use Monitoring] in accordance with DoD policy requires in-person access to the defense equipment provided,” it said. “Intelligence methods provide some accountability for observable platforms, such as missiles and helicopters, but smaller items, such as night vision devices, have limited accountability.”
“The DoD OIG found deficiencies in the DoD’s transfer of military equipment to the Government of Ukraine requiring [End Use Monitoring], including Javelin missiles, Javelin Command Launch Units, and night vision devices; and in Ukraine’s security and accountability of US.-provided military equipment requiring [End Use Monitoring],” the report added.
In a section of the report that is heavily redacted, the inspector general listed some cases of American weapons not making it to their intended recipient. The cases that remained unredacted in the report include: a Moscow-influenced criminal organization that procured grande launchers and machine guns, a pro-Kev militia that tried to sell dozens of rifles on the black market, and a group of arms traffickers who were selling weapons and ammunition stolen from the front lines.
In response to questions about the report, a State Department spokesperson admitted that American weapons were being used for illicit purposes in Ukraine. Despite these issues, the spokesperson emphasized that Washington felt the weapons transfers were too important.
“The US government remains keenly aware of the risk of possible illicit diversion and is proactively taking steps to mitigate this risk in close cooperation with the government of Ukraine.” The spokesperson continued, “We are realistic that we are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself in an active conflict, and there is a risk these weapons could be captured if territory changes hands – which happens in any war.”
Earlier this month, the White House came out against a provision in the Pentagon funding bill that would create a special inspector general for the Ukraine aid. The inspector general for the Afghan War, John Sopko, has warned that without sufficient oversight of the weapons and money sent to Kiev, Ukraine will face many of the same problems as the Afghan government.
The demand to create an office to oversee the more than $100 billion in aid Congress has authorized sending to Ukraine has been attacked as Russian propaganda. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the head of the House Armed Services Committee, said in December that calls for more oversight of the billions of dollars the US is spending on Ukraine are “part of Russian propaganda.”
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Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman.
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The NATO Summit in Vilnius (July 11-12) signalled that there is absolutely no possibility of talks to settle the Ukraine war in a foreseeable future. The war will only intensify, as the US and its allies still hope to inflict a military defeat on Russia although that is clearly beyond their capability.
On July 14, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of US joint chiefs of staff said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “far from a failure” but the fight ahead will be “long” and “bloody”. Milley has a reputation for speaking what the White House wants to hear, no matter his professional judgment.
Indeed, on July 19, the Biden administration announced additional security assistance of about $1.3 billion for Ukraine. The Pentagon said in a statement that the announcement “represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine.” That is to say, the US will be using funds in its Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative program, which allows the administration to buy weapons from industry rather than pull from US weapons stocks.
According to the Pentagon, the latest package includes four National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and munitions; 152 mm artillery rounds; mine clearing equipment; and drones.
Meanwhile, in an ominous development, no sooner than Russia let the UN-brokered grain deal expire on July 17, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky disclosed that he had sent official letters to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan suggesting to continue the grain deal without Russia’s participation.
On the very next day, Kiev followed up with an official letter to the UN’s International Maritime Organization spelling out a new maritime corridor passing through Romania’s territorial waters and exclusive maritime economic zone in the north-western part of the Black Sea.
Evidently, Kiev acted in concert with Romania (a NATO member country where the 101st Airborne Division of the US army is deployed). Presumably, the US and NATO are in the loop while the UN’s imprimatur is being arranged.It goes without saying that the NATO has been working on a new maritime route in the Black Sea for sometime already.
This is a serious development, as it seems a precursor to involving the NATO in some way to challenge Russia’s domain dominance in the Black Sea. Indeed, the NATO’s Vilnius Summit Communiqué (July 11) had forecast that the alliance is gearing up for a vastly enhanced presence in the Black Sea region, which has been historically a Russian preserve, where its has important military bases.
The relevant para in the NATO Communiqué said:
“The Black Sea region is of strategic importance for the Alliance. This is further highlighted by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. We underline our continued support to Allied regional efforts aimed at upholding security, safety, stability and freedom of navigation in the Black Sea region including, as appropriate, through the 1936 Montreux Convention. We will further monitor and assess developments in the region and enhance our situational awareness, with a particular focus on the threats to our security and potential opportunities for closer cooperation with our partners in the region, as appropriate.” [Emphasis added.]
Four things need to be noted:
one, the Ukraine conflict has been singled out as the context; the focus is on Crimea;
two, “freedom of navigation” means an assertive US naval presence; reference to the 1936 Montreux Convention hinted at the role of Turkey, both as a NATO member country and the custodian of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits;
three, the NATO flags its intention to enhance its “situational awareness,” which as a military term involves 4 stages: observation, orientation, decision, and action. Situational awareness has two main elements, namely, one’s own knowledge of the situation and, secondly, one’s knowledge of what others are doing and might do if the situation were to change in certain ways. Simply put, the NATO surveillance of Russian activities in the Black Sea will intensify; and,
four, the NATO seeks closer cooperation with “our partners in the region” (read Ukraine).
Most certainly, a new maritime route in northwestern and western regions of the Black Sea along Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey (all of whom are NATO member countries) will cut off the Russian garrison in Transnistria (Moldava) and would boost Kiev’s capability to strike at Crimea. The NATO involvement would complicate any future Russian operations to liberate Odessa as well, which is historically a Russian city.
Apart from the huge legacy of culture and history, Odessa is a port head for the industrial products of Russia and Ukraine. The Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline (which the Ukrainian saboteurs blew up recently) is one of the best examples. The 2,471 km pipeline, the longest ammonia pipeline in the world, connected the world’s largest ammonia producer, TogliattiAzot, in Russia’s Samara region with Odessa Port.
In strategic terms, without control over Odessa, NATO cannot have force projection in the Black Sea region or hope to resurrect Ukraine as an anti-Russia outpost. Nor can NATO advance toward the Transcaucasus and the Caspian (bordering Iran) and Central Asia without dominating the Black Sea region.
And for the same reasons, Russia cannot afford to cede the Black Sea region to the NATO, either. Odessa is a vital link in any land bridge along the Black Sea coast connecting the Russian hinterland with its garrison in Transnistria, Moldova (which the US is eyeing as a potential NATO member.) In fact, Crimea’s security will be endangered if hostile forces establish themselves in Odessa. (The attack on the Kerch Bridge in October 2022 was staged from Odessa.)
Clearly, the entire US project on the new maritime route is intended to pre-empt Russia from gaining control of Odessa. It factors in the strong likelihood that with the Ukrainian offensive floundering, Russia may soon launch its counter-offensive in the direction of Odessa.
From the Russian perspective, this becomes an existential moment. The NATO has virtually encircled the Russian Navy in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea (with the induction of Sweden and Finland as members). The freedom of navigation of the Baltic Fleet and the dominance in the Black Sea, therefore, become all the more crucial for Russia to freely access the world market round the year.
Moscow has reacted strongly. On July 19, Russian ministry of defence notified that “all vessels sailing in the waters of the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports will be regarded as potential carriers of military cargo. Accordingly, the countries of such vessels will be considered to be involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the Kiev regime.”
Russia has further notified that “the north-western and south-eastern parts of the international waters of the Black Sea have been declared temporarily dangerous for navigation.” The latest reports suggest that the Black Sea Fleet of warships are rehearsing the procedure for boarding foreign ships sailing to Ukrainian waters. In effect, Russia is imposing a sea blockade of Ukraine.
In an interview with Izvestia, Russian military expert Vasily Dandykin said he would now expect Russia to stop and inspect all ships sailing to Ukrainian ports. “This practice is normal: There is a war zone there, and in the past two days it has been the scene of missile strikes. We’ll see how this will work in practice and whether there will be anyone willing to send vessels to these waters, because this is very serious.”
The White House has accused Russia of laying mines to block Ukrainian ports. Of course, Washington hopes that the NATO moving in as the guarantor of the grain corridor, replacing Russia, would have resonance in the Global South. The Western propaganda caricatures Russia as creating food scarcity globally. Whereas, the fact of the matter is that the West didn’t keep its part of the bargain reciprocally to allow the export of Russian wheat and fertiliser, as has been acknowledged by the UN and Turkey.
What remains to be seen is whether beyond the raging information war, any NATO country would dare to challenge Russia’s sea blockade. The chances are slim, the daunting deployment of the 101st Airborne Division in next-door Romania notwithstanding.
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The White House called it “unfortunate” after Israel’s parliament passed a law diminishing the powers of the courts and endorsing comprehensive reforms to overhaul the judicial system.
“As a lifelong friend of Israel, President [Joe] Biden has publicly and privately expressed his views that major changes in a democracy to be enduring must have as broad a consensus as possible,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
“It is unfortunate that the vote today took place with the slimmest possible majority,” she added.
Supported by legislatures from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist coalition government, the “Reasonable Standard Law” was approved with a 64-to-0 vote. Opposition members left the session in protest, shouting “shame” and “government of destruction” before the vote took place.
The new law abolishes Israel’s “reasonableness standard”, eliminating the Supreme Court’s ability to block government decisions it deems unreasonable.
It’s part of a package of bills proposed by the government earlier this year, seeking to overhaul the judicial system in the country.
“We understand talks are ongoing and likely to continue over the coming weeks and months to forge a broader compromise even with the Knesset in recess,” Jean-Pierre said.
“The United States will continue to support the efforts of President [Isaac] Herzog and other Israeli leaders as they seek to build a broader consensus through political dialogue.”
Disappointed Jewish Organisations
The American Jewish Committee expressed its “profound disappointment over the passage of the law”. According to a statement, the organisation said that this deepened the divisions in Israeli society as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of people who have taken to the streets.
“The continued effort to press forward on judicial reform rather than seeking compromise has sown discord within the Israeli Defense Forces at a time of elevated threats to the Jewish homeland and has strained the vital relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry,” the statement read.
“Dramatic changes to Israel’s judicial system should result from a deliberative and inclusive process that upholds the democratic values of maintaining checks and balances, respecting minority rights and civil liberties, and preserving essential judicial independence.”
The National Council of Jewish Women put out a statement saying that for the past six months, Israelis have protested in the streets, culminating in tens of thousands walking from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem over the weekend in a five-day trek.
“We believe in a secure, Jewish, and democratic Israel – and the move to limit the power of the Supreme Court’s abilities to provide checks and balances on the government undermines that vision,” the council wrote on Twitter.
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As “Oppenheimer” begins its run in theaters nationwide this week, the author of the book the film is based on, Kai Bird, and Nobel laureates have joined with survivors of U.S. nuclear weapons testing to urge Congress to rectify the harm this group has suffered.
In a letter to Congress released today, the group called for Congress to strengthen and extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA)—a program that provides financial support to people suffering from cancers and other illnesses related to exposure to radiation from the testing and production of U.S. nuclear weapons but leaves out people who lived downwind of the Trinity test site in New Mexico, along with others.
Legislation has been introduced in the House and Senate that would for the first time extend healthcare benefits and compensation to communities impacted by the test of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico, as well as downwind communities in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Guam, and cover remaining areas of Nevada, Utah and Arizona.
In addition to Bird, the Pulitzer Prize winning co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, signers include Nobel prize winning scientists Roald Hoffmann, Roger D. Kornberg and Martin Chalfie; Dr. Buu Nygren, President of the Navajo Nation, which is home to many downwinders and former uranium workers; engineer and science educator Bill Nye; groups representing people who lived downwind of nuclear weapons tests; veterans who cleaned up test sites; uranium miners; and leaders in the peace and security field.
The letter was coordinated by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and will continue to collect signatures.
“‘Oppenheimer’ provides an opportunity for some public scrutiny of nuclear weapons’ legacy,” said Lilly Adams, senior outreach coordinator in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “People who lived downwind of the Trinity test are, right now, fighting for recognition and compensation for the harms they and their loved ones suffered. RECA is a valuable program with bipartisan support, but too many people are left out—Trinity test survivors and many others. These are our neighbors: veterans, farmers, ranchers, miners, families from across the country who have gotten sick or have lost loved ones. Downwinders have been fighting for justice for decades, and they cannot wait any longer. We need Congress to act now.”
RECA currently limits compensation to Downwinders who lived in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona when above-ground nuclear tests were conducted between 1945 and 1962, despite studies indicating the radioactive fallout and radiation reached several states in the Mountain West. Many groups of uranium miners are also excluded, including any workers employed after 1971.
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Featured image: A US Air Force commander simulates launching a nuclear weapon during a test. Nuclear command and control systems already incorporate various forms of automation. As countries build new systems, will they insert more artificial intelligence? Credit: US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Christopher Ruano.
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Senator Gerard Rennick is an Australian politician, who is in the Liberal National Party of Queensland since July 2019.
We are all used to the Government lying but in my view this has to be one of the biggest lies of all.
The World Health Organisation has told governments to code deaths to Covid even if the virus was not identified in an autopsy and even if it was not medically correct.
“Although both categories, U07.1 (COVID-19, virus identified) and U07.2 (COVID-19, virus not identified) are suitable for cause of death coding, it is recognized that in many countries detail as to the laboratory confirmation of COVID-19 will NOT be reported on the death certificate. In the absence of this detail, it is recommended, for mortality purposes only, to code COVID-19 provisionally to U07.1 unless it is stated as “probable” or “suspected”.
The international rules and guideline for selecting the underlying cause of death for statistical tabulation apply when COVID-19 is reported on a death certificate but, given the intense public health requirements for data, COVID-19 is not considered as due to, or as an obvious consequence of, anything else in analogy to the coding rules applied for INFLUENZA. Further to this, there is no provision in the classification to link COVID-19 to other causes or modify its coding in any way.
With reference to section 4.2.3 of volume 2 of ICD-10, the purpose of mortality classification (coding) is to produce the most useful cause of death statistics possible. Thus, whether a sequence is listed as ‘rejected’ or ‘accepted’ may reflect interests of importance for public health rather than what is acceptable from a purely medical point of view. Therefore, always apply these instructions, whether they can be considered medically correct or not. Individual countries should not correct what is assumed to be an error, since changes at the national level will lead to data that are less comparable to data from other countries, and thus less useful for analysis.”
Let’s not forget authorities in Australia wouldn’t recognise someone as being vaccinated until 21 days after the jab, meaning that many of the vaccine injured or deaths had their injury correlated to Covid not the jab.
This World Health Organization document quoted above proves that the world public health leadership at the WHO faked death reports during the pandemic. This was designed to overestimate the death rate worldwide.
The document also “teaches” physicians and hospitals to code for COVID-19, even when the cause of death may have been something else. Note that in the WHO examples below, a positive COVID-19 test is not necessary for listing COVID-19 as the cause of death.
The first example from the document shows that if there is a positive test, the death certificate should be labelled as such. Without such labelling, there would not have been a positive test. This is what a positive COVID-19 test would look like on a death certificate.
The example above documents that despite the fact that this patient had Coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, and COP – WHO advises that on the death certificate, COVID-19 be listed as the primary cause of death. Even without a positive test.
In another example, the patient had cerebral palsy – a disease that is associated with extremely high childhood death rates, yet without a positive test – that child was listed as a COVID-19 death.
Likewise, this last example shows that a patient with HIV- and no positive test would be listed a COVID-19 death.
In the USA, this appears to get even more nefarious.
Due to the CARES act, medicare paid hospitals a 20% “add-on” to the regular payment for COVID-19 patients. Remember that the people who became sick from COVID were generally the elderly and on medicare. Ergo: the incentive to put people on ventilators. There was a financial incentive to put people on ventilators and yet ventilators contributed to many of the COVID-19 deaths.
It is less clear if hospitals actually received a payment from a government agency for a positive COVID-19 cause of death on the certificate (if anyone can find an actual government document stating that, I would love to see it).
Here is the NIH protocol for treating COVID-19 which hospitals were encouraged not to deviate from:
Note that remdesivir is still considered the main drug of choice for treating COVID-19 by the NIH, even in many patients with mild to moderate disease. Yet this drug is known for causing renal failure and significantly higher rates of death in various patient populations, such as those receiving high flow oxygen. Yet, the NIH guidelines above STILL recommend remdesivir for patients on high flow oxygen.
Do they want to kill people? It sure seems that way.
Revisiting this information is important, given that the WHO was and is encouraging countries throughout the world to code for COVID-19 deaths, even when some of those deaths most likely weren’t caused by COVID.
So, not only was the death rate over estimated worldwide, in the USA at least, ventilation and remdesivir were strongly “encouraged” by the government. The NIH was using treatment protocols that were intentionally or not, designed to kill people. These are strong words. Physicians were not allowed to deviate from these government protocols. Protocols that killed people.
This has led to a general mistrust of public health and rightly so.
It is evil to fake deaths to cause the mortality rates of COVID-19 to spike.
It is evil to force physicians to use protocols that were not clinically tested or proven to be effective.
Our public health system is broken worldwide and it is only getting worse.
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Featured image is from NaturalNews.com
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
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July 22, 2023 – Perth, Australia – 24 year old Krystal Pitt collapsed while lining up at a local post office just 10 days after giving birth to her 2nd child, and died in hospital a few days later (click here).
Translation:
Krystal is presumed to have been COVID-19 vaccinated.
She went into premature labor and had a baby 4 weeks before due date (first red flag – vaccinated women have a higher risk of going into premature labor)
She then developed pulmonary embolism (blood clots in her lungs) which caused her cardiac arrest 10 days after delivery (second red flag – too many vaccinated women are developing blood clots after delivery)
In the hospital, she was put on blood thinners and placed into an induced coma (third red flag – the cardiac arrest appears to have been unusually severe)
During her hospital stay, “while her prognosis was initially positive, her health quickly deteriorated before she died in hospital…from blood clots that had formed in her lungs and triggered the cardiac arrest” (fourth red flag – the blood thinners doctors were treating her with didn’t work and she died from the blood clots in the lungs – vaccinated patients have treatment resistant blood clots).
Another news story confirms that doctors were trying to stabilize her and treat her blood clots but were unsuccessful (click here).
Other Cases
July 14, 2023 – Lubbock, TX – 19 year old Ariana Nicole Sanchez gave birth to a baby girl who weighed 10 pounds 6 ounces and died suddenly during delivery. No explanation. (click here)
May 15, 2023 – Perth, Australia – 36 year old Monika Mann died 7 days after giving birth to twins. She arrived at ER “unresponsive” and was declared dead (click here).
May 2, 2023 – 32 yo Olympic sprinter Tori Bowie was found dead alone in bed after wellness check, was 8 months pregnant and was “undergoing labor” when she was found deceased. (click here)
March 25, 2023 – New York, 28 year old Samantha Dannecker died unexpectedly while giving birth to her first child, a baby girl (click here).
Jan. 10, 2023 – 31 year old April Valentine had an emergency c-section for her daughter on Jan. 9, complained of pain the following day and died suddenly, while her boyfriend performed CPR on her (click here)(click here).
Nov. 8, 2022 – Newtown, PA – 30 year old teacher Jennifer Krasna died suddenly only days after giving birth to her second son (click here).
Oct. 24, 2022 – Texas – 29 year old Krystina Pacheco suffered septic shock. Two days after giving birth to a girl, she developed shortness of breath, vomiting, stomach pains, was hospitalized with septic shock. Sedated for 2 weeks she nearly died and had to have her hands and feet amputated (click here).
Feb. 1, 2022 – UK – 41 year old Amber Pendlebury delivered a baby boy, then cried out “I can’t breathe”, had two cardiac arrests and died shortly after (click here).
“She was supposed to go in for a c-section in the morning, and when she got there, she decided she wanted to do a natural birth.
“So they induced her, but she’d been on the drip for the inducement for at least ten hours, and she was only 4cm dilated, which is not good. They later said they’d have to do a caesarian section, but said they’d have to put her to sleep while they did it.”
Doctors were bringing the mum round when she had a series of sudden heart attacks and never caught a glimpse of her baby before she collapsed.
Vida added: “Doctors delivered the little baby, who was 6 pounds, 2 ounces. But she never saw him, as when she woke up, she said, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe! My chest is on fire, my chest is on fire!”
“That’s all her partner heard her say, and then she was whisked away.”
On January 26, the family received the news that Amber was on a life support machine.
Aug. 6, 2021 – Florida – 30 year old Kristen McMullen had an emergency C-section on July 27 and was transferred to ICU. Because she had tested positive for COVID she was placed on ventilator on Aug. 6, 2021 and died the SAME DAY. Killed by hospital protocols? (click here)
I have written two substack articles already on COVID-19 vaccinated women dying shortly after delivery:
May 25, 2023 – Pregnant women continue to die unexpectedly (8 recent deaths)
April 15, 2023 – Pregnant women having heart attacks, strokes and dying (15 cases)
My Take…
US Obstetrician and Maternal Fetal Medicine expert with 44 years experience Dr.James Thorp and I have been raising alarms about the extreme dangers of COVID-19 mRNA vaccination in pregnancy. (click here)(click here)
COVID-19 vaccines ARE NOT SAFE IN PREGNANCY. They were never studied for safety in pregnancy.
COVID-19 vaccines significantly increase risks to the pregnant mother, especially during labor and shortly after giving birth. Some of the outcomes are catastrophic.
In many such cases, these risks are from blood clots – pulmonary embolism, but also cardiac arrests, strokes and infections since COVID-19 vaccines severely damage the immune system of the mother, increasing risks of various infections that could lead to sepsis and septic shock.
These sudden deaths of new mothers are being covered up right now as health authorities continue to lie to pregnant women about COVID-19 vaccines being “safe” at all stages of pregnancy.
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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense
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
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***
One might think that since Honest Joe Bidendeclared his latest war entitled the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism in May the media has certainly taken up the task of exposing evil in these United States by reporting every affront to Jewish groups or individuals and to the Jewish state, Israel. The purpose is to invent a narrative suggesting that the world’s richest and most powerful ethno-religious demographic is somehow a perpetual victim and that goes double for Israel, explaining and forgiving the apartheid state’s occupying army’s targeting and killing of 55 journalists and its murder of more than 150 Palestinian civilians so far this year, including the sniper shooting of a Palestinian two-year-old boy in the head. In spite of all that carnage, a wealthy Israel, which can afford to provide free health care and university education to its citizens, continues to receive nearly $4 billion in military aid plus billions more in trade and charitable benefits from the United States taxpayer annually, totaling more than $300 billion since the Jewish state was founded in 1948.
We have lately been treated to a massive propaganda campaign orchestrated by the likes of the notorious American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL). One wonders why organizations like that which work closely with the Israeli government are not required to register with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), but to question that relationship got John F. Kennedy killed, so it is probably best to look the other way.
The role of organizations like ADL and AIPAC, dedicated to spreading lies about the Middle East and the world in general, is in part to convince the American public that Israel is really a wonderful place that is threatened by the Arab “terrorists,” as they choose to put it for obvious reasons. This grants Israel blanket immunity whenever its government exercises the “right to defend itself” doing whatever it takes, including blowing up schools and hospitals and attacking its neighbors. An astonishing bill being promoted by extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir currently under consideration in Israel’s Knesset would grant complete immunity for soldiers and policemen who shoot dead Palestinians or foreigners, effectively granting “license to kill.” Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Tony Blinken might consider that as “self-defense” if asked and, oh yeah, so might our self-declared Zionist president Honest Joe.
And ADL and AIPAC and all the other groups constantly bleat how there is also a broader threat of surging antisemitism and even the abomination of holocaust denial wherever one chooses to look. Conveniently, Israel, without being held accountable, can imprison, beat, torture, and kill as many Palestinians as it wishes while also stealing their land and other property, depriving them of their livelihoods and of their very right to spend their own lives in peace. The persistent drive to make Israel into an all-Jewish apartheid state that is illegally incorporating what was supposed to have been a Palestinian state is hardly hidden, and, as it includes shooting and making homeless those under occupation who in any way resist, it is actually both a genocide and a war crime.
Virtually every international organization that has looked into the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, to include Israeli human rights groups, has denounced in the strongest terms the inhuman behavior that has become normal. So why don’t Congress and the American media get it since they are so ready to exploit the essentially bogus narratives of crimes against humanity that are being floated to justify going to war with Russia? If war crimes and crimes against humanity are the metric that one measures by in Biden’s “rules based international order” there is no country on earth that is more deserving of being invaded and sorted out than Israel, unless it is the warmongering United States itself.
Recently we Americans have been treated to several iterations of the “Israel is good” contrived narrative, a tale that includes how both the US and the Jewish state share an “unbreakable bond” because both nations were “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” And the two nations also are allegedly linked by the “shared values” nonsense, which does not apply if one is either a Red Indian, a black slave, or a Palestinian of either Christian or Muslim persuasion. Indeed, even observant Jews in Israel who are not practicing according to the Orthodox beliefs are subjected to various restrictions on their personal lives, including how they must conform to marry, and suffer from an inability to practice their religious choice openly.
We have recently experienced a visit to the White House and an address to a joint session of Congress by Israel’s head of state President Isaac Herzog which was preceded by a vote in Congress on a bill introduced by Republicans declaring that Israel “is not a racist or apartheid state” and adding that the United States “will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.” The vote abjuring Israel of all misbehavior passed by an overwhelming 412-9-1 vote. The nine “no” votes and one abstention were from Progressive Caucus Democrats, which features Pramila Jayapal as the chairwoman: Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Andre Carson, Delia Ramirez and Ayanna Pressley. Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota, who has submitted a bill blocking US aid to Israel that is used to imprison Palestinian children, voted “present.”
Jayapal, who said recently accurately that “Israel is a racist state,” was rewarded with a torrent of criticism from her own party, to include a rare joint statement from House Democratic leadership rejecting her remarks plus also a separate statement signed by 43 Democratic Party colleagues who said they were “deeply concerned” about her “unacceptable” views. She consequently apologized effusively before flipping and supporting the resolution. And every other Democrat and all the Republicans voted “yes.” A day later, three House Republicans filed a censure motion against Jayapal for having the temerity to call Israel “racist.” That basically confirms the hypothesis that Israel could shit on the heads of the clowns in Congress and the recipients would applaud the act and beg for more. Jayapal is now focusing on more congenial issues like climate change.
Of course, the bill in Congress is a lie and a denial of reality. Israel is by self-definition legally a Jewish state which makes it both racist and apartheid in structure towards its non-Jewish citizens and also to the Palestinians who have the misfortune of living in areas under Israeli occupation. The recent atrocities against the Palestinian victims have not passed unnoticed even if the Jewish dominated US media has attempted to mitigate what is reported. In fact, many Democrats no longer buy into the Israel narrative. Mondoweiss reports how “A University of Maryland Critical Issues poll from earlier this year found that 44% of Democratic voters believe Israel is ‘a state with segregation similar to apartheid.’ That survey mirrors a number of public opinion studies that have been released recently… 49% of the Democratic voters polled said they sympathize with Palestinians, compared to just 38% who said they sympathize with Israelis.” Another recent poll indicated that 80% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans, in absence of a two-state solution to Israel-Palestine, “would choose a democratic Israel that’s no longer Jewish, over a Jewish Israel without full citizenship and equality for non-Jewish people living under its authority.”
Attempting to address the growing uneasiness of many Americans over the issue of Israel and Palestinian rights, Herzog basically told congress that criticism of Israel is a freedom of speech right but that it should not veer over into antisemitism. Unfortunately, his logic is a bit on the thin side as the definition of antisemitism used by the US government and the media coined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) includes criticism of Israel, making attacking Israeli regarding its ghastly behavior ipso facto antisemitism.
Herzog also lied his way through his preferred analysis of what drives the bilateral relationship with Washington as well as civil liberties and other rights in his own country, saying “We are proud to be the United States’ closest partner and friend. When the United States is strong, Israel is stronger. And when Israel is strong, the United States is more secure.” How exactly the US is made more secure by Israeli destabilizing of the Middle East was not made clear, but Herzog went on with another series of lies explaining how Israel “takes pride in its vibrant democracy, its protection of minorities, human rights and civil liberties, as laid down by its parliament, the Knesset, and safeguarded by its strong Supreme Court and independent judiciary.”
Nothing Herzog said was actually true and he forgot to mention the political donations from Jewish sources and the friendly Jewish media coverage that binds most American politicians to Israel. In recent electoral cycles, Jewish donations dominated in both parties and candidates were rightfully fearful of not saying and doing enough when it comes to Israel. But to really appreciate the deep hole of corruption that the United States is in with Israel and its friends in The Lobby calling the shots even when the narrative is so transparently false, it is best to quote the New York Timesaccount of the revelry in the House of Representatives Chamber as Herzog spoke: “The reception for Mr. Herzog in the packed House chamber was staunchly supportive, with frequent standing ovations by the assembled lawmakers, including when he decried Palestinians for destroying the prospects for peace by supporting terror attacks against Israel.” Another big lie and the inevitable standing ovations from the Congress critters. We are in deep trouble when our Solons on Capitol Hill cannot appear to discern a series of self- serving lies by a foreign leader which do nothing but impoverish and do damage to the United States and its people. Indeed, the clowns applaud what they are hearing. It is the tragedy of our times, perhaps the final tragedy.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
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***
On July 19, several media sources reported that airstrikes were carried out against what was claimed to be the bases of the Islamist group fighting the central government in the Horn of Africa state of Somalia.
The attacks were coordinated and implemented by the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) with the assistance of the western trained forces of the Somalian National Army (SNA).
In a report published by the Voice of America (VOA), it notes that:
“AFRICOM said the strike was in support of Somali National Army forces fighting al-Shabab. The strike came at the request of the federal government of Somalia, the statement added. AFRICOM said it will continue to assess the results of Wednesday’s (July 19) operation and will provide additional information ‘as appropriate.’ The Somali government has been fighting al-Shabab militants since 2006. The group was removed from major cities but continues to control vast areas in the countryside. In August 2022, the Somali army, supported by self-mobilized local fighters, launched a military offensive that seized parts of central Somalia from the militant group. The militants have struck back, raiding military bases and inflicting heavy losses on government forces in the south and central regions.”
Apparently in response to the bombing of the previous week, on July 24, a military training facility of the SNA was attacked by a suicide bomber resulting significant casualties and physical damage. This continuing conflict in Somalia can be traced back to the persistent interference in the internal affairs of the country by successive administrations in Washington and their allies.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, redeployed hundreds of Pentagon troops from AFRICOM to Somalia during the early phase of his tenure in office. This policy decision was carried out after his predecessor, President Donald Trump, had withdrawn soldiers from Somalia prior to his leaving office in early 2021.
AFRICOM has been operating on the continent for the last 15 years while the level of instability has increased in several geopolitical regions. In West Africa, states such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Conakry, Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) have experienced military coups and insurgencies despite the joint military operations and training programs sponsored by AFRICOM and other NATO countries.
Regarding the latest insurgent attack in Somalia, US News reported:
“A suicide bomber killed at least 30 soldiers and wounded scores more inside a military academy in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Monday (July 24), two military sources said, in an attack claimed by the al-Shabaab militant group. A military campaign launched by government forces and allied militiamen last year has forced the al Qaeda-linked group from large swathes of territory in southern Somalia, but the militants have continued to stage deadly raids. In recent weeks, with the military campaign against them stalled as the army prepares a second phase of the offensive, al-Shabaab fighters have stepped up their attacks. In late May, they killed at least 54 Ugandan peacekeepers at a base south of Mogadishu. They laid siege to Baidoa, one of the country’s largest cities for nearly two weeks. And they have staged a series of raids in Mogadishu this month. The bombing on Monday targeted the Jale Siyaad military academy.”
Imperialist Militarism and Food Insecurity
Somalia has been the focus of U.S. foreign policy initiatives going back to the latter years of the 1970s when the administration of former President Jimmy Carter encouraged the-then government of General Mohamed Siad Barre to intervene in the Ogaden region of neighboring Ethiopia. At this time, the U.S. was waging a destabilization campaign against the socialist-oriented administration of Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam in Addis Ababa.
Since the late 1970s, there have been ongoing attempts to remake Somalia and the entire Horn of Africa region in the political image of U.S. imperialism. With the present alarms sounded over threats of hunger and famine, Washington has paid very limited attention to their role in the developing crisis.
In fact, the problems of food deficits have been aggravated by the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against the Russian Federation. The suspended Black Sea grain deal is already negatively impacting the African Union (AU) member-states with their 1.3 billion people.
Although western media reports following the line of the administration in Washington, categorically blames and condemns Russia for the suspension of the Black Sea grain deal, an idea advanced and implemented at the aegis of the AU leadership and the government of Turkey. Contrastingly, President Vladimir Putin of Russia has said that he will continue to supply grain to AU member-states blaming the draconian sanctions imposed by NATO governments for the present situation.
East Africa food insecurity map
Climate change has caused severe weather events including drought, cyclones and flooding in states as far south as Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Madagascar. On an international scale, the western industrialized capitalist governments have attempted to dominate the annual United Nations Climate conferences, blocking key resolutions which would provide assistance for developing regions to transition from a reliance on fossil fuels and other forms of pollutants.
In Kenya recently, the opposition party of former presidential candidate Raila Odinga have staged demonstrations which turned violent prompted by the rise in taxes. Several governments including large oil producers such as Nigeria and Angola have eliminated fuel subsidies causing sharp increases in prices.
However, the acute food deficits have been documented in Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. United Nations agencies and other humanitarian organizations have published several reports on their activities in East Africa.
One organization known as World Vision said in a recent document that it has reached over 10 million people providing food assistance throughout the region, half of whom were children, over the last two years. A combination of climate change, internal and cross-border western-inspired conflicts, the post-pandemic economic crises and the escalating war in Eastern Europe, has resulted in the present conjuncture.
World Vision’s East Africa Hunger Emergency Response Situation Report #23, published in May emphasizes:
“In the face of unprecedented global demands for humanitarian funding, crises in East Africa are receiving limited international attention, despite urgent, growing and life-threatening needs. World Vision is calling on national governments, regional institutions, humanitarian actors and donors to urgently address the hunger crisis in Eastern Africa and more forcefully communicate its breadth and severity. This is not peculiar to this region as the world is facing its worst hunger crisis in modern times. In Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, there are more than 49 million people at risk of starvation or vulnerable to famine or famine-like conditions.”
The world’s leading capitalist state in Washington is at present preoccupied with its failing proxy war in Ukraine. Biden in his reelection bid for 2024, touts the official low jobless rate and the rising profits of the ruling class.
Nonetheless, there are many people within the U.S. and around the globe plagued by rising prices impacting their capacity to purchase food, energy resources, healthcare and housing. Social programs enacted during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic expanding unemployment payments, Medicaid and housing subsidies have expired. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) allocations have been drastically reduced due to the inaction of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.
This undeclared war on the impoverished millions within the U.S. and billions throughout the world coincides with the imperialist war drive against Moscow, the People’s Republic of China, the Islamic Republic of Iran and any other state and political entity which does not follow the dictates of the White House. Concerns about the events on the warfront in Ukraine are routinely ignored and dismissed by the Biden administration.
Consequently, the Pentagon war budget represents a major impediment in adopting any real solutions to burgeoning food insecurity in various geopolitical regions of the world. Therefore, the movement to defeat imperialism also represents the struggle to produce and distribute enough food needed for the well-being of people throughout the planet.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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***
Author of more than 50 books, Dr. David Ray Griffin has been compared to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King for his courage and dedication to seeking truth.
Griffin was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace prize, and was named in 2009 by the New Statesman as “one of the 50 people who matter today.”
His final book, a chilling yet deeply moving page-turner with over 500 references, recounts the history of US global domination strategies of “democracy promotion.”
A world-famous theologian, Griffin died in November, 2022, amidst media silence: As seen below, he was far too dangerous to be remembered in an obituary.
“America on the Brink,” which he completed from his death-bed, has now been published six months after his passing.
Its foreword, “In Homage,” by Princeton University Professor emeritus of international law, Dr. Richard Falk, refers to Griffin as “one of the most important thinkers and public intellectuals of our time.”
Falk suggests that the legacy media sadly ignored Griffin’s death because his worldwide stature as a theologian would have given credibility to his 12 scholarly books on 9/11.
One of these, “The New Pearl Harbor Revisited,” was named “pick of the week” by the leading-edge Publishers Weekly in 2008 (only 51 books a year receive this distinction. PW is widely read by most publishers, libraries, and bookstores.) Predictably, all other reviewers remained silent.
Now, while not overly long or complex, Griffin’s readable “America on the Brink” exposes, on one hand, the US propaganda crusades to “protect” sovereign democracies from imagined Communist threats. On the other hand, it reveals the deadly, secret US military coups that have killed untold numbers of civilians while remaining mostly in the shadows. The grisly 2002-03 Bush-Cheney tactics against Saddam Hussein in Iraq (who had been earlier financed by the US) are particularly abhorrent.
Worse was the systematic destruction of successful, bustling Libya in 2011, following the country’s nationalization of its oil industry and its development as a modern, educated nation. (Notably, Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s move towards a gold-backed currency would have weakened the US dollar.)
Not only was Gaddafi shot dead during the US/NATO involvement, but his national man-made irrigation river, which had given all of Libya self-sufficiency in agriculture, was obliterated.
Prior to 1989, before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of America as the single unipower, US regime-change operations had been limited to sovereign nations such as Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil, Panama, Vietnam, Greece, and Indonesia (each of which is summarized in this book).
But during negotiations after the fall of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact alliance, Russia stressed that a one-sided expansion of the surviving US-led NATO alliance would constitute a serious existential threat to Russia.
In response, the US promised in 1990 not to extend NATO “one inch eastward” than it was at that time.
However, by 1998, the US Senate had given approval to add Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to NATO.
Griffin quotes the response of America’s top expert on Russia, historian and diplomat George F. Kennan:
“I think NATO expansion is the beginning of a new cold war…I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else…I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime. Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia…”
Heedlessly, however, the United States has sought over time, using Ukraine as its “torpedo,” to engineer regime change militarily via NATO (whose Supreme Commander has always been a 4-star US general) and US weapons:
first, in the violent US-backed coup of 2014
second, in an 8-year war on the two Russian-speaking Donbass republics, and
third, in the US-provoked war of 2022-23.
The US Government/CIA/NATO have also funded and trained the Ukrainian right-wing extremist neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which carried out the tragic Odessa massacre in 2014.
In 2022, the US pledged to “move heaven and earth” to help Ukraine – yet there has been no diplomacy towards a goal of saving Ukrainian lives during a war in which “Ukraine does the dying; America does the supplying.”
Meanwhile, US-backed television-star-turned-President Volodymyr Zelensky has accumulated millions that are invested in the shadowy Pandora Papers financial system, and owns an 11-bedroom 3-storey mansion in South Florida.
Griffin reports that in March 2022, in a faux pas that made US news, President Biden publicly exclaimed about Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
It is clear from this evidence of regime change that the American aim has not been “to spare Ukraine, but to ruin Russia.”
Throughout all this, the US information warfare capability (for example, American reporters attending the staged propaganda Bucha massacre in 2022) is unmatched because it controls the Internet gatekeepers of content, such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia.
Conversely, omission by Western media of the key causes of the Russian invasion has been likened to “describing a chessboard with only black pieces.”
The full truth can be found in the Global South, where 88% of the world’s population does not align with Washington on the Ukraine issue.
In summary, US unipolar strategy has attempted to run the world from one country, thereby sacrificing vision and support for a collaborative world in which small countries retain individuality and partnerships without interference.
Alternatively, in October 2022, President Putin referred to a “symphony of human civilization,” in which nobody thinks their sound is the best.
Cited independent Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone puts it best:
The strongest argument for a multipolar world is that maintaining a unipolar one necessarily requires endless violence and continually escalating nuclear brinkmanship. It is literally unsustainable. There’s no valid reason nations can’t just get along and collaborate toward the greater good of humanity without one of them trying to dominate the others. The unipolarist impulse to rule the earth stops this peaceful and collaborative world from emerging. There is no “Pax Americana.” Unipolarism is the opposite of peace.”
Griffin concludes:
“The true story about Ukraine is so terrible that every effort has been made to try to block every avenue of truth which would enable most Americans to see the falsity of Biden’s claims. In short, the American government is resorting to fascism to defend democracy.”
This book review only scratches the surface of the US atrocities abroad that are revealed in Griffin’s final work – about which most Americans (if they were allowed to know about them) would hang their heads in shame.
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Elizabeth Woodworth is highly engaged in climate change science and activism. She has published 42 articles on Global Research, is co-author of “Unprecedented Climate Mobilization”, “Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival,” and co-producer of the COP21 video “A Climate Revolution For All.” She is author of the popular handbook on nuclear weapons activism, “What Can I Do?” and the novel, “The November Deep”. For 25 years, she served as head medical librarian for the BC Government. She holds a BA from Queen’s and a Library Sciences Degree from UBC.
She is a regular contributor to Global Research.
America on the Brink: How US Foreign Policy Led to the War in Ukraine
By David Ray Griffin
Publisher: Clarity Press (May 20, 2023)
Paperback: 271 pages
ISBN-10: 1949762726
ISBN-13: 978-1949762723
The American government, through its media, has convinced most Americans to support the Ukrainian government. This books shows why this is a mistake: The United States promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward”; and there had been ample warnings, by George Kennan and others, that moving NATO eastward, especially moving into Georgia and Ukraine, would cause problems for Russia.
In Ukraine prior to 2014, Ukrainian and Russian speakers were coexisting tolerably well. But in 2013 and 2014, neocons in Obama’s administration engineered a coup, with help from neo-Nazis, turning Ukraine into a Russia-hating nation. The war in Ukraine began that year (not in 2022, when Russia attacked in order to protect the Russian-speaking regions under attack by the new coup government in Kiev).
Although this book is primarily about the war in Ukraine, it also shows how, in one sense, the war in Ukraine is simply one more instance in the trajectory of American imperialism. as illustrated by previous US interventions in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil, Greece, Dominican Republic, Panama and Iraq.
In another sense, this war reveals just how committed America is to maintaining a unipolar world order: Because this war illustrates that America is willing to threaten nuclear holocaust. it is almost as if people in the U.S. State Department and military believe that life is not worth living unless the US can control the world.
With the seemingly endless fear-generating narratives of the corporate-owned mass media in relation to catastrophic CO2-induced climate change; virus pandemics; nuclear war; or whatever else they can come up with to keep you shivering under your sheets – is it any wonder that stress and so-called mental health issues have been in ‘pandemic’ mode?
Garnet was in need of a kidney transplant, which he was denied due to his vaccination status. Garnet’s referral to a transplant centre was denied, meaning he wasn’t even considered for a place on an organ donation list.
We have to keep in mind that a term and notion of security usually implies a kind of sense of protection and safety from different possible harms coming from “outside”. Therefore, it can be generally acceptable and understandable that the states want to protect their own territories by expanding great resources in making their territorial safe.
A bit over half a century ago, the United States under the Nixon administration sent its then-State Secretary Henry Kissinger to China in order to exploit the infamous Sino-Soviet split that nearly escalated into a full-blown war between Moscow and Beijing.
Already on March 29, Earle Mack, former US ambassador to Finland, writing in a piece for The Hill, described the current confrontation as proxy attrition warfare, that is one which seeks military victory by wearing down the enemy. He worried that Ukraine seemed bound to tire out first. Things have not gotten much better for Kiev, so far.
Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), gathered Saudi journalists in Riyadh in December to say that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been an ally for decades, but had stabbed Saudi Arabia in the back, and threatened a response.
There is no lack of money in the US movie industry. They constantly make one expensive movie after another. Mission Impossible No. 4002 and counting – Indiana Jones No. 284733 and counting. Super Hero movie no. 3 million and counting. Disney nobody-cares movie number gazillion.
US officials are growing tired of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky making endless demands for Western support, writes Douglas MacKinnon, a former adviser for policy and communications at the Pentagon, in an op-ed for The Hill. Even without MacKinnon’s insight, it is evident that Western leaders are becoming weary of Zelensky’s demands, as seen at the recent NATO Summit in Lithuania and the aftermath of the event.
In the last decades, great power rivalries and competition have characterised contemporary Africa, popularly termed as the new scramble for Africa. Within the context of the emerging multipolar world and the current Russia-Ukraine crisis, majority of African States are seemingly maintaining their strategic autonomy.
The US has created a permanent new pandemic agency called the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy in anticipation of future pandemics and the Decade of Vaccines. President Joe Biden has appointed a retired Air Force general to take charge of spearheading the project.
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This video is from 2021.
Cops in Toronto thrashed homeless people camping in a public park and arrested protesters who supported them. Despite his record of commenting on protests all over the world, PM Justin Trudeau is yet to condemn what happened in Toronto.
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With the seemingly endless fear-generating narratives of the corporate-owned mass media in relation to catastrophic CO2-induced climate change; virus pandemics; nuclear war; or whatever else they can come up with to keep you shivering under your sheets – is it any wonder that stress and so-called mental health issues have been in ‘pandemic’ mode? The modern-day solution to such problems is to go to your doctor, and he prescribes some ‘bio-pharmaceutical pills’ that he probably does not know the actual ingredients of. If the pills do not numb your worries, the doctor will happily send you to ‘mental health services’, where a psychologist or psychiatrist gives you a diagnosis and all the pharmaceutical ‘help’ you need. This ‘pop a pill’ process has become ingrained in modern society.
Even many school kids and students today are on a daily regime of behaviour control pills or antidepressants. God forbid your children display normal behaviour of energetic play and discovery. Now our kids are supposed to be docile automatons of the new world order technocracy – to sit in class and learn nonsense that CO2 is killing the planet, accept fake science and fake history, and that we must be vaccinated to survive the next ‘plandemic’. Such misinformation amounts to child abuse.
The book Godless Fake Science and the previous article Godless Fake Science demonstrate that much of the scientific narrative we have been taught from our school days onwards, is based on falsehood, and that the institution of ‘science’ itself has in many ways been hijacked by financial interests seeking to advance their own narrative and agenda. This article asks the question does modern-day psychiatry belong to the category of fake science?
‘Psyche’ means ‘of the soul’. Therefore, the discipline of psychology should really involve the study or ‘the science of the soul’. The original (not altered versions) of the ancient scriptures of the world have already described the science of the soul in great detail. In contrast to this ancient wisdom for human wellbeing, modern day psychology and psychiatry is steeped in the profit-making and drug-pushing agendas of bio-pharmaceutical corporations. It appears to me modern-day psychiatry has more to do with corporate profits and behaviour control than real science or real mental health.
The reality is that no medical test exists for any so-called “mental disorder”. Psychiatrists, medical doctors, and psychologists worldwide prescribe many different drugs based on same symptoms. This is unscientific.
An example of the potentially detrimental impact of this subjectiveness was recounted to me some years ago when I happened to meet a clearly intelligent man who had worked as a scientist for a state agency of the Government of Ireland. This man had been detained against his will due to a single opinion, that of the family doctor, in circumstances that appeared to be contentious, and was committed as an involuntary patient to a mental institute. He described to me some of the horrors of the experience and that, whilst he was detained, he was force-fed pharmaceutical drugs that he did not wish to take. Note that all such drugs come with potential side-effects that can be mild or serious. Thus, a single doctor’s opinion that you are mentally ill can have major ramifications.
This man later wrote about his horrific experience in a highly critical analysis of Irish psychiatry. His article was published by the Irish Times newspaper, in an article titled Psychiatric diagnosis not scientific but subjective, see Endnote [i]. He pointed out that “psychiatric diagnoses are based on the subjective interpretation of behaviour by third parties”. The person is then seen as a “faulty object”, with a chemical imbalance requiring a certain type of pill. The diagnosis can have a very dehumanising effect on someone, along with the stigma of a mental illness that actually has no scientific basis associated with it. The person is led to believe what these “experts” are saying.
Worse still your children can be taken away by the ‘system’ if they are ‘deemed’ to be suffering from a mental disorder, see Endnote [ii]. A psychiatrist makes the decision as to whether your child is mentally ill or not. For example, the Irish Citizens Information portal states:
“If the voluntary patient is a child and the parents or guardian want to remove them, the professional may have the child detained and placed in the custody of the Health Service Executive (if the professional considers that the child is suffering from a mental disorder).”
Revealing Quotes About Psychiatry and the Controversial DSM-IV Classification System
The following quotations easily sourced online are from academics, psychiatrists, psychology teachers, and doctors, and provide a notable condemnation of modern-day psychiatry:
[Note: DSM-IV codes are the classification found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.]
“There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder…. there is no definition of a mental disorder…. It’s bull—. I mean, you just can’t define it.” — Allen Frances, Psychiatrist and former DSM-IV Task Force Chairman
“DSM-IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document… DSM-IV has become a bible and a money making bestseller—its major failings notwithstanding.”— Loren Mosher, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
“It’s not science. It’s politics and economics. That’s what psychiatry is: politics and economics. Behavior control, it is not science, it is not medicine.”— Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus
“everyone with an interest in mental health should at least be aware of the Szaszian critique of the mental health industry… medicine is a real science that deals with biological phenomena, especially cellular pathology… Now take a look at the DSM and one will immediately note that the DSM is not based at all on cellular pathology… For many of the conditions, organic explanations are to be RULED OUT in order for a DSM diagnosis to be given… Crucial for Szasz is that the attribution of disease then legitimizes in psychiatrists and other mental health professionals the power of social control. By labeling others as “sick”, we can lock them away, force drugs upon them, and separate them from “normal” people like us because there is something fundamentally wrong with them. And we can justify it all in the name of science. But really it is about social control. The mental health industry manufactures illnesses to legitimize and feed itself and it serves those in power via social control of deviants…. according to Szasz, the science of mental sickness is all metaphor and the emperor has no clothes…. while the Emperor might not be completely naked, it seems to me he is often down to his skivvies.” – Gregg Henriques, Ph.D., directs the Combined Clinical and School Psychology Doctoral Program at James Madison University.
“In reality, psychiatric diagnosing is a kind of spiritual profiling that can destroy lives and frequently does.” — Peter Breggin, Psychiatrist
“…modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness… Patients [have] been diagnosed with ‘chemical imbalances’ despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and…there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.” — Dr. David Kaiser, Psychiatrist
“There’s no biological imbalance. When people come to me and they say, ‘I have a biochemical imbalance,’ I say, ‘Show me your lab tests.’ There are no lab tests. So what’s the biochemical imbalance?” — Dr. Ron Leifer, Psychiatrist
“Virtually anyone at any given time can meet the criteria for bipolar disorder or ADHD. Anyone. And the problem is everyone diagnosed with even one of these ‘illnesses’ triggers the pill dispenser.” — Dr. Stefan Kruszewski, Psychiatrist
“No behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That’s not what diseases are. Diseases are malfunctions of the human body, of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain. Typhoid fever is a disease. Spring fever is not a disease; it is a figure of speech, a metaphoric disease. All mental diseases are metaphoric diseases, misrepresented as real diseases and mistaken for real diseases.” — Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, best known for coining the term the “myth of mental illness
“It has occurred to me with forcible irony that psychiatry has quite literally lost its mind, and along with it the minds of the patients they are presumably supposed to care for.”— David Kaiser, Psychiatrist
“All psychiatrists have in common that when they are caught on camera or on microphone, they cower and admit that there are no such things as chemical imbalances/diseases, or examinations or tests for them. What they do in practice, lying in every instance, abrogating [revoking] the informed consent right of every patient and poisoning them in the name of ‘treatment’ is nothing short of criminal.”— Dr Fred Baughman Jr., Paediatric Neurologist
“Psychiatry makes unproven claims that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin…This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention naïve and perhaps delusional.” — Dr. David Kaiser, psychiatrist
“In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ‘disease,’ formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.”— Dr. Thomas Dorman, internist and member of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK
“I believe, until the public and psychiatry itself see that DSM labels are not only useless as medical ‘diagnoses’ but also have the potential to do great harm—particularly when they are used as means to deny individual freedoms, or as weapons by psychiatrists acting as hired guns for the legal system.” — Dr. Sydney Walker III, psychiatrist
“The way things get into the DSM is not based on blood test or brain scan or physical findings. It’s based on descriptions of behavior. And that’s what the whole psychiatry system is.”— Dr. Colin Ross, psychiatrist
“No biochemical, neurological, or genetic markers have been found for Attention Deficit Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Depression, Schizophrenia, anxiety, compulsive alcohol and drug abuse, overeating, gambling or any other so-called mental illness, disease, or disorder.” — Bruce Levine, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Commonsense Rebellion
“Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV [and ICD-10] are terms arrived at through peer consensus.”— Tana Dineen Ph.D., psychologist
“The greater the number of treatment facilities and the more widely they are known, the larger the number of persons seeking their services. Psychotherapy is the only form of treatment which, to some extent, appears to create the illness it treats.” – Dr. Jerome Frank of the Johns-Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore
“Psychiatry and psychology are the most lucrative professions in America, and among all professionals, the highest suicide rate is found among psychiatrists and psychologists” – Chaitanya Charan das, Author
Was Psychologist Sigmund Freud a Fraud?
“The entire system of classical psycho-analytical thought rests on nothing more substantial than Freud’s word that it is true. And that is why the late Nobelist in medicine Sir Peter Medawar famously condemned that system as a stupendous intellectual confidence trick.“ – Frederick Crews, Professor Emeritus of English, University of California
Let us consider the work of the famous Jewish psychologist, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), upon which much of modern-day psychiatry and psycho-analysis is based. His ideas have had a significant impact upon modern society. In his writings Freud confesses to a definite sexual longing for his mother, and because of this he assumed that all men did. This unscientific piece of Freudian perversion was promoted to such an extent it became embedded into modern-day psychology. Why should the whole world have to accept this theory based on Freud’s confession of his own perverted state? Throughout human history such thoughts have been considered by traditional society as being preposterous and morally unacceptable, but to Freud it seemed completely natural. Freud said:
“I have found in my own case too, the phenomena of being in love with my mother and jealous of my father, and I now consider it to be a universal event… ”.
Freud’s notion is unscientific and lacking a shred of evidence, yet the entire rest of the world has been painted into the picture of Freudian psychology. Freud also asserted that it would better for people if they had sexual relations with both genders. Again, this was asserted with no evidence. In fact, many scientists and academics have questioned the legitimacy of Freudian psychoanalysis, for example, Frank L. Cioffi of Princeton University author of the book Freud and the Question of Pseudo-science. The following are revealing comments about Freud by prolific academics and notable personalities:
“He [Freud] was for many years an enthusiastic user [of cocaine] to the point where his nose bled and became filled with pus – which he treated with more cocaine…Freud’s friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxov (1846-1891) had become despairing addict after Freud had prescribed cocaine as medicine for a painful hand tumor. There is no doubt that the addiction brought about his early death…. Freuds neurotic dysfunctions manifested themselves in unusual behavior patterns and in psychosomatic ailments – particularly those affecting the mouth, the genitals and the anus… more often than not he was chronically depressed and bad tempered.” – David McCalden (1951-1991), Writer
“No one has yet evaluated the hallucinatory effects of cocaine on Freuds mind during the formative years of psychoanalysis. Without cocaine, could Freud have created such improbable flights of human fancy?” – Martin L. Gross, writer and former Associate Professor of Social Science at New York University.
“[On Freudian theory] “I think it’s such a narcissistic indulgence that I cannot believe in it” – Sophie Freud, grand-daughter of Sigmund Freud, PhD from Florence Heller School for Social Welfare
“A major contributor to the present-day tendency to accept and encourage homosexuality is Dr. Sigmund Freud… In other words, homosexuality was no longer to be considered an illegal form of debauchery or perversion in which one willingly engaged a person of his own sex…” – Dr. Tim LaHaye, Author
“I don’t want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me” – Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), novelist, critic, from an aristocratic Russian family
“[Freudian belief and psychoanalysis] were never a science. Freud was a fashion, and then he became unfashionable, completely absurd.” – Sonu Shamdasani PhD, a historian of psychology and a research associate at UCL
“To me, psychoanalysis is a hoax – the biggest hoax ever played on humanity. By showing who analysts are, how they work, what they believe, and what they have done, I hope to show Freud as a fraud. If I succeed, I am idealistic enough to hope that the world may return to the belief in love, ideals, good taste and courtesy – the ‘books’ that have been burned by the Freudian Inquisition.” – Edward R. Pinckney MD
“The seduction stories that provide the proffered empirical basis of the Oedipal complex were in fact a construction by Freud who then interpreted his patients’ distress on hearing his constructions as confirmation. Freud then deceptively obscured the fact that his patients’ stories were reconstructions and interpretations based on his a priori theory. He also retro-actively changed the identity of the fancied seducers from non-family members (servants, etc.) when his oedipal story required fathers instead… What started out as speculation in need of empirical support ended up as a fundamental a priori assumption.
Now 100 years after its inception, the theory of the Oedipal complex, childhood sexuality, and the sexual etiology of neuroses remain without any independent empirical validation…. the idea that children would have a specifical sexual attraction to their opposite sex parent is extremely implausible… Freud has been the most overrated figure in the entire history of science and medicine, one who wrought immense harm through the propagation of false etiologies, mistaken diagnoses, and fruitless lines of inquiry… psycho-analysis has a lot to answer for… since its inception, psycho-analysis has been denounced as a pseudo-science.
By the early 1960s philosophers of science such as Michael Polanyi, Karl Popper, Ernst Nagel and Sidney Hook had noted the self-authenticating nature of psychoanalytical assertion. More recently, highly critical accounts of psychoanalysis from Henri Ellenberger (1970), Frank Sulloway (1992/1979), Adolph Grunbaum (1984), Frank Cioffi (1969, 1970, 1972), and most recently, Malcolm MacMillan (1991) have appeared.”
– Professor Kevin MacDonald PhD, Department of Psychology CSU-Long Beach
“They are translating this Freud’s philosophy, pig civilization.” – Srila Prabhupada, Renowned Spiritual Leader and Vedic scholar
“I think that Sigmund Freud had sexual conflicts within himself which he did not resolve. His belief in constitutional bisexuality, for example, was an excuse for certain personal traits.” – Dr. Harold M. Voth, a Freudian psychiatrist at the Menninger Foundation
“I dimly sensed some slight feminine aspect in his manner and movements.” Modern critics suggest that present-day Freudians are influenced by Freud’s “feminine, passive feelings” so much that they “regard masculine assertiveness and aggression as a neurotic manifestation.” – Freud’s biographer, Ernest Jones
“No one has yet evaluated the hallucinatory effects of cocaine on Freud’s mind during the formative years of psychoanalysis.” – Martin L. Gross, author of The Psychological Society
“Dr. Voth is convinced that Freud displayed ‘a considerable degree of femininity’ in his personality, a trait that has colored the entire profession by making what he calls the ‘neurotically troubled’ Dr. Freud a model… Those driving needs have infiltrated the psyche of millions of individuals as well, remaking much of our personalities in his image. By offering his catalog of foibles as the symbols of normality, Freud achieved immortality…
The portrait that emerges is one of a man driven by the furies of hostility and envy, weighed down by depression, death wishes, phobias and severe debilitating neuroses. He was professionally distorted by his extreme surreptitiousness and gullibility — the antithesis of a man of science. Freud the man is more the unhappy philosopher than the intrepid researcher who society thought would unlock the key to our confused behavior.”
– Jewish author Martin L. Gross and Dr. Harold M. Voth, a Freudian psychiatrist at the Menninger Foundation
“There is little question but that a good deal of the impetus for the discovery of psychoanalysis came from Freud’s general hostility toward Christianity…” – Stanley Rothman, in an article Group Fantasies and Jewish Radicalism published in the Fall 1978 issue of The Journal of Psychohistory
“The psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi reports a statement by Freud from 1932 that referred to patients as “rabble” and “only good for money-earning and studying.” From 1884 onward, Freud was in effect a snake-oil salesman. He then began experimenting with cocaine… Michel Onfray, an author who wrote a comprehensive and critical monograph on Freud in 2010, documented deaths from his gross misdiagnosis… Psychotherapy was a potpourri of techniques lifted from previous colleagues, laced with a heavy dose of sexual fixations, most of them exclusively Jewish in nature… Soon using a charade of the scientific method, Freud began to surmise that most of his patients’ problems were sexual in nature…
Freud obviously experienced Oedipal lust… he then suffered the delusion that his abnormality was normal and universal… Freud told his colleague Karl Abraham that “too many of us are Jews. I don’t want Psychoanalysis to become a Jewish national affair…. The Israeli philosophy professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz went even further and held that Freud psychoanalysis was “primarily a Jewish money-making scheme”, and that’s a “bad sign for (us) Jews.” He went on to say that psychoanalysis was “entirely in the hands of the Jews” and has “brought unspeakable suffering to millions of people.”
– Richard Boyden, in an article which he says is based in part on David McCalden’s treatise Exiles From History, see Endnote [iii].
Conclusion: It appears the profession been infected by a disciplic succession of Freudian quackery.
The Sex Delusion
In addition, Freud and his financial backers promoted the concept that orgasm is necessary for health. Such Freudian narratives have proliferated in this current sex-dominated culture, and some people are, thus, under the impression that the more sex, the better it is for their health and wellbeing.
We all have freewill to make our own personal choices, however, it appears to me that this assertion by Freud’s also has no scientific basis. In regard to this I note a book titled Brain Gain by the American writer, academic and spiritual leader, Dr. Dane Holtzman, better known as Danavir Goswami. The book provides evidence that the opposite is the case – that overindulgence in sex can lead to health disorders, including nervous disorders, via loss of vital bodily fluids. It is asserted with references from physicians that wasting vital bodily fluids decreases vitality and immunity because it involves the loss of precious proteins, lipoids, cholesterin, and minerals.
It is cited that dozens of geniuses throughout history practiced celibacy for this reason, including Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Beethoven, Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Pascal, Spinoza, Kant, Thoreau, Handel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sidis, Tesla, who all lived celibate lives to transmute their sexual energy into intellectual development. In the spiritual domain, Jesus Christ, Sukadeva Goswami, prophets Elijah and Elisha, John the Baptist, and many more were celibate. Chaste women of prolific fame include, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, Florence Nightingale, Draupadi, Sita, Saint Teresa, Emily Dickinson, Mirabai, Saint Catherine, Mother Teresa and the Virgin Mary.
“To control the sexual impulse efficiently has always been and ever will be regarded as the highest test of human wisdom” – Auguste Comte, French Philosopher
Note also that cholesterol is a vital substance in the brain. In fact, the brain has the highest cholesterol content of any organ in the body. Most of the brain’s cholesterol exists in the axons of nerve cells. According to a 2014 study, titled Cholesterol in brain disease: sometimes determinant and frequently implicated, see Endnote [iv].
“Cholesterol is essential for neuronal physiology, both during development and in the adult life… defects in brain cholesterol metabolism may contribute to neurological syndromes.”
It is also commonly known in the sport of boxing that a fighter, in order to retain his strength, should not engage in sexual relations before a fight. It appears there is valid science behind this instruction. If we accept the research detailed in Brain Gain, then Freud’s popularized assertion has most probably resulted in an increase in mental health problems! Could it be that Freud was actually the one with a mental disorder? Why he was compelled to talk endlessly of perversion? Karl Jung, a psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology, noted the following:
“Freud never asked himself why he was compelled to talk continually of sex, why this idea had taken such possession of him. He remained unaware that his monotony of interpretation expressed a flight from himself…” – Carl Jung, Psychiatrist
Freud’s work is also an inversion of original Christian values and of traditional values that existed world-wide for thousands of years, including the values of ancient Vedic cultures.
“… the body is not for fornication… Flee fornication… he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” – (Bible: Book of 1st Corinthians 13, 18, 19)
“The union, then, of male and female for the purpose of procreation is the natural good of marriage. But he who makes a bad use of this good who uses it bestially, so that his intention is on the gratification of lust.” – Saint Augustine, Christian Saint
“The practice of chastity is counselled by Christ, taught by His example, and practiced by the Apostles.” – Saint Francis, Christian Saint
“Adultery and fornication are forbidden for a number of reasons. First of all, because they destroy the soul; “He that is an adulterer, for the folly of his heart shall destroy his own soul.”… which is whenever the flesh dominates the spirit… Thirdly, these sins consume his substance, just as happened to the prodigal son in that ‘he wasted his substance living riotously.” – Saint Thomas Aquinas, Christian Saint
“When veerya [vital fluid] is not used, it is all transmuted into ojas sakti or spiritual energy and stored up in the brain… loss of memory, premature old age, and various nervous diseases are attributable to the heavy loss of this fluid” – His Holiness Sri Swami Sivananda
“… in Vedic times, sex was meant for procreation, not recreation…. We would do well to remember that our so-called primitive ancestors were not brainwashed by the maddening media blitz saturated with covert and overt sexual overtones… Apart from sanctified procreation, the institution of marriage was meant for gratification of the bodily sex drive in a regulated, religious way. This would gradually help both the spouses to realize the futility of all bodily enjoyment and help each other to advance together on the journey back to Krishna (God). “ – Chaitanya Charan das, Author
In contrast to the modern sex-culture, original scriptures inform us that sex should be reserved only for the creation of children. Furthermore, and tragically, the frantic culture of carnal-gratification in modern times seems to have degraded our most precious faculty – love itself. How can young men and young women find a stable path in such an environment? The ephemeral nature of it all is likely to leave a void in the heart.
For example, in ancient Vedic cultures young men were trained as a brahmacarya until the age of 25. Brahmacarya life involved conduct consistent with the divine path of God-consciousness; and becoming expert in learning, military arts, administration, spiritual counselling, etc., according to each man’s individual qualities. By remaining celibate until the age of 25, men became physically and intellectually stronger not weaker – their energy was not wasted on promiscuity and needless sex. At that point many men would then marry and sex was only then for the purpose of raising a (God-conscious) family – it was not to be done needlessly. Vedic culture also utilized specific dietary habits to avoid stimulating sex desire, see Endnote [v] for details.
The Climate Politics of Milk – Seeking Sustenance for a Healthy Brain
In ancient times, cows were revered and they provided the miracle food of high-quality cholesterol-rich milk with all the nutrients the human body needs, and which was beneficial to the brain and higher thinking. Ancient brahmans and sages could live on milk alone. To this day, in Ayurvedic medicine ghee, which is made from milk, it is used to improve memory and reduce mental tension. For thousands of years mankind drank raw milk – any impurities can be eliminated by simply boiling it prior to drinking it and this is the best way to drink milk. The cows were not vaccinated, and the milk did not go through the modern enzyme-destroying process of pasteurization, which can make the milk harder to digest for some people. In ancient cultures worldwide, cows were not regarded as mere commercial commodities to be sold and exploited, rather they were an essential part of a functioning community.
Modern-day commercial dairy farming can involve the use of growth hormones, man-made chemicals, pesticides on the farm, vaccination of the cows, GMOs, etc.; and it appears to me the milk is of poorer quality for it. We have consumed raw milk for at least 5,000 years, but today it is illegal in various countries to sell or produce raw milk – for example, this is the case in Canada, under the Food and Drug Regulations since 1991. I note also that in the US, in 2011, Judge Patrick J. Fiedler made an astonishing unjust ruling, where he judged “no, plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of your choice… no right to contract with a farmer… no right to own a cow”. Three weeks later, he resigned from his position as a judge and joined a law firm that represents Monsanto, a major producer of rBGH growth hormones for commercial dairy cows, see Endnote [vi]. In response to such injustice, some towns in the US have been approving food sovereignty initiatives that allow food producers to sell food without federal or state interference.
I note also the current UN-inspired, plan, voiced by the Irish Department of Agriculture, and the Irish Environmental Protection Agency, to kill 200,000 dairy cows in Ireland in a murderously deluded attempt to stop manmade climate change. The reality is that methane emissions from cows do not cause climate change. See also the book Transcending the Climate Deception Toward Real Sustainability. There are many farmers and independent groups in Ireland that know this, yet the Irish government appears to have shut out all debate on climate change, and it seems will pay 5,000 euros ($5,622) for each cow killed, in this psychotic onslaught. Psychosis being defined as an acute or chronic mental state marked by loss of contact with reality.
What Causes Depression? Links Between Toxicity in the Body and Mental Health Issues
I am not doctor, I am not here to provide medical advice, this article is simply based on my own experience and initial research, yet I note the words of Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus (1920 – 2012) best known for coining the term the “myth of mental illness. He states:
“No behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That’s not what diseases are… All mental diseases are metaphoric diseases, misrepresented as real diseases and mistaken for real diseases.”
Was Szasz correct in his analysis? Tens of millions of people are prescribed bio-pharmaceutical drugs to address so-called mental health issues. such as depression, anxiety etc. However, it appears to me that such drugs do not address the underlying cause of such issues. Furthermore, it seems that no one really knows what exactly causes depression. We hear about factors such as biochemical imbalance, stress, and genetic predisposition, but where is the scientific basis? Could there be another cause not acknowledged by the profession? What about environmental factors?
Consider that industrial globalization has produced many substances that are registered as pollutants, including thousands of new man-made chemical compounds, toxins, nano-particles and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that are in violation of the scientific pre-cautionary principle. Over the past tens of thousands of years, the human body has never been exposed to these new substances so we do not know the long-term effects. UN environmental law instruments are largely impotent in safe-guarding human health and nature from the vast scale of rampant corporate technological pollution. Instead, the UN focuses on the bogus manmade climate change due to CO2, and methane from cows, agenda, see this article.
I note that depression has been linked to the proliferation of toxins that exist in the modern environment that we are exposed to. A study titled Environmental Chemicals and Nervous System Dysfunction published in The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, see Endnote [vii], states:
“The etiology of many neurological and/ or psychiatric disorders is obscure or completely unknown. Affected patients frequently have nonspecific complaints that are easily passed off as being minor, temporary, psychosomatic, due to stress, etc. However, these same subtle symptoms may be the first signs of intoxication with environmental and occupational chemicals. The medical community should become sensitized to considering nervous system toxicants as a source of these otherwise unexplainable symptoms, and evidence for occupational and environmental exposures must be included in the differential diagnosis of neurological diseases. The toxicity of the compounds mentioned in this review is now well known, but they may represent only the “tip of the iceberg.”
Exposure to toxic heavy metals, such as mercury, lead, and arsenic are known to cause anxiety and/or depression. Government literatures do warn us of neurotoxicity, for example, the US National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council website, see Endnote [viii], states:
“Neurotoxicity occurs when the exposure to natural or manmade toxic substances (neurotoxicants) alters the normal activity of the nervous system. This can eventually disrupt or even kill neurons (nerve cells) which are important for transmitting and processing signals in the brain and other parts of the nervous system. Neurotoxicity can result from exposure to substances used in chemotherapy, radiation treatment, drug therapies, and organ transplants, as well as exposure to heavy metals such as lead and mercury, certain foods and food additives, pesticides, industrial and/or cleaning solvents, cosmetics, and some naturally occurring substances.”
It appears that the neurotoxic factor is rarely considered by doctors or psychiatrists in relation to mental health and depression. This may be because environmental health is not usually taught in medical education. To make matters even more complicated, a depressed mood is actually a common side effect of the bio-pharmaceutical medications that are prescribed to combat depression, see Endnote [ix].
The Psychology of the Soul
Remember ‘psyche’ means ‘of the soul’. According to psychotherapist Neal M. Goldsmith Ph.D: “Before Wilhelm Wundt opened the first experimental psychology laboratory in 1879, there was no academic discipline of psychology separate from philosophy and biology. Perhaps it should have stayed like that for a while longer at least.”
In conclusion, it appears to me that modern-day psychiatry is fake science and that for our wellbeing we need to re-embrace the true ‘science of the soul’. It can only benefit us to remember our true identity as an eternal soul – as children of God – that is the science of self-realisation. Wellbeing is the natural psychological state of the God-conscious soul, and despite external circumstances, the soul itself is never damaged by external temporalities. In this realization the self is protected from the mental ills of this current topsy-turvy world of chaos, fake science, and greed. Furthermore, a common thread in both the Christian scriptures and the ancient Vedic scriptures is that God protects his sincere devotees.
“We know that God’s children do not make a practice of sinning, for God’s Son holds them securely, and the evil one cannot touch them.” – John 5:18
“this very Supreme Personality of Godhead is the supreme controller, the supremely worshipable, all-cognizant, fully determined, fully opulent, the emblem of forgiveness, the protector of surrendered souls, munificent, true to His promise,” – from the Nectar of Devotion by Srila Prabhupada, Spiritual leader in the tradition of Vedic Vaishnavism
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Mark Keenan is a former scientist at the UK Government Dept. of Energy and Climate Change, and at the United Nations Environment Division. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
He is author of the following books available on Amazon:
[v] The Vedic diet referred to involves the avoidance of meat, fish, eggs, garlic, onions, alcohol, coffee, tea and tobacco, all of which are aphrodisiacal stimulants. Note that eminent Danish nutritionist Mikkel Hindhede (1862-1945), stated “we must conclude that sex in its ordinary manifestation among civilised human beings is not the product of natural instinct that it is generally supposed to be but is a chemotropism evoked or conditioned reflex (in Pavlov’s sense) evoked in response to aphrodisiacal stimulation by foods and beverages, especially animal proteins, alcohol, coffee, and also tobacco. This tropistic reaction, in both its physical and psychical aspects, is subject to voluntary control through diet, an alkaline-forming, low protein vegetable diet reducing it, while an acid-forming high-protein met diet increases it.”
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May 22, 2023 – Sudbury, Ontario – Garnet Harper died after being denied a kidney transplant, leaving behind wife and five children. (click here)
Garnet was in need of a kidney transplant, which he was denied due to his vaccination status. Garnet’s referral to a transplant centre was denied, meaning he wasn’t even considered for a place on an organ donation list.
When he consented to begin dialysis, he was mistreated by the doctors and staff over masking rules, resulting in a botched surgery that landed him with a staph infection. After that, he was never the same. His health quickly deteriorated and he became septic, which in turn caused a serious heart problem, a collapsed lung, and temporary paralysis. He was told he was no longer a transplant candidate due to his poor health.
But Garnet was a fighter. Although 5 different doctors told him on different occasions that he should have died from one or more of those health complications, he overcame them all. He was clawing his way back to health. His lung was drained of fluid (4.5 Liters) and re-inflated to 80% capacity. He taught himself to walk again. He was gaining strength day by day. His kidney specialist was impressed by his progress, enough to prepare him for home dialysis.
Garnet was determined to find a way to get himself an organ, to get the treatment that he needed, and without participating in what he called “The Experiment.” He was fighting for his health, to pave the way for others who may not have been so strong.
Garnet never got to commence home dialysis. He died from a bleeding stroke in the middle of the night. Strokes are among the leading causes of death for people on long-term dialysis, as the treatment is very hard on your cardiovascular system.
Sheila Annette Lewis was denied access to an organ transplant by corrupt Alberta Health Services Executives and Judges in Alberta, Canada (click here).
In 2020, Sheila Lewis was placed on the waitlist for a donor organ, and in 2021, was informed that she had to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a new requirement.
Having had C19 herself twice, she asked her doctors repeatedly for a C19 antibody test, but they refused. Expecting she had antibodies to C19 and therefore not wanting to subject herself to an unnecessary vaccination , Sheila declined to take the C19 vaccinations and her doctors proceeded to move her to ‘inactive’ status.
She then arranged privately to have C19 antibody testing and was found to have “extremely high” levels of antibodies to C19- higher than many people vaccinated against it. Her doctors, however, continue to refuse to provide Sheila the transplant she needed, still insisting she must be vaccinated.
Notably, the Alberta Transplant Program recently dispensed with C19 vaccination as a requirement for kidney transplantation, and in court, a judge has acknowledged that previous infection with chicken pox, exempts transplant patients from requiring varicella vaccination.
Sheila’s case is subject to a court-imposed gag order which is intended to protect her doctors from reprisal for their decision to deny her a transplant.
July 2022 – Alberta Court of King’s Bench Judge Paul Belzil ruled that state sanctioned murder of the unvaccinated is now legal in Canada, and is fully supported by the Courts.
Alberta Justice Paul Belzil (Court of King’s Bench), lawyer Daniel Morrow who represented corrupt AHS doctors, and AHS lawyer Mark Jackson who represented AHS Executives who authorized the attempted murder of Sheila Lewis:
Nov. 2022 – Alberta Court of Appeal upheld the lower Court’s Decision – Justice Frederica Schutz (Harper appointee Jul. 2015), Justice Michelle Crighton (Trudeau appointee Oct. 2016), Justice Dawn Pentelechuk (Trudeau appointee Nov. 2018) (Court Decision here).
USA Hospital agreed to perform the transplant at a cost: (click here).
Lewis has challenged the vaccine policies of AHS (Alberta Health Services) and her transplant doctors, claiming that they violate her rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench and the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled against her, stating that the Charter does not cover the specific Covid-19 vaccine policies. Her claims under The Alberta Bill of Rights were also dismissed. Recently, the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear her case, exhausting all her legal options.
According to a GiveSendGo fundraiser, a U.S. hospital has agreed to perform the transplant surgery, but it comes with a significant cost. The fundraiser says Ms. Lewis needs $100,000 for testing before being placed on the donor list, and the surgery itself is estimated to cost an additional $500,000 USD.
After a recent interview on Viva Frei’s Podcast, Alberta Health Services has agreed to a financial settlement with Sheila Lewis, but it may be too late for her to get the transplant:
My Take…
There is an extremist far left activist lawyer in Alberta, in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary, Lorian Hardcastle, with whom I’ve had many conversations.
I will let her own words show you just how extreme and violent she is.
This is her take on what happened with the Sheila Lewis case: (source)
Here are her key statements from her published article:
“Court seemed to be VERY persuaded by the EFFICACY OF VACCINATIONS”
Sheila Lewis “seemed to be persuaded by the misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccines.”
“And the Court didn’t seem to have a lot of patience for some of that misinformation and that may signal an approach that the Courts take in other kinds of cases where people DON’T WANT TO BE VACCINATED, such as the employment context.”
“they are not just going to ENTERTAIN these kinds of arguments at all”.
Conclusion
These 4 Alberta Judges (Belzil, Schutz, Crighton, Pentelechuk) and 2 lawyers (Daniel Morrow – Bennett Jones, Mark Jackson – Field Law LLP), have made murder of the unvaccinated legal in Alberta, as of November 2022.
And far left extremist University of Calgary lawyer Lorian Hardcastle is telling us that they will be coming for thousands more Albertans in the future.
You see, these corrupt extremist Judges and lawyers are VERY PERSUADED by the EFFICACY of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines and they will literally sentence you to death if you don’t WANT to get vaccinated, because you are MISINFORMED and they’re out of PATIENCE.
I know my history and I know what happens when evil people in positions of power start to talk in these terms.
P.S.: In regards to Trudeau appointee Justice Pentelechuk, who sentenced Alberta transplant patient Sheila Lewis to die, Justice Pentelechuk has recently committed fraud in Court in my case, and has involved herself in a criminal conspiracy with Alberta Health Services Executives Verna Yiu, Francois Belanger and their AHS Lawyer Mark Jackson to threaten me and commit extortion against me and my family, to get me to drop my lawsuit, leave Alberta and sign non-disclosure agreements.
Currently, they are working extremely hard to try and have me silenced permanently.
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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.”
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There is an increasingly widespread view in Russia that the goal of the US – and the “collective West” it leads – is to achieve a “final solution” to the “Russian question.” The goals are believed to be defeating Russia, wrecking its military potential, restructuring its statehood, reshaping its identity and possibly eliminating it as a state, in its current form.
For a long time, this view remained on the periphery of foreign policy thinking. However, much has changed in the past year and a half. Today, this perception of the West’s goals has gone mainstream. Indeed, it seems quite rational, when placed into the proper context.
Meanwhile, Russia itself is pursuing a similar sort of policy towards the Ukrainian state, the existence of which in its former form and borders is perceived in Moscow as a key security challenge.
The historical experience of the last century shows that inflicting total defeat on an enemy and then rebuilding its statehood is the rule rather than the exception in foreign policy practice. There is an important difference to the conflicts of the 18th and 19th centuries, when military defeat of the enemy was seen as a way of extracting concessions from it, but not of rebuilding its very foundations.
The experiences of the 20th and 21st centuries are not always linear, but their repetition is obvious. Germany’s defeat in the First World War led to a palpable reshaping of its statehood, determined more by internal contradictions, which grew from the military loss.
Germany’s surrender after the Second World War had far more radical consequences. The country was divided, stripped of its foreign policy autonomy and almost completely rebuilt. Military defeat and subsequent occupation also led to the reformatting of the other large powers, Japan and Italy. The Soviet Union, as a victorious country, was a key player in resolving the “German question.” The USSR was also active in establishing socialist regimes in countries liberated from the Nazi occupation.
The subsequent Cold War made this redrawing more difficult. Every attempt was met with resistance from the West. Sometimes the battle ended in a draw, as in Korea. Sometimes the Soviet Union got the upper hand – it helped to inflict a painful defeat on the US in Vietnam, for example. In other situations, the US was successful, for example in supporting anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
The collapse of the Soviet Union gave Washington a free hand. Despite Moscow’s rhetoric that the Cold War had ended in victory for both sides, the reality was different.
Many of the former socialist countries were quickly integrated into Euro-Atlantic structures with the active help of new local elites and broad public support. Russia itself loudly proclaimed a desire to return to the ‘civilized world.’ The US-led collective West was given carte blanche to reshape a vast area, which they not unreasonably saw as a result of their bloodless victory over the Soviet Union.
In the absence of a counterweight, the US carried out several military interventions, which also resulted in a complete restructuring of the target states. Yugoslavia fell apart. Iraq was occupied, its leader executed and its system of government transformed. There were also failures. In Afghanistan, a quick victory turned into a stubborn guerrilla war and subsequent humiliating withdrawal. A military intervention in Iran did not take place, although it was planned. North Korea became a nuclear power, dramatically reducing the likelihood of external invasion. Successful US interventions provoked Moscow’s displeasure, but this did not translate into real action until a certain point. Domestically, large-scale Western investment, close humanitarian cooperation and Russian society’s interest in the West were encouraged, or at least not condemned, until the late 2010s.
At the same time, two trends led to sustained and growing irritation from the Russian authorities. The first was the increasingly visible attempts by Western countries to bypass the state and engage in direct dialogue with the Russian public. This paradigm pitted a “good” civil society against a “bad” government. Moscow’s growing and understandable annoyance was triggered by the notion that Russia had a “regime.” It hinted, or even directly stated, that the West somehow contrasted civil society with the government and did not see them as part of the same political community. The more conscious and demonstrative this approach was on the part of Western states, the more it was resisted in Moscow.
In the West, such an approach was attributed to the perceived shortcomings of democracy in Russia, which only added to the irritation.
The Russian authorities clearly did not want to depend on external assessments of their state-building. All the more so as the denominator of such assessments was increasingly set not only by the mature democracies, but also by the Eastern European and Baltic countries with their bouquet of historical grievances and complexes. The experience of ‘color revolutions’ in the post-Soviet space only reinforced Moscow’s fears. In Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, public protests received full moral, political and even material support from Western countries, while the authorities were often demonized.
Revolutionary changes of power, even for the sake of democratization and development, were legitimately perceived in Moscow as a challenge. There was a strong consensus within the Russian elite that state-building should and could only take place through its own efforts. Any form of outside involvement was unacceptable. This consensus began to take shape in the mid-1990s, and by the end of Vladimir Putin’s first term it had become a clear policy point.
The second trend that had a significant impact on changing Russian attitudes was related to US and EU policy in the post-Soviet space. Russia has swallowed the integration of Central and Eastern European countries into Western structures, probably seeing them as toxic assets for itself. Contrary to the common stereotype in the West, which ascribes to Moscow a desire to recreate the USSR, the real goals were far from imperial ambitions.
Russia was not interested in taking on another huge imperial burden, feeding local elites and buying the loyalty of the population. It was quite happy with the neutrality of the former Soviet republics and even with cooperation with the US in the post-Soviet space, provided that such cooperation was on an equal footing. In the early 2000s, Moscow did not object to the American military presence in Central Asia and then helped supply the Western grouping in Afghanistan for a long time. But Moscow was categorically uncomfortable with the prospect of Western projects without Russian participation. Against the background of Vladimir Putin’s active diplomacy to build constructive relations with the US and the EU on all fronts, the hope remained that the area of the ex-USSR would remain a neutral field of cooperation.
But it gradually became clear that there would be less and less inclusiveness towards Russia. The aforementioned ‘color revolutions’ were yet another wake-up call. The growing concerns of the Russian leadership were discussed, but each time they were politely dismissed by Western partners. Apparently, the West simply did not see the need to take Russia’s interests into account. After the 1990s collapse of the economy, a massive brain drain, a series of internal conflicts, rampant crime, corruption, capital flight, the transition – which had begun under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev – to the status of a commodity appendage, a falling birth rate, alcoholism and an excessively high death rate, Russia was hardly perceived as a serious contender.
The local interests of some post-Soviet elites, who gained political capital by selling the “Russian threat” to the West, also played a role.
Underestimating the Russian leadership’s will to restore statehood and avoid a zero-sum game in the post-Soviet space was a major miscalculation. With each new crisis, the West failed to take into account the real possibility of worst-case scenarios in which Russia would assert its interests by force, leading to a counteroffensive against attempts to reformat the post-Soviet states. The first serious crisis was the five-day war with Georgia, in which the Russian side not only responded violently to an attack on a peacekeeping contingent, but also recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The West had the foresight to realize the Georgian leadership had made major mistakes and to defuse the crisis with Russia. But the price was the precedent of a de facto revision of borders.
Moscow quickly responded to another Ukrainian revolution in 2013-2014 with the “Crimean Spring,” and then with support for the resistance in Donbass. The Minsk agreements left open the possibility of a relatively easy solution to the crisis. However, Russia’s tough and decisive line had already caused alarm in the West.
As a result, the US-led bloc chose a path of containment and opposition to Moscow. Western-Russian relations in the post-Soviet space, and in Ukraine in particular, finally turned into a full-on rivalry, and the Minsk agreements were later openly described by some Western leaders as having been merely a maneuver to prepare for a new fight. Russian support for the Syrian government has shown that Moscow is willing to obstruct ‘social engineering’ outside the post-Soviet space as well.
Despite the expectation of a new crisis, the scenario of a full-scale military operation against Ukraine was considered unlikely by many, including in Russia itself. Moscow was deeply embedded in the Western-oriented global economy. Trade interdependence with the EU remained high. There was no rejection of Western values in Russia, although certain social phenomena and movements were criticized as an affront to traditional values. For Moscow, the key issue remained the security of its western borders. Apparently, the Russian authorities assumed the inevitability of a gradual militarization of both Ukraine and NATO’s eastern flank, followed by a military crisis at an inconvenient moment. Neo-Nazism in Ukraine was not widespread and did not enjoy widespread popular support, but the Kiev authorities’ tolerance of radical movements was strongly resented in Russia.
The decision to launch a pre-emptive military operation was a turning point that radically raised the stakes of the rivalry. The ensuing military conflict has largely undone the legacy of the post-Soviet period.
There will be no return to the reality of 2021. It is clear that Russia will do everything it can to protect the new territorial status quo and to undermine Ukraine’s military potential as much as possible. It is also clear that the West will do everything it can to undermine Russia and, if the circumstances are right, will also use any internal problems to its advantage.
The question remains as to how the current crisis will end.
There is currently no political solution to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in sight. The sustainability of any peace agreement, even if reached, is highly questionable. The West fears an abrupt military escalation and a war with Russia that could quickly turn into a nuclear exchange. However, NATO’s gradual direct military involvement in the conflict cannot be ruled out.
The prospect of domestic unrest in Russia is widely discussed in Western media and analyzed. So far, such views have clearly not been reflected in official positions. But the transition from musings in the analysts’ community and populist statements by individual politicians to an official position may only be a matter of time. Turmoil in a major nuclear power carries great risks. But in the West they may be perceived as less serious than a direct military confrontation. Meanwhile, an internal political explosion could put Russia out of business for a long time and force it to try to reformat its entire system. In such a development, the preservation of Russia’s statehood and sovereignty will once again become the main stakes of any conflict.
Ukraine’s statehood is also at stake. It is very likely to emerge from the current crisis with diminished capacity, truncated borders and total dependence on external forces.
The US is in a better position. It has been able to discipline its allies against the backdrop of the crisis and does have risks to its own status. However, it has already entered into a rivalry with China and finds itself in a situation of double deterrence. A Russian victory in Ukraine, together a strengthening of relations between Moscow and Beijing, would be a major strategic challenge for the US.
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We have to keep in mind that a term and notion of security usually implies a kind of sense of protection and safety from different possible harms coming from „outside“. Therefore, it can be generally acceptable and understandable that the states want to protect their own territories by expanding great resources in making their territorial safe. Security topics are of very different kinds, ranging from the causes of conflict between states to deterioration in the global climate or women’s rights in global politics.
The Conception of a System
The conception of international systems of states is crucial as an explanatory mechanism of both global politics and global security models. However, in order to understand international systems of states firstly the very notion of a system itself has to be clarified and defined. In this context, it can be said that „a system is an assemblage of units, objects, or parts united by some form of regular interaction“.[i] Any system is necessarily constructed of different members on micro and macro levels which are interacting between themselves from horizontal and vertical perspectives. The member units of a system are of different sizes, capacities, potentials, wealth, might, and therefore of different positions regarding the decision-making procedure and especially power.
For the reason that member units of a system are constantly interacting with each other either from horizontal or vertical perspectives, it is quite natural that in the case of a change in one unit, the reactions to such change are expected by other units. The most expressed examples are the arms race, seeking the balance of power, making political-military blocs with other units, or even in the most drastic cases, committing aggression on the member unit.
Any system with its member units has a tendency to regulate the relations between them and to try to respond by different means if those relations are changed at the expense of the hegemonic unit(s) of the system. It can exist at the same time two or more systems that are separated from each other by regulated boundaries, but different systems very often collaborate across the boundaries, for instance, in the areas of economy, knowledge, or technology exchange as it was the case during the Cold War 1.0 era (1949−1989). Finally, one system can break down for any reason which means that necessary changes within the system were not achieved in order to save it (for instance, the case of the Warsaw Pact in 1990−1991). Subsequently, instead of the old system a new system can emerge or the member units of the old system can be simply absorbed by another one as it happened, for example, with the majority of the Central and South-East European states after the Cold War 1.0.
International Systems of States
It is very difficult to fix the exact date when the global system of international relations (IR) and therefore global security models started to work for the very reason that the process of globalization occurred over many centuries.[ii]However, the modern European system of IR can be traced back up to the time after the 1648 Westphalian Peace Treaty, while the process of globalization of international systems of inter-states relations started to work from the first half of the 19th century.
International systems of inter-state relations and global security became after the WWII investigated as academic subjects within the framework of World Systems Theory (WST) which recognizes that the states are historically playing a fundamental role in IR and they will do that in the future as well but the systems of relations of (nation)-states have to be understood and put in the context of global unity rather than conflicts based on realizations of different national interests. What the theoreticians of WST suggest is that the most meaningful system of global security has to be based on the world-system but not on the nation-states system. Therefore, they believe that international cooperation and order will replace international conflicts and anarchy. However, behind WST is, basically, hidden a system of Capitalist World-Economy(CWE) which is advocating the ideology of globalization as a new form of Western global imperialism based on the international division of labor. Thus, according to CWE, the whole world is divided into three labor and economic zones: the core-states (the Western developed mature economies); the periphery-states (mainly ex-colonies from Africa with still underdeveloped economies); and the semiperiphery-states (mainly East-European ex-socialist states and Middle-East oil-riched states with rising economies and growing infrastructure). The essence of WST/CWE is that globalization has to function to the full benefit of the core-states which are fully exploiting the perifery-states with semiperiphery states as a buffer between core and periphery segments of the world economy which are partially exploited by the core-states (by financial and economic means). In one word, WST/CWE is trying to legitimate the existence and functioning of global Western capitalism and its exploitation of the rest of the world by the promulgation of globalization ideology.[iii] However, the liberal ideology of globalization is advocating in reality the global process of (pervasive) American Westernization from all points of view – from cultural, economic, or political to the issues of values, tradition, and customs.[iv]
Historically, there were three fundamental types of international systems or relations between the states as the crucial actors in global politics even today: 1. Independent; 2. Hegemonic; and 3. Imperial.[v]
The Independent State System (ISS) is composed of the states as political actors and entities and each of them claims to be independent which means both autonomous and sovereign. The fundamental feature of such a state, at least from the very theoretical point of view, is that it has the right and possibility to make its own foreign and domestic policies out of any influence or dependence from the outside. The ISS presupposes that the state territory and its citizens are under full control and governance by the central state authority and that the state borders are inviolable from outside. In other words, any outside actor is not eligible to interfere in the domestic affairs of the state which can be governed only by one „legitimate“ authority that is internationally recognized as such. An independent state has to be as well autonomous which means (as it meant at the time of ancient Greeks wherefrom the term comes) that the legitimate state authorities are adopting their own law and organizing the state activities, political and other types of life of the society according to it but not according to the imposed law, rules or values from the outside. States had to be equally treated and understood in regard to their claims to independence, autonomy, and sovereignty regardless of the very practical fact that not all of them are of the same power, capabilities, and might.[vi]
The Hegemonic State System (HSS) is based on an idea of a hegemon and hegemony imposed by a hegemon in IR which means that one or more states (or other actors in politics) dominate the system of IR or/and regional or global politics. A hegemon is fixing the standards, values, and the „rules of the game“ and having a direct influence on the politics of the system’s members like, for instance, the US in the NATO bloc.
There are three possible types of HSS in global politics:
Unipolar (or Single) hegemony, when a single state is dominating as was the case with the US immediately after WWII.
Bipolar (or Dual) hegemony, when two dominant states exist in global politics as was the case during the time of the Cold War (the USA and the USSR).
Multipolar (or Collective) hegemony, when several or even many states dominate international relations like during the time after the Vienna Congress in 1815 (Russia, Austria, Great Britain, France, and Prussia).
In practice, in any of these three HSS, lesser powerful actors may interact with their powers, but they have to get permission from the hegemon for such action. In HSS, usually, the domestic affairs of the states are left untouched by the hegemon, while their foreign affairs are strictly under the hegemonic control.
The third type of IR, the Imperial State System (ImSS), existed from the ancient time (Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, Rome) and has been dominant in Europe, North Africa, and Asia in the Middle Ages (the Frankish, Holy Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman or Habsburg empires).
The essence of empire as a system is that it is composed of separate societal, ethnic, national, linguistic, or/and confessional parts which are associated by regular interaction. However, within such a multistructural imperial framework it is a regular practice that one unit dominate over others by imposing over the rest its own political supremacy. The rest of the framework units have to accept such reality either by force or by interest while political supremacy by one (ruling) part can be accepted by the others either implicitly or explicitly.[vii]
However, the question arises what is the difference between the Hegemonic and the Imperial State Systems as these two systems seem to be very similar if not even the same? Nevertheless, the fundamental difference is that a dominant unit of an empire is much more able to manage other subjects of the state system in comparison to HSS and especially to force them to work for the central authority (tax collection, recruiting people for the imperial army, appointing local political client leaders, etc.). The empires are usually created and enlarged by military conquest, but also they can be militarily destroyed from the outside or disappear due to the inner revolutions followed by civil wars.
In conclusion, the academic research field of Security Studies is extreme complexity raging from the standpoint that these studies should have a narrow military focus as the fundamental security threat to the territorial integrity of states comes during times of conflict to the view that individuals are the final research object of the studies but not the states themselves. Therefore, many academics focus their research on global security basically on human emancipation which is usually understood as achieving wide scope of freedoms – both individual and group.[viii] They argue that the academic discipline of Security Studies should focus on them but not on the security of the state.
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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
[i] Karen A. Mingst, Essentials of International Relations, Third edition, New York−London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, 81.
[ii] On globalization of world politics, see (John Baylis, Steve Smith, Patricia Owens, The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, Seventh edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
[iii] On world-system, see more in (Alvin Y. So, Social Change and Development: Modernization, Dependency, and World-System Theories, Newbury Park−London−New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990; Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, Fifth edition, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
[iv] Jeffrey Haynes, Peter Hough, Shahin Malik, Lloyd Pettiford, World Politics, New York: Routledge, 2013, 715. In one word, WST conceptualizes global order to be structured into developed, underdeveloped and intermediary states and economic systems.
[v] Paul R. Viotti, Mark V. Kauppi, International Relations and World Politics: Security, Economy, Identity, Fourth Edition, Upper Saddle River, New Jersay: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009, 40.
[vi] Sovereignty means that one state (or political territory) has its own government (political ruling establishment) which has both full authority over its own claimed administered territory and the rights and possibility of membership of (at least some) the international political community. However, there are many examples of the so-called “quasi-sovereign states” (like Kosovo, North Cyprus, Transnistria…). On the issue of „quasi-sovereign states“, see (Cynthia Weber, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State, and Symbolic Interchange, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
[vii] Martin Wight, Systems of States, Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1977, 6.
[viii] Emancipation means, at least by the Westerners, the achievement of independence, i.e., ability to act independently. However, to be emancipated does not automatically mean that the individual is free of all obligations toward others including and those toward the state (military service, taxation…). It means only that the individual is free of those obligations which are considered to be oppressive or inhuman (slavery, serfdom…).
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A bit over half a century ago, the United States under the Nixon administration sent its then-State Secretary Henry Kissinger to China in order to exploit the infamous Sino-Soviet split that nearly escalated into a full-blown war between Moscow and Beijing.
The “cold war” between the two previously closely allied communist powers was a strategic gift to the US-led political West, as the belligerent thalassocracy was terrified of the prospect of facing a giant Eurasian monolith spanning from East Germany to Vietnam. The brewing ideological conflict between the post-Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China was heavily (ab)used by the US to somewhat soften the consequences of the humiliating defeat of America’s genocidal aggression in Indochina, where millions were killed in its indiscriminate attacks on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Henry Kissinger is often credited as the instrumental figure in engineering the Sino-American detente that gave the US much-needed geopolitical breathing room in the late 1970s and much of the 1980s after the belligerent thalassocracy pulled back to “lick its Vietnam wounds”. However, it should be noted that, despite Kissinger’s vast diplomatic experience and knowledge, the very fact that the early 1970s China was still largely isolationist, as well as in the process of recovering from the consequences of WWII and the Cultural Revolution, made his efforts significantly easier. Still, thanks to Kissinger, the Nixon administration achieved a major diplomatic win that lasted until the very end of the Cold War and was completely nullified only by the recent suicidal US foreign policy.
Back in the 1970s, it would’ve been almost entirely unimaginable that Henry Kissinger, quite literally a historical figure at this point, not only due to his Cold War-era achievements, but also his advanced age (now in triple digits), would have to engage in his “shuttle” and “triangular diplomacy” concepts once again. However, precisely this happened last week, culminating with Kissinger’s meeting with Xi Jinping himself on July 20. The Chinese President even called the centenarian “an old friend of China”. Owing to the Asian giant’s great attention to detail, particularly when it comes to diplomatic protocols, the meeting was held at the Villa 5 of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, the exact same place where Kissinger met the then-Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1971.
Precisely that meeting was instrumental in preparing Richard Nixon’s visit to China next year. However, that’s where the historical parallels end. Despite the reputation, influence and respect that he enjoys in China and worldwide, Kissinger went to Beijing in an unofficial capacity. Not representing the US anymore, he was largely relieved of the burden and responsibility for America’s diplomatic standing in China, a far cry from what it used to be during the (First) Cold War. The situation has changed drastically since Kissinger’s tenure, as the Asian giant is anything but a poor, underdeveloped nation with major ideological identity issues that could be exploited to further US interests. On the contrary, precisely Washington DC is the side that’s been going through major internal issues and waning global influence.
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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
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While Western discussions have focused on sending sophisticated weapons to Kiev, Hal Brands, a Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, argues that what Ukraine needs the most, besides air-defense systems, is artillery ammunition. He describes the current conflict as an artillery-centric one: “if Kiev can’t find enough artillery pieces and ammunition, especially 155mm shells, it will be at a dire firepower deficit along the conflict’s front lines.”
Already on March 29, Earle Mack, former US ambassador to Finland, writing in a piece for The Hill, described the current confrontation as proxy attrition warfare, that is one which seeks military victory by wearing down the enemy. He worried that Ukraine seemed bound to tire out first. Things have not gotten much better for Kiev, so far.
A July 23 New York Times story, by former Marine infantryman Thomas Gibbons-Neff, based on “dozens of visits to the front line” quotes a Ukrainian commander: “we’re trading our people for their people and they have more people and equipment.” According to the story, “Ukraine has made marginal progress in its ability to coordinate directly between its troops closest to Russian forces on the so-called zero line and those assaulting forward.” Moreover, the country’s artillery is in short supply, and “a mixture of munitions sent from different countries” is employed. The thing is that accuracy varies greatly between them and the Ukrainians need to use more ammunition. In addition, according to the same news report, “some of the older shells and rockets sent from abroad are damaging their equipment and injuring soldiers.”
Rather than using the complex military communication equipment, Ukraine’s troops employ “less sophisticated, but easier-to-use programs like smartphone messaging apps, private internet chat rooms.” Most of this system is dependent on Starlink satellite internet, and therefore it takes longer to communicate important military information when the units are assaulting and a Wi-Fi router is absent. In this case, unbelievably, “attacking troops have to reach someone with an internet connection to call for support.”
Regarding ammo, the problem is that US authorities themselves estimate that Moscow is capable of producing “1 million rounds of 152mm artillery ammunition per year.” The US, in contrast, produces merely a seventh of that, according to Hal Brands.
Right now, the US itself needs to purchase conventional artillery ammunition from its South Korean ally. In what Brands describes as a “desperate global scavenger hunt for munitions”, Washington has also been seeking ammo from Japan, as well as “repositioning rounds stored in Israel to Ukraine.”
Europe’s stockpiles are in no better shape. According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, NATO European states armed forces are “hollowed out, plagued by unserviceable equipment and severely depleted ammunition stocks.” Bloomberg’s journalist and military historian Max Hastings writes that, over a year ago, Berlin had committed itself to €100 billion to rebuild its worn out forces. So far, however, only an estimated 1% of that has been spent. The German National Security Strategy, last month, stressed the weakness of Germany’s economy. According to Hastings, the “political will” to strengthen their armed forces is “absent” not only in Germany, but also in other European countries.
As I wrote before, the problem for Europe goes way beyond depleted weapons stockpiles: for it to rearm itself, re-industrialization is badly needed, something which, quite ironically, Washington itself has consistently opposed via its subsidy war against the European bloc. In addition, Europe, with its heavily diffused and fragmented defense, lacks a European Union common defense market and a legal and bureaucratic framework, as Sophia Besch (a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow), and Max Bergmann (former member of the US Policy Planning Staff and Director of the Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies) write.
Britain’s industry today faces many difficulties, and the same thing happens with other European nations – manufacturers badly need funding expansion and governments are increasingly growing “tired” of the conflict’s costs.
As for the US, lecturer in History at Yale Michael Brenes argues that America’s own “war machine” is “broken”, with privatizations and several problems. He paints a picture of “shortages in production”, and “interruptions in supply chains”, all of which have compromised Washington’s ability to “deliver weapons to Ukraine.”
To sum it up, the current state of affairs, with a Western deindustrializations crisis, makes it very difficult for the political West to pursue its proxy attrition war. It simply cannot produce all the weapons it is pledging Ukraine. For the West, in fact, it is already a challenge to provide Kiev with enough ammunition.
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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.
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In the last decades, great power rivalries and competition have characterised contemporary Africa, popularly termed as the new scramble for Africa. Within the context of the emerging multipolar world and the current Russia-Ukraine crisis, majority of African States are seemingly maintaining their strategic autonomy.
Most of them are now choosing their external partners with solution-based, practical and pragmatic policy which are considered very significant and useful for their economic development. With Africa increasingly becoming the world’s largest geographic free trade area, this creates grounds for concrete and transparent economic partnerships.
While the outlook for Africa in the near future is far from smooth, taking into account their own internal roadblocks and combined with efforts at strengthening bilateral relations and cooperation with external players, leaders of African States and policy-makers must exercise more agency in determining their own affairs.
Samir Bhattacharya, Senior Research Associate at Vivekananda International Foundation and Doctoral Candidate at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in this insightful interview, has further expressed his expert views on the current changing geopolitical situation, with particular reference to Africa, its external relations and key global players. Here are the excerpts.
Kester Kenn Klomegah (KKK): How do you assess the key questions discussed at the Valdai Discussion Club in mid-July?
Samir Bhattacharya (SB): The key questions appear to be well thought-out and timely. However, some new ideas must emerge from the forum. If we keep repeating what has already been thought or said, we cannot solve the current problems. Hence, it will be crucial to think of some out of-the-box ideas and then brainstorm around them to select the best alternative.
For example, the topic of de-dollarisation and what is the alternative is doing the round in multiple forums. My question is, why do we need a single solution? A unipolar world was maintained using a unique currency for the whole world. As the world is getting multipolar, let’s resolve this at a micro level, bilaterally or sometimes regionally.
The idea of BRICS currency and considering it as a replacement of the dollar sounds theoretically perfect, but it won’t be easy to implement. If that were the case, Euro would have become, at least, equivalent to the dollar. Again, the African continent is talking of a common currency. Yet, after almost a decade of discussion, even the West African block ECOWAS or even smaller block WAEMU couldn’t come up of their own. Therefore, the arguments need to be solution-based, practical and pragmatic.
KKK: In your expert view, what are some of Russia’s policy weaknesses toward Africa?
SB: The biggest policy weakness of Russia in its Africa policy is its near absence in Africa for over three decades. During that time, multiple countries, based on their respective strengths, got engaged with Africa. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was not in a position to assist Africa in any way. This was mostly owing to Russia’s faltering economy and international sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe. Meanwhile, the USA was too busy or too happy as Fukuyama declared the “end of history”, and Africa fell from its policy priority. Around that time, only China slowly and steadily made inroads and assisted Africa. Whether China works ethically or if its debt-trap diplomacy is for another debate. The fact remains that China helped Africa when no one did.
The good thing, Russia realised where it went wrong. Concerning the action to rectify its mistake, it may be too little, too late. But these things are evaluated in the longer term. Hence, from 2019, when Russia-Africa relations got another life with its institutionalisation, auditing the performance would be tough, especially in the backdrop of Covid when the whole world came to a pause.
Another policy weakness of Russia is its attempt to work alone. Russia has a good relationship with both India and China. Russia must work in Africa with both of them based on complementarity. The only problem with an equal Russia-China-Africa partnership, China would be more equal than the other two. On the other hand, the Russia-India-Africa partnership could actually be grounded in equality. However, Russia must be clear what it wants to do in Africa, how it will help Africa and what Russia would gain out of it. And to get the right answer, it is important to ask the right questions, which are still elusive.
KKK: What is admirable about the policy approaches adopted toward Africa, for instance, by China and India?
SB: About China, I have already talked briefly. Being an Indian, I am better positioned to speak on India’s approach to Africa. The key pillars of India’s development partnership with Africa have been capacity-building initiatives, lines of credit, grant support, small development projects, technical consultation, disaster relief and humanitarian help, and military cooperation. Similar to Russia, India also had policy paralysis for nearly two decades, up to its economic liberalisation in 1991. Due to its domestic realities, India almost had to pull itself out of the African equation.
Since India is slowly coming back to Africa, and the current dispensation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken it to a new level as his administration has been showing a remarkable determination to fortify India’s historical bonding with the continent. Since his government came to power, there have been over 35 outbound trips to various African nations at the levels of President, Vice President, and Prime Minister. This is unprecedented in the history of India-Africa relations.
The India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) has been instrumental in formalising this partnership. Since its inception in 2008, the IAFS has emerged as one of the largest regular diplomatic gatherings of African leaders. There have been three editions of IAFS, held in India in 2008, Ethiopia in 2011, and India again in 2015. Although it is a cause of concern as India has had only three IAFS so far, however, India’s Africa policy is much more than just IAFS.
The principal mode of India’s development relationship with Africa has been capacity building and skill development, and ITEC played a significant role in it. Introduced in 1964, the India Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme has been an essential aspect of the India-Africa collaboration. In fact, the African continent is now the largest recipient of the ITEC program.
In 2019, India introduced the first pilot e-ITEC course for two African countries. And since the outbreak of the pandemic, the e-ITEC has become the new normal. To respond to the needs of changing times, new and innovative courses such as Big Data Analytics, urban infrastructure management, WTO-related topics, and solar technology were introduced organically.
In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. 25 African countries received medical assistance from India. Also, India offered an e-ITEC course on “COVID-19 Pandemic: Prevention and Management Guidelines for Healthcare Professionals’ to healthcare workers in Africa. Although, much more can be done, the India-Africa relationship today constitutes a vibrant partnership between the two continents, animated by the spirit of developing together as equals, devoid of colonial or neocolonial baggage. And I think that recognising the African agency is the biggest strength in India’s Africa policy.
KKK: Do you think Russia-Ukraine crisis has impacted on Russia’s relation with Africa?
SB: Following the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the United States and European nations imposed a slew of sanctions on Russia. Despite being geographically distant from the conflict, the African continent is concerned about the spill-over effect and subsequent economic sanctions, which will significantly impact different African countries. The surge in oil, gas, and wheat prices is the war’s most visible and tangible result.
On 2nd March, the United Nations General Assembly in New York voted on a resolution calling for the withdrawal of the Russian military from Ukraine. To the shock of United States and many Western nations, only 27 African countries participated in the United Nations General Assembly vote on the resolution. Several rounds of elections took place in the United Nations. Russia is aware of which are the countries that always stood behind it and going forward, would become the core of Russia’s Africa strategy. Russia is also aware of the countries that never supported it. These votes would actually help Russia to recalibrate its Africa strategy.
On the other hand, the pattern of these votes also indicates that Africans do not see their foreign relationships as a zero-sum game and do not want to become dependent on any foreign power. They have gone hybrid, choosing and mixing from among the various outside parties, be it the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, China, Russia, France, India or Turkey, based on their national interest, and maintaining their strategic autonomy.
KKK: Why Africa is attracting many external players? Is this trend another round of scramble for its resources?
SB: In the last decade, many countries are increasing their presence in Africa: Turkey has opened 16 new missions, Qatar has opened 11 and Japan has opened nine. Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Germany and Venezuela have also opened five new embassies. It’s like a new Cold War is playing out in Africa, where the rival sides are trying to gain influence. The extent of competition between different traditional and emerging countries to reach out to Africa has made some people term it as new scramble for Africa.
No wonder Africa is heavily rich with natural resources, particularly minerals including cobalt and lithium, essential to the rapidly expanding electric vehicle industry. However, the fight for Africa is much beyond its resources. By 2050, Africa will be home to one-fourth of the world’s population; half of them would be under 25, representing an important market. Africa is already the world’s largest geographic free trade area, and its gross domestic product has been projected to reach as high as $29 trillion by 2050. Africa is also essential to global security due to Islamic terrorist groups such as Boko Haram in West Africa and Al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa.
The value of Africa is also important geostrategically. In the UN and other multilateral bodies, Africa represents the largest block with 28 per cent of the votes compared to Asia’s 27 per cent, the Americas’ 17 per cent, and Western Europe’s 15 per cent. Indeed, African votes were decisive in the United Nations General Assembly debate 1971 that returned Communist China to the United Nations and expelled Taiwan. Therefore, to reshape global institutions and norms that would reflect today’s reality, Africa will remain central to geostrategic competition.
Therefore, terming this as “scramble for Africa” would be a limited view that ignores the continent’s own agency.
KKK: Can we describe that as neo-colonialism? What do you suggest should be African leaders approach in dealing with external players?
SB: Great power rivalries characterise contemporary Africa, termed the new scramble for Africa. The contest between the three major global powers will increase in the upcoming year as China, the United States and the European Union try to enhance their economic, political, and security ties with Africa. However, as explained earlier, although it has much resemblance with neocolonialism, terming it neocolonialism would be too simplistic.
I’ll explain this with one recent example. The West was alarmed when Africa refused to condemn Russian aggression in Ukraine at the UNGA. However, what West forgot to consider is that despite the worsening humanitarian crisis in Africa, how much help West has extended. Instead of assisting Africa in overcoming the disastrous consequences of food scarcity and price increases, their focus appeared to be on countering Russian influence in Africa. And therefore, the African reaction to the West’s call to condemn Russia demonstrates the emergence of African realpolitik, quite rightfully.
Going forward, African leaders must think strategically, removing emotions and personal gain from policy decisions. Transparency and good governance are going to be paramount for any good to come out of the continent’s bargaining with rich and powerful foreigners or for any good to trickle down to those who need it most.
KKK: What could be the role of Africa in this new reconfiguration often referred to as multipolar world?
SB: The outlook for Africa in the near future is far from smooth. It is not difficult to list the concerns. Issues, including debt, civil war, internal strife, and climate change, present considerable difficulties. The instability brought on by election cycles, geopolitics, war, and the continuing threat of food shortages will remain significant causes for concern. But it also offers opportunities for African nations to rise to the occasion.
Undoubtedly, the world is in the throes of tremendous change. The Breton Woods arrangement and the Pax Americana are slowly but surely declining. And therefore, African countries now have an opportunity to redefine their role in the world order. It is palpable from the fact that they are increasingly looking east to emerging and re-emerging powers for partnerships. But as they do so, they need to ensure they do not move from one unhappy partnership to another.
African policymakers have begun to attend periodic summit-level meetings with new centres of power such as China, India, Russia, and Turkey. They have done so, of course, while continuing to participate in summits with the European Union, the United States, France, and Japan. The countries of the continent must exercise more agency in determining their own affairs.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS) and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.
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***
Within the fortified corridors of politico-industrial power in Washington and in the hallowed bastion of the European Commission in Brussels, the same dark plans are being pushed forward: to alter the genetic code of life so as to make both man and nature patentable, controllable and servile to the cause of the techno-industrial god of insentient progress.
The latest manifestation of this process has now emerged within the food and farming sector and strongly threatens the future of all ‘GMO Free’ produce and terrains. It goes under the deliberately innocuous heading ‘New Genomic Techniques’ (NGT).
The US agribusiness industry set the agricultural genetic engineering agenda more than two decades ago, when a judge in a New York court room pronounced GMO and conventionally grown food ‘indistinguishable’. A judgement that went against the essential scientific evidence and played into the gleeful hands of the biotech industry. The precise term used was ‘substantial equivalence’.
This allowed the marketing of US GMO foods to go ahead with no labelling to warn consumers of its composition or provenance, thus denying them the right to choose.
US farmers have been likewise left to fight for the right to sell their seeds and grains as ‘GMO Free’, as the Monsanto corporation gave itself the authority to fine any farmer suffering the misfortune of having their crop contaminated by rogue GM varieties whose pollen was carried by wind or insects onto their farmland. Yes, prosecuted for being found to have a Monsanto patented GM plant growing on their field!
From the outset, European farmers and consumers strongly resisted attempts to get GMO’s into the food chain and onto the fields. Battles to uphold the sovereignty of ‘real foods’ and the right for organic and traditional produce to be legally protected against GM cross contamination, raged throughout the 1990’s and beyond – right the way up to the present day*.
Consequently, in spite of intense GM industry lobbying of the EU Commission in Brussels, less than 2% of European farmland grows GM crops.
Stung by their failure to make progress – and the subsequent collapse of the Monsanto corporation – the wounded GM battleship came up with a guileful sleight of hand to try and beat the regulatory protection of a largely GMO Free Europe.
They invented something called ‘Gene Edited’ crops going under the synonym ‘CRISPR’ (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). Gene editing, they claim, is not the same as introducing foreign bacteria into the seed genome to make it resistant to an intensive chemical spraying regime.
Gene editing, they posit, simply removes/alters genes to make the plant perform according to the requirements of the biotech control program. A program that exerts sufficient ‘alteration’ to the natural composition of the plant to make it patentable as a ‘novel food’, thus enabling all profits to flow back into the pockets of the ‘designer’ corporations.
Recognising that a particularly cunning Trojan Horse was being designed to get ‘GMO by another name’ into the food chain, activists clubbed together and took the case to the European Court of Justice.
On 25 July 2018, the court rejected the bio-tech industry’s claim that CRISPR was no longer a GMO, clarifying that organisms created by new mutagenesis techniques are subject to existing EU GMO laws. A great victory for the defence of food sovereignty and the preservation of the natural biodiversity of farm crops.
But the GMO and chemical agribusiness behemoth knows no end to its determination to exert its sterile stamp on nature. Just four corporations now own more than 50% of the total world seed market. Their bio-piracy of original seed genomes and subsequent attempt to patent (privatise) ‘living organisms of nature’ has re-emerged in a new attempt to overthrow resistance to gene engineering.
The new deception is called New Genomic Techniques (NGT) and its right to operate is now starting its passage through the legislative assessment process at the European Commission.
WARNING: there is nothing about NGT’s that carries any benefit for the environment or food quality. Quite the opposite, it is a further tinkering with the genetics of life, whose purpose is solely to move living organisms out of traditional cross-breeding practices and into patented laboratory created industrial designer-foods. Foods able to be manipulated to ultimately replace the need for existing soil/field based agricultural traditions practised by millions of farmers throughout the world.
This agenda is a central component of the World Economic Forum programme known as ‘The Great Reset’ and particularly its ‘Green New Deal’ and ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’. Shockingly it is supported by the once ‘green’ King Charles III of England, who operates alongside WEF executive chairman Klaus Schwab and recently gave Royal Assent to new biotech innovations which stand at the opposite end of the spectrum from organic and agro-ecological farming practices.
Consumers in Europe have demanded the ‘right to know’ the provenance and composition of their foods, but the ability to hold onto this right is being undermined even as I write. The new GM legislation has recently been under debate in the European parliament and will later come under the scrutiny of the EU Board of Ministers. Italy, Austria and Holland are strongly opposed, but other countries are yet to show their colours.
GMO ingredients have to be labelled as such within the EU. But NGT’s won’t carry this requirement, if they come into law. A whole range of existing risk assessment precautions will go, as the parameters of what is GMO and what is not, get deliberately blurred and diffused.
There will be no mechanisms for enabling conventional non organic foods staying ‘GMO Free’; farmers and consumers alike will be disenfranchised from their commitment to food sovereignty.
If this agenda is adopted, there will be no detection rules and no methods of monitoring the status of crops.
Now is the moment to DEMAND that the Minister of Agriculture and Minister of the Environment in your country, never allow NGT’s to get onto the statute books during their term of office. Demand that they completely reject the New Genomic Techniques bill which they will be called to vote on in the European Commission.
If you want to retain an element of control over your and your children’s health and over the food you eat, as well as help preserve the vital biodiversity of nature within this planet’s irreplaceable natural environment, then make sure to take this vital step today!
Play your part in overcoming the sick wishes of the cabal that is attempting to subvert the very life support systems which have kept this beautiful living planet in vibrant existence for billions of years.
Let us join together in never allowing the insentient perpetrators of ecocide to play their cold roulette with the fundamental building blocks of life itself.
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Julian Rose and Jadwiga Lopata successfully campaigned to block a big corporate push to get GM seeds and plants into Poland. They succeeded in persuading the Polish government to introduce a national GMO ban in 2006 which still remains in place today.
Julian is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer and international activist. See his website www.julianrose.info.
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US officials are growing tired of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky making endless demands for Western support, writes Douglas MacKinnon, a former adviser for policy and communications at the Pentagon, in an op-ed for The Hill. Even without MacKinnon’s insight, it is evident that Western leaders are becoming weary of Zelensky’s demands, as seen at the recent NATO Summit in Lithuania and the aftermath of the event.
MacKinnon, citing sources, points out in his article that US President Joe Biden, in June 2022, “lost his temper and yelled that Zelensky should be showing more gratitude for the billions in aid he was getting from the United States via the American people.”
Asked about Zelensky’s endless demands for US help, a former high-level Pentagon official told MacKinnon that Western support is not endless.
“Zelensky is acting like a spoiled, petulant child who gets everything he wants and it’s still not enough. Many in the U.S. government and many of our citizens are growing tired of his act. I can assure you he is burning bridges in Europe as well,” the former Pentagon official said.
MacKinnon emphasised that more Americans are becoming sceptical of continued US aid to Kiev. This trend will likely grow “as the American people take a harder look at the horrific consequences of the war while also deciding to view Zelensky at ground level instead atop a pedestal.”
“While there is clearly resentment building regarding Zelensky’s perceived lack of appreciation for the money and munitions the West is sending his way, the spigot for those supplies remains wide open,” he added.
On July 21, the Biden administration announced that the US plans a new military assistance package for Ukraine worth up to $400 million, primarily comprised of artillery, air defence missiles and ground vehicles, but no cluster munitions.
According to Reuters, included in the package are several Stryker armoured personnel carriers, mine clearing equipment, munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), anti-tank weapons including TOW and Javelin and munitions for Patriot and Stinger anti-aircraft system. However, these are unlikely to make any difference to the war effort since Western equipment is almost immediately destroyed once entering the battlefield.
It was revealed on July 23 that the Russian military had destroyed a record amount of Western-supplied armour to Ukraine in only 24 hours while repelling Kiev’s long-awaited counter-offensive. Russian forces had eliminated at least 15 German-made Leopard tanks and more than 20 US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles in just one engagement. At the same time, since the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the first week of June, Kiev has lost over 26,000 soldiers, confirming that the long-awaited attack was nothing more than a failure.
The New York Times reported on July 15 that the Ukrainian military lost 20% of its battlefield equipment, including many Western-supplied vehicles, in the first two weeks of the offensive. That was preceded by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu saying on July 11 that there was an estimated Ukrainian loss of 3,000 units of military equipment.
Meanwhile, Western officials have expressed alarm at Ukraine’s slow progress on the battlefield, with a recent Wall Street Journal article claiming that they, too, have been jolted by the rapid loss of military equipment. However, several Ukrainian officials tried to explain the difficulties in the offensive by pointing to delays in Western military assistance.
The media coverage over Biden’s frustration with Zelensky, which has existed since at least June 2022, coupled with reports of the catastrophic loss of equipment and soldiers, has not deterred the West from supporting Ukraine. Despite Biden’s complaints of Zelensky’s spoiled behaviour, it has not deterred the US from pouring billions into Ukraine.
This is the same masochistic behaviour that the UK employs.
It is recalled that British Foreign Secretary Ben Wallace told reporters at the annual NATO summit in Lithuania earlier this month that Kiev should not treat its western partners like “Amazon.”
“I told them that last June. I said to the Ukrainians, when I drove 11 hours to be given a list: ‘I’m not Amazon,’” Wallace said, adding, “Whether we like it or not, people want to see gratitude.”
Ultimately, Zelensky fired his ambassador to the UK on July 21 after the ambassador criticised the president’s “sarcasm” in response to Wallace suggesting Kiev should be more grateful for Western support.
This highlights the spoiled behaviour of Zelensky, but it also demonstrates why he has the audacity to behave in such an entitled behaviour – the Anglo hatred for Russia is so strong that they are willing to be continually humiliated and lambasted by an inferior country, Ukraine.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), gathered Saudi journalists in Riyadh in December to say that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been an ally for decades, but had stabbed Saudi Arabia in the back, and threatened a response.
According to Gulf experts, the disagreement between MBS and Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) is because of the competition between the two over geopolitical and economical leadership in the region. The rivalry stems from the question as to who will be in control of the global oil market.
MBS favors lower oil production, in line with OPEC agreed upon levels, which keeps the global oil price higher. US President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia to personally ask MBS to raise oil production in order to lower the gasoline prices in America, which would be a political plus for Biden and his 2024 re-election campaign while faced with low polling numbers.
However, after the cordial fist-bump the meeting failed to produce the results Biden came for. MBS refused to increased oil production, instead sticking with the previous OPEC agreed upon levels. MBS is the most powerful player in OPEC, and has stepped onto the regional stage as the most powerful political player in the region as well.
MBZ favors increased oil production, which would drop oil prices, but with increased sales, UAE would still have high profits. This strategy is in line with what the White House favors.
The UAE has become an investment and tourism destination for wealthy foreigners, including those from western democracies. Residents of the UAE enjoy a first-class lifestyle, and comparable wages in a cosmopolitan setting.
Not that long ago, Saudi Arabia didn’t even offer a tourist visa. Women had to be covered from head to toe and ‘fashion police’ roamed the streets beating women with canes if not appropriately covered. MBS shelved those antiquated measures and is in the process of turning Saudi Arabia into a tourist destination including the new mega-city Neom, and the new Saudi airlines which will rival the UAE’s Emirates airlines.
The geopolitical landscape of the Middle East is witnessing a subtle but noticeable shift, as cracks begin to emerge in the once unshakeable alliance between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Recent events, ranging from regional disagreements to economic competition, have contributed to a growing strain between these two powerhouse nations.
Yemen and Regional Ambitions
One area that has tested the Saudi-UAE relationship is the ongoing conflict in Yemen. Initially presenting a united front against the Houthi rebels, differing visions on post-war Yemen have caused a rift. While Saudi Arabia portrays itself as the senior custodian of Yemen’s stability, the UAE has often pursued independent ambitions in the south, creating divisions and muddying the waters of coalition efforts. This discord has further complicated reaching a comprehensive peace agreement.
Economic Rivalry
Economic competition has become another catalyst behind the strained Saudi-UAE relationship. Both countries aspire to diversify their economies and reduce dependence on oil, leading to increased rivalry in various sectors such as finance, tourism, entertainment, and technology. These ambitions have occasionally resulted in overlapping interests and rivalries, creating friction between the two nations, as they vie for prominence in the region.
Energy Diplomacy and OPEC
In the realm of energy diplomacy, tensions have recently risen, causing the Saudi-UAE relationship to falter. Disagreements arose within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) regarding production cuts. UAE’s push for higher production quotas to fund its future economic projects clashed with Saudi Arabia’s preference for maintaining market stability. The fallout of these negotiations exposed divisions, sparking resentment and contributing to the widening gap between the two nations.
Qatar and the GCC Crisis
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) crisis, which erupted in 2017, has further strained the Saudi-UAE alliance. While Saudi Arabia led the blockade against Qatar, the UAE took measures to isolate Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism. However, as regional dynamics have evolved, Saudi Arabia has sought reconciliation, while the UAE remains hesitant. This contrasting approach has caused a rift within the coalition, impacting the shared stance against Qatar and challenging the long-standing regional dynamics.
Regional Influence and Power Struggles
As both Saudi Arabia and the UAE aim to assert their dominance and expand their influence in the wider Middle East, their individual foreign policies frequently collide. Divergent approaches towards Syria, Iran, and Egypt, among others, have strained the alliance. Saudi Arabia’s focus on confronting Iran and maintaining traditional alliances often contrasts with the UAE’s pragmatism and pursuit of calculated regional partnerships. Such divergent strategies have created tensions, potentially altering regional dynamics.
The Saudi-UAE alliance, once hailed as an unbreakable pillar in the region, is experiencing significant strain due to Yemen’s complexities, economic rivalry, energy diplomacy, the Qatar crisis, and power struggles in the region. These contrasting interests and policies have gradually eroded the unity that once defined their partnership. As the Middle East undergoes profound transformations, it remains to be seen how Saudi Arabia and the UAE will navigate these challenges, either rejuvenating their alliance or drifting further apart in pursuit of their own ambitions.
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The more the government of Canada piles on the hocus pocus of climate change/net zero, the more the incentive grows for the Trudeau-Singh regime to shower even more favour on Ontario and Quebec. The brunt of this formula for national disunity continues to be felt most severely by the people of Alberta.
Any security arrangement with too many variables and multiple contingencies, risks stuttering and keeling over. Critical delays might be suffered, attributable to a number of factors beyond the parties concerned. Disputes and disagreements may surface. Such an arrangement is AUKUS, where the number of cooks risk spoiling any meal they promise to cook.
Mirroring meticulous Chinese attention to protocol, they met at Villa 5 of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse – exactly where Kissinger first met in person with Zhou Enlai in 1971, preparing Nixon’s 1972 visit to China. The Mr. Kissinger Goes to Beijing saga was an “unofficial”, individual attempt to try to mend increasingly fractious Sino-American relations. He was not representing the current American administration.
The chips sanctions are not just about limiting China’s military-industrial potential. It is taking aim a ALL of China’s society. The idea is that AI is about to permeate everything in society, science, diplomacy, politics, economics, trade, finance, military – you name. A country deprived of access to AI will be handicapped. AI needs advanced chips. The chips embargo are the means to secure that all of China will be handicapped.
In June, as soon as the counteroffensive began, Ukraine’s military intelligence claimed that the army had almost run out of its Soviet era 152mm artillery ammunition and was forced to use NATO standard 155mm shells. These claims caused large stir in NATO, which began actively looking for ammunition for poor Ukraine.
Richard Werner, Ph.D., created a monetary policy known as quantitative easing, which is intended to help banks get out of financial crises more rapidly and avoid long-term recession. In 2020, this policy was misused to intentionally create inflation.
In the United States, the word “socialism” has come to have a negative meaning. In that meaning, the word implies the loss of individual sovereignty, rejection of religion and the institution of authoritarian political measures.
Thousands of Israeli citizens are protesting judicial reforms proposed by the extremist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Street protests against the proposed bill began in January, and are gathering momentum as military units, labor unions, and medical associations join the throng of protesters.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. blew up the Democratic Party yesterday in the House Subcommittee on Weaponization of Government hearing, acting like a normal human while being set upon by a flock of harpies desperately screeching “Russia, Russia, Russia,” as if that means anything anymore. He branded them as worse than the McCarthyites of the 1950s, rebuked their insane scurrilities supporting censorship, and left them in a state of exhausted disgrace.
In fact, the West supports the destruction of Ukraine and its peoples. Amply documented, the West never wanted peace for Ukraine. Instead, Western policymakers seek to “fight to the last Ukrainian” in order to bleed Russia. Ukraine and Ukrainians are being sacrificed, not for “democracy and freedom” which are nothing more than war propaganda slogans, but for nazism, for impoverishment, for economic enslavement, and for colonial status.
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The US is losing culture.
Hollywood is a very vivid symptom of this.
The other day, I revisited an iconic US film distributed by Columbia Pictures – Dr. Strangelove.
One of the best political black-satire movies of all time. I saw it 3 times and still enjoy seeing scenes from it again.
I just came across another iconic film released by Paramount Pictures – Once Upon a Time in the West.
Both movies were provocative – in their story as well as in their cinematography. Both are masterworks.
We don’t see masterworks from Hollywood anymore.
And there is a profound lack of US films with an edge.
What is the reason?
There is no lack of money in the US movie industry. They constantly make one expensive movie after another. Mission Impossible No. 4002 and counting – Indiana Jones No. 284733 and counting. Super Hero movie no. 3 million and counting. Disney nobody-cares movie number gazillion. A lot of ink can be wasted about changes in movie-habits, on-line movie access etc. Is the collapse in US movie quality the consequence of that – or is the collapse in cultural quality of US movies an intrinsic, a deeper US cultural phenomenon? I believe the latter.
Even in the US, there used to be a market for niche films with less viewers – many of which like Pulp Fiction and the first Star Wars movie (yes, both were low-budget) became blockbusters. Earlier, the US was also able to make provocative films even in the high budget range. Apocalypse Now was extremely expensive to make, but the financiers in the movie industry at that time dared to invest in that movie which heavily criticized US behavior in the lost Vietnam war. And that movie became a blockbuster and a classic too. The Godfather series which showed a violent crime family in a somewhat human light was also provocative. Are there any provocations in US movies today? Look to Barbie. Ask Oppenheimer.
Something is lost in the US cultural sphere.
Are there other parts of the US cultural landscape which are blossoming instead? I don’t see signs of that. I also haven’t seen anything really interesting in the New York Times which loves to report on culture (they call it “arts” to be more snobbish). What about music? Rap was provocative – but that was then. Techno was underground and provocative – but that was then. Michael Jackson is outlawed, and there is no new one. There are no new cultural US musical mega-figures with strong personalities – nothing like Michael Jagger, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix. There isn’t even a new Madonna.
It seems like the US society doesn’t further such culture and personalities. The US doesn’t even seem to have a thriving underground environment anymore. The US Left used to support such underground environments, but it seems that the woke US Left is itself becoming the arch enemy of everything “deviant” – the cancel culture of political correctness and artificial pronouns. An artificial “progressive” political movement which has infiltrated, infested, and cut down the productive growth environments of cinema, music, and culture in the US. Diversity, creativity, renewal, and energy come from things growing wild – and that is not allowed in the US anymore.
So maybe there we have it. A key reason for US cultural collapse.
It will have a profound detrimental impact. Both on the US internally – and on the US position in the World.
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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.
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