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First published on October 25, 2022

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At a conference for medical professionals in Sedona, Arizona this past weekend, several speakers–all physicians–commented on a disturbing trend: an increase in otherwise healthy people dying in their sleep.

Sudden unexplained age-inappropriate deaths seem to be happening more than usual, both in the United States, where these medical doctors practice, and in several other countries in the industrialized world.

Excess death “is a phenomenon all over the world at the moment,” said Dr. John Campbell, a nurse educator who has been meticulously following and commenting on the scientific data for his YouTube channel, which has 2.47 million subscribers.

The data shows that “deaths are 16 percent higher than we would expect,” Dr. Campbell said in a recent video, “and the vast majority of these are not COVID deaths.”

Statistics tell part of the story. Unusual deaths making headlines tell another part.

For example, South African actress, Franci Swanepoel, was found dead in her bed on Sunday morning, October 16. She was in the middle of filming a new project. Swanepoel was 50 years old. Her cause of death is not yet known, according to news reports.

Earlier this month, a young dad, Jack Grozier, was also found dead at his home in New Cumnock, Scotland. Just hours before, he had texted his girlfriend to say that he’d talk to her the next morning. Grozier was 23. He leaves behind a one-year-old son, according to the Irish Mirror.

Seventeen-year-old Gwen Casten, whose father is a lawmaker in the state of Illinois, also died in her sleep.

On October 7, 2022, Casten’s family issued a statement on Instagram explaining that their daughter, who had no known health or behavioral problems, died of a heart arrhythmia of an unknown cause.

“She had just come home from an evening with friends, went to bed and didn’t wake up,” the statement read.

Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who is board-certified in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease, who presented at the conference, said that when people—especially young people—die in their sleep the underlying cause is often myocarditis.

Myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart, can lead to irregular heart rhythms that can be lethal without immediate treatment.

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First published o February 20, 2023

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One of the most critical economic partners of Russia amid the unprecedented Western economic sanctions from Washington and the EU over the Ukraine war has been the Indian government of BJP leader Narendra Modi.

In the past several years Modi, playing a delicate balancing act between alliances with Russia and also with the West, has emerged as a vital trade partner of Russia amid the sanctions. Despite repeated efforts by Biden Administration and UK officials, Modi has refused to join sanctions against Russian trade, above all oil trade. Now a series of suspiciously-timed and targeted events suggest that there is an Anglo-American destabilization being launched to topple Modi in the coming months.

India is a vital ally of Russia through its participation among other things in the so-named BRICS group of nations. The BRICS is the acronym for an informal group of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It is a loose gathering of five of the most dynamic states of the non-OECD nations, mostly of the South. After a Wall Street economist named four potential fast growth emerging economies in 2001, in 2009 the first BRIC summit was held, and after admitting South Africa in 2010, BRICS summits have been annual.

The five have an impressive 40% of the world population, over three billion people, and around 25% of global GDP, with China making up 70% of that, India around 13% and Russia and Brazil 7%. With increasing problems for international companies doing business in China, many major companies are looking to India, the world’s most populous country with a large skilled workforce, as the increasingly favored production alternative to China.

India and Modi

India under BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly refused to join Washington in condemning Russia’s Ukraine actions. It has defied US sanctions on Russian oil buying, despite repeated US threats of consequences. In addition to being a fellow BRICS member, India is also a major long-time buyer of Russian defense equipment.

Modi is facing a national election in Spring 2024, and important regional ones this year, that will determine his future. In January a clear Anglo-American assault on Modi and his key financial backer was launched. A shadowy Wall Street financial firm, Hindenburg  Research, supposedly does “forensic financial research” to look for corruption or fraud in listed companies, with which it then sells a company ”short” as their research is published. The mysterious company emerged in 2017 and is suspected of having ties with US Intelligence.

In January Hindenburg targeted an Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, head of the Adani Group and at the time reportedly the richest man in Asia. Adani also happens to be the major financial backer of Modi. Adani’s fortune has multiplied hugely since Modi became Prime Minister, often on ventures tied to Modi’s economic agenda.

Since the January 24 Hindenburg report alleging improper use of offshore tax havens and stock manipulation, Adani Group companies have lost over $120 billion in market value. Adani Group is the second largest conglomerate in India. Opposition parties have made a point that Modi is tied to Adani. Both are long-term friends from Gujarat in the same part of India.

The Hindenburg report, which it claims is the result of 2 years research and visits to half a dozen countries– suggesting it was quite a costly investment gamble for a tiny Wall Street research firm– accused Adani companies among other things, “that the INR 17.8 trillion (U.S. $218 billion) Indian conglomerate Adani Group has engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades…Our research involved speaking with dozens of individuals, including former senior executives of the Adani Group, reviewing thousands of documents, and conducting diligence site visits in almost half a dozen countries.” [i]

The details of the Hindenburg effort to discredit and short stocks of a company in remote India, spending clearly large sums to document, suggests they might have well-informed whistleblowers or intelligence sources helping them target a vulnerable group with close ties to Modi. Otherwise it would have been a very high-risk gamble for them. Or they are phenomenally lucky.

At the same month that the suspiciously-timed Hindenburg expose of Adani appeared, in January, 2023 the British government-owned BBC released a TV documentary alleging Modi’s role two decades ago in 2002 in religious riots in Gujarat when he was governor there. The BBC report, which has been banned in India, was based on unpublished intelligence given to BBC by the UK Foreign Office. Interesting. [ii]

The Modi government took extraordinary measures to censor “India: The Modi Question,” the BBC film in India. Indian authorities attacked the BBC for producing “propaganda,” raided BBC offices in India for alleged tax crimes, and invoked emergency powers to force social media companies to remove links to the BBC’s videos. The police detained student protesters who were organizing viewing parties on campuses across the country. [iii] The BBC with help of the UK Foreign Office hit a raw nerve.

India Russia Ties

Refusing to join NATO sanctions against Russia, and maintaining a strict principle of neutrality as it has done since the Cold War era, Modi has taken advantage of availability of Russian crude oil that the US and EU now refuse. Russia is now the biggest supplier of crude oil to India overtaking Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In December, India bought 1.2 million barrels of crude from Russia every day – a whopping  33 times more than a year earlier. Ironically, some of that Russian oil is being refined in India and re-exported to the EU, which just banned Russian oil. According to energy analysts, “India is buying record amounts of severely discounted Russian crude, running its refiners above nameplate capacity, and capturing the economic rent of sky-high crack spreads and exporting gasoline and diesel to Europe.” [iv]

Before the start of the Ukraine war, India bought only 1 percent of Russia’s crude. That figure went up to 28 percent in January. No other country has increased its consumption of Russian oil as much, not even China, which has also significantly increased its buying of Russian oil. If we add imports of Russian fertilizers and sunflower oil and other products, India’s imports from Russia climbed more than 400% in eight months to November from a year earlier.

Worth noting, when it comes to making a huge profit from buying deeply-discounted Russian oil, India’s biggest company by market value, Reliance Industries Ltd, has been a major private sector buyer of Russian crude. Reliance, which owns world’s largest refinery by capacity, in Jamnagar, got  27 percent of its oil from Russia in May, 2022 up from just 5 percent before April. That sum has likely risen since then. Notable, as the Chairman of Reliance, Mukesh Ambani,  is on the Board of the Davos World Economic Forum which is a major promoter of ending crude oil and gas for the UN 2030 Green Agenda. [v] Ideology is nice but huge profits apparently nicer.

Enter George Soros

As further indication that Washington and London seek regime change in India, George Soros, speaking on February 17 at the annual Munich Security Conference, declared, ominously, that, in effect, Modi’s days are numbered.

The 92-year old Soros stated, “India is an interesting case. It’s a democracy, but its leader Narendra Modi  is no democrat. “ That’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Clearly referring to the recent BBC documentary,

Soros added, “Inciting violence against Muslims was an important factor in his meteoric rise.”

Soros detailed his indictment of the Indian leader: “Modi maintains close relations with both open and closed societies. India is a member of the Quad (which also includes Australia, the US, and Japan), but it buys a lot of Russian oil at a steep discount and makes a lot of money on it…” [vi]

Soros has been involved in every Color Revolution since the 1980’s including in Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Yeltsin’s 1990s rape of Russia, in Iran, against Orban’s Hungary, and countless other countries not playing by the free market “democracy” agenda of Washington. That is a matter of open record.

Soros suggested strongly that the Hindenburg Research exposé of Modi ally Adani  is no coincidence. He stated,

“Modi and business tycoon Adani are close allies; their fate is intertwined… Adani is accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards. Modi is silent on the subject, but he will have to answer questions from foreign investors and in parliament. This will significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government and open the door to push for much needed institutional reforms.” [vii]

He concluded,

“I may be naïve, but I expect a democratic revival in India.” [viii]

That’s Soros short-hand for regime change to someone more pliant to the NATO globalist agenda.

Billionaire hedge fund speculator George Soros has been accused of many things, but never of being naïve. Expect the coming months to signal a massive escalation of Western dirty trick operations to try to topple Modi and weaken the BRICS group of countries that are increasingly trying to oppose the dictates of Washington and Davos globalists.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.

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

Notes

[i] Hindenburg Research, Adani Group : How The World’s 3rd Richest Man Is Pulling The Largest Con In Corporate History, January 24, 2023, https://hindenburgresearch.com/adani/

[ii] BBC, BBC India offices searched by income tax officials, 14 February, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-64634711

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Conor Gallagher, Russia’s  Sanction Proof  Trade Corridor To India Frustrates The Neocons, February 1, 2023, Zero Hedge, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russias-sanction-proof-trade-corridor-india-frustrates-neocons

[v] Charu Sudan Kasturi, Why India Can’t Quit Russian Oil, July 13, 2022, Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/13/india-russia-oil-imports-energy-ukraine-war/

[vi] George Soros, Remarks Delivered at the 2023 Munich Security Conference, February 16, 2023,  https://www.georgesoros.com/2023/02/16/remarks-delivered-at-the-2023-munich-security-conference/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid.

Featured image: Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Samarkand, Uzbekistan, September 16, 2022 (Source: Indian Punchline)

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It’s been a bloodbath for the majority of companies that go overtly woke in the new era of American consumer rebellion, and the establishment is not happy. Corporations like Disney, Anheuser-Busch and Target are plunging in profits and losing billions in market cap after pledging fealty to the trans agenda. In particular, the public is setting out to make examples of institutions that support trans indoctrination of children. Simply put, a line in the sand has been crossed.

With conservative boycotts far more effective than leftist boycotts ever were, the movement makes evident that the political left is a paper tiger and that conservatives and independents have the real majority power in the US. In response, the media is claiming that this movement is a form of “economic terrorism.” That is to say, if you refuse to support the woke hive mind with your wallet, you should be considered domestic enemy.

It took long enough, but average Americans are finally engaging in a culture war which was started years ago, not so much by the political left, but by globalist institutions using leftist activists as enforcers and saboteurs. The key issue that very few people talk about is that activist groups would have NO POWER whatsoever if it weren’t for the unprecedented backing they receive from governments, non-profits, think-tanks and the corporate world. And, a lot of this support has been injected through ESG-style financing as well as DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs.

ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) is becoming a well known term and is, at bottom, a form of “impact investing” – Meaning, major lenders such as Blackrock or Carlyle Group, or think-tanks like the Ford Foundation, seek to control societal outcomes using lending as leverage. Watch the video HERE featuring the Ford Foundation’s head of “mission investments” to get a basic understanding of what ESG really is:  Social engineering.

In the past, lenders would base their financing standards on good credit scores and the likelihood of return on investment. If you had a business with a history of solid returns and worthy collateral then you would probably get whatever loans you needed. Today, however, lenders are trying to set political and ideological terms for companies seeking to obtain financing. You must signal your virtue to get access to money, and this includes supporting climate and carbon initiatives, reorganizing your labor based on diversity and inclusion rules, even promoting LGBT activism might be a big factor in your next infusion of cash.

The higher your ESG score, the more likely it is that you will qualify for access to debt. This is part of the reason why a large array of corporations are increasingly jumping on the “pride month” bandwagon. All they have to do is slap some rainbows on some products or commercials or publicly defend the trans grooming of children and suddenly they are golden for another year of subsidized funds.

But what happens in a world where consumer loyalty is no longer a guarantee and the public stops buying from chains that promote woke concepts? What happens when going woke also means going broke? Is ESG cash really worth losing half your customers or more?

Well, not right now it isn’t. As central banks raise interest rates and cut their balance sheets the easy money party that started back in 2008 is ending. After a decade of exponential growth ESG is now in steep decline, and this is directly tied to the policies of central banks like the Federal Reserve. In the past year it is no longer viable to dump money into mostly useless woke projects. Yet, the woke trend continues. Why?

Twenty years ago, the name of the game in the business world was “brand building.” If you could build your brand and gain market loyalty you could sustain your profit model for decades to come. Now, corporations are actually willing to destroy the very brands they spent so much time and money developing all in the name of political idolatry.

It seems like pure madness, but what if they know something we don’t?

What if they are riding out an engineered economic crisis so that they can be rewarded later with “too woke to fail” riches?

My theory is that while ESG lending appears to be dying today, tomorrow ESG lending will be the only way any company will be able to survive.

We need to start considering the future possibility of globally institutionalized ESG.  The frightening notion of central bank ESG financing has been circulating ever since the early days of the covid pandemic.

From the BIS to the Fed to the ECB, numerous programs began to surface with woke connotations. Most of them initially focused on climate change, with central banks suddenly taking an interest in “saving the planet” from a carbon threat that doesn’t exist. Now, there’s a rising chorus of DEI and social equity babble coming from central banks as well.

Maybe international banks are limited in how they engage in ESG lending, but what about central banks? What if they drop their facade of being “politically neutral” and come out full force in support of the woke mind virus? What if central banks become the foundation of ESG?  Wouldn’t woke lending then become perpetual?

I believe that this is exactly what is intended to happen, but it would have to be tied directly to an economic crisis as well as the introduction of digital currencies (CBDCs).  A debt crisis (along with stagflation) could force a majority of companies into a corner. With lack of funds, falling consumer spending and a tightening loan market, central banks and stimulus measures would once again become the only official mechanism for rebuilding the economy.

Governments would also be beholden to central banks as a means to stay afloat, and this means the bankers will have immense influence over how money is distributed (and how wealth is reallocated).

Unlike the crash of 2008, though, the next stimulus event will not be a fiat free-for-all. Instead, it will be RESET; a highly limited rescue plan with digital money being infused into select institutions. In other words, only a portion of the existing economy will be given a life boat, and guess who will qualify for a spot on the raft? That’s right, companies showing the most devotion to ESG.

This would explain why so many corporations are refusing to back away from woke marketing even though they’re losing millions of customers; they know what’s about to happen and they’re preparing in advance for the fallout as well as the inevitable digital bailouts.

Of course, some people will argue that this would require a level of organization and “conspiracy” that doesn’t exist. It would be “silly” to suggest that corporations are colluding to enact a plan to fundamentally upend the current economic paradigm, right? Wrong. At least in terms of coordination, the cabal has already openly announced its presence.

The collusion of corporations, think-tanks and governments to create an international woke monopoly is not theory, it’s reality. The only question left is when will central banks fully admit they’re a part of the scheme? I would suggest that the signs of banking crisis we witnessed at the beginning of this year are the tip of the iceberg.

As the Fed and others continue to raise interest rates into economic weakness stress on the system will expand, and eventually something integral will snap. Maybe it will be another Lehman moment, maybe it will be the US dollar losing reserve status or some other disaster. But it’s no coincidence that this invasion of far-left cultism in the business world is escalating at the same time that our economic foundations are struggling. One is related to the other, and it’s my view that the decay of the current system is meant to facilitate the creation of a new and perpetually woke economy.

The public would thus be trapped into participating in the cult by sheer necessity, unless, the population decentralizes using localized production and localized trade. Our entire way of life would have to change dramatically, drawing from self sufficient ideals that used to be a staple a hundred years ago.

ESG is not going away on its own. Woke ideology is not going away on its own. These structures will have to be destroyed, but you can’t rebel against a structure you rely on for your daily survival. You would first have to completely separate from it.

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“Turbo cancer” is a non-medical term that has arisen to describe very aggressive and rapidly progressive cancers following Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccination and suppression of the immune system.

I have written 13 substacks about turbo cancers so far:

• turbo cancers in Canadian doctors (click here)
• turbo cancer leukemias (click here) and children (click here) and (click here)
• turbo cancer lymphoma (click here)
• turbo brain cancer glioblastomas (click here) and (click here)
• turbo cervical cancer (click here)
• turbo testicular cancer in athletes (click here)
• turbo cancer of appendix (click here)
• turbo sarcomas (click here)
• turbo colon cancers (click here)
• turbo gastric cancers (click here)

Today’s focus is on turbo lung cancers.

Clydebank, UK – 24 yo paramedic Meadhbh Cameron died on Mar. 11, 2023. She was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in Sep. 2022, which was resistant to chemo and she died within 5 months of diagnosis (click here)

UK journalist, 45 year old Emily Morgan died after “short battle” (2 months?) with lung cancer (click here).

Emily Morgan passed away on May 26, 2023 after a short battle with lung cancer.

She had stopped Tweeting from her account @emilymorganitv on March 30, 2023.

Although more details are not available, it seems that her “short battle with lung cancer” lasted about 2 months.

Connecticut – 62 yo Abbe Brod Funk died on May 29, 2023 after a 6 month battle with Stage 4 small cell lung cancer

Swift Current, NL – Lorraine Andrews’ son had his lung cancer return

Tumwater, WA – Corrections Deputy Kenneth Richard Anderson died on June 2, 2023 after short battle with lung cancer (click here)

Portland, OR – 40s yo nurse Mara Kieval died suddenly on May 26, 2023 after a “severe health crisis” She had a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine booster on Nov. 27, 2021. She was diagnosed with lung cancer 1 month prior to death.

Twitter reports of Turbo lung cancer:

My Take… 

The underlying mechanism of turbo cancer is most likely some type of COVID-19 vaccine induced immune system suppression that gives rise to rapidly growing and rapidly progressive cancers of the breast, lung, colon, gastric, gallbladder, pancreas, brain, lymphoma, leukemia and so on.

There are a number of theories in regards to what is causing COVID-19 vaccine induced immune system dysfunction: TLR suppression, T-cell dysfunction, IgG4 shift, DNA contamination of mRNA vials with plasmids containing SV40 promoter, p53 inhibition, PD-L1 elevation, NK cell exhaustion and many more.

It is unclear at this time, what is the prevailing mechanism that causes turbo cancer.

The pattern emerging with turbo lung cancers is as follows:

• presents usually very late at Stage 4 with distant metastases
• survival from diagnosis to death in usually around 2 to 6 months, much shorter than the typical non-mRNA induced lung cancer
• resistant to conventional treatments like chemotherapy or radiation therapy
• right now there is not enough data to determine whether these are mostly NSCLC non-small cell lung cancer or SCLC small cell lung cancer types (I have seen examples of both)
• seems to be a problem with both Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines

Turbo cancers are a new phenomenon in oncology and so far, oncologists are not recognizing that these turbo lung cancers, arising after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination, are behaving very differently.

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

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A whistleblower from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which has itself a shady reputation mainly for its biased reporting, always in favor of the western wannabe empire and its vassals, has revealed the discovery of Ukrainian Nazi Groups harvesting children’s organs in underground laboratories. These labs were exposed after the buildings were destroyed in the war.

Already in the wake of the February 2014 (U.S Sponsored) Coup d’état, according to the Huffington Post (2015 report):

“… Poor and disabled children, locked away and out of sight from families and their communities, are sitting ducks for traffickers and pedophiles. And nefarious staff are often the beneficiaries of perverse transactions where captive children are the commodity.

The organization, Disability Rights International (DRI), recently released a report — “No Way Home: The Exploitation and Abuse of Children in Ukraine’s Orphanages” — following a three year investigation of the plight of children living in institutional care.

DRI found that children are at risk of being trafficked for sex, labor, pornography and organs in a country [Ukraine] that is a known hub for human trafficking.

Some 82,000 children are said to live in these facilities, although no one seems to know for sure. Some Ukrainian activists put the number closer to 200,000.

Inside orphanages, DRI found rampant sexual violence, abuse and rape were commonplace. Children are often recruited directly from orphanages for sex and labor according anti-trafficking organizations in Ukraine.”

That was before the onset of the Ukraine War.

The 11-minute video of The People’s Voice is so brutal and cruel it is difficult to watch and listen to. 

The Ukrainian atrocities it describes is just at the limit of what a normal human being can take – and still believe in humanity. Lest, one begins to segregate humans from un-humans. Thoughts and concepts along this line are not new, especially since the beginning of the new era, as you may call what began with the self-inflicted 9/11 mass murder – and related lies, ongoing.

The thought of un-humans running the world was just drastically reinforced when Muammar Gaddafi, the then-leader of Libya was lynched on 20 October 2011 in the most vicious ways by NATO forces led by France and the United States, and when the then-President Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, celebrated with colleagues and journalists, laughing diabolically, “We came, we saw, he died.” The legitimate question, “Is this woman human?” was raised by many people and journalists.

Then came the beginning of the UN Agenda 2030 / The Great Reset – the fear-mongering and lies after lies after miserable lies about a virus which, rightfully may be asked, did it ever exist? — locking down people, preventing them from seeing their loved ones, elderly parents, dying relatives.

A lockdown, of which one key purpose was to start warp-speed building of countless, literally millions and millions of 5G antennas around the globe, with the objective of eventually helping kill people and transform the survivors into remote-controlled transhumans, executing the agenda of a sick elite. See this.

The fake plandemic was followed by two intense years of forced and coerced “vaccination”, of discriminating vaxxed against unvaxxed around the globe, no escape, with a mRNA concoction that was a trial injection – trial not to find out what works best against the flu-like invented Covid disease, but figure out which one kills best and in what ways.

The objective was and is to this day – not healing, but killing – a movement of massive depopulation of the world. That is where we stand today, with the disclosure of thousands and thousands of Pfizer documents. See this.

The population is flooded with media lies, government lies, scientific lies – all bought and corrupted to serve a diabolical elite agenda, an agenda debatably led by Un-People.

When it comes to this western / NATO-provoked Ukraine war, where the Ukrainian Nazi government kills its own people and destroys its own infrastructure just so it can blame Russia for it – see especially the blowing up of the Nova Kakhovka dam – the corruption and child trafficking for elite pedophiles, as well as organ and adrenochrome harvesting, by the tens of thousands, come to the fore.

Just to add another barbarism, the purposeful devastated Nova Kakhovka dam is flooding some 80,000 people, destroying their livelihoods – all evidence indicating it was done by Ukraine but the west blames Russia – all the western mainstream media ape the same lies. See this.

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The People’s Voice video describes in vivid style how Russian troops discovered carved-up bodies of children as young as 2 years to 6 and 7 years of age. Killed alive for their organs. Their pain-stressed blood was harvested for Adrenochrome – the “live-prolonging” remedy for the elite – traded for millions every year.

Child trafficking for sex and organ harvesting is the fastest growing business in the world, currently said to run in the tens of billions. No precise figures are available, and the all-controlling corrupt media make sure that no such figures enter the light of day, as this is the darkest of all dark businesses.

It is a worldwide business, but the center of it is arguably Ukraine.

The west knows it, while still supporting the also most unethical country in the world. President Biden must know about Ukraine’s corruption, as his son made millions in this lawless ambiance. The presstitute media mute such news.

Europe is fully aware.

But the European Commission’s priority is destroying Russia. Are the people at the head of the EC still humans? The west will, of course, never succeed with the Ukrainian war, no matter how many hundreds of billions-worth of weaponry they supply to the Zelensky government. They also know that 70% of this weaponry goes straight to the black-market. See this. 

They also know that Russia is far superior and never intended to dominate Ukraine, just protect the Russian population and their territories.

Yet, Europe follows the insane and inhuman mandate of her Washington masters.

Europe as well as Washington are well-aware of the child-trafficking and organ harvesting, another billions of dollar business. Yet, the support of Ukraine and the repugnant lying to the people around the world continues.

The legitimate question: are these humans or un-humans, those who run the world, those who run the institutions like the WEF, WHO, GAVI, Club of Rome and more? Look at their facial expression, the dark vibrations they emanate – and you keep wondering.

Then watch the video below. Same video as above

Indeed, the power of atrocity is hard to stomach.

And the answer to the question about humans or un-humans becomes obvious.

We, the People, must wake up to an uncomfortable reality, one that cannot be swept under the rug, but must be confronted to save our planet and our civilization from disappearing.

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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.

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

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Virtually the entire world was able to see the absolute debacle of NATO’s much-touted heavy armor and other weapons recently, precisely as various independent experts predicted just days before the wanton counteroffensive began. Despite decades of close cooperation between the former Ukrainian military and NATO, as well as close to a decade of much more intensive joint training between the belligerent alliance and the (then newly installed) Neo-Nazi junta that focused on interoperability and the implementation of NATO standards, the Kiev regime forces’ performance against even the conscripted (although battle-hardened) Donbass militias within the Russian military has been embarrassingly poor.

The counteroffensive is still ongoing, resulting in largely insignificant gains (that are still firmly under Russian fire control), but has now largely stalled. The mainstream propaganda machine is trying to portray their favorite puppet regime’s “successes” as militarily significant, but the available information (ample footage included) indicates this is simply a coping mechanism and a desperate attempt to keep the laughable “Russia losing” narrative alive.

Even if the Neo-Nazi junta’s gains have been a hundred times greater (a virtually impossible scenario as evidenced by undeniable battlefield information), this would still not justify the massive casualties its forces have suffered so far and which are still far from being conclusive.

However, the political West is wholly unmoved by the deaths of tens of thousands of forcibly conscripted Ukrainians, as its only concern is “killing as many Russians as possible”, per their own unrepentant admission. Still, the humiliating losses of such a large quantity of top-of-the-line (on paper only, it would seem) NATO equipment and weapons has now exposed significant cracks within the political West, particularly the growing frustration and disdain Western Europeans have for the ever-hegemonic United States.

The delivery of Western-made weapons, munitions and other equipment has been spearheaded by countries such as the US, UK, Poland, etc.

London was the first to pledge heavy armor and long-range missiles, as well as banned depleted uranium munitions that can leave disastrous consequences. This was followed by Washington DC’s intention of delivering its M1 “Abrams” MBTs (main battle tanks) that are reportedly slated to be upgraded with some M1A2 systems and subsystems, increasing their overall performance and capabilities.

Afraid of potential losses (rightfully as we’ve learned recently), Germany was initially reluctant to provide its own MBTs (Battle Tanks), long considered the most advanced (and best overall) in NATO. This was met with cheap moralizing from the US, UK, Poland and many others, pushing Berlin to speed up its deliveries of heavy armor. However, now that its prized MBTs have not only been destroyed, but are “also on their way to Moscow” (including one of the latest A6 variants), Germany realized just how big of a mistake this has been (just like 80 years ago).

Interestingly, ever since the debacle, Washington DC and London have been strangely quiet about their previously boastful pledge to send the “Abrams” and “Challenger 2” MBTs. Especially now when all the German manufacturers of the “Leopard 2”, primarily Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (chassis producer) and Rheinmetall (main gun producer), are facing plummeting stocks (and extremely likely market share losses). We can only guess who will benefit the most from filling the market gap with their own equivalent equipment and weapons.

However, apart from irreparable damage to its reputation, Germans are also faced with the prospect of their heavy armor becoming nearly obsolete, “as some of it has been sent to Moscow“, where the Russian military will study it in detail. The mainstream propaganda machine insists this is because Russia supposedly “lacks such high technologies” and wants to reverse-engineer them, but this notion is quite laughable, as Moscow will simply study it to find easier ways to destroy NATO heavy armor (not that it has problems doing that already, though).

On June 13, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a live meeting with a number of prominent war bloggers and military journalists, where he detailed the results of the Russian military’s performance in previous days. Putin didn’t hide Russian losses and admitted there are certain problems in the armed forces and the country’s military industry, but also reiterated that these are being tackled as the authorities are working towards weeding out deficiencies. Still, he didn’t miss the opportunity to praise the overall performance of both.

And indeed, the Russian military-industrial capacity has been greatly expanded and proved virtually invulnerable to Western sanctions warfare, while the military demonstrated remarkable flexibility by rapidly adopting new tactics, an effort that resulted in its largely stellar performance when it comes to repelling the Kiev regime’s attacks. Putin specifically praised the T-90M MBT, as it has indeed proven to be the best in the world. This notion is further reinforced by the fact that it has suffered very few losses to enemy fire in well over a year of its use.

On the other hand, the number of German-built “Leopard 2” MBTs destroyed in mere days far exceeds the number of T-90Ms lost in approximately 16 months of the special military operation (SMO), despite the fact that the latter is also much more widely deployed. Worse yet for the Germans, even the less advanced T-72B3 proved to be much more survivable against both drones and ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) than NATO’s latest and most advanced heavy armor. What’s more, the upgraded Soviet-era T-64BV in service with the Kiev regime forces also demonstrated greater survivability.

Apart from Russian Ground Forces and drones, attack helicopters such as the Ka-52 “Alligator” proved particularly deadly against hostile heavy armor. This fantastic machine’s primary ATGM is the 9M127-1 “Vikhr”, one of the world’s most advanced weapons of this class. Putin also praised its ground-based “cousin”, the no less capable 9K135 “Kornet” ATGM, which the Russian President also said will be produced in larger quantities. He also added that military experts expected no less than what we’ve seen in the last several days, adding that NATO weapons and equipment “burn nicely”. The same as that of their “Barbarossa” ideological (and literal) forefathers, we might add.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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China will always remain one of Russia’s top energy partners for economic, geographic, and political reasons, but Moscow doesn’t want to become dependent on exports to the People’s Republic, which is why it’s preemptively diversifying by betting big on South Asia in general and on India in particular.

Several interconnected developments this month prove that Russia’s energy industry is betting big on South Asia. In early June, Iran announced that it’ll form a gas hub together with Russia, Qatar, and Turkmenistan, which might see Moscow and Tehran swapping supplies to meet the needs of each other’s shared partners like India. This arrangement could also revive the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline if Islamabad has the political will or at least lead to an Iranian-Indian one with time.

On the topic of Pakistan, it just received its first-ever Russian oil tanker, which coincided with the first batch of LPG arriving overland from Afghanistan. Russia also hopes to eventually clinch a deal on the Pakistan Stream Gas Pipeline that’s been effectively frozen since April 2022’s post-modern coup. In the meantime, it’s reportedly in favor of reviving the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline and playing a major role in it too, whether with regards to its construction and/or supply.

Even if neither of those two pipelines ever see the light of day, India in and of itself is important enough of an energy partner for Russia to make its big bet on South Asia worthwhile. Russia nowadays supplies a whopping 42% of India’s crude oil and has plans to scale up its supply of LNG too. It’ll soon resume exports from its Yamal plant that were temporarily suspended late last year due to an unrelated sanctions issue and recently invited India to play a larger role in its Sakhalin projects as well.

India is therefore the indisputable centerpiece of the Russian energy industry’s future plans for South Asia, which they envisage including a Pakistani component (if Islamabad can muster the political will) and a Bangladeshi one too. These three countries are either rapidly growing economies like India and Bangladesh or have large untapped potential like Pakistan, not to mention to being home to around a quarter of humanity, which means that their energy needs will continue rising for the foreseeable future.

China will always remain one of Russia’s top energy partners for economic, geographic, and political reasons, but Moscow doesn’t want to become dependent on exports to the People’s Republic, which is why it’s preemptively diversifying by betting big on South Asia in general and on India in particular. From the Kremlin’s perspective, Russia’s literal fueling of India’s rise is expected to keep the global systemic transition on track by midwifing tripolarity prior to complex multipolarity (“multiplexity”).

In parallel with that, helping neighboring Pakistan meet its minimum energy requirements on the cheap can assist it in maintaining a level of socio-economic stability amidst that country’s potential bankruptcy and likely long-term recovery, which serves India’s national security interests. As for the Bangladeshi component of Russia’s regional energy strategy, it simply makes sense to supply this traditional partner with discounted resources too if tankers will already be transiting through the region to and from India.

The grand strategic trend is that Russia has wisely averted the scenario of becoming disproportionately dependent on China by preemptively diversifying its energy exports to South Asia, which also accomplishes the goal of literally fueling India’s rise in order to further accelerate multipolar processes. This newfound energy dimension of the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership therefore has global implications, which thus imbues their bilateral ties with immense importance for shaping this century.

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This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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For thirty years I have taken my father’s name in the vain hope that some of his exquisite writing and character would be recognized through his son’s hand. When he died in 1993, I was devastated. I was the middle child squeezed between seven sisters.

As the only son, my father and I had a very special bond, heralded by my being named after him and sealed by an intimacy exclusive to the two males in the family. When he died, I became the oldest man in a vast extended family bearing the name Curtin. I felt older and more responsible.

Shortly after he died, I very consciously dropped the Jr. from my name to carry on his. This seemed like a way to keep him with me, as if we were one, and just as he once seeded me into life with my mother, I could give him continued life in me, for naming is numinous and in the beginning and end are the words.

From the start, he was my great supporter in all I wrote (and did). With him behind me, I have always felt filled with supreme confidence, as the word attests to its meaning as a shared faith. His in me and mine in him and both of us in something far larger than us: God, the Spirit that inspires us. I would send him my published writings and he would respond with wit and praise, sometimes disagreeing with some of the content of my work but always instilling in me the inner confidence that I was born to write. And as his letters were works of art themselves, I always felt he was blessing me, as if we were poetic souls together exchanging communion, as we often did when I was young and we would attend early morning Mass together, often stopping afterwards for his favorite corn muffins, a simple second act of breaking bread together.

As Irish-American Catholics educated by Jesuit priests, we both had the sensibilities of James Joyce when he said in a letter, “[A writer] is a priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.” Since we lived more than a hundred miles from each other, a life of letters between us ensued.

We both knew that daily life often left something to be desired and our task was how to find ways to fulfill that never-ending desire. In our ways we differed, at least on the surface, for those differences concealed a shared affinity for wit, literature, sports, and things spiritual, to name but four – his spirituality being of the conventional sort and mine more heterodox. When he read the English writer Edmund Gosse’s classic account of his Victorian childhood and his conflicted religious relationship with his father in Father and Son – subtitled “a study of two temperaments” – he wrote to me to say it sounded like us; there was a sadness in his words tinged with a wise understanding that this was inevitable, for separate generations are affected differently by changes in society, and yet and yet, the fundamental things abide. Our deep love, most fundamentally.

My father was a lawyer who in his youth had been an excellent athlete. Since I adored him, at first I too became an athlete in his image, then I considered becoming a lawyer on his trail, and even briefly contemplated the priesthood in search of my father’s shadow. By a simple twist of romantic fate, however, I became a teacher, a wandering scholar, and antinomian of sorts, whose true calling was always writing. I spent many years fleeing my vocation down my nights and days, half committing but never fully. But the Call was insistent, and with my father’s implicit support, I finally said yes. Yes I said yes I will Yes. I think it was also his calling. But different social and personal situations led us down different paths, and he had little choice.

Being a child of the 1960s, I had more opportunities to spread my wings, much of it because of his support. I have been writing and publishing since my twenties, but once my father died and I assumed his name, my writing increased until it became a torrent of words that were unstoppable. I felt I was channeling him, not in some literal and weird sense, but that his death had opened a floodgate that I had kept closed for some reason. Some fear. Something. Yet I always felt I was writing for him.

Because he married young during the Great Depression and had four daughters by the age of twenty-eight and then five more children (one died at birth), he had little time for serious writing, so he channeled his writing into his letters, what he called epistles, which he tossed off on the go with the aplomb of a master. He left me with a large trove of these magical epistles that read like mini short stories. Erudite and deep, funny and self-deprecating, he left a legacy hard to match, not just with his words but with his life.  Here are a few excerpts:

• I have a new case, Ed, in which I represent the fair wife Sally in a custody case involving three children. It seems the children phoned the father and told him that the mother said that reptiles, movie stars, and President Reagan were on the roof. I don’t think this helps my case unless I can show that Reagan was on the roof. What do you think? And what movie stars? I guess I should move for a bill of particulars as to which stars and what kind of reptiles.
• This week I managed to keep pretty busy which is good, though somewhat depressing. Yesterday one of my clients was a blond Japanese guy with a seeing eye dog whose wife, also legally blind, snatched his cane and tried to push him in front of a car. The reason, however, that he is blind is that he killed his first wife a few years ago and shot himself in the head, causing the blindness. He has also threatened to kill this wife.
• [Back from a doctor’s visit, he wrote:] The doctor said I have only two problems – from the waist down and from the waist up. But from the neck up I think I am okay. Cogito ergo sum.
• Another of my clients was a 14 year-old Puerto Rican girl who with four others mugged an old cleaning woman on the subway at 4:45 A.M. My charmer is accused of threatening the victim with a gun. Talking to her in detention, I asked her why the gun bit and she said, ‘She was giving us a hard time.’ I asked her what she meant by that and she replied, ‘She wouldn’t give up her bag.’
• Next case! ¿Quién sabe? [who knows?]
• It’s a great big wonderful world but more than half the people in it are nuts.

I’m afraid he’s right, but he said it, not me.

He once wrote to me that when I was born the doctor told him “You hit the jackpot.” He assumed it meant multiple more girls to go with the four he already had. It turned out to be me. He asked me a good question, “Where had you been?”

After all these years, I still wonder. ¿Quién sabe?

But here I am now and my name is Edward J. Curtin, Jr., a very lucky son of a wonderful father with a saber wit and heart of gold.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

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Incident: Canada BCS3 enroute on Jun 7th 2023, first officer incapacitated (click here) 

By Simon Hradecky, created Thursday, Jun 15th 2023

An Air Canada Bombardier C-Series CS-300, registration C-GJXY performing flight AC-692 from Toronto, ON to St. John’s, NL (Canada) with 125 passengers and 6 crew, was enroute when the first officer became incapacitated. A deadheading captain assumed the duties of the first officer, the aircraft continued to St. John’s for a safe landing about 90 minutes later.

The Canadian TSB reported: “During the flight, the First Officer became incapacitated. A deadheading Captain assumed the crew members duties and the aircraft landed without further incident. Emergency Medical Services met the aircraft at the gate upon arrival.” See this.

Recent pilot deaths 

• Pilot death – May 2023 – 4 Singapore Airlines pilots died suddenly in May 2023
• Pilot death – May 9, 2023 – United Airlines and US Air Force Pilot Lt. Col. Michael Fugett, age 46, died unexpectedly at his home
• Pilot death – May 3, 2023 – Air Transat and Air Canada Pilot Eddy Vorperian, age 48, died suddenly during layover in Croatia
• Pilot death – April 13, 2023 – Phil Thomas, graduate of Flight Training Pilot academy in Cadiz, Spain (FTEJerez) died suddenly.
• Pilot death – March 17, 2023 – 39 year old Westjet Pilot Benjamin Paul Vige died suddenly in Calgary
• Pilot death – March 11, 2023 – British Airways pilot died of heart attack in crew hotel in Cairo before a Cairo to London flight (name & age not released)

Other recent pilot incapacitations in-flight 

Jun. 4, 2023 – Cessna Citation N611VG flying Tennessee to Long Island, fighter jets spotted pilot slumped over in cockpit unconscious, plane crashed and all onboard died (click here)

May 11, 2023 – HiSKy Flight H4474 (DUB-KIV) Dublin to Chisinau (Moldova), 20 min after liftoff pilot became “unable to act”, plane diverted to Manchester (click here)

May 4, 2023 – British Charter TUI Airways Flight BY-1424 (NCL-LPA) Newcastle to Las Palmas Spain pilot became ill, plane diverted back to NCL. (click here)

April 4, 2023 – United Airlines Flight 2102 (BOI-SFO) – captain was incapacitated, first officer was only one in control of the aircraft. (click here)

March 25, 2023 – TAROM Flight RO-7673 TSR-HRG diverted to Bucharest as 30 yo pilot had chest pain, then collapsed (click here)

March 22, 2023 – Southwest Flight WN6013 LAS-CMH diverted as pilot collapsed shortly after take-off, replaced by non-Southwest pilot (click here)

March 18, 2023 – Air Transat Flight TS739 FDF-YUL first officer was incapacitated about 200NM south of Montreal (click here)

March 13, 2023 – Emirates Flight EK205 MXP-JFK diverted due to pilot illness hour and a half after take-off (click here)

March 11, 2023 – United Airlines Flight UA2007 GUA-ORD diverted due to “incapacitated pilot” who had chest pains (click here)

March 11, 2023? – British Airways (CAI-LHR) pilot collapsed in Cairo hotel and died, was scheduled to fly Airbus A321 from Cairo to London (click here)

March 3, 2023 – Virgin Australia Flight VA-717 ADL-PER Adelaide to Perth flight was forced to make an emergency landing after First Officer suffered heart attack 30 min after departure. (click here)

Epoch Times articles on pilot incapacitations

• April 18, 2023 – IN-DEPTH: One Moment He Was in Command of a 150,000-Pound Plane, Next He Was Technically Dead
• March 30, 2023 – Reports of ‘Incapacitated’ Airline Pilots Stoke Concerns, Calls for Investigations

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

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Biotech firm BioNTech is facing a lawsuit filed by a German woman over side effects she suffered after receiving its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine. The woman, a healthcare worker whose identity remains private under German privacy laws, is claiming at least €150,000 ($164,000) in damages for bodily harm and compensation for material damage. She reports experiencing upper-body pain, swollen extremities, fatigue, and sleeping disorders after receiving the vaccine. The case, the first of potentially hundreds in Germany, is being heard by the regional court in Hamburg.

The woman’s lawyer says he intends to challenge the positive risk-benefit analysis given to the BioNTech injection by European Union (EU) regulators and German vaccine assessment bodies. Under German pharmaceutical law, vaccine manufacturers are only liable for damages if it can be shown that the shots cause disproportionate harm relative to their claimed benefits, or if labeling information is incorrect.

BioNTech, which developed its vaccine with Pfizer and holds the marketing authorization for the product in Germany, predictably claims that the woman’s case lacks merit. The position of the European Medicines Agency is that the BioNTech vaccine has a very low incidence of side effects. A recent study sharply contradicts this, however, confirming that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are associated with more serious harms than originally thought.

As some of the EU’s bulk purchase agreements with COVID-19 vaccine makers reportedly include liability waivers, the BioNTech lawsuit raises important questions regarding responsibility for legal costs and compensation. Observers suggest that in cases brought in EU countries, governments, and ultimately therefore taxpayers, could be forced to bear the payment of any damages.

A growing number of lawsuits

The German case is one of a growing number of COVID-19 vaccine lawsuits being filed around the world.

In the UK around 90 families are said to be pursuing legal action against vaccine maker AstraZeneca. Many of the plaintiffs say the firm’s COVID-19 vaccine caused them to develop vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, a condition that can cause deadly blood clots. Others developed Guillan-Barre syndrome, which can result in paralysis. Some have even had limbs amputated.

The UK lawsuit currently involves over two dozen fatalities, some of whom were aged as young as 18-years-old. The compensation bill for British victims killed or maimed by the AstraZeneca vaccine could theoretically exceed £1 billion ($1.28 billion). But as the UK government’s contract with the firm included an indemnity clause, the final bill will end up being footed by taxpayers.

A COVID-19 vaccine injury lawsuit has also been filed in Australia. This case reportedly has 500 members and is seeking redress for citizens left injured or bereaved by COVID-19 vaccines. The Australian government, its drug regulatory agency and its department of health are all named as parties to the class action, as also are a number of senior public servants.

The lead claimants in the Australian case include a man who developed a severe heart condition after receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, another who developed encephalomyelitis (inflammation in the brain and spinal cord) following the AstraZeneca vaccine, and a third who developed cognitive impairment and chronic fatigue after having the Moderna vaccine.

Additional countries in which cases have recently been filed include Italy, Canada, and the United States. Lawsuits in further countries are expected to follow.

With total worldwide revenue from COVID-19 vaccines reaching $64.4 billion in 2021 and $60.9 billion in 2022, the maximizing of corporate profits has resulted in widespread human suffering. With death and injury tolls continuing to mount, vaccine manufacturers and their stakeholders must be called to account.

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This article was originally published on Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from DRHF

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April 16, 2020 [America in ‘lockdown’: Day 34.]

The CDC would never launch a fake epidemic; certainly not…

And meet our old friend, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in another context…

History matters.

So I take you back to the summer of 2009, when the CDC and the World Health Organization were hyping the “deadly H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic.”

They were, of course, also urging people to take the new Swine Flu vaccine. On that subject, here is an excerpt from Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense (3/27/20):

“For example, [Dr. Anthony] Fauci once shilled for the fast-tracked H1N1 influenza (‘swine flu’) vaccine on YouTube, reassuring viewers in 2009 that serious adverse events were ‘very, very, very rare.’ Shortly thereafter, the vaccine went on to wreak havoc in multiple countries, increasing miscarriage risks in pregnant women in the U.S., provoking a spike in adolescent narcolepsy in Scandinavia and causing febrile convulsions in one in every 110 vaccinated children in Australia—prompting the latter to suspend its influenza vaccination program in under-fives.”

Thank you. Dr. Fauci. Explain to us why you haven’t been downgraded to pumping gas in Death Valley or sent to prison?

Back to the Swine Flu pandemic. In the summer of 2009, the CDC was claiming there were thousands of cases in the US. But behind these statistics lay an unnerving secret. A crime, considering the CDC’s mandate to report the truth to the American people:

Secretly, the CDC had stopped counting cases of Swine Flu.

What? Why?

CBS investigative reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, discovered the CDC secret; and she found out why.

The routine testing of tissue samples from the most likely Swine Flu patients was coming back, in the overwhelming percentage of cases, with: NO SIGN OF SWINE FLU OR ANY OTHER KIND OF FLU.

Attkisson wrote an article about this scandal, and it was published on the CBS News website. However, the next, bigger step—putting out the story on CBS television news—was waylaid. No deal. And CBS shut down any future investigation on the subject. Attkisson’s article died on the vine. No other major news outlet in the world picked up her article and ran with it deeper into the rabbit hole.

Here is what Attkisson told me when I interviewed her:

Rappoport: In 2009, you spearheaded coverage of the so-called Swine Flu pandemic. You discovered that, in the summer of 2009, the Centers for Disease Control, ignoring their federal mandate, [secretly] stopped counting Swine Flu cases in America. Yet they continued to stir up fear about the “pandemic,” without having any real measure of its impact. Wasn’t that another investigation of yours that was shut down? Wasn’t there more to find out?

Attkisson: The implications of the story were even worse than that. We discovered through our FOI efforts that before the CDC mysteriously stopped counting Swine Flu cases, they had learned that almost none of the cases they had counted as Swine Flu was, in fact, Swine Flu or any sort of flu at all! The interest in the story from one [CBS] executive was very enthusiastic. He said it was “the most original story” he’d seen on the whole Swine Flu epidemic. But others pushed to stop it [after it was published on the CBS News website] and, in the end, no [CBS television news] broadcast wanted to touch it. We aired numerous stories pumping up the idea of an epidemic, but not the one that would shed original, new light on all the hype. It was fair, accurate, legally approved and a heck of a story. With the CDC keeping the true Swine Flu stats secret, it meant that many in the public took and gave their children an experimental vaccine that may not have been necessary.

—end of interview excerpt—

So…fake pandemic, CDC crimes, and a damaging vaccine.

But that wasn’t end of it. The CDC wanted to commit another crime. About three weeks after Attkisson’s findings were published on the CBS News website, the CDC, obviously in a panic, decided to double down. If one lie is exposed, tell an even bigger one. A much bigger one.

Here, from a November 12, 2009, WebMD article is the CDC’s response: “Shockingly, 14 million to 34 million U.S. residents — the CDC’s best guess is 22 million — came down with H1N1 swine flu by Oct. 17 [2009].” (“22 million cases of Swine Flu in US,” by Daniel J. DeNoon).

Are your eyeballs popping? They should be.

Fast forward to 2020. Who in his right mind, armed with a little history, would believe anything the CDC is saying about COVID-19? The case numbers, the accuracy of the diagnostic tests, the need for lockdowns and economic devastation, the safety and importance of a vaccine, the fear porn?

Only a fool.

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The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Sources

[1] Dr. Fauci and COVID-19 Priorities: Therapeutics Now or Vaccines Later?

[2] Press Briefing Transcripts, Weekly 2009 H1N1 Flu Media Briefing, October 09, 2009, 12:00 p.m.

[3] Swine Flu Cases Overestimated?

[4] 22 Million Cases of Swine Flu in U.S.

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Several federal government agencies have been hit in a global hacking campaign that exploited a vulnerability in widely used file-transfer software, the nation’s cyber watchdog agency said on Thursday.

The statement by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added to a growing list of entities in the US, UK and other countries whose systems were infiltrated through the MOVEit Transfer software. The hackers took advantage of a security flaw that its maker, Progress Software, discovered late last month.

“We are working urgently to understand impacts and ensure timely remediation,” Eric Goldstein, CISA’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said in a statement.

British energy giant Shell, the Johns Hopkins University, the Johns Hopkins Health System and the University System of Georgia were also hit, they said in separate statements.

Shell spokeswoman Anna Arata said MOVEit Transfer is used by “a small number” of Shell employees and customers.

“There is no evidence of impact to Shell’s core IT systems,” she said. “There are around 50 users of the tool, and we are urgently investigating what data may have been impacted.”

Johns Hopkins said it was “investigating a recent cybersecurity attack targeting a widely used software tool that affected our networks, as well as thousands of other large organizations around the world.”

The University System of Georgia, which groups about 26 public colleges, said it was “evaluating the scope and severity of this potential data exposure” from the MOVEit hack.

Large organizations including the UK’s telecom regulator, British Airways, the BBC and drugstore chain Boots emerged as victims last week.

The UK telecom regulator said hackers stole data from its systems, while the personal information of tens of thousands of employees of British Airways, Boots and the BBC was also exposed.

CISA did not immediately respond to requests seeking further comment. The FBI and National Security Agency also did not immediately respond to emails seeking details on the breaches.

The United States does not expect any “significant impact” from the breach, CISA Director Jen Easterly told MSNBC.

MOVEit is typically used by organizations to transfer files between their partners or customers. A MOVEit spokesperson said the company had “engaged with federal law enforcement” and was working with customers to help them apply fixes to their systems.

New Vulnerability Found

Progress Software’s shares ended down 6.1% on Thursday. The company disclosed another “critical vulnerability” it found in MOVEit Transfer on Thursday, although it was not clear whether it had been exploited by hackers.

The online extortion group Cl0p, which has claimed credit for the MOVEit hack, has previously said it would not exploit any data taken from government agencies.

“IF YOU ARE A GOVERNMENT, CITY OR POLICE SERVICE DO NOT WORRY, WE ERASED ALL YOUR DATA,” the group said in a statement on its website.

Cl0p did not immediately responded to a request for comment.

John Hammond, a security researcher at Huntress, said MOVEit is used to transfer sensitive information, such as by bank customers to upload their financial data for loan applications.

“There’s a whole lot of potential for what an adversary might be able to get into,” he said earlier this month.

The news adds to a growing tally of victims of a sprawling hacking campaign that began two weeks ago and has hit major US universities and state governments. The hacking spree mounts pressure on federal officials who have pledged to put a dent in the scourge of ransomware attacks that have hobbled schools, hospitals and local governments across the US.

Since late last month, the hackers have been exploiting a flaw in widely used software known as MOVEit that companies and agencies use to transfer data. Progress Software, the US firm that makes the software, told CNN Thursday that a new vulnerability in the software had been discovered “that could be exploited by a bad actor.”

“We have communicated with customers on the steps they need to take to further secure their environments and we have also taken MOVEit Cloud offline as we urgently work to patch the issue,” the company said in a statement.

Agencies were much quicker Thursday to deny they’d been affected by the hacking than to confirm they were. The Transportation Security Administration and the State Department said they were not victims of the hack.

The Department of Energy “took immediate steps” to mitigate the impact of the hack after learning that records from two department “entities” had been compromised, the department spokesperson said.

“The Department has notified Congress and is working with law enforcement, CISA, and the affected entities to investigate the incident and mitigate impacts from the breach,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the university’s renowned health system said in a statement this week that “sensitive personal and financial information,” including health billing records may have been stolen in the hack.

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First published on May 20th, 2016

Laissez faire was planned, explained Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation: The origins of the market system go back to the intentional project of institutional transformation initiated in England in the 19th century, establishing a free labor market, free trade and the gold standard. Institutions such as the unions, the industrial cartels and the Welfare State instead emerged subsequently as spontaneous counter-reactions to laissez faire. Kari Polanyi Levitt and Mario Seccareccia show, with a new periodization, how this dialectic interaction, or ‘double movement’ can still guide the understanding of today’s Neoliberalism.

Philip Mirowski has produced some truly exceptional works on the historical roots and intellectual history of what is described as the Neoliberal Thought Collective (NTC). These works have been rightly celebrated for deepening our understanding of the continued popularity and dominance of neoliberal policy ideas in the second decade of the twenty-first century (see, for, instance, Mirowski [2013] and Mirowski and Plehwe [2009]).

Neoliberalism, just like some other overworked buzzwords du jour (to use his expression) such as globalization and financialization, has slipped into the common lexicon, especially of political economists, over the last few decades. This expression is normally connected with the rise of the visible hand of the so-called “pro-market” minimalist state in seeking to remove all vestiges of the postwar Keynesian welfare state that had resulted from social struggles rejecting the old economic liberalism of the nineteenth century.

For this reason, it cannot be associated merely with the dominance of neoclassical economic ideas and methodology. As he correctly depicts in Figure 3 of his working paper (Mirowski 2014, p. 10), those are quite distinct in nature. An example of these divisions are the differences and tensions within the large NTC over such matters as how economic agents behave in processing information: the neo-Austrians reject outright models of perfect knowledge and point to the market as the only correct source of information, while the Chicago rational expectations tribe starts with the presupposition of quasi-perfect knowledge. Because of differing presuppositions, there ensue differences in how, for instance, the neoliberals view the state as an instrument to protect the “market” from the demands of the “people”, while the neoclassicals see it as an exogenous entity potentially generating market “imperfections”. Yet, as Mirowski (2014) rightly points out, there remains among most economists much skepticism as to the existence of neoliberalism as an intellectual movement itself. This is so despite the fact that neoliberalism has slowly achieved such a global political influence in government policy circles since its beginnings during the interwar era of the last century and in the immediate post-WWII years with the founding of the Mont Pèlerin Society in 1947.

We are in complete agreement with Philip Mirowski (2014) on the existence of an organized Neoliberal Political Project (NPP) — whose presence he tries to detect and measure by using various analytical tools of research. For instance, he provides an empirical review of the number of books and articles referring to neoliberalism, particularly since the 1980s, and he studies the proliferation of neoliberal think-tanks and other such lobby groups, often masquerading as research institutes that can hijack government policies at the local and national levels and end up almost as in camera advisors to elected representatives. A very good example of this is right here in Canada over the last decade. In this country, there has been much suspicion about the relationship between the previous Conservative government that was defeated recently in the October 2015 election and such neoliberal think-tanks as the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, and lobby groups such as the Toronto-based National Citizens Coalition. The latter had actually once been headed by none other than our former Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who is himself a political ideologue associated with the broad NPP.

However, this kind of capture of the state is hardly new. A similar takeover is discussed by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation, in reference to the emergence and development of what he dubbed the liberal creed in Ricardian and post-Ricardian England of the nineteenth century. His historical reconstruction focused precisely on the political strategies that were deployed by groups adhering to this creed to capture the state and redefine its role. Indeed, it is surprising that Karl Polanyi is not mentioned or cited once in Mirowski (2014).

This avoidance of Polanyi is somewhat surprising, since he had been the most solid opponent of many of the early twentieth-century neoliberal writers that Mirowski mentions. It was the case particularly with Ludwig von Mises already during the 1920s and early 1930s in Vienna, that is, much before the Keynes-Hayek debates that ensued in the late 1930s. But he also engaged debates with other liberal/neoliberal writers and eventual members of the Mont Pèlerin Society, such as Walter Lippmann (Polanyi 1944, p. 148). Indeed, while they did not actually know each other personally, Friedrich von Hayek and Karl Polanyi followed parallel paths from the two diametrically-opposed intellectual circles emerging in the Red Vienna of the 1920s, with each of them leaving for Britain in the early 1930s and then eventually to the United States (see, for more details, Polanyi Levitt 2012-13; 2013).

The Importance of Karl Polanyi’s Analysis to Understanding Current Neoliberalism

For Karl Polanyi, the liberal creed was the set of organizing principles that guided the nineteenth-century movement after the Great Reform Act of 1832, that had represented the political defeat of the British aristocracy by the then rising industrial class or bourgeoisie. Its purpose was to design and establish a self-regulating market system that would include the creation of markets for fictitious commodities, namely pseudo-markets for labor, land and money.

Until then, the principle of laissez-faire, as it had been embraced, for instance, by eighteenth-century French Physiocratic writers, had a much more limited focus. The goal of these earlylaissez-faire opponents of mercantilism was narrowly to free commodity markets from the yoke of mercantilist regulatory structures, especially as the latter impacted on agriculture. The nineteenth-century liberal creed was, instead, an all-encompassing principle for redesigning society as a ubiquitous and “self-regulating” market system. This wider social project required a threefold institutional transformation, consisting of separate acts of policy that had long been debated and planned by its proponents. The first of these was to establish “free labor”, towards whom an employer had no other obligation than to pay a market wage.

This necessitated the creation of a capitalistic/competitive labor market by, for instance, abolishing outdoor poor relief, such as those associated with the Speenhamland system in England, thereby largely dis-embedding the labor market from its larger societal base. The second wasfree trade of commodities by imposing and extending the rules of a “de-regulated” goods market on a world scale. Under Pax Britannica, free trade policy entailed a precise hegemonic power relation with Britain importing from cheap sources of raw materials while, in return, selling more processed manufactured goods both domestically and internationally. David Ricardo had envisaged this structure of “free trade” at the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 in his critique of the Corn Laws, so as to sustain industrial rates of profit and forestall what he believed to be their inevitable fall. Thirdly, there was the establishment of the gold standard in order to remove discretionary monetary intervention as had existed previously during the Napoleonic wars and to impose a supposedly automatic (non-discretionary) monetary order, which, among other things, relied especially on a key power relation between Britain and its fledgling colonies (see de Cecco 1984).

In the British context, these foundational changes took place within a decade or so of the Great Reform act with, respectively, the adoption of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and, in 1844, Sir Robert Peel’s Bank Charter Act, which established the Bank of England as a central bank. While the first largely eliminated the previous Poor Laws that allowed local parishes to distribute the relief to the indigent, and while the repeal of the corn law sacrificed domestic agriculture, making the country dependent on cheap imports, the purpose of the Bank Charter Act was to make capitalist enterprises and the haute finance believe that whatever they received in net revenues was as “real” as its equivalent in solid gold and to insure complete convertibility without monetary “debasement.” Karl Polanyi insisted that, in order for the so-called self-regulated market system to be established, those three conditions needed to be secured through political action, whose enactment served to “dis-embed” or institutionally to separate the “self-regulating market” from its broader social sphere.

Polanyi argued that, before 1832, changes were introduced by legislated actions of parliament dominated by the landed aristocracy. Changes usually took decades to unwind and be effective. Instead, many of the legislative changes of the following decade were introduced abruptly and, like in the case of the Poor Law, brutally. From that point onwards, further action required simply an administrative act. The buildup and enhancement of the administrative capacity of the state therefore aimed at introducing and preserving the emerging liberal order. In that connection, Polanyi cited Jeremy Bentham, who was a staunch believer in the efficiency of the administrative apparatus of the government, as illustrated by his famous inspection house project, the Panopticon, for the efficient supervision of penitentiaries, industrial establishments and schools (Polanyi 1944, p. 146). Centralized state bureaucracy became a decisive means of implementation and management of the changes to the Poor Laws; that is, to echo Michel Foucault, to establish and maintain the social order.

This had little to do with the laissez-faire demands of the anti-mercantilist critics of the previous era. Nor was the new order the outcome of some spontaneous developments. Instead, the new institutional structure of the so-called “self-regulating market” was itself the result of the concerted actions of the state to ensure compliance under the terms stipulated by the new order. In that sense, it was hardly a self-regulating system since, from the very beginning, it needed to be established and maintained by a strong bureaucracy and other elements of the state apparatus to enforce compliance. Indeed, as Polanyi affirmed, “laissez faire was planned” (Polanyi 1944, p. 147).

But what Polanyi also taught us is that if the market order was not natural, the reactions of the society were. A counter movement to the imposed laissez faire arose spontaneously from a great variety of sources. Those included struggles of the factory workers, that established their right to organize in trade unions, business claims for the “right” to establish cartels to protect themselves from cut-throat competition, states’ prerogative to shield their “infant industries” through tariff protection, and so on. These dialectic interactions generated a double movement that ultimately resolved into democratic reforms of the state, with the liberal institutions progressively sided by new structures, such as trade unions and mass socialist parties both on the European continent and, to a lesser extent, on the North American continent.

Following WWI and the Russian Revolution, the post-WWI struggles led to intellectual debates such as, for instance, Polanyi’s encounter with Ludwig von Mises, which occurred as early as 1922 in Vienna. In this latter case, the debate first arose over issues relating to the socialist municipal administration, with Mises praising for a return to the liberal era of the nineteenth-century belle époque. Interestingly, as Polanyi (1944) points out, the term “collectivism” had already been coined by such late nineteenth-century authors as Albert Dicey (1919), as a way to discredit the social responses to the liberal model. Following Dicey’s attack, Ludwig von Mises and his protégé, Friederich von Hayek, began to promote a startling image of the so called “collectivist state,” that supposedly stood in stark contrast to the principles of liberty typical of the liberal creed. It was from these repeated attacks on the Polanyian double movement, or what Mises and Hayek repeatedly described as the “state collectivist” movement, that the newly-emerging neoliberal creed was born.

The Neoliberal Era: What are the Differences?

At the core, the vocabulary of the neoliberal creed was not very different from the nineteenth century liberal rhetoric, preaching the virtues of competition and so forth. We could say that the former intellectual baggage served as source and inspiration for the latter (see Henry 2010), yet there was a substantive difference. In fact, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the liberal state had undergone considerable reforms. For instance, by the 1920s and 1930s, the British liberal movement came to be associated with important figures such as John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge, who sought to save capitalism from its own destructive tendencies by means of what, in the early post-WWII era, came to be called the Keynesian welfare state. One has only to recall the title and content of Lord Beveridge’s famous 1944 book, Full Employment in a Free Society, to recognize the transformation that liberalism had undergone. Hence, as a result of the Polanyian double movement, liberalism had undergone a metamorphosis that was far more compatible with the current usage of the term in the United States and Canada, which reflects the welfare state policies of the New Deal era.

Neoliberalism, instead, developed already in the 1930s in opposition to this newly-reformed twentieth-century liberalist “synthesis,” or what some may also describe as the Galbraithian countervailing powers (see Galbraith 1952), which had arisen out of the Polanyi’s double movement. Once again, the goal of the neoliberal movement was to capture the state and impose a new order, while pretending to hark back to the ideals of nineteenth-century liberalism. As recognized by Polanyi, neoliberals like Walter Lippmann neither believed inlaissez faire nor in democratic governance. Actually, as Hayek explained in his book The Constitution of Liberty, they were aware that once the new neoliberal order were established, it would have to be protected against political interference of the mass democracy; that is, from the inevitable political pressures resulting from Polanyi’s double movement.

But what are the precise pillars of the neoliberal creed that emerged since the late 1930s and promoted by the members of the Mont Pèlerin Society and the allied organizations that flourished especially since the 1970s? Interestingly, also the neoliberal movement came to follow a three-pronged strategy somewhat analogous, in its rationale, to the earlier liberalism: First, their policy perspective in support of competition favored a restructuring of the labor market. They promoted policies that would weaken workers’ organizations, by arguing that workers should be let negotiate individually with their employers. But the argument for breaking the “monopoly” power of trade unions and supporting the “right to work” of working people did not apply to transnational business enterprises, with corresponding anti-trust laws. Similarly, they promoted austerity measures to starve the public sector for funds, in the name of combating waste and suppressing inflationary pressures. These policies have served the purpose of attacking the Keynesian welfare state and reducing state transfers to households, thereby weakening even more the position of labor. Much as it had happened under the Poor Laws reforms in the nineteenth century, this dis-embedded further the labor market, with some of the same consequences in terms of stagnant, if not declining, real wages.

The second pillar, free trade or what has been termed globalization, also further reinforced the effects on the labor market via the out-sourcing of jobs. However, modern free trade is even more rules-based than its nineteenth-century predecessor. These rules are promoted and administered by important supra-national institutions, such as the World Trade Organization. As a result, unrestricted flows of goods and capital, which had also existed in the nineteenth century, are now coupled with international accords, which seek to protect cross-border investment and offer legal privileges to corporations. A perfect example is the NAFTA agreement between Mexico, US and Canada (not to mention the current Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)), which clearly advantages big outsourcing firms in ways that would have been unthinkable in the nineteenth century.

Third, Neoliberals have promoted greater monetary integration and hierarchical currency structures not that dissimilar to the pound sterling-based power relations under the gold standard but even more asymmetrical. Although somewhat more fragmented than under Pax Britannica, the US dollar reigns as the supreme reserve currency, with trading countries accumulating dollar reserves, just like in the nineteenth century they held gold reserves. With the exception of core dominant industrialized countries that have floating exchange rates, there is a huge constellation of trading countries that are either completely or partly dollarized through a variety of fixed exchange rate regimes. But perhaps even more problematic is the monetary regime that a large number of countries on the European continent had embraced with the adoption of the Euro: they have gone even further than under the gold standard by giving up their national currencies altogether and choosing to accept a rules-based fiscal straitjacket (see Seccareccia and Correa, 2015). That surely would have surprised even Karl Polanyi, since, as he had recognized, countries did not really abide by such strict rules with the gold standard being often reduced to a “mere pretense” (Polanyi 1944, p. 204)! Indeed, many writers associate the Eurozone project to a neoliberal monetary architecture already concocted by Mont Pèlerin economists such as Hayek and Lionel Robbins as early as the late 1930s, as well as by writers associated with the Vichy regime during the Second World War (see Thomasberger 2015; and Parguez 2016).

In conclusion, from a Polanyian perspective we can identify an evolution in historical stages from the Liberal creed to current Neoliberalism, as described in Figure 1. Modern neoliberalism, just like its nineteenth century forerunner, is an integrated system that, as Mirowski (2014) says, dares not speak its own name as an ideological movement that bows to the temple of the almighty market. However, this market fundamentalism, as Block and Somers (2014) refer to it, is a much more virulent phenomenon than its predecessors. As Polanyi himself pointed out in the Great Transformation, and as discussed by Polanyi-Levitt (2013, Chapter 2), neoliberalism is a particularly effective ideology because of its methodological individualism. This peculiarity makes the double movement more difficult to trigger: In the last three Neoliberal decades, as Wolfgang Streeck (2014) argues, capitalism seems to have lost a capacity for collective action. Nowadays, Margaret Thatcher’s famous statement still weighs heavily on our fragmented society when she asserted that “… there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” It is this distorted and misleading individualistic ideology that modern counter movements have had such a difficult time opposing, and it is on that precise intellectual front that progressive/heterodox economists must do more to meet the challenge.

Kari Polanyi Levitt is Professor Emerita of Economics at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; and Mario Seccareccia is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Notes:

Beveridge, William H. (1944), Full Employment in a Free Society, London: Allen & Unwin.

Block, Fred, and Margaret R. Somers (2014), The Power of Market Fundamentalism, Karl Polanyi’s Critique, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

De Cecco, Marcello (1984), Money and Empire: International Gold Standard, 1890-1914, (Second edition), New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Dicey, Albert Venn (1917), Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century, Liberty Fund edition available online at:http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2119 .

Galbraith, John Kenneth (1952), American Capitalism, The Concept of Countervailing Power, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Hayek, Friedrich A. (1978), The Constitution of Liberty, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Henry, John F. (2010), “The Historic Roots of the Neoliberal Program”, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 44, no. 2 (June), pp. 543-50.

Mirowski, Philip (2013), Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, New York: Verso.

Mirowski, Philip, and Dieter Plehwe, eds. (2009), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Mirowski, Philip (2014), “The Political Movement that Dared not Speak its Own Name: The Neoliberal Thought Collective under Erasure”, Institute for New Economic Thinking, Working Paper No. 23 (September); at: http://ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/WP23-Mirowski.pdf.

Parguez, Alain (2016), “Economic Theories of Social Order and the Origins of the Euro”,International Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 45, no. 1 (Spring), pp. 2-16.

Polanyi, Karl (1944), The Great Transformation, The Political and Economic Origins of our Times, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.

Polanyi Levitt, Kari (2012-13), “The Power of Ideas: Keynes, Hayek and Polanyi”, International Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 41, no. 4 (Winter), pp. 5-15.

Polanyi Levitt, Kari (2013 ), From the Great Transformation to the Great Financialization, Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Books, and London: Zed Books.

Seccareccia, Mario, and Eugenia Correa (2015), “Supra-National Money and the Euro Crisis: Lessons from Karl Polanyi”, Forum for Social Economics, Vol. 44, pp. 1-23; online at:http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GFjUfjk6musVZiqGGtac/full .

Streeck, Wolfgang (2014), “How Will Capitalism End?”, New Left Review, No. 87 (May-June), pp. 35-64; available online at: https://newleftreview.org/II/87/wolfgang-streeck-how-will-capitalism-end .

Thatcher, Margaret (1987), “Epitaph for the eighties? ‘There Is No Such Thing as Society”: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, talking to Women’s Own magazine, (October 31 1987), The Sunday Times reprint at: http://briandeer.com/social/thatcher-society.htm .

Thomasberger, Claus (2015), “Europe at the Crossroads: Failed Ideas, Fictional Facts, and Fatal Consequences”, Forum for Social Economics, Vol. 44, no 2, pp. 179-200.

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It’s hardly breaking news that Russia has been fighting off a crawling invasion by NATO (aided by America’s global vassals and satellite states) for well over a year now. The Neo-Nazi junta would’ve lasted mere days had it only been a Moscow vs. Kiev scenario and this fact is not Russia’s claim, but one by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat (although his skills in diplomacy are highly questionable at best).

It’s precisely this that makes Russia’s ability to withstand Western aggression all the more mind-boggling, particularly when considering the sheer discrepancy in population size, nominal military budgets, size of Russia’s economy in comparison to the combined financial and economic strength of the US-led political West (to say nothing of its geopolitical influence), etc.

It should be noted that the virtually direct involvement of the political West has resulted in a strategic stalemate with tactical back and forth, as both sides made gains somewhere or were forced to concede areas elsewhere. However, the notable difference is that Russia is doing that for strategic reasons, particularly in order to avoid heavy casualties (both civilian and military), while the complete opposite is true for the Kiev regime (Bakhmut/Artyomovsk being the case in point).

This is because the Neo-Nazi junta’s main goal is optics and keeping the narrative alive. And the narrative is that Russia is supposedly “weak” and “incapable” of defeating the US/NATO puppets in Kiev. However, the massive casualties suffered by the regime’s forces are a clear indicator of just how much of a reverie this narrative is.

Perhaps the best proof of this is the ongoing counteroffensive of the Neo-Nazi junta forces. Although experts have already predicted how it would go (and that’s precisely how it’s been going for approximately two weeks now), the Kiev regime is forced to keep up with it, because its puppet masters don’t really care about Ukrainian casualties as long as they can portray Russia as supposedly “weak” and “incapable of winning”.

The stakes are as high as they could possibly be, so the belligerent thalassocracy needs to ensure that the Neo-Nazi junta at least doesn’t lose the aforementioned narrative, as the prospect of actually defeating the Russian military is all but impossible. To accomplish this, the US-led political West is ready to engage in a sort of nuclear brinkmanship the world has never seen, including during the entirety of the (First) Cold War.

To this end, Washington DC is already resorting to what some experts call “nuclear blackmail”. To prevent a complete defeat of its favorite puppets after Russia eventually launches its own counteroffensive, the US has placed additional nuclear weapons in Europe in order to increase pressure on Moscow and keep most of its forces on standby in case the ongoing Cold War between Russia and NATO turns hot. Poland, one of Moscow’s archenemies, has been particularly insistent on having American nuclear weapons deployed in its territory.

Coupled with Warsaw’s ambitions to build probably the largest and most advanced land force in the European part of NATO, as well as station as many other NATO troops as possible, such aggressive actions have pushed Russia to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, as well as reinforce its Kaliningrad exclave.

Specific moves to ensure Russia’s safety include the expansion of its already massive military-industrial capacity, additional deployments of its state-of-the-art hypersonic weapons (which the entire political West lacks altogether) and the overall change in its deterrence policy, which now includes the aforementioned deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in allied territory, specifically Belarus.

However, Minsk will not merely house such weapons, but will also be able to use them in case the political West escalates its aggression against Belarus itself, which has been under a crawling attack for several years now. Worse yet, the belligerent thalassocracy has never given up on trying to conduct yet another color revolution in Minsk, as it still insists that President Alexander Lukashenko is supposedly “illegitimate” and that the opposition is the “actual government in exile”.

The Kremlin has correctly anticipated virtually all moves by the US and NATO and has revised its strategic posturing towards them, making it perfectly clear that it’s ready for any “unexpected” developments. And while Russia is certainly not the one that wants to be the first to use a nuclear weapon, the political West is doing everything in its power (short of direct war, for now at least) to push Moscow to do exactly that.

The latest warning by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Washington DC is pushing the transfer of nuclear-capable F-16s to the Kiev regime illustrates this perfectly. And while the mainstream propaganda machine insists this is “Russian disinformation” and “baseless fearmongering”, Lavrov’s no-nonsense bearing and the sheer magnitude of his credibility in the diplomatic world say otherwise.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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by Michel Chossudovsky

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Reviews

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On December 16, 1773, off the Boston coast, irate American colonists, fed up with paying excessive tax rates and getting political abuse from their colonial masters in return, flooded the sea with 342 chests of British East India Company tea.

It was a glorious symbolic act of defiance. War ensued, and eventually the patriots, once in the extreme minority among the total colonial population, were vindicated.

The rallying cry of the revolutionary movement was “no taxation without representation,” meaning that the colonists were subjected to taxation to fuel the British Empire’s expensive adventures across the globe, but did not enjoy any real political representation in British Parliament for it.

Does modern America suffer from the same phenomenon?

I have previously referenced a 2014 study published via Cambridge University Press that quantitatively debunks the “democracy” myth that American children are force-fed in public school:

“When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it… average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence [over US policy].”

In layman’s terms, the multinational Western technocratic state does not factor the peasants’ desires or values into its decision-making at all.

Furthermore, the government considers at least a third of its own population “domestic terrorists” for non-crimes as petty as parents not wanting their kids exposed to transgender indoctrination in public schools. It uses money collected from said alleged domestic terrorists through taxes to politically persecute them, and frequently requests more to facilitate its jihad.

Via New York Times, May 4, 2021:

“Attorney General Merrick B. Garland told lawmakers on Tuesday that the Justice Department needs more money for Biden administration priorities including combating domestic extremism.… Mr. Garland has prioritized efforts to fight domestic terrorism and protect civil rights over the department’s focus during the Trump administration on street crime and gangs…

The department is also seeking an additional $101 million to address the rising threat of domestic terrorism.”

Journalists who expose government abuses such as the ones enumerated above, instead of being lauded as heroes for their good work, are targeted for political persecution by the state.

There are literally thousands of examples of this, but the most prominent is Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been hounded to the ends of the Earth for a decade now for exposing US war crimes, Hillary Clinton’s personal corruption, and other factual information in the public interest.

The government selectively enforces the law against white people and conservatives while letting leftist agents of chaos run hog-wild on American streets in a phenomenon called “anarcho-tyranny” that I have written about previously at The Daily Bell.

Due process has been all but discarded as a relic of legacy America, in the before-times prior to the installment of the multinational technocracy. Alex Jones was not permitted, in his Sandy Hook defamation trial, to offer his innocence as a defense. His guilt had been pre-determined; the court proceedings were only to determine how much moneyJones owed the alleged victims.

Former president Donald Trump recently lost a civil rape case to a certifiable lunatic The Atlantic writer who offered no evidence of any kind except her own unhinged testimony. The alleged rape occurred in 1996 – 27 years ago. There were no witnesses in the busy department store where it allegedly went down. The jury awarded her millions of dollars anyway, and Rachel Maddow did a fawning interview to celebrate.

Trump maintained his innocence throughout. After the trial, when Trump again pled innocence at a CNN town hall, her attorney threatened another lawsuit for simply claiming his innocence as he has since the whole scandal erupted.

None of this is an endorsement – not even a tacit one – of political violence if it can be avoided. Kinetic warfare with the multinational corporate state is inadvisable for many reasons, not least of which is that the government’s capabilities dwarf those of any insurgency.

Rather, this is an acknowledgment of reality: a strong case can be made that the United States government is illegitimate. What we do with this assessment is up for debate.

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This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TDB

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At the end of April, two French neo-Nazis – Alan Vineron and Guillaume Andreoni – who had joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine as mercenaries, were arrested and convicted in their home country. Two months earlier, one of them had posted photos of three executed Russian prisoners on social media.

However, Vineron and Andreoni were detained not because of any war crimes, but for attempting to smuggle weapons and munitions back home, including rifle scopes and magazines for machine guns. After a brief trial, they were sentenced to 15 months in prison each, nine of them to be served conditionally. 

This incident is only the first sign of things to come. According to French media, about 400 French citizens are taking part in the armed conflict in Ukraine. Of these, about 100 are directly involved in the fighting, and about 30 are well-known far-right extremists. 

It’s not just Paris that will soon face the prospect of militant neo-Nazis returning home. Observers note that the number of volunteer foreign fighters in Ukraine has reached thousands. 

The French and their ‘adventures’ in Ukraine

According to the French media outlet Mediapart, France’s General Directorate for Internal Security had its eye on the suspects long before the incident. Despite this, they were detained only thanks to a random check at customs.

Vineron (also known as “Vivi”) is a retired fighter of the elite French Chasseurs Alpins (Alpine Hunters) unit. He was dismissed from the army after his neo-Nazi views came to light in the media. Shortly before returning home, he posted a photo on the “TrackANaziMerc” Telegram channel, showing three Russian soldiers shot in the head. The image shows that the soldiers were unarmed and killed at close range. After the photos of the execution began circulating online, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that it would examine the crimes of French mercenaries against Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine.

Vineron’s accomplice, known as “Bones” by his military callsign, was also previously linked to a far-right neo-Nazi group which has long-standing ties with Ukrainian extremists.

The “Zouaves Paris” group – it ironically derives its name from the Berber tribe Zwawa, which in turn became known as the French army’s first “indigenous” regiment – supported Ukraine and established contact with local fighters from the neo-Nazi Azov regiment. In December 2019, the leader of the far-right group, Marc de Cacqueray-Valmenier, traveled to the country to personally meet Azov fighters and visit their training camp.

In January 2022, a month before the start of Russia’s military operation, Zouaves Paris was banned in France. However, its ties with Ukrainian extremists had nothing to do with the ban – a month earlier, the group had attacked anti-racism demonstrators who tried to disrupt a far-right rally in support of presidential candidate Eric Zemmour.

The ban did not particularly affect the neo-Nazis. Zouaves Paris supporters from the “Ouest Casual” Telegram channel are still singing the praises of Ukrainian fighters and are using Nazi symbols and phrases alluding to various far-right movements in France and Germany. In their posts, they refer to Russian troops as “the Asian hordes of Soviet imperialism that have once again taken over Europe,” and to Chechen units as “Putin’s Muslim dogs.” They use similar duplicate channels to raise funds for the needs of militants and collaborate with neo-Nazis from other countries.

The group boasts of its presence in Ukraine, posting photos of its Ukrainian supporters and stickers of French right-wing organizations. It has also created backup platforms in case the main Telegram channel is blocked.

All roads lead to Ukraine

A little over a year ago, far-right terrorists from France killed the former Argentinian international rugby player Federico Martin Aramburu. One of the suspects, Loik Le Priol, was caught on the border between Hungary and Ukraine. According to official reports, the terrorist and former marine commando wanted to surrender to the Ukrainian authorities after committing the murder.

In November 2022, the Italian police announced the arrest of five members of local neo-Nazi group “Order of Hagal”. They had illegally stored weaponry, ammunition, tactical equipment, and a grenade launcher and further engaged in regular paramilitary training to prepare a terrorist attack in Naples.

Later, it became apparent that the group also maintained close ties with Ukraine’s Right Sector, Centuria, and Azov neo-Nazi units. One of its members was a fighter from the Azov. His accomplice, having “dangerously close ties with far-right Ukrainian nationalist groups,” planned to attack a police station in Naples, while the former Azov fighter himself was preparing a terrorist attack in a shopping mall. 

The Italian police first became aware of the neo-Nazis back in 2019. In an intercepted conversation from January 2021, one of the militants, Giampiero Testa, threatened that he would “make a massacre like in New Zealand,” obviously referring to the terrorist attack in Christchurch that resulted in the deaths of 51 people in 2019. Incidentally, in his manifesto, the New Zealand terrorist stated that he had trained in the Azov battalion in Ukraine, and wore neo-Nazi symbols.

These ties between the neo-Nazis are mutual. According to a 2020 investigation by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, the New Zealand shooter’s manifesto became popular among Ukrainian paramilitary units. It was even translated into the Ukrainian language and sold as a book by a 22-year-old Kiev resident, becoming a kind of artifact. The center added that Ukraine “holds a particular attraction for white supremacists, activists and adventurers” largely due to the establishment and development of the Azov regiment and other state-supported paramilitary formations.

Over the years, Azov has encountered no impediment to growth and has become a powerful and extensive organization. The more it grew, the more support it received from the Ukrainian state. Azov’s ideological influence on Ukrainian society has helped to shape the country’s modern agenda. In the 2010s, the organization actively organized youth camps that taught basic military training and ideology. As noted in the Combating Terrorism Center report, the public declarations of Ukrainian far-right extremists attracted ultra-rightists from Europe, the United States, and other countries.

Far-right extremist puppet theater

In the same CTC report, Ukraine is dubbed the first country where the “overtly far-right white nationalist militia [is] publicly celebrated, openly organizing, and with friends in high places.”

As a result, Ukraine has become a meeting point for far-right extremists from all over the world. The foundation for this was laid long before the start of hostilities in February 2022.

Joachim Furholm was a foreign mercenary in Ukraine and later a recruiter of Western extremists. Furholm is a Norwegian fascist activist who was briefly imprisoned after an attempted bank robbery. He also became well-known for sympathizing with the terrorist Anders Breivik. In 2018, he joined the Foreign Legion in Ukraine and began recruiting American neo-Nazis to the Azov unit. 

“It’s like a petri dish for fascism. It’s the perfect conditions,” Furholm said about Ukraine in an interview. Referring to the Azov unit, he said that “they do have serious intentions of helping the rest of Europe in retaking our rightful lands.” Later on the “Azov” podcast, Furholm urged listeners to get in touch with him on Instagram. When a young man from New Mexico reached out, the Norwegian urged him to join the fighting in Ukraine saying, “Come over here, boy. A rifle and beer are waiting for you.”

Surprisingly, after making an appearance on the far-right podcast, Furholm wasn’t ostracized by the media. After speaking at an Azov rally in 2018, he went on to give an interview to the US government-controlled RFE/RL.

The case of the American mercenary and former US Army veteran Craig Lang is even more striking. Lang made headlines when he attempted to blow up his pregnant wife with anti-personnel landmines. In 2015, after serving a prison sentence, he joined the Right Sector ultranationalist organization along with another army veteran, Alex Zwiefelhofere. BuzzFeed reported that Craig recruited dozens of Western militants to Ukrainian paramilitary units.

In 2016, Lang joined the Georgian National Legion, which fought on the side of Ukraine in eastern Donbass. Leaked documents revealed that he beat, tortured, and killed local civilians. According to the publishers of the leak, one of the videos shows Lang beating and drowning a girl after a fellow fighter injected her with adrenaline so that she would not lose consciousness while drowning. Lang and other militants committed these atrocities as members of the Right Sector unit. 

Despite the fact that Lang has been charged in a double murder case in the United States, his lawyer Dmytro Morhun told Politico that he had returned to the battlefield. In the summer of 2022, he was seen on social media “in a Ukrainian military uniform and brandishing an anti-tank weapon.” 

Paul Gray is another prominent example of the petri-dish effect. The Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient was a well-known fascist activist in the United States before joining the pro-Ukrainian militants. Despite this, Gray made numerous media appearances, including on Fox News, where he was portrayed as a heroic soldier, his neo-Nazi views never surfacing. 

According to media reports, a document compiled by the US Customs and Border Protection Service, intelligence, and other domestic security services, shows that many American militants have traveled to Ukraine. The evidence in these cases being recorded interviews with the extremists themselves, conducted by the law enforcement agencies. 

Interestingly, one of the questions listed in the document was, “What kind of training are foreign fighters receiving in Ukraine that they could possibly proliferate in US based militia and white nationalist groups?”

In July 2022, Europol warned that “the proliferation of firearms and explosives in Ukraine could lead to an increase in firearms and munitions trafficked into the EU via established smuggling routes or online platforms” and “this threat might even be higher once the conflict has ended.”

This means that Ukraine isn’t just turning into a mecca for neo-Nazis, but also poses a threat for the West. A report by the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament shows that British citizens who have traveled overseas for “Right-Wing Terrorism-related purposes” have been “further radicalized” and “developed connections” with others who share their violent ideology. At the same time, the report indicates that there is currently “no process” in place to monitor these people following their arrival home.

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Iain Muir is a Scottish/British Photojournalist, researcher, pilot (A&H), CAA-licensed drone operator, commentator, NUJ member, SCTS-registered.

All images in this article are from Scotland Today Online

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***

Pregnant women who took toxic, experimental COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have been suffering all kinds of complications including:

• miscarriages (fetal death <= 20wk)
• stillbirths (fetal death > 20wk)
• sudden death of mom before, during or after delivery (click here)
• pregnant women having heart attacks, strokes, dying in sleep (click here)
• sudden deaths of infants shortly after delivery (click here)
• injuries to infants such as myocarditis (click here)
• injuries to infants from breastfeeding with mRNA in milk (click here)

In this article I will look deeper into some of the identified causes of miscarriages and stillbirths (after mom took COVID-19 mRNA vaccine) such as fetal growth restriction, fetal cardiac arrest, fetal pulmonary hemorrhage, blood clots at the placenta, placental failure, etc.

I will write a separate substack on congenital malformations.

I would like to thank Substack author “WelcomeTheEagle88” for his work on finding these VAERS reports, please check out his substack, he has done some incredible work (click here).

Fetus stopped growing after mRNA injection:

CASE 02 (VAERS 1340339) – 35 year old Pregnant woman had 2nd Pfizer jab on April 18, 2021 at 5wk5d of pregnancy. Fetus stopped growing 5 days after Pfizer jab on April 23, 2021 and died. Miscarriage.

CASE 04 (VAERS 2003811) – 34 year old pregnant woman had 2nd Pfizer dose on Aug.5, 2021 at 2 weeks pregnancy and fetus stopped growing immediately, she suffered a miscarriage 3 weeks later on Aug.26, 2021.

CASE 05 (VAERS 2070928) – Pregnant woman had 2nd Pfizer jab at 3wk of pregnancy and fetus stopped growing at 4.5 to 5 weeks pregnancy resulting in spontaneous abortion. 

CASE 06 (VAERS 2115408) – 29 year old pregnant woman had 3rd Pfizer jab at 8 weeks pregnancy and fetus stopped growing on same day as vaccination. 

CASE 07 (VAERS 2178577) – Pregnant woman had 2nd Pfizer jab on Jul.30, 2021 and 18 days later, U/S showed intrauterine growth retardation. Medical termination of pregnancy Aug.26, 2021 (4 weeks after Pfizer jab)

CASE 08 (VAERS 2180550) – Pregnant woman had 3rd Pfizer jab on Dec.1, 2021 and within 2 months there was fetal growth restriction leading to fetal death on Feb.15, 2022 and medical termination of pregnancy. 

Fetus had cardiac arrest:

CASE 09 (VAERS 1964955) – 31 year old pregnant woman had 1st Pfizer jab at 18 weeks pregnancy and suffered fetal cardiac arrest and therapeutic abortion.

CASE 10 (VAERS 2009647) – Pregnant woman had 1st Pfizer dose at 4wk pregnancy on May 18, 2021 and her fetus had cardiac arrest 15 days later at 6wk3d resulting in miscarriage.

Fetus had pulmonary hemorrhage:

CASE 11 (VAERS 2230334) – Pregnant woman had 1st Moderna dose Jul.30, 2021 and 2nd Moderna dose on Aug. 27, 2021. Next day, fetus had pulmonary hemorrhage and peritoneal hemorrhage resulting in stillbirth on Aug. 28, 2021 at 38 weeks gestation.

Placenta problems 

CASE 12 (VAERS 2386294) – 34 year old Pregnant woman had 3rd Pfizer jab on Jan. 20, 2022. Then 20 days later fetus had pulmonary hemorrhage resulting in stillbirth at 34+3 weeks. Cause of death: PLACENTAL FAILURE.

CASE 13 (VAERS 2046121) – Pregnant woman had 2nd dose of Moderna on Oct.20, 2021 and 6 days later fetus died due to “clotting at the placenta” and fetal vascular malperfusion. Reported cause of death: clotting at the placenta.

CASE 14 (VAERS 2463841) – 30 year old pregnant woman had 3rd Pfizer jab on Dec. 18, 2021 and one month later on Jan. 21, 2022 ultrasound showed growth restriction, on Feb.20, 2022 fetus had no heartbeat. Stillbirth on Feb. 23, 2022. Cause of death: placental insufficiency caused by severe maternal vascular malperfusion.

My Take…

Every pregnant woman should have had these risks explained to her as part of informed consent. The risks of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to the fetus include:

• fetus can stop growing and die immediately after taking the mRNA vaccine or up to several days, weeks or months later, resulting in miscarriage or stillbirth;
• fetus can suffer cardiac arrest and die;
• fetus can suffer pulmonary hemorrhage and die;
• fetus can die from placental blood clots
• fetus can die from placental insufficiency or placental failure
• fetus can die from congenital malformations (next substack)

Please note that these COVID-19 mRNA vaccine related adverse events were known and recorded in VAERS in early 2021 so every doctor should have been advising their pregnant patients about these documented and known adverse events.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of doctors did not educate their pregnant patients about the risks of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, and should be held legally liable for failing to do so.

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

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Amnesty International has accused Israel of “collective punishment against the civilian population” during last month’s fighting between Israel and Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip, and called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate.

The new report concluded that Israel conducted “apparently disproportionate” strikes against men, women and children in Gaza over a five-day period in May, killing 33 Palestinians, including six children.

One Israeli was also killed during the fighting.

During the attacks, the Israeli military damaged 2,943 housing units, including 103 homes which were completely destroyed. More than 1,244 Palestinians have also been displaced.

“Since the root cause of these recurrent unlawful attacks against civilians is Israel’s apartheid system against Palestinians, therefore Amnesty International is renewing its call on the ICC to consider the applicability of the crime against humanity of apartheid within its current formal investigation into the Situation in the State of Palestine,” said the report.

The fighting on 9 May began when the Israeli military killed 15 Palestinians, including three Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) commanders along with their wives and children, in air strikes.

“Those who planned and authorised the attacks anticipated – and likely disregarded – the disproportionate harm to civilians,” said Amnesty, adding that “intentionally launching disproportionate attacks… is a war crime”.

The PIJ responded to the Israeli attack by firing rockets into Israel.

Amnesty International went on to say that indiscriminate rocket fire by the PIJ killed both Israeli and Palestinian civilians and should also be subject to investigation.

PIJ rockets are “inherently inaccurate and their use against areas populated with civilians is indiscriminate, violates international humanitarian law and should be investigated as possible war crimes”, the report added.

Israeli impunity

The most significant portions of the report, however, were reserved for Israel.

“Israel’s impunity for the war crimes it repeatedly commits against Palestinians, and for its cruel ongoing 16-year illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, emboldens further violations and makes injustice chronic,” said Heba Morayef, the Middle East and North Africa regional director at Amnesty International.

“That we have been documenting the same patterns of unlawful killings and destruction over and over again is an indictment of the international community’s failure to hold Israel accountable.”

Speaking to AFP, the Israeli army responded to the report, saying that it “carried out attacks only after a real-time assessment before the attack that the expected collateral damage to civilians and civilian property will not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated”.

Amnesty International has rejected such claims, citing a “pattern of extensive destruction of property” as a result of Israeli strikes that “failed to meet the exceptions under which attacking homes and other civilian objects would be justified”.

During its investigation, Amnesty documented at least three cases of “neighbourhood-wide property destruction”.

In one recorded incident on 13 May, Israel targeted a three-storey building in the neighbourhood of Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza.

The building, home to 22 civilians, including 12 children, was completely destroyed and several other homes in the area were severely damaged. The bombing resulted in the internal displacement of at least 41 civilians.

Amnesty said that it found no evidence that there was a military objective in destroying the buildings or that any members of the family had any military involvement.

“In our investigation, we heard vivid accounts of bombs obliterating homes, of fathers digging their little girls out from under rubble, of a teenager fatally injured as she lay in bed holding a teddy bear. More frightening than any of this is the near certainty that, unless perpetrators are held to account, these horrifying scenes will be repeated,” said Morayef.

A spokesperson for PIJ said the group “welcomes” the report.

“We are doing our part to defend ourselves against the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people,” it added in a statement.

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Featured image: Mourners comfort each other before the burial of 13 Palestinians killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza City, 9 May 2023 (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

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The European Commission wants to implement a digital euro that is accessible to all retail users for free, in an effort to strengthen financial inclusion and competition in digital payments, according to a leaked draft proposal seen by EURACTIV.

The proposal for a regulation to introduce a digital euro is expected to be presented on 28 June. It will then have to be approved by both the European Parliament and the member state governments in the EU Council.

While it was unclear in what form the digital euro should be introduced, the leaked document now suggests that the Commission wants to make it accessible not only to banks but primarily to the public at large as a retail payment option.

One of the motivations behind the proposal is the desire to “reduce the fragmentation of the European retail payments market, to promote competition,” and “to encourage industry initiatives to offer pan-European payment services,” according to the draft proposal.

Moreover, the digital euro is a reaction to technological developments.

The discussion around the digital euro first picked up speed when a consortium around Facebook (today Meta) started the Libra project with the aim of creating its own digital currency. While the Libra project was abandoned in the meantime, the fear of losing monetary control to private initiatives remained.

Accessible to everybody

“In the euro area, the establishment of a retail CBDC (central bank digital currency)  – the digital euro – is necessary to supplement cash and adapt the official forms of the currency to technological developments,” the explanatory statement of the draft proposal reads.

By going for a retail CBDC, the EU would take a different path than other jurisdictions. The Swiss National Bank, for example is mainly interested in a wholesale CBDC that could be used to facilitate interbank settlements.

The digital euro would be legal tender, meaning that economic operators will have to accept payment in digital euro, although there are exceptions, for example for microenterprises with fewer than 10 employees and less than €2 million in annual turnover.

The digital euro is backed by the European Central Bank (ECB), as physical cash is today. It would thus be more safe than bank deposits, which are only backed by the commercial banks and – up to a certain amount – by deposit insurance schemes.

Moreover, the digital euro should not only be available online, it should also be usable offline, via so-called proximity payments. However, offline use would only be allowed for low-value transactions.

Free account, free transactions

Just like cash, the digital euro should be available to users free of charge.

“All credit institutions providing payment account services would be required to provide basic digital euro payment services upon request of their clients,” the proposal reads. Moreover, the Commission wants to ensure that “basic digital euro services” are “offered for free to natural persons,” even if they are not consumers of credit institutions.

In addition, public institutions like postal offices or local and regional authorities would be able to distribute the digital euro, helping to make its use independent from banks.

Payment services providers would also have to offer the transactions free of charge for natural persons. They can, however, ask for a fee from merchants, but the fee cannot surpass the fees “requested for the most efficient comparable means of payment,” according to the proposal.

Holding limits

In the past, some banks have expressed the worry that too attractive a digital euro could lead savers to withdraw their money from bank deposits and store it in the safer digital euro accounts backed by the central bank. If such a move happened too quickly, this could pose a risk to financial stability.

This tradeoff is acknowledged in the draft proposal that, in its own words, seeks to balance the trade-offs between “ensuring wide usage while protecting financial stability and credit provision.”

The Commission wants to tackle that problem by limiting the use of the digital euro as a store of value. It tasks the ECB with “developing instruments to limit the use of the digital euro as a store of value”.

According to the draft proposal, this could mean that the ECB would institute limits to how much digital euros any individual can hold in order to safeguard financial stability.

While individuals would be allowed to use multiple digital euro accounts, the ECB-imposed holding limits would apply to the sum of digital euros held in all digital euro accounts of any single individual.

Data protection vs anti-money laundering

The enforcement of these holding limits, as well as the necessity to comply with anti-money laundering rules and EU sanctions, would force payment services providers to process personal data.

Especially regarding the enforcement of holding limits, the ECB would also have to process personal data, but may not directly identify the account holder.

For both the payment services providers and the ECB, the draft proposal mandates “appropriate technical and organisational measures including state-of-the-art security and privacy-preserving measures.”

In any case, the Commission wants to “ensure that the [ECB] and the national central banks cannot directly identify individual digital euro users.”

While the draft proposal’s explanatory statement does not go into detail as to how this tradeoff between protecting privacy and ensuring traceability should be resolved, it mentions “pseudonymisation or encryption” as two possible technological solutions.

In general, the tradeoff should be resolved by ensuring a high privacy for offline transactions of digital euros, similarly to cash transactions, while applying the anti-money laundering standards of today’s private digital payments to online transactions of digital euros.

Front-end services

The draft proposal also regulates the front-end services provided to users of the digital euro. For example, they should be “interoperable with or integrated in the European Digital Identity Wallets.” According to the draft proposal’s recitals, “it should be possible to use the European Digital Identity Wallets for the storage of digital euros.”

Moreover, the draft proposal also says that while payment services providers may develop their own front-end services, they also have to offer users access to the front-end services developed by the ECB.

However, the ECB would not be allowed to “provide for customer relationships”, nor to have access to personal data of the users.

The draft proposal also requires producers of mobile devices to allow providers of front end services and providers European Digital Identity Wallets “effective interoperability” and access to the hardware and software features “necessary for storing and transferring data to process online or offline digital euro transactions, on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

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Additional reporting by Luca Bertuzzi

Featured image is from the European Commission

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When it comes to data privacy in our present, hyper-connected age, many of your worst fears and biggest anxieties are probably correct.

Yes, smartphones and our manifold other devices collect an incredible array of information on our habits, choices, and movements at all times.

Yes, all of this information is compiled by companies to sell for profit.

Yes, the U.S. government is among the many clients buying up that data.

And yes, it represents a significant and persistent threat to your civil liberties and safety, as confirmed in a newly released report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)—the top dog among all of our nation’s spy agencies.

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In the fast-paced world of today, it’s easy for the average British citizen to become disconnected from events outside their cozy island nation. With a seemingly endless barrage of sensational news and trivial distractions, it’s no wonder that the vicious war raging in Ukraine feels like a distant nightmare rather than an imminent threat. However, this apathetic attitude is not only worrisome but also dangerously ignorant of the catastrophic dangers lurking on Europe’s doorstep.

As Ukraine’s war-torn landscape bears witness to shocking loss of life and the destruction of national infrastructure, the average British citizen remains blissfully insulated from such horrors. With our  own lives comparatively safe and secure, it is all too easy to forget that war knows no boundaries. The uncomfortable truth is that a conflict in Europe has the potential to escalate rapidly and even turn nuclear, unleashing a maelstrom of ionising radiation and toxic fallout that would threaten the very fabric of life.

While the British populace revels in the illusion of safety, Ukraine’s citizens endure the harsh reality of war. Families torn apart, homes reduced to rubble, and lives shattered beyond repair – these are the everyday struggles faced by Ukrainians, who live in the shadow of a brutal conflict that seems to know no end. Yet, as the situation worsens, the average Brit remains disengaged, seemingly unaware of the gathering storm just a few thousand miles away.

A war in Ukraine holds grave implications for the stability of Europe. The fragile peace that has defined the continent since the end of World War II could be shattered within a matter of days. In an interconnected world, events thousands of miles away have a way of seeping into our lives, disrupting the tranquil existence we often take for granted. The notion that Britain is somehow immune to the horrors unfolding elsewhere is nothing short of a fallacy, and one that must be shattered before it’s too late.

The spectre of nuclear escalation looms ominously over the conflict-ridden skies of Ukraine. With tensions running high and geopolitical interests at stake, the unthinkable becomes a distinct possibility. A single spark could ignite a chain reaction that plunges Europe into a nuclear nightmare. The resulting ionising radiation and its toxic effects on life would be devastating, sparing no one in its path.

It is high time for the average British citizen to awaken from our slumber of complacency. The disconnect between the war in Ukraine and their own lives is an illusion that must be shattered. The consequences of a conflict spiralling out of control are too grave to ignore. In an era defined by interconnectedness, the notion of distance is increasingly irrelevant. Ukraine’s plight should serve as a chilling reminder that our world is more fragile than we care to admit.

As the British citizenry revels in our safe existence, it is crucial to remember that danger often lurks where we least expect it. Ukraine’s war should not be brushed aside as a remote tragedy but should be recognised for what it truly is: a stark warning of the perils that lie just beyond our borders. Only through awareness and action can we hope to prevent the unthinkable and safeguard our shared future.

It’s time for the average Brit to shed our indifference, embrace our responsibility as global citizens, and demand a safer world for all. Ignorance may be bliss, but in the face of a potential catastrophe, it’s a luxury we can ill afford. The clock is ticking, and the disconnect must end before the horrors of Ukraine become an unwelcome reality, here in the United Kingdom.

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Hans Stehling (a pen name) is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Graffiti “Stop War” on Russia’s war in Ukraine in the Mauerpark in Berlin, Germany. Image taken on March 11, 2022. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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War is deadly, destructive, expensive and lucrative. While the Ukraine war has cost the lives of 9,655 Ukrainian civilians and 15,500-17,500 soldiers. The World Bank has estimated the expenditure on rebuilding will be more than $400 billion over ten years. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most of the 30 NATO members have committed more than $80 billion worth of military, humanitarian and financial aid to Kyiv. Of this $65 billion has been military aid. The US, the largest single weapons donor, delivered $21.1 billion worth of arms from its stockpiles plus $17 billion financial and humanitarian aid. Europe Union has donated $32 billion, Britain $10.75 billion, Germany $7.5 billion and Japan $6 billion.

The Ukraine war has created a boom for Western arms manufacturers which are clearing stocks, upgrading and making more arms to meet demand while Russia, formerly the second largest arms exporter after the US, has held onto its supplies and seen sales decline. Increasing demand has, however, been accompanied by shortages in raw materials and components, creating bottlenecks that slow production and deliveries. In the future when the pressure eases, arms manufacturers expect more purchases by countries like Germany which intend to increase spending on weapons.

Pundits have predicted that the Ukraine war could continue as long as the flow of weapons continues to Ukraine since President Volodymyr Zelensky is determined to defeat Russia and claw back the territory which Russia holds, including Crimea. This is precisely what Western hawks and arms manufacturers want. Hawks wrongly see Russia as the West’s old foe, the Soviet Union, while arms makers are eager to rake in billions in profits.

In 1961, outgoing US president Dwight Eisenhower — who commanded Allied troops in Europe during World War II — admitted that to keep the peace the US was “compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions” but he warned that the large post-war military establishment and arms industry posed great dangers. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

This is exactly what has happened since World War II. New generations of US politicians and military men have planted 1,000 US military installations in 85 countries across the world. From the end of World War II to 2001, the US is responsible for 201 of the 248-armed conflicts which have taken place in in 153 territories. This amounts to more than 80 per cent of these conflicts. Since the attack on New York and Washington in 2001, additional US wars and military operations have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and displaced tens of millions of people. The military-industrial complex has played a large part in these wars and has wielded considerable power with the aim of promoting conflict where negotiations might have saved lives and prevented devastation wreaked by warfare.

International firms already in place in Ukraine and in line for its reconstruction effort are no less rapacious than the military-industrial complex and wield considerable clout with their home governments. Some companies have been involved in maintaining Ukraine’s power plants, railways, aircraft, and infrastructure while the war has raged. Governments have set aside millions of dollars to help finance reconstruction. 

The Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce has called the country “the world’s largest construction site”. Patricia Cohen and Liz Alderman writing in The New York Times in February of this year made the point that Zelensky seeks to use reconstruction “to stitch Ukraine’s infrastructure seamlessly into the rest of Europe”, thereby decoupling Ukraine from its Russian neighbour. They added, “Ukraine, whose economy shrank 30 per cent last year, desperately needs funds just to keep going and to make emergency repairs. Long-term reconstruction aid will depend not only on the outcome of the war, but on how much money the European Union, the United States and other allies put up.”

Private investors are so far “not willing to risk committing money now” while the conflict continues. Although there have been multiple conferences on rebuilding, the majority of companies attending have been more interested in selling goods and services rather than investing, the article said.

Investors remain cautious not only because of the war but because Ukraine has a reputation of being one of the most corrupt countries on earth. Even while the conflict has been going on officials and politicians were found to be profiteering and there were reports that weapons Ukraine needs at its multiple war fronts have turned up in Africa. Ukraine will have to demonstrate that it is willing and ready to crack down on corruption and provide transparency in reconstruction dealings when the sixth annual Ukraine Recovery Conference convenes in London on June 21st-22nd. Unless Ukraine fails to show how accountability and transparency are to govern reconstruction, the country is unlikely to secure the massive funding needed.

Ukraine has to deliver on seven preconditions to be considered worthy of investment. These include reforming the Constitutional Court, the High Council of Justice and the High Qualification Commission of Judges. On corruption, reforms must be in place for prosecuting graft, combating money laundering and controlling the oligarchs who still hold considerable power. Ukraine must free media and adopt legislation to protect national minorities. These conditions have also been set for Ukraine’s qualification for applying for EU membership.

Ukraine is certain to face graft challenges when the time comes for reconstruction. Countries which have provided arms and aid for the war will demand preferential treatment when bids are made for projects. There will be no equal bidding field. Transparency and accountability will be ignored. The Marshall plan which invested $13.1 billion ($177 billion now) to help rebuild Western Europe following World War II has been seen as a grand humanitarian enterprise which benefitted Germans, French, Dutch, Italians, and others. A great deal of the investment in their countries came from US companies and the US economy enjoyed a spurt in growth thanks to the Marshall plan.

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***

In just an eight day period in May, the West authorized sending both long range Storm Shadow cruise missiles and F-16 fighter bombers to Ukraine, reversing a policy of not providing Ukraine with weapons that can strike inside Russia in place since the start of the war. That was one of the few sane policies of any party involved in the war for the very good reason that it could prevent the United States and NATO from being drawn into a a potentially nuclear war with Russia. White House spokesperson John Kirby has said that the foundation of the policy is Biden’s goal to “avoid World War III.”

On May 11, the United Kingdom revealed that long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles “are now going into or are in” Ukraine. Though the United States has maintained the cover of refusing to send long-range missiles of its own, the British decision to provide Ukraine with the long-range missiles was made with the knowledge of the Americans who were, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said, “incredibly supportive.” The Storm Shadow missile has a range in excess of 155 miles, sufficient to strike inside Russia’s internationally recognized borders.

Eight days later, the United States authorized supplying Ukraine with F-16 fighter-bombers, providing a second capacity to strike deep inside internationally recognized Russian territory.

The UK says it has received “assurances…that these missiles will be used only within Ukrainian sovereign territory and not inside Russia.” And U.S. President Joe Biden says he has received “flat assurances” from Zelensky that F-16’s won’t be used inside Russian territory. Ukraine has long promised “not to target Russian territory with weapons provided by the West.”

But with the coming Ukrainian counter-offensive, that leaves the hazardous question of Crimea. Senior officials in the Biden administration have affirmed that “Any target they choose to pursue on sovereign Ukrainian soil is by definition self defense,” and “Crimea is Ukraine.” In February, U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland publicly said that Washington supports Ukrainian attacks on military targets in Crimea.”

After a recent flurry of Ukrainian attacks inside Russia, some of which used U.S. armored vehicles and NATO supplied weapons, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly maintained that Ukraine has “the right to project force beyond its borders.” He added that “legitimate military targets beyond its own border are part of Ukraine’s self-defence. And we should recognise that.” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan clearly stated, “What we have said is that we will not enable Ukraine with U.S. systems, Western systems, to attack Russia. And we believe Crimea is Ukraine.”

Russia believes differently. And when it comes to the risk of an escalated response, or even a nuclear response, that’s what matters. Responding to Sullivan’s green light on attacks in Crimea, Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov said that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would be viewed by Moscow in the same way “as an attack on any other region of the Russian Federation.”

Moscow’s view is not limited to Putin. The view that Crimea is part of the Russian state is held across the Russian political spectrum. To any Russian leader, as well as to the majority of Russians and Crimeans, Crimea is Russian territory. No Russian leader could agree to surrender Crimea. That means that green lighting an attack on Crimea is crossing a Russian red line. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has acknowledged, “A Ukrainian attempt to retake Crimea would be a red line for Vladimir Putin that could lead to a wider Russian response.” That is the first big reason not to green light Ukrainian attacks on Crimea. It could lead to a wider Russian response and a dangerous escalation of the war. Russia would no longer be fighting a war in Ukraine or a war to stop NATO’s eastward expansion, it would be fighting a war for its own survival.

And that’s the second big reason not to green light an attack on Crimea. If Russia is fighting a war for its survival, the crossing of the Crimea red line could cross the nuclear red line. Putin has said, “In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us.” He has also said that Russia won’t use nuclear weapons because it won’t be necessary: “We see no need for that. There is no point in that, neither political, nor military.”

However, Russia’s Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the field of nuclear deterrence, says that Russia “hypothetically” could allow the use of nuclear weapons only if there is “aggression using conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is threatened.”

Threatening to capture Crimea is threatening the “territorial integrity” of Russia and “the very existence of the state.” Though Russia would likely not use a nuclear weapon if they lost on the battlefield, since that does not threaten the existence of the state, they could use a nuclear weapon if they lost Crimea, since that does threaten the existence of the state.

The third reason is that even if Ukraine launches a counteroffensive that successfully severs Russia’s land bridge to Crimea, that does not end the war. Following the Ukrainian counteroffensive, presumably, comes the Russian counteroffensive. Ukraine has already lost a horrifying number of soldiers in Bakhmut and cannibalized much of their air defense missiles and artillery. Military analyst and ret. U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis has pointed out that, even if Ukraine were to launch and win a counteroffensive, the rate of casualties and deaths would be so high, they would “have spent [their] last remaining force with which to conduct offensives” or future operations. It is that military that would then be hit by a Russian counteroffensive. Unless the Ukrainian counteroffensive is sufficiently successful to end the war by defeating Russia, a major push on Crimea could leave a Ukrainian military more vulnerable to defeat.

And the fourth reason, seldom considered in war, is the will of the people. The majority of Crimeans see themselves as part of Russia and do not want to be captured by Ukraine. Though Crimeans are most likely to identify themselves first as Crimeans, Nicolai Petro, Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island and the author of The Tragedy of Ukraine, has said, “Crimea is the only region of Ukraine whose population identifies itself as primarily ethnically Russian.” Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, there is a long and consistent history of Crimeans expressing a desire to be independent of Ukraine or part of Russia, including several referendums, beginning with the 1991 referendum’s 93% vote for Crimea restoring its autonomy in the post Soviet Union Union Treaty. In 1994, Crimeans elected Yuri Meshkov President of Crimea on a platform of reuniting with Russia. He won 73% of the vote in the run-off. In a referendum that would have begun a process of reuniting with Russia, 78.4% supported increased autonomy for Crimea, and 82.2% supported dual citizenship with Russia.

Of thirty polls and referendums taken in Crimea between 1994 and 2016, twenty-five show pro-Russian results of 72.9% or higher. The remaining five were between 25.6% and 55%. United Nations polling between 2009 and 2011 reveal that the majority of Crimeans were in favor of reunification with Russia. Nicolai Petro reports that leading Crimean sociologist Natalia Kiselyova says that, from 1991-2014, the percentage of Crimeans who “yearned for Russia” was always greater than 50%.

On March 16, following the U.S. supported coup of 2014 that replaced Victor Yanukovych, with his eastern Ukrainian base, with a Western leaning president who was hand picked by Washington, the last in a line of Crimean referendums voted for reunification with Russia. With a voter turnout of 83%, 97% voted for joining Russia. Though the standards and accuracy of the referendum have been questioned, Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent and author of Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, says, “It is clear that the majority of the Crimean population favored unification with Russia.” He adds, “even in perfect conditions a majority in Crimea would have voted for union with Russia.”

Nicolai Petro has pointed out that an April Pew poll found that 91% of Crimeans thought the referendum was free and fair and a June 2014 Gallup poll found that nearly 83% of Crimeans though it reflected the view of the people. In 2017, 79% of Crimeans said they would vote the same way. Petro cites polls taken between 2014 and 2019 that continue to show “that the decision to join Russia remains popular among all ethnic groups in Crimea.”

The will of the people of Crimea to remain part of Russia; the crossing of Russian red lines, including potentially the nuclear red line; and the risk that a Ukrainian counteroffensive that could include a push for Crimea could leave Ukraine vulnerable to a devastating Russian counterattack are four big reasons not to green light attacks on Crimea. These reasons suggest that giving a green light to attacks on Crimea is contrary to the interests of Ukrainians, Crimeans, Russians, and Americans.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program is now accepting applications around the topic of privacy-preserving digital credential wallets and verifiers.

The program looks to nurture an R&D environment for technologies with potential government use cases.

The government project is looking to assess solutions that “catalyze, develop, enhance, and operationalize a set of privacy-preserving building blocks that can support the needs of a privacy-preserving digital credentialing ecosystem.”

A ‘Digital Wallets Call Industry Day’ event will be held on August 18 to help vendors understand the requirements and how to apply.

In particular, the project is looking for “privacy preserving technical capabilities” that support and integrate with the three-party digital identity model (issuer, holder, verifier) enabled by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Verifiable Credential Data Model (VCDM), and W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs).

In addition, applications will need to be seen to meet the needs of the DHS Operational Components and Offices, including U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the DHS Privacy Office (PRIV).

Applications must respond and must fit into the technical specifications of either a “Digital Wallet” or “Mobile Wallet” to be eligible.

In the case of digital wallets, the project is seeking applications that are “useful across contexts and jurisdictions, and can support credentials made possible with W3C VCDM/DID standards that include verified support for DHS-issued credentials.”

The project also specified that these should be “portable, highly secure, privacy-preserving, standards-based, interoperable, and multi-functional.”

In terms of mobile wallets, these applications must be able to be deployed on mobile devices, including iOS and Android-based devices.

In addition, these applications will need to support a broad range of credentials possible, including W3C VCDM/DID standards with verified support for DHS-issued credentials.

The above is not the only area of the biometrics ecosystem which the DHS is supporting.

In 2023, the DHS unveiled the “second track” of its small ID validation demo.

This will examine the applicants’ software capabilities when it comes to spotting imposters in selfies and in images of identification documents.

EU tackles trust services move to the cloud first

In Europe, the public sector is also looking to address the technical issues and nurture the ecosystem surrounding digital identity.

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) has issued a report on moving trust services, such as those of the eIDAS digital identity project to the cloud. Although eIDAS 2.0 proposes the establishment of European digital identity wallets, the update is still in development, and ENISA therefore steers clear of the topic, along with the four new trust services proposed.

The report found that though some services, including “validation of signatures, registered delivery, time stamp or signature preservation” can be transitioned from on-premises implementations to the cloud quickly, others such as  “issuance of certificates and remote control over the signing device” require more nuanced analysis and preparation.

Data sovereignty issues were also touched on and the report found that the migrated data must stay in the data of the service provider and that some services may not be suitable for cloud migration.

ENISA recently hosted a workshop in Amsterdam, Netherlands to discuss some of the challenges around moving national implementations of trust services to the cloud, and remote identity proofing with digital wallets.

Topics touched on included the potential for existing and emerging attacks as well as potential security measures for remote identity proofing in Europe.

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Featured image is from Biometric Update

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The Pentagon said today that a helicopter accident in northern Syria had hurt 22 of its soldiers.

The cause of the accident was under investigation and no enemy fire was involved, the US military added.

Over 900 US troops remain in Syria, supposedly to “advise and assist” the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which control regions in the north-west.

The US government says its forces are there to prevent any revival of the Islamic State terrorist group, which took over large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014. Its presence is opposed by the Syrian government and illegal under international law.

Damascus says the real reason for maintaining a US troop presence is to steal Syrian oil, with oil production concentrated in areas that remain outside government control.

Last year, it said 83 per cent of Syrian oil production was being appropriated by the US or US-backed armed opposition groups, much of it taken in tanker convoys to US military bases in Iraq, with the oil ministry accusing the US of taking 66,000 barrels of Syrian oil every day in the first half of 2022.

Though the US denies that oil reserves influence its decision to stay in Syria, in 2020 US company Delta Crescent Energy secured an oil concession in the area with the approval of the SDF but not of the Syrian government.

In 2019, then-president Donald Trump declared that the US military was in Syria “only for the oil,” prompting frantic denials by administration officials.

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Featured image: US 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment troops conduct area reconnaissance in Syria, 18 February 202. Wikipedia

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Chicken feces, or chicken litter, and other animal waste from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) is commonly used as fertilizer, including for organic crops

CAFO waste used as fertilizer is contaminated with pathogens, including bacteria, fungi, viruses, antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant genes, growth hormones, heavy metals and pesticides

In the U.S., feces from broiler chickens were contaminated with antibiotic-resistant E. coli, with genes resistant to more than seven antibiotics, including amoxicillin, ceftiofur, tetracycline and sulfonamide

A meta-analysis concluded “direct land application of chicken litter could be harming animal, human and environmental health”

The overwhelming presence of CAFOs in the state of North Carolina prompted a civil rights complaint on behalf of residents in three counties

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Farmers have used manure as a natural, nutrient-rich fertilizer for thousands of years. In fact, there’s evidence that early farmers used manure to fertilize cereal grains and pulse seeds up to 7,900 years ago. They likely noticed enhanced crop growth in areas where manure naturally accumulated, then tried the method in other areas.¹

Today, many farmers still depend on manure to help their crops grow. This includes organic farmers² and those using permaculture and regenerative methods.³ When chickens are raised on pasture, their manure is spread across the land and worked into the soil naturally via pecking and scratching.⁴

This beneficial practice that works in concert with nature bears little resemblance to the use of poultry litter — or chicken feces, sometimes mixed with urine, sawdust, feathers and other materials — and other animal waste from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) as fertilizer. Yet, this latter practice is common, even among some organic farms.⁵

Chicken Litter Contains Bacteria, Viruses and Other Pathogens

Chicken litter used as an organic fertilizer is considered “the cheapest and most environmentally safe method of disposing of the volume generated from the rapidly expanding poultry industry worldwide.”⁶

But a review, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, raises an important point — “little is known about the safety of chicken litter for land application and general release into the environment.”⁷

The research team, from Kyambogo and Makerere Universities in Uganda and the University of Florida, set out to remedy this. They conducted a meta-analysis of technical reports, conference proceedings, peer-reviewed journal articles and internet texts, noting that the available data was “scattered and disjointed” making it difficult to access and interpret.

They consolidated the data they did find, however, revealing that “direct land application of chicken litter could be harming animal, human, and environmental health.”⁸ The review revealed, for instance:⁹

Pesticide Residues, Antibiotics, Heavy Metals Also in Manure

The massive quantities of manure flowing from CAFOs amounts to a toxic sludge of contaminants, spread on fields used to grow even organic food.

“The key safety concerns of chicken litter are its contamination with pathogens, including bacteria, fungi, helminthes, parasitic protozoa, and viruses; antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant genes; growth hormones such as egg and meat boosters; heavy metals; and pesticides,” the researchers explained.¹⁰

Chicken litter contains a “vast array” of antibiotics and heavy metals, their meta-analysis showed, including “high concentrations” of cadmium, lead, arsenic and mercury that “pose serious health risks to animals, plants and environmental health.”¹¹

Pesticides, including dioxins, furans, polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, also contaminate chicken litter, as do growth and sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone. Growth hormones have a harmful effect on reproduction in fish and other aquatic organisms, and may persist in the environment for more than two years after they’re excreted in chicken litter.

“This persistence increases the potential of the hormones reaching surface water bodies through runoff,” according to the team.¹² Further, they noted, “The chlorinated antibiotic and pesticide residues detected in chicken litter are worryingly high. These chemicals are persistent, carcinogenic, and release dioxin when contaminated litter is burnt.”¹³

Regarding antibiotics, fluoroquinolones, sulfonamides and tetracyclines were the classes most widely detected. While some antibiotics degrade in soil within about 30 days, others persist and may harm microorganisms and soil fertility. Some antibiotics can also be absorbed into food crops, like green onions, cabbage and corn, from the soil. The analysis noted:¹⁴

“The presence of antibiotics, especially those that kill pathogens in chicken litter and are broad spectrum, may distort major biological processes in soil upon application of the litter, including development of antibiotic resistance, which can affect humans, livestock, fish, and wildlife … Human consumption of antibiotics-contaminated foods can increase antibiotic resistance, leading to food poisoning or allergies.”

Despite this, they added, “There are no standards set specifically for chicken litter for most of its known contaminants. Even where standards exist for related products such as compost, there is wide variation across countries and bodies mandated to set standards for safe disposal of organic wastes.”¹⁵

Trying to Pass Off a Liability as an Asset

An article posted by Washington State University described using CAFO manure on small farms as a tool to turn a “liability to an asset.”¹⁶ But even putting the contamination issues aside, the amount of waste generated by CAFOs is massive. In the U.S., 1.37 billion tons of solid animal waste are produced every year. That’s 130 times more than the amount of human waste generated annually.¹⁷

Often, the waste is held in “lagoons” that are meant to be impenetrable. But even under the best circumstances, the lagoons may leak, seeping millions of gallons of waste a year into neighboring soil and groundwater.¹⁸ Waste may also be sprayed onto nearby “sprayfields,” creating more environmental destruction. Natural Resources Defense Council explained:¹⁹

“People living near factory farms are placed at risk. Hundreds of gases are emitted by lagoons and the irrigation pivots associated with sprayfields, including ammonia (a toxic form of nitrogen), hydrogen sulfide, and methane. The accumulation of gases formed in the process of breaking down animal waste is toxic, oxygen consuming, and potentially explosive, and farm workers’ exposure to lagoon gases has even caused deaths.

People living close to hog operations have reported headaches, runny noses, sore throats, excessive coughing, respiratory problems, nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, burning eyes, depression, and fatigue. The pathogenic microbes in animal waste can also infect people.

Water contaminated by animal manure contributes to human diseases such as acute gastroenteritis, fever, kidney failure, and even death. Nitrates seeping from lagoons and sprayfields have contaminated groundwater used for human drinking water.”

In cases of natural disasters, such as Hurricane Florence, which hit the Carolinas in September 2018, even more devastation can result. During that tragic event alone, at least 132 CAFO lagoons released pig waste into the environment.²⁰

The National Pork Council tried to downplay the damage, stating that solids are stored mostly at the bottom of lagoons while the liquids at the top are heavily diluted and therefore would minimize the environmental impact if they were to spill over.²¹

Yet, as noted by Sacoby Wilson, a professor of public health at the University of Maryland, to Vice News, “You basically have a toxic soup for people who live in close proximity to those lagoons … All of these contaminants that are in the hog lagoons, like salmonella, giardia, and E. coli, can get into the waterways and infect people trying to get out.”²²

So, CAFO waste is nearly always a liability — one that shouldn’t be framed as an “asset” for neighboring small farms. In response to the Washington State University article, commenter Michaelyn Erickson said:²³

“Hey CAFO, is that lipstick on your confined pig? As a Permaculturist and small farmer, this doesn’t sound like a solution at all. It sounds like an attempt by big agriculture to dump its waste off on unsuspecting small farms like me. I don’t want your hormone-filled tortured cow excrement … that is your responsibility to deal with not mine.”

CAFOs Violating Residents’ Civil Rights

The overwhelming presence of CAFOs in the state of North Carolina prompted a civil rights complaint from lawyers with the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School. The complaint was filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for residents in three North Carolina counties.²⁴

The residents described piles of chicken litter that are more than 8 feet tall, waiting to be spread on nearby fields. “They stand there and start fuming off. The odor is terrible,” resident Henry Brewer stated in the complaint. “Sometimes it feels like the flies are about to eat us alive — the dogs can’t even live in the yard.”²⁵

Due to a loophole in state environmental regulations, chicken CAFOs have been set up without any permitting requirements in North Carolina, and they’re decimating low-income counties at a disproportionate rate. Civil Eats reported:²⁶

“‘Under state law, DEQ [Department of Environmental Quality] has to take into account cumulative impacts that are happening in a particular location,’ said Fredrick Ole Ikayo, a legal fellow who worked on the complaint. ‘But they don’t even know where these poultry facilities are or anything about the way they are polluting the air and water.’”

In addition to violating residents’ civil rights, manure from industrial agriculture is a primary source of nitrogen and phosphorus in surface waterways and groundwater, according to the EPA.²⁷ The resulting damage includes an excess of nutrients that lead to algae overgrowth, depleting the water of oxygen and killing fish and other marine life in expansive dead zones.

This, combined with the excess fertilizers applied to monocrops like corn and soy, sends a steady stream of nitrogen and phosphorus to both surface and groundwater, spreading potentially disease-causing organisms and unsustainable amounts of nutrients along the way.

Was Your Food Grown in Sewage Sludge?

Sewage sludge, a waste product that comes from wastewater treatment facilities, is also widely applied to agricultural fields as a fertilizer. Often used interchangeably with the term biosolids, the compound is just as unappealing as it sounds.

When wastewater and storm water enter wastewater treatment facilities, the solid and liquid waste are separated. The solids are “digested” using bacteria, treated, dried and then sent to landfills or used for agricultural purposes as “fertilizer.” In the U.S., 54% of sewage sludge biosolids are used for so-called “beneficial” purposes.

Most often this means they’re applied to agricultural sites, although small amounts are also applied to forestry sites, reclamation sites, including Superfund and Brownfield lands and urban areas, including park land. Broken down, it’s estimated that 36% of biosolids are used for agricultural purposes while 28% end up in landfills and 15% are incinerated.²⁸

The fact is, just like animals, humans produce a healthy amount of waste. How to dispose of this biosolid sludge is a vexing problem worldwide, so, theoretically, turning the waste product into a beneficial product like fertilizer makes sense, assuming it could be thoroughly purified.

Therein lies the problem, however. The Guardian quoted former EPA scientist David Lewis, who opposed the use of sewage sludge on cropland. Lewis noted, “Spending billions of dollars to remove hazardous chemicals and biological wastes from water, only to spread them on soil everywhere we live, work and play defies common sense.”²⁹

As of December 21, 2022, the EPA detected 739 chemicals in sewage sludge used in the U.S. as a soil amendment.³⁰ Fortunately, unlike CAFO waste, sewage sludge is prohibited in organic farming.³¹

How to Find Toxin-Free Food

Foods grown on soil treated with CAFO waste or biosolids are not labeled as such, so your best bet for avoiding them is to support sustainable agriculture movements in your area. Make it a point to only buy food from a source you know and trust, one using safe, nontoxic growing methods.

Remember, small regenerative farmers commonly use rotational grazing of multiple species to mimic natural cycles. This keeps pastures — and the animals that live on them — healthy.

This method also depends on animal manure to fertilize the soil, but the manure is not contaminated like CAFO waste — and it exists on a manageable scale that supports the farm’s overall health instead of harming it. This is not the same as the industrially sourced CAFO waste that’s sprayed over farm fields.

Growing your own food is another way to ensure what you’re eating isn’t exposed to CAFO waste. But be careful when purchasing potting soil and compost, as companies do not have to disclose when biosolids are used. If you see “Milorganite” on the label, however, it contains biosolids from the city of Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District — a national distributor.³²

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Notes

¹ University of Nebraska-Lincoln March 15, 2016

² Farm Progress February 11, 2010

³ Permaculture Research Institute

⁴ Pasture Bird, Why Chicken Poop is the Sh*t

⁵ National Center for Appropriate Technology, Tipsheet: Manure in Organic Production Systems

^{6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15} Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Oct; 16(19): 3521., Abstract

¹¹ Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Oct; 16(19): 3521., 3.3 Heavy Metals

¹² Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Oct; 16(19): 3521., 3.4 Growth Hormones

¹³ Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Oct; 16(19): 3521., Conclusions

¹⁴ Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Oct; 16(19): 3521., 3.2 Antibiotics and Pesticides

^16, 23 Washington State University January 18, 2017

¹⁷ Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production

¹⁸ NRDC, Cesspools of Shame July 2001

¹⁹ NRDC, Cesspools of Shame July 2001, Page 1

²⁰ The New Yorker September 21, 2018

²¹ WRAL September 18, 2018

²² Vice September 18, 2018

^24, 25, 26 Civil Eats May 3, 2023

²⁷ U.S. EPA, Estimated Animal Agriculture Nitrogen and Phosphorus From Manure

²⁸ University of Michigan, Center for Sustainable Systems, U.S. Wastewater Treatment Factsheet

²⁹ The Guardian October 5, 2019

³⁰ U.S. EPA, Chemicals in biosolids (2022)

³¹ USDA, Organic 101 December 16, 2011

³² Milorganite.com, What is Milorganite?

Featured image is from Mercola

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On January 24 2023, the Foreign Minister of Germany and author of Germany’s forthcoming National Security Strategy, Annalena Baerbock, said at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, “We are fighting a war against Russia.”

On 5 April 2023, Hervé Blejéan, Director General of the European Union Military Staff, said that henceforth, NATO would fully control the EU’s military decisions.

On 9 May 2023, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said “All NATO members agree that Ukraine will become a NATO member,” which means that the entire Alliance is unanimous that Russia will and must be defeated in Ukraine.

The next day, on 10 May 2023, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said essentially the same thing, though in a far less succinct way.

Then, on 14 June 2023, Mr. Blejéan directly reversed what he had said on 5 April 2023, and said instead,

“To send ground troops to Ukraine is to be a party in a war, to be at war with Russia, and nobody wants that, neither the EU, nor NATO. We are not at war with Russia.”

Something extremely important had happened which reversed, cancelled, the EU’s, and also NATO’s, war against Russia. But no one was reporting what had caused the change — nor even that there was a change.

This was the first such statement from the EU that the war against Russia is over — won’t go all the way as a U.S-and-All-European war; but instead had been prematurely committed-to as-if it would be that.

However, Annalena Baerbock and the entire German Government are now even more committed to war against Russia than before, because, on 14 June 2023, Germany’s Government finally came forth with its war-promoting National Security Strategy. Deutsche Welle headlined “German government presents first national security strategy”, and Minister Baerbock said “All of us had to learn with the brutal war of aggression of Russia against Ukraine that freedom and peace do not fall from the sky.” The DW news-report said virtually nothing about what is in the National Security Strategy. Russia’s RT was more informative about that; it headlined the same day, “Germany names biggest threat to ‘peace and security’: Berlin has accused Moscow of jeopardizing strategic stability”, and it opened: “Russia has been declared the biggest security threat in a top German strategic policy paper. Presented on Wednesday, Germany’s first ever National Security Strategy describes Moscow as a force threatening both regional and global order.” Germany, which has 231 U.S. military bases on its territory and is being destroyed by the U.S.’s enforced economic sanctions, physical destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, and other U.S.-imposed economic burdens, would remain a U.S. slave-state or ‘ally’, regardless of what the rest of the ‘Alliance’ would do.

Going forward now, it is the U.S. regime and countries such as Germany that are still committed to U.S. President Joe Biden’s promise that, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” If America’s war against Russia will henceforth NOT be including some other European nations, then perhaps Russia will remove those other nations from being targeted by its thousands of nuclear weapons. The United States, in any event, certainly is providing international leadership of a certain sort: into WW III. But, by doing so, it might lose some of its ‘allies’.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image:  EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell. (EU)

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Three days ago — June 10 — was the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s Peace Speech at American University. Reading or listening to the speech today, it is not difficult to see why the U.S. national-security establishment deemed Kennedy to be a grave threat to national security, just as it did with certain foreign leaders, such as Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz and, later, President Salvador Allende of Chile. 

For some 150 years, the federal government had been a limited-government republic. After World War II, however, the federal government was converted to a national-security state. 

The difference was day and night.

With a limited-government republic, there was openness and transparency in governmental operations. Moreover, there was only a relatively small, basic military force. No Pentagon, no vast military-industrial complex, no CIA, no NSA, and no empire of foreign military bases. Governmental powers were limited and tightly constrained. No power to assassinate, kidnap, torture, or indefinitely detain people. No power to initiate coups or regime-change operations in foreign countries. No power of mass secret surveillance. 

With a national-security state, dark-side secrecy became everything. “National security” became the two most important words in the American political lexicon. A large, permanent military establishment, along with the CIA and the NSA, came into existence. This vast national-security establishment vested itself with omnipotent, totalitarian-like powers, including assassination, torture, coups, secret surveillance, kidnapping, and indefinite detention. It established a vast empire of military bases, both foreign and domestic, and initiated a program of regime change in foreign nations. Foreign wars in faraway lands, such as Korea and Vietnam, became the norm.

The Cold War was actually one great big racket, one that became a cash cow for the vast military-intelligence complex and its ever-growing army of “defense” contractors who loved feeding at the public trough. This enormous racket was justified under the rubric of keeping America safe from a supposed vast communist conspiracy that supposedly was based in Moscow, Russia. Yes, that Russia!

There was no possibility whatsoever of a peaceful resolution of the forever war between the United States and Russia, U.S. oficials said. There could never be peaceful coexistence, they maintained. The war against the Russian Reds, U.S. national-security officials held, was a war to the death. That was why the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended to Kennedy that the United States initiate a surprise nuclear attack against the Russians, a recommendation that Kennedy indignantly rejected.

Having achieved a “breakthrough” after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy had decided that he was going to lead America in an entirely different direction from that of the national-security establishment. In his Peace Speech, Kennedy threw down the gauntlet against what had now become his enemy — the national-security establishment. Kennedy essentially declared an end to the Cold War racket and announced that henceforth Russia and the United States would live in peaceful coexistence. He declared an end to to the extreme anti-Russia hostility that the national-security establishment had inculcated in the American people, and he even praised the Soviet Union.

The very next night — June 11 — Kennedy delivered a nation-wide speech expressing support for the civil-rights movement, which the national-security establishment was convinced was controlled by the Russian Reds. That’s why the FBI wiretapped Martin Luther King and used blackmail with the aim of inducing him to commit suicide.

Kennedy then followed up his words with actions. Over the fierce opposition of the Pentagon and the CIA, he negotiated the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets. He also ordered a pull-out of troops from Vietnam. He proposed a joint trip to the moon with the Russians, which would have meant sharing U.S. rocket technology with the Reds. On the day he was killed, he had an emissary having lunch with Fidel Castro with an intent to normalize relations with Cuba, which was anathema to the national-security establishment. 

What would have happened if Kennedy had lived? The national-security establishment would have immediately become irrelevant and immaterial. They would have been left twiddling their thumbs, with nothing to do. Remember, after all, that the supposed threat from the Russian Reds was why the federal government was converted to a national-security state in the first place. Peaceful coexistence with the communist world would have meant no more justification for a national-security state. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA would have been dismantled and America’s founding system of a limited-government republic would have been restored.

Keep in mind something else. Kennedy would never have permitted the Pentagon and the CIA to go into the Middle East and begin killing people, as they did after the Cold War finally came to an end in 1989. That would have meant that there never would have been terrorist retaliation for U.S. interventionism and, therefore, there never would have been a “war on terrorism.”

In other words, if Kennedy had lived, we’d be living in a totally different society today, one characterized by a limited-government republic rather than a national-security state — one without the militarism, forever wars, conflicts, hostilities, crises, chaos, coups, assassinations, torture, and indefinite detention that have become regular and permanent features of American life.

For its part, the military-intelligence establishment considered Kennedy to be a weak leader — a coward — an appeaser — Neville Chamberlain —  a traitor — a president who was leading America to doom at the hands of the communists. Kennedy was deemed to be a grave threat to national-security. As far as it was concerned, the national-security establishment had no choice but to do what was necessary to save America.

Kennedy knew the danger that he faced in the war between him and the national-security establishment for the future direction of America. He had listened to President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, when Ike warned the American people of the dangers that the national-security state apparatus posed to the rights and liberties of the American people and to America’s democratic processes. 

The war between President Kennedy and the national-security establishment came to an end on November 22, 1963. And Americans have been paying the price for that “victory” ever since.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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***

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.”—H.L. Mencken

And so it continues.

This entire fiasco—indicting Donald Trump for allegedly violating both the Espionage Act and obstructing justice by improperly handling classified records—is merely the latest in a never-ending series of distractions, distortions, and political theater aimed at diverting the public’s attention from the sinister advances of the American Deep State.

Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted, diverted or mesmerized by the cheap theater tricks.

This indictment spectacle is Shakespearean in its scope: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Nothing is the key word here.

Despite the wall-to-wall media coverage, this is all just smoke and mirrors.

Mark my words: the government is as corrupt and self-serving as ever, dominated by two political factions that pretend to be at odds with each other all the while moving in lockstep to maintain the status quo.

If you really want to talk about who’s guilty of treason, set your sights higher: indict the government for overstepping its authority, abusing its power, disregarding the rule of law, and betraying the American people.

When we refer to the “rule of law,” that’s constitutional shorthand for the idea that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.

When the government and its agents no longer respect the rule of law—the Constitution—or believe that it applies to them, then the very contract on which this relationship is based becomes invalid.

This abuse of power has been going on for so long that it has become the norm, the Constitution be damned.

There are hundreds—make that thousands—of government bureaucrats who are getting away with murder (in many cases, literally) simply because the legislatures, courts and the citizenry can’t be bothered to make them play by the rules of the Constitution.

Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.

For too long now, the American people have played politics with their principles and turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient, allowing the government to wreak havoc with their freedoms and act in violation of the rule of law.

“We the people” are paying the price for it now.

We are paying the price every day that we allow the government to continue to wage its war on the American People, a war that is being fought on many fronts: with bullets and tasers, with surveillance cameras and license readers, with intimidation and propaganda, with court rulings and legislation, with the collusion of every bureaucrat who dances to the tune of corporate handouts while on the government’s payroll, and most effectively of all, with the complicity of the American people, who continue to allow themselves to be easily manipulated by their politics, distracted by their pastimes, and acclimated to a world in which government corruption is the norm.

It’s the nature of the beast: power corrupts.

Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.

The republic has fallen.

The Deep State’s plot to take over America has succeeded.

The American system of representative government has been overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, corporate oligarchy bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad.

Even now, we are being pushed and prodded towards a civil war, not because the American people are so divided but because that’s how corrupt governments control a populace (i.e., divide and conquer).

These are dangerous times.

These are indeed dangerous times but not because of violent crime or terrorism or illegal immigration.

No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing armies to rob, steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill American citizens with immunity.

The danger “we the people” face comes from masked invaders on the government payroll who crash through our doors in the dark of night, shoot our dogs, and terrorize our families.

This danger comes from militarized henchmen on the government payroll who demand absolute obedience, instill abject fear, and shoot first and ask questions later.

This danger comes from greedy, power-hungry bureaucrats on the government payroll who have little to no understanding of their constitutional limits.

This danger comes from greedy politicians and corporations for whom profit trumps principle.

Consider, if you will, all of the dastardly, devious, diabolical, dangerous, debilitating, deceitful, dehumanizing, demonic, depraved, dishonorable, disillusioning, discriminatory, dictatorial schemes inflicted on “we the people” by a bureaucratic, totalitarian regime that has long since ceased to be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

• Americans have no protection against police abuse.
• Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state.
• Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty.
• Americans no longer have a right to private property.
• Americans no longer have a say about what their children are exposed to in school.
• Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police.
• Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity.
• Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy.
• Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice.
• Americans no longer have a representative government.

I haven’t even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.

Indictments, impeachments and elections will not save us.

History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a totalitarian state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom.

Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

From Clinton to Bush, then Obama to Trump and now Biden, it’s as if we’re caught in a time loop, forced to re-live the same thing over and over again: the same assaults on our freedoms, the same disregard for the rule of law, the same subservience to the Deep State, and the same corrupt, self-serving government that exists only to amass power, enrich its shareholders and ensure its continued domination.

There can be no denying that the world is indeed a dangerous place, but it’s the government that poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life, and no amount of politicking, parsing or pandering will change that.

It is easy to be diverted, distracted and amused by political circuses and entertainment spectacles.

What is far more difficult to face up to is the reality of life in America, where “we the people” are at a distinct disadvantage in the face of the government elite’s power grabs, greed and firepower.

The Constitution doesn’t stand a chance against a federalized, globalized standing army protected by legislative, judicial and executive branches that are all on the same side.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, no matter what political views they subscribe to: suffice it to say, they are not on our side or the side of freedom.

That is the real betrayal.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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“Turbo cancer” is a non-medical term that has arisen to describe very aggressive and rapidly progressive cancers following Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccination and suppression of the immune system.

I have written 12 substacks about turbo cancers so far:

• turbo cancers in Canadian doctors (click here)
• turbo cancer leukemias (click here) and children (click here) and (click here)
• turbo cancer lymphoma (click here)
• turbo brain cancer glioblastomas (click here) and (click here)
• turbo cervical cancer (click here)
• turbo testicular cancer in athletes (click here)
• turbo cancer of appendix (click here)
• turbo sarcomas (click here)
• turbo colon cancers (click here)

Today’s focus is on turbo gastric cancer.

UK – 49 year old army nurse Billie-Joe Graham (click here) 

Billie-Joe Graham served on the frontlines during the Gulf War. After leaving the Army, Billie-Joe became a midwife. She was working as a midwife for South Tyneside Healthcare Trust at the time of her death.

After suffering stomach pains, which she thought might be gallstones, she visited her doctor. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer on March 29, 2022 and passed away 12 days later on April 10, 2022.

She was due to start cancer treatment on April 11, 2022. She died before she could even start treatment.

UK – 37 year old father of two, Danny Johnston (click here)

Starting in November 2022, 37 year old Danny Johnston would regularly vomit blood. He thought he had a stomach ulcer. He had an endoscopy on Nov.30, 2022 but there was no evidence of cancer.

He was diagnosed with cancer on Jan.14, 2023 and died a month later on Feb.17, 2023.

He was about to start chemotherapy but he died before he could start treatment.

UK – 37 year old dad, Jamie Thompson, died weeks after going to emergency for stomach pain (click here)

37 year old Jamie Thompson visited emerg beginning of Nov.2022 complaining of stomach pain.

Tests revealed the 37-year-old from Middlesborough had cancer in his stomach, chest and lung.

A couple of weeks later his friends called an ambulance when he took a turn for the worse. He was sent for another scan and the mass on his stomach had grown significantly.

Jamie had a biopsy and suffered a cardiac arrest shortly after. He had also suffered a brain bleed and died on Nov. 22, 2022.

UK – 39 year old dad who complained of sore stomach on honeymoon died 2 months later of gastric cancer.

“We came back from our honeymoon in July, and a week later he went to hospital with pain in his stomach. He never left hospital again.

“It was two months between diagnosis and him passing away.”

UK – 39 year old UK man died 1 week after appointment for hernia (click here) 

A 39-year-old man died just a week after going to the hospital for a hernia in his groin.

It turned out he had advanced stomach cancer that had been spreading to several parts of his body.

There is another pattern of stomach cancers that are not as rapidly lethal, and usually take about a year to kill:

UK – 39 year old mom of 3 dies battling very rare stomach cancer for 14 months (click here)

Lisa’s oncologist reportedly told her she had more chance of being struck by lightning than getting this form of cancer.

“Even when she was battling this horrible disease alongside intense chemo, radiotherapy and suffering a blood clot on her lung, She never once complained.”

Cedar Hill, MO – 31 year old Northwest High School teacher Jessica Kozlen died after 16 month battle with stage 4 metastatic jejunal adenocarcinoma (click here)

On July 4, 2021 she called her brother and asked him what it felt like when he had appendicitis. He told her to go to emerg.

“They ran a lot of tests and they ended up doing a CT scan and it revealed that she hadlate stage cancer that had spread to her colon and liver and it had already spread significantly” he said.

Stephen said he was told Kozlen’s cancer basically has no symptoms until it is in an advanced stage.

“It’s a very rare form of cancer that is very hard to treat,” he said.

She started chemotherapy right away, had some success, but then it started to fail. She died on Nov.1, 2022.

Japan – 31 year old national volleyball player Naonobu Fuji died on March 10, 2023, after battling stage 4 gastric cancer for 12 months.

On Feb. 27, 2022 he announced publicly that he had stage 4 gastric cancer with brain metastases.

Washington Post editor, 35 year old Roshania Patel died on Oct. 25, 2022 from gastric cancer.

UK – 47 year old British heavyweight boxer Mark Potter died in Nov. 2022 after 11 month battle with gastric cancer (click here) 

Nicholas Lloyd Webber, composer and record producer and son of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber died at age 43 from gastric cancer after 18 month battle (click here)

Twitter Reports

My Take…

The underlying mechanism of turbo cancer is most likely some type of COVID-19 vaccine induced immune system suppression that gives rise to rapidly growing and rapidly progressive cancers of the breast, lung, colon, gastric, gallbladder, pancreas, brain, lymphoma, leukemia and so on.

There are a number of theories in regards to what is causing COVID-19 vaccine induced immune system dysfunction: TLR suppression, T-cell dysfunction, IgG4 shift, DNA contamination of mRNA vials with plasmids containing SV40 promoter, p53 inhibition, PD-L1 elevation, NK cell exhaustion and many more.

PD-L1 has been associated with gastric cancer (click here). PD-L1 is a protein called “the ligand of programmed cell death 1” and is found on immune cells. It binds PD-1 which is also found on immune cells (activated T-cells & others).

The interaction of PD-1 with its ligand PD-L1 induces a suppression of T-cell receptor signaling and results in a down regulation of the immune response, which enables cancer cells to escape immune destruction. (click here)

There are new cancer drugs that target PD-L1/PD-1 to restore cancer cell directed immune response and killing of cancer cells.

COVID-19 mRNA Spike protein upregulates PD-L1 and this is even more pronounced with Omicron spike than with original Wuhan spike. Although the authors of one study concluded that this promotes immune evasion of COVID-19 and causes severe disease, upregulation of PD-L1 will also allow cancers to evade the immune system. (click here)

Pfizer & Moderna mRNA vaccines may be upregulating PD-L1 which could be causing several types of aggressive “turbo” cancers, including gastric cancers.

Even more concerning, it is possible that bivalent Omicron COVID-19 mRNA boosters may be causing even higher PD-L1 levels than the original strains of COVID-19, which could mean that if the original COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are indeed carcinogenic (via upregulation of PD-L1), the Omicron COVID-19 boosters are even worse and more likely to cause aggressive cancers.

*

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

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Senegal was the scene of demonstrations and widespread property damage in the wake of the conviction of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko who was tried by the courts in absentia in early June.

Sonko, a former tax inspector and co-founder of the African Patriots of Senegal (PASTEF) opposition party, had been charged with sexual assault, however, his conviction was for the corruption of a minor.

Supposedly the charges stemmed from Sonko’s interaction with a woman at a massage parlor, according to press reports. Even after the conviction and sentencing, Sonko has not been arrested by the authorities in Senegal. He was given 15 days to file an appeal in the courts to his conviction and sentence to two years in prison.

Image: Ousmane Sonko (Licensed under the Public Domain)

The opposition leader’s supporters say that the charges against him are politically motivated in order to prevent Sonko from running for president in 2024. He contested in the 2019 elections and came in third after the incumbent President Macky Sall. The PASTEF party leads a coalition of opposition parties called Liberate the People which represents the second largest bloc in the National Assembly of Senegal.

Aggravating the social situation in Senegal is the controversy surrounding whether President Sall will seek re-election after serving two terms. The Senegalese constitution will have to be changed for Sall to run once again. Sonko, who is 48-years-old, has a strong following among the youth who represent the largest demographic inside the country. Due to the post-colonial crisis of many African states, unemployment and poverty among young people remains disproportionately high in many countries such as Senegal.

Reports from Senegal indicate that 16 people lost their lives during the demonstrations which began during early June. Extensive damage was done in the area around the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar.

Extensive damage was reportedly done at the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar where thousands of student, faculty and administrative documents were damaged. The university is named after the eminent historian and anthropologist who challenged the European theories of African inferiority. His books “The Cultural Unity of Black Africa” (1959), the “African Origin of Civilization” (1974) and “Civilization or Barbarism” (1991) remain major sources in continental research.

Although President Macky Sall has not commented extensively on the unrest, several opposition leaders and international human rights organizations have criticized his administration for utilizing live ammunition in the efforts to halt the demonstrations. However, supporters of the ruling Alliance for the Republic party and other political forces have accused Sonko of deliberately fueling the violent activities. (See this)

Political Background to the Current Crisis

Senegal, a former French colony, gained its independence from France in 1960. The country from the time of its liberation maintained close relations with Paris as well as the United States.

Since 1960, the country has been relatively stable in comparison to several of the neighboring states in West Africa. There has never been a military coup in Senegal over the last 63 years of its independence. Over the last four decades there has been a multiparty political system. Only four people have served as president: Leopold Senghor, Abdou Diouf, Abdoulaye Wade and the current head-of-state Macky Sall.

Senegal is known for its keen interests in the preservation of African history and culture. The first President Leopold Senghor was a writer and theoretician who advanced his own ideas related to the role of post-colonial societies in Africa. He expressed the concept of “Negritude” which also held substantial influence leading up to the 1960s in other geopolitical regions such as the Caribbean and among African Americans in the U.S. His form of Negritude advanced a version of socialism which did not challenge the inherent exploitative conditions which resulted from colonial rule. During his tenure in office, Senegal remained within the French monetary zone where its currency remained pegged to the CFA Franc. He also relied on French advisors for governmental and military affairs.

In later years during the 1960s, Senghor’s theories were challenged by more revolutionary African leaders such as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, President Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau, President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, among others. Alternative concepts such as the African Personality, African Democratic Revolution, Ujamaa, Pan-Africanism, Scientific Socialism, Marxism-Leninism, etc. supported the armed struggles to overthrow colonialism and imperialism along with the construction of a non-capitalist society.

The First Pan-African Cultural Festival held in Algeria during August 1969, in many ways represented a repudiation of the ideas espoused by Senghor and Martinique-born poet and political leader Aimee Cesaire. Senghor remained in power from 1960 to 1980. During his administration there was the removal and imprisonment of his prime minister, Mamadou Dia, in 1962, who was accused of attempting a coup against the president.

Since the early phase of the African independence movements of the 1950s and 1960s, there has been greater emphasis on political pluralism. The African Union (AU), which grew out of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) formed 60 years ago in 1963, took a stronger position against military interventions in political governance.

Nonetheless, in the last three years several countries in West Africa have experienced military coups. Mali, Guinea-Conakry, Burkina Faso and Chad underwent military seizures of power. These coups are reflections of the economic and security crises which have spread across the continent. Although the U.S. and France have escalated their military presence on the continent through the Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Paris’ Operation Barkhane, the capacity of numerous AU member-states to stabilize their countries have drastically declined.

Senegal, Africa and the New Cold War

With President Sall having been Chairperson of the AU during the previous year, his international stature has brought media attention to the country. During 2022, Sall and the Commission Chair of the AU, Faki Moussa Mahamat, travelled to Russia and met with President Vladimir Putin in the city of Sochi.

The purpose of the trip was to seek a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine war which has caused agriculture shortages in various African states. Ukraine and Russia supply large amounts of grain and other staple food products to African countries. The plan for a corridor for the supply of food from Ukraine and Russia was first proposed at this meeting between the AU officials and Putin.

Since this time period, the AU has announced the formation of a delegation to travel on a peace mission to both Ukraine and the Russian Federation. The seven-member African delegation is scheduled to visit Russia and Ukraine in mid-June.

The position of the AU member-states has been a cause for much consternation by Washington and other NATO member-states. Despite political and economic pressures being exerted by the administration of President Joe Biden towards African governments to line up behind the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, this delegation was committed to continuing with its mission.

In a report published by TASS news agency:

“The Brazzaville Foundation is pleased to announce that Vladimir Zelensky, President of Ukraine, will receive on Friday, June 16, 2023, in Kiev, and Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will receive on Saturday, June 17, 2023 in St. Petersburg the following Heads of State: Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Republic of South Africa; Azali Assoumani, President of the African Union and President of the Union of Comoros; Denis Sassou Nguesso, President of the Republic of Congo; Yoweri Museveni, President of the Republic of Uganda; Macky Sall, President of the Republic of Senegal and Hakainde Hichilema, President of the Republic of Zambia,” the organization said in a communique distributed on Thursday in South Africa.

On May 16, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that Russian and Ukrainian authorities had agreed to host an African delegation to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Ramaphosa was speaking on behalf of a group of six African countries: Egypt, the Republic of the Congo, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia. Now the incumbent chair of the African Union, the Comoros, has been added to this list.” 

Undoubtedly, the Biden administration will continue its efforts to undermine any semblance of an independent foreign policy among African states as it relates to the Russian Federation as well as the People’s Republic of China. In specific reference to the Republic of South Africa, a bi-partisan group of Congressman and Senators have written a letter to President Biden demanding that he take economic measures against Pretoria for their supposed support for Moscow in its special military operation in Ukraine. The African National Congress (ANC) government has been accused of supplying weapons to Russia by the U.S. ambassador to South Africa. All of these accusations and threats are designed to destabilize the South African government and society.

Any opportunity created by imperialism to undermine the sovereignty and independence of African states will be utilized by Washington, London, Paris and Brussels. Irrespective of the outcome of the national elections in Senegal during 2024, the U.S. and its allies will continue to pursue their hegemonic designs aimed at maintaining neo-colonialism in Africa and other geopolitical regions of the world.

*

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

Dumpling Wars

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 14, 2023

The Ukrainian blonde had the smell of trouble. She had perched herself, along with her mute friend, in a restaurant across from the famed South Melbourne Market. On arriving at the modish, glorious bit of real estate known as Tipsy Village, a Polish establishment famed for accented French cuisine, she shrieked: “Why do you have Ruskie dumplings on your menu?”

“We Want Peace. The World Cries Out”. Henry Wallace

By Emanuel Pastreich, June 15, 2023

Although I do not fully agree with Henry Wallace’s arguments, I find his speeches inspiring and think they offer us great potential at this dangerous moment in history. There is also an argument to be made that another world was possible that did not include the Cold War of the 1950s, or the Cold War of 2023 (the second “cold war” works on the basic principle that “Cold Wars repeat: first as tragedy and again as farce”).

“The Ultimate Constraint on Freedom”: Ted Kaczynski, Technology and Trauma

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 15, 2023

Henry A. Murray has much to answer for. Between 1959 and 1961, the Harvard psychology academic, as the leader of a team of equally unprincipled academics, was responsible for conducting an CIA-funded experiment most unethical on 22 undergraduates.  The individuals in question were pseudonymised. One particularly youthful figure, named “Lawful”, was the mathematically gifted Theodore John Kaczynski.

Turkey’s Refugee Crisis

By Hasan Erel, June 15, 2023

Turkey has become the target point of a mass migration, which is rarely seen in the world. This essentially started with the Syrian war in 2011 and continues with Libya, Iraq, African countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russians and Ukrainians.

Only a Manipulated Human Inflicts Suffering on Members of the Same Species

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, June 15, 2023

As a psychologist and long-time psychotherapist, I am convinced that man is good, social and capable of living together without weapons and war. However, he is psychologically irritated due to his manipulation in family upbringing and by social institutions.

Prof. Kari Polyani Levitt: Regaining Canada’s Sovereignty: June 14, 2023 We Celebrate Kari’s 100th Birthday

By Kari Polanyi Levitt and Michael Welch, June 14, 2023

She constitutes a powerful voice in the understanding and analysis of  US hegemony and the global political economy. Her first book published in 1970 entitled,  Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada, predicted with foresight more than half a century ago, what is happening today.

Crown Prince of Saudi MbS Is Working Towards a “Political Solution for Syria”

By Steven Sahiounie, June 14, 2023

Dr. Faisal Mekdad, Syria’s Foreign Minister, is in Saudi Arabia for meetings held on June 11 and 12, which marks his third visit to the Kingdom in the last three months. In April, he made his initial visit and accompanied President Assad to Jeddah to attend the Council of the League of Arab States summit on May 19.

US Planning to Overhaul UN Security Council

By Kyle Anzalone, June 14, 2023

The White House is developing plans to expand the number of permanent members to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the Washington Post reported on Monday. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield is spearheading the effort to enlarge the body by adding six new members. 

The US Military Is Struggling to Account for Equipment Sent to Ukraine

By Jared Keller, June 14, 2023

The U.S. military did not properly maintain accountability for thousands of pieces of equipment transferred to the government of Ukraine as part of the former’s security assistance program in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, according to a new government watchdog report.

States Invest in Nuclear Arsenals as Geopolitical Relations Deteriorate

By SIPRI, June 14, 2023

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) today launches its annual assessment of the state of armaments, disarmament and international security. A key finding of SIPRI Yearbook 2023 is that the number of operational nuclear weapons started to rise as countries’ long-term force modernization and expansion plans progressed.

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***

I want to thank Matt Ehret to pointing out the speeches by Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president and later Secretary of Commerce under Harry Truman, concerning Russia and the threat of a world war, and a cold war.

Although I do not fully agree with Henry Wallace’s arguments, I find his speeches inspiring and think they offer us great potential at this dangerous moment in history. There is also an argument to be made that another world was possible that did not include the Cold War of the 1950s, or the Cold War of 2023 (the second “cold war” works on the basic principle that “Cold Wars repeat: first as tragedy and again as farce”).

The first speech of 1946 was the one that led to President Truman demanding his resignation. The second speech of 1947 was made once he had positioned himself in explicit opposition to the Truman administration. Wallace suggests a “competition of ideas” for mutual benefit that has strong appeal for us today.

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Henry Wallace, Secretary of Commerce

September 12, 1946, Madison Square Garden, New York

“He who trusts in the atom bomb will sooner or later perish by the atom bomb”

Tonight, I want to talk about peace—and how to get peace. Never have the common people of all lands so longed for peace. Yet, never in a time of comparative peace have they feared war so much. During the past year or so, the significance of peace has been increased immeasurably by the atomic bomb, guided missiles and airplanes which soon will travel as fast as sound. We cannot rest in the assurance that we invented the atom bomb—and therefore that this agent of destruction will work best for us. He who trusts in the atom bomb will sooner or later perish by the atom bomb—or something worse.

To achieve lasting peace, we must study in detail just how the Russian character was formed—by invasions of Tartars, Mongols, Germans, Poles, Swedes, and French; by the czarist rule based on ignorance, fear and force; by the intervention of the British, French and Americans in Russian affairs from 1919-1921; by the geography of the huge Russian land mass situated strategically between Europe and Asia; and by the vitality derived from the rich Russian soil and the strenuous Russian climate. Add to all this the tremendous emotional power which Marxism and Leninism gives to the Russian leaders—and then we can realize that we are reckoning with a force which cannot be handled successfully by a ‘Get tough with Russia’ policy. ‘Getting tough’ never brought anything real and lasting—whether for schoolyard bullies or businessmen or world powers. The tougher we get, the tougher the Russians will get.

We most earnestly want peace with Russia—but we want to be met half way. We want cooperation. And I believe that we can get cooperation once Russia understands that our primary objective is neither saving the British Empire nor purchasing oil in the Near East with the lives of American soldiers.

On our part we should recognize that we have no more business in the political affairs of Eastern Europe than Russia has in the political affairs of Latin America, Western Europe and the United States. The Russians have no more business in stirring up native communists to political activity in Western Europe, Latin America and the United States than we have in interfering in the politics of Eastern Europe and Russia. We know what Russia is up to in Eastern Europe, for example, and Russia knows what we are up to. We cannot permit the door to be closed against our trade in Eastern Europe any more than we can in China. But at the same time we have to recognize that the Balkans are closer to Russia than to us—and that Russia cannot permit either England or the United States to dominate the politics of that area.  

Russian ideas of social-economic justice are going to govern nearly a third of the world. Our ideas of free enterprise democracy will govern much of the rest. The two ideas will endeavor to prove which can deliver the most satisfaction to the common man in their respective areas of political dominance. Under friendly peaceful competition the Russian world and the American world will gradually become more alike. The Russians will be forced to grant more and more of the personal freedoms; and we shall become more and more absorbed with the problems of social-economic justice.

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Henry Wallace

March 31, 1947, Madison Square Garden, New York

“Not for an American crusade in the name of hatred and fear of communism, but for a world crusade in the name of brotherhood of man”

We are here tonight because , not for an American crusade in the name of hatred and fear of communism, but for a world crusade in the name of brotherhood of man.

The name of crisis facts is withheld, time is denied, hysteria is whipped up, congress is asked to rush through a momentous decision, as if great armies were already on the march. I hear no armies marching. I hear a world crying out for peace. The truth is that the president and his republican backers are less concerned with the need of the free people, for food than with the need of the American navy for oil. The plan to contain communism is really secondary to the push for oil.

For every glamorous admiral, who boasts “it’s nobody’s damn business where we go”, there are 10 drab, but practical, procurement officers to add “and we’ll get there with the oil from the middle east.” If we took the matter to the United Nations, and the Russians exercised their veto, the moral burden would be on them. When we act independently, outside the framework of the United Nations, the moral burden is on us.

(Both speeches are redacted and I have not found the original texts yet)

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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.

***

 

 

 

Henry A. Murray has much to answer for. Between 1959 and 1961, the Harvard psychology academic, as the leader of a team of equally unprincipled academics, was responsible for conducting an CIA-funded experiment most unethical on 22 undergraduates.  The individuals in question were pseudonymised. One particularly youthful figure, named “Lawful”, was the mathematically gifted Theodore John Kaczynski.

A central theme of the experiments was examining the effects of stress, characterised by what Murray called “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive” attacks. Ideals and beliefs were assailed; egos pulverised. For Murray, this came naturally. He had cut his teeth designing psychological screening tests for the forerunner to the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services. It was perfect preparation for what came to be known as Multiform Assessments of Personality Development Among Gifted College Men.

Kaczynski was the less than grateful recipient of the higher end of the experiment. “I had been talked or pressured,” he told his attorney Michael Mello in August 1998, “into participating in the Murray study against my better judgment.” It is indisputable that he, along with other subjects, had been sufficiently deceived to be victims of a breach of experimental ethics known more commonly as the Nuremberg Code.

Drafted in the aftermath of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial of German concentration camp doctors, the code stressed the importance of informed consent. “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential,” declared the judges responsible for formulating the code. The subject should also be “so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress…”

Kaczynski can hardly be said to go on to better things, but they were certainly bigger. In terms of notoriety, his position in the technology obsessed undergrowth of the United States was assured by his murderous and maiming efforts. His favourite method: the package bomb, 16 of which were mailed to his intended victims. Three people died; 23 were injured.

A central tenet of Kaczynski’s thought was levelled at those complicit representatives of what he called the Industrial Society and its state manifestation. Far from being critical of power, its methods, and its wielding by bureaucrats and planners, its members were adjutants and prosecutors of a sinister agenda of behavioural control.

The profiles of the victims, actual and intended, constituted a true fruit salad, at times erratic and scattered: academics in engineering, psychology, genetics and computer science; the president of the California Forestry Association; a computer store owner; an advertising executive; American Airlines Flight 444 and the United Airlines President.

In its unifying theme, the manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, opens its barrels on the role of technology. “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences,” goes the grave opening, “have been a disaster for the human race.” While it had “greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in ‘advanced’ countries”, society had been destabilised, life made “unfulfilling”. Humans had been subjected to “indignities” and “widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well)”. The “natural world” had also suffered.

James Ley, reflecting on Kaczynski’s writing, finds his understanding of technology to be “the ultimate constraint on freedom, beyond any specific laws or political arrangements that might obtain.” The conservatives are deluded for conniving in the destruction of their own ideals in embracing technology; leftists merely pursue goals of improvement without dealing with the elephant in the room: the properties of technological enslavement.

In an area of surveillance capitalism, inexorable data mining, and Mark Zuckerberg, there is something haunting about this. The manifesto may not be the sprightliest work of originality, but the vision is contemporary and relevant. The technological society systematically oppresses; it cannot be regulated. With that monstrous genie out of the bottle, it can only be, according to Kaczynski, destroyed.

Kaczynski defied the authorities and the technological state he so despised, eluding capture for almost two decades. Being incapable of summoning the forces to destroy technology, he eschewed it, becoming a rustic version of the Savage in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the man who “ate civilization”, and in so doing ate his own wickedness.

He lived in a cabin near Lincoln, Montana, a place in every sense off the grid: no electricity, no television, no telephone. He moved about with a bicycle. He took an interest in regeneration in nature. He even foraged. This was his way of romancing the notion of the “pre-industrial city”, as he termed it, where the “19^th century frontiersman” could create “change himself, by his own choice.” Change for the “modern man”, in contrast, was “imposed”.

Despite isolation, his pride proved too powerful, the need for recognition, consuming. His efforts to get the New York Times and Washington Post to publish his 35,000-word manifesto undid him. His brother David, and sister-in-law, on realising he was the author, identified him. The FBI, furnished by letters and documents provided by David, joined the dots, arresting Kaczynski on April 3, 1996.

The stage was set for the Unabomber to become a figure of medical interest. At trial, fearing that his brother would receive the death sentence, David, and the defence, opted for psychopathological grounds. Did the Murray experiments tip him over? The lawyers ran with the argument that the Harvard experience had provided the bricks and mortar of paranoid schizophrenia. Their client begged, with tenacious fury, to differ. His terrorism had been principled, rational, his Weltanschauung outlined in his manifesto. To suggest medical illness and disturbance was to give into the pathologizing agenda, something that would render him mad and therefore illegitimate as a thinker.

Far from being mad, the dystopia of Kaczynski’s industrial society has found solid roots. And the forces behind it, be they the myriad of social networks, data hungry platforms and the increasingly agitated discussion about Artificial Intelligence and its generative properties, implicates us all.

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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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Einführung in Thematik

Als Psychologe und langjähriger Psychotherapeut bin ich der Überzeugung, dass der Mensch gut, sozial und fähig ist, ohne Waffen und Krieg zusammenzuleben (1). Er ist jedoch psychisch irritiert, was auf seine Manipulation in der familiären Erziehung und durch die gesellschaftlichen Institutionen zurückzuführen ist.

Nur ein manipulierter Mensch ist in der Lage, seinen Artgenossen Leid zuzufügen: Kriege, Terroraktionen, Entführung von Kindern und Vermietung an Pädophile, Organhandel, Entvölkerungsprogramme, Vertreibung, Bevölkerungsaustausch, Geschichtsfälschung und so weiter und so fort.

Seinen Artgenossen Gewalt und Pein zuzufügen oder loszumarschieren und loszuschlagen, wenn der Staat zu den Waffen ruft, das ist nicht das Resultat eines freien Willens. Die Erziehung der Menschen hat bewirkt, dass sie den staatlichen Autoritäten gehorchen müssen. Ihr Gefühlsleben ist so geprägt, dass sie nicht „NEIN!“ sagen können. Dass er Vater und Mutter in der Kinderstube folgen musste, trägt der Erwachsene ein Leben lang mit – ohne dass ihm das bewusst ist.

Doch die Psychologie zeigt uns, dass man den Menschen helfen kann, sich ihrer teils unbewussten Gefühle und ihres Verhaltens bewusst zu werden. Sie können sich so umorientieren, dass sie den Artgenossen kein Leid mehr zufügen.

Dieser psychologische Erklärungsansatz des menschlichen Gefühlslebens und Verhaltens entspricht nicht nur der menschlichen Natur, er wirkt im Gegensatz zur moralischen Argumentation – der Frage nach Gut und Böse – auch versöhnlich.

Nur der manipulierte Mensch fügt seinen Artgenossen Leid zu

Einige Beispiele aus jüngster Zeit machen deutlich, was zwischen uns Menschen möglich ist:

So hat laut „anti-spiegel“ vom 6. Juni eine russische Menschenrechtsstiftung einen Fall von organisiertem Handel mit ukrainischen Kindern aufgedeckt, die über Zwischenstationen bis nach Südamerika gelangt sind, wo sie offenbar für Geld an Pädophile „vermietet“ werden.

Angesichts einer weiteren Pädophilie-Enthüllung auf „Instagram“ warnte Tucker Carlson, der ehemalige Star-Moderator von „Fox-News“ vor einer gewollten Zerstörung der westlichen Werte und glaubt, dass hinter dem Vormarsch des Nihilismus und der Verengung des Meinungskorridors System steckt. Es geht seiner Meinung nach darum, die Werte und die Moral in der Gesellschaft zu zerstören sowie zeitgleich jedes Aufbegehren dagegen zu kriminalisieren, um Angst und Schrecken für den Machterhalt zu verbreiten (2).

Beim Gipfeltreffen der „Europäischen Politischen Gemeinschaft“ am 1. Juni in Moldawien verkündete EU-Chefdiplomat Josef Borrell seine Vision von einer nochmals erweiterten EU inklusive Türkei und Aserbeidschan und sagte: “Dies werde der ‚Aufbruch in eine Welt ohne Russland‘“. So offen sprach noch kein westlicher Politiker über die wahren Pläne der Expansion (3).

Die weltbekannte Forscherin und Autorin Dr. Naomi Wolf deckte auf, dass Pfizers „Killerinjektionen“ (König) nicht entwickelt wurden, um die Menschheit vor einer Krankheit zu retten, sondern um sie zu dezimieren. Es handelt sich um einen Entvölkerungsplan, der aus den eigenen Dokumenten des riesigen US-amerikanischen Pharmaunternehmens hervorgeht.

Die Sprecherin des russischen Außenministeriums Marija Sacharowa nahm die sprachliche Entgleisung von US-Senator Lindsay Graham in Kiew zum Anlass („Russen sterben – das ist das Beste, wofür wir je Geld ausgegeben haben“), um an die umfangreichen Finanzhilfen und Investitionen der USA an Hitler-Deutschland zu erinnern, die bereits zum Zweiten Weltkrieg geführt haben (4).

Nach einer Meldung des Online-Medienportals „InfoBRICS“ stellte der ehemalige US-Kongressabgeordnete und Ex-Präsidentschaftskandidat Ron Paul fest, dass die Bedeutung des US-Dollars rasch abnimmt – und das erst der Anfang sei. Es sollte niemanden überraschen, dass andere Nationen „endlich versuchen“, dem US-Dollar Konkurrenz zu machen. Grund für die Schwächung der US-Währung sei die Müdigkeit anderer Länder gegenüber der US-amerikanischen Interventionspolitik.

Wörtlich meinte er:

„Wir sind eine interventionistische Regierung. Wir greifen in die persönliche Freiheit ein, wir greifen in die wirtschaftliche Freiheit ein. Wir mischen uns in die inneren Angelegenheiten aller anderen Nationen der Welt ein. Wir sagen ihnen, was sie zu tun haben, wir verhängen Sanktionen, um sie zu bestrafen, und dann wundern wir uns. (…).“ (5)

Abschließend ein Auszug aus der Kurzgeschichte „Die Klage des Zugvogels“ (6) des vor 15 Jahren in Nürnberg verstorbenen kirgisischen Schriftstellers Tschingis Aitmatow. im Antlitz klirrender Waffen und menschlicher Zerstörung warnt der tierische Beobachter die Menschen:

 „Behüt euch der Himmel vor Leid, das kein Mensch mehr erträgt, vor Feuersbrünsten, die keiner mehr löscht, vor blutigen Kriegen, die keiner aufhält, vor Taten, die keiner mehr gutmacht. Behüt euch der Himmel vor Leid, das kein Mensch mehr erträgt.“ (7)

Zeit der Vernunft?

Lange Zeit hat die Menschheit gefühlsmäßig im Mittelalter gelebt; es hat gegolten, was der Pfarrer gesagt hat. Neue Gedanken waren nicht erlaubt; sie sind geahndet worden. Doch im Laufe von Jahrhunderten hat sich die Menschheit aus dem Mittelalter herausentwickelt und sich Gedanken gemacht über die Welt, den lieben Gott und den Himmel. Viele Menschen haben es so weit gebracht, dass sie zweifeln, ob das stimmt, was ihnen der Pfarrer einst erzählt hat. Sie haben angefangen zu denken. Damit begann die Zeit der Vernunft. Doch wie sieht diese Zeit der Vernunft heute aus?

Zwar haben die Menschen in der Technik und auch sonst im Leben ungeheure Fortschritte gemacht, doch eines haben sie nicht erkannt: sich selbst. An sich selbst, ihre Psyche, sind sie nicht herangetreten. Obwohl sie angefangen haben, sich verantwortlich zu fühlen für das, was hier auf der Welt geschieht, haben sie sich selbst und den anderen Menschen nicht erkannt. Deshalb sind sie auch nicht vernünftig, wenn es darauf ankommt, sondern sie versagen. Und das trotz der zunehmenden Vernunft und obwohl sie sich die Natur in den Dienst gestellt haben und auf dem Mond gelandet sind.

Kein Mensch hat vor der Zeit der Vernunft über sich selbst, über seine Gefühle und sein Leben Bescheid gewusst, bis der Arzt Sigmund Freud (1856-1930) in Wien die Entdeckung gemacht hat, dass der Mensch ein Unbewusstes hat. Obwohl Freud Spekulationen angestellt hat, die heute verneint werden, war seine Entdeckung von großer Bedeutung.

Der Tiefenpsychologe Alfred Adler (1870-1937) erkannte dann, dass man dem Menschen helfen kann. Mit Unterstützung eines Psychotherapeuten kann er umorientiert werden, können seine Gefühle reformiert werden und er kann sich schließlich für die Vernunft entscheiden. Leider gibt es heute noch wenige Psychologen, die sich den Problemen der Menschen annehmen. Das Wissen des Menschen, der sich dem Studium der Psychologie zuwendet, fällt in der Regel auf den alten Boden. Er ist religiös, national, patriotisch, staatsgläubig. Er steht auf dem Standpunkt, das System zu erhalten.

Auch werden die Menschen bewusst irregeführt und irregeleitet, sodass sie nicht zur Vernunft kommen. Die Beurteilung des Stellvertreterkrieges der US-NATO gegen Russland zeigt dies in aller Deutlichkeit. Dass sich die Menschen diese Irreführung gefallen lassen, das ist auf die Erziehung zurückzuführen. Die Forschungsergebnisse der Psychologie lehren uns, dass die Erziehung so gestaltet ist, dass bereits das Kind in den ersten Lebensjahren nur folgen und nicht „NEIN“ sagen kann.

Die Manipulation beginnt in Elternhaus und Schule – und wird von Staat, Kirche und Konzernmedien mitgetragen

Bereits in der Kindheit werden die Menschen so manipuliert, dass sie dann auf alles eingehen, zu allem fähig sind. Es gibt kaum einen Menschen, der heil davongekommen ist.

Diese Manipulation wird vom Staat und der Kirche mit ihren verschiedenen Institutionen mitgetragen und weitergeführt. Er wird so manipuliert, dass er nicht fähig ist, sich klare Gedanken zu machen; im entscheidenden Moment fällt er um. Obwohl der Westen zum Beispiel mit allen erlaubten und unerlaubten Mitteln, die ihm zur Verfügung stehen, gegen den Osten kämpft, wird er von den meisten Bürgern der USA und Europas gefühlsmäßig und materiell unterstützt. Das machen wir als gute Christen. Während die Menschen in vielen Teilen der Welt hungern müssen, rüsten wir auf und erzeugen nicht das Lebensnotwendige. Damit bereiten wir den neuen Weltkrieg vor.

Vor allem die autoritäre Erziehung ergibt eine Tendenz in unserem Denken und Fühlen, dass wir keine andere Meinung kennen. Wir sind so manipuliert, dass wir auf die Lockrufe der Autoritäten hereinfallen und deshalb den wahnsinnigen Stellvertreterkrieg der US-NATO gegen Russland, in dem die ukrainische und russische Jugend verblutet, mit wenigen Ausnahmen voll unterstützen.

Die Konzern-Medien leisten zu diesem Übel einen bedeutenden Beitrag. Ihre käuflichen Journalisten tragen durch die Schaffung von Feindbildern, durch Kriegstreiberei, Manipulation und Propaganda ihren Teil zur Verdummung der Massen bei. Gefällige Journalisten bekommen dafür sogar ein millionenschweres Euro-Honorar von den Regierungen (8).

Bereits im Jahr 1889 bezeichnete die Friedens-Nobelpreisträgerin Bertha von Suttner die Presse als „Werkzeug des Kriegsministeriums“, das „im Dienste der Massenverdummung, der Hetze und der Hasspropaganda“ steht (9). Dabei wären die Journalisten eigentlich dazu verpflichtet, den Menschen „Friedensstifter“ zu sein. Doch sie übernehmen keine Verantwortung für das Gemeinwohl der Menschheit.

Wir sind die Schweigenden!

Da wir Menschen das Produkt der Erlebnisse in unserer Kindheit sind, kommt es entscheidend darauf an, wie wir unsere Beziehungspersonen erlebt haben, wieviel Vertrauen und wie viel Mut wir mitbekommen und welche Stimmung wir erlebt haben. Wir müssen keine Schläge abbekommen haben. Oft sind es der Missmut, die Verneinung und die Ablehnung, die wir als Kind erfahren haben, die uns als unbewusste Gefühlsregungen im späteren Leben nicht froh werden lassen.

Dabei haben es die Eltern meist gut gemeint. In ihrer Unwissenheit waren sie streng oder haben uns verwöhnt. Jedenfalls waren sie nicht imstande, mit dem Kind richtig umzugehen. So kann zum Beispiel die erlernte Angst, die eigene Meinung zu äußern oder nichts Falsches zu sagen, auch noch beim Erwachsenen zum Schweigen führen. Er getraut sich nichts zu sagen, weil er vielleicht einen Fehler begehen könnte oder das nicht ganz stimmt, was er sagen will.

Das hat der Erwachsene schon als Kind abbekommen! In der Kindheit hat man ihm das vermittelt – diese Angst, genau zu sein, ganz genau! Viele Menschen werden dadurch zu Schweigenden.

Sich die Ergebnisse der psychologischen Forschung zu eigen machen!

Wenn sich die Menschen die Ergebnisse der psychologischen Forschung zu eigen machen und sich selbst und ihre Mitmenschen kennen lernen, dann wird sich ihre Sichtweise auf die staatlichen Gegebenheiten und die gesamte Gesellschaftsordnung entscheidend ändern und sie werden für sich und ihre Nachkommen ein menschenwürdiges Leben schaffen (10).

Die Veränderung der durch und durch gewalttätigen Welt muss aus ihnen selbst kommen.

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

Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.

Noten

1 https://apolut.net/o-tempora-o-mores/

2 https://de.rt.com/kurzclips/video/172281-nach-paedophilie-enthuellung-auf-insrtagram/

3 https://de.rt.com/meinung/172016-aufbruch-in-die-welt-ohne-russland/

4 https://de.rt.com/international/171290-sacharow-ueber-us-hilfen-an/

5 https://de.rt.com/international/171965-niedergang-us-waehrung.laeuft-brics/

6 Tschingis Aitmatow. Klage des Zugvogels. Zürich 1990, S. 24

7 a. O.

8 https://de.rt.com/inland/172159-23-millionen-euro-an-gefaellige/

9 https://www.globalresearch.ca/journaille-canaille-media-desinformation-karl-kraus-campaign-against-a-warmongering-press/5677754

10 https://www.globalresearch.ca/humanity-must-adopt-results-psychological-research-order-create-life-worthy-human-beings/5815983

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***

Turkey has become the target point of a mass migration, which is rarely seen in the world.

This essentially started with the Syrian war in 2011 and continues with Libya, Iraq, African countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russians and Ukrainians.

The largest part of the refugees is from Syria: according to official figures, they number more than 4 million, and according to unofficial figures, they exceed 7 million.

The ruling AKP government provides all kinds of opportunities to asylum seekers under temporary protection.

Even more than it provides to its own citizens; Syrians are officially the priority group in housing, food, education and health.

Migrants have trouble adapting wherever they go, revealing their violence-dominated feudal culture and arousing reactions from the local people.

There are many terorrists hiding among them also. 

After the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan, Afghan military young men, who came to Turkey via Iran, are also engaged in arms and drug smuggling.

While they are concentrated in cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Adana, Mersin, Gaziantep, Sakarya, Kilis, and Urfa, the largest population is in Hatay, Turkey’s most strategic province.

When Hatay was destroyed by the last earthquake, the Turkish population here decreased and the Syrians increased.

Asylum seekers also played an important role in the last presidential election.

How Does?

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose votes decreased among Turkish voters due to the high cost of living, found the solution by making Syrians citizens and voters.

According to official figures, more than 250,000 Syrians voted in the election.

This number is expected to increase further in the local elections in 2024.

Speaking of elections; Asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, who were not mentioned much in the first round of elections on May 14, played an important role in the second round of elections on May 28.

CHP Chairman and Presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu turned the election into a referendum whether refugees should go or stay in the second round and met with Zafer Party, the critical party of the last period.

Kılıçdaroğlu and Özdağ agreed on the return of asylum seekers to their countries as soon as possible.

According to Victory Party Chairman Ümit Özdağ, there are at least 13 million asylum seekers and illegal immigrants in Turkey.

Özdağ describes this situation as “Demographical Occupation”.

In the nuclear world where hybrid wars prevail, migration is now a kind of war tool.

The winner of the election, in which the person who will rule Turkey until 2028 is determined, was the former President Erdoğan, who was elected by the votes of Turks abroad (mainly those who earn euros in Europe and benefiting from the economic crisis in the country) and citizens of asylum seekers.

When the result of the election became clear, the streets of Türkiye became the scene of the victory demonstrations of the refugees.

Some Syrian Arabs even said, “You infidels will go, this place will be ours as the Ottoman Empire,” addressing the secular Turks from the CHP.

Ozdag, the leader of the Victory Party, who made politics in line with Atatürk’s nationalist line, wrote the following words on his Twitter account regarding these scenes:

“Syrians celebrate the occupation. They hate the Victory Party, which resists the occupation. What are you AK Party members celebrating? 11 billion dollars a year we will spend on Syrians? Our soldiers who will be martyred in northern Syria? The pain of our girls who will be harassed on the streets? Selling drugs? Rents going up? Life getting expensive? The uncontrollable rise of the currency that will happen tomorrow or 3 days later? The sale of the last government institutions we have? What are you celebrating, brothers?”

Although those who give such reactions are easily accused of racism, it is becoming increasingly impossible even in the most liberal segments to remain indifferent as the world is experiencing an unprecedented foreign invasion.

The Erdogan government provides social benefits that even support Syrian refugees to have many children.

The source of water comes mainly from the EU.

They don’t want refugees from “forrest” come to their “garden”.

According to the immigration detention agreements with Turkey, billions of euros in aid are being given to Turkey.

One of those who want Syrians to stay in Turkey is the USA.

For the second Kurdish state (after Barzanistan) that it plans to establish in eastern Syria, the fact that the Arab population in that region is in Turkey is in the interest of Washington.

Erdogan’s scrambling to reach an agreement with Syrian President Assad is also based on this.

Assad has repeatedly called for Syrians in Turkey to return after the war, which actually ended in 2018, with amnesty dozens of times.

However, the Syrians who make a living on aid in Turkey are content with their lives, they only go to their homeland during the holidays.

As a result, a problem that will cause a headache for Turkey in the coming decades and may even threaten its territorial integrity is almost ignored in the world.

A tradesman from Hatay describes the extent of the demographic occupation with these words:

“The Syrian population in Hatay has increased so much that they come to us and say, ‘We have taken back Hatay, which Atatürk took from us.’ When we oppose them, 40-50 people can come and attack us. There is no Turkish population left in Kırıkhan district. They rob shops, they use their houses as markets.”

One final note; before the Syrian civil war, the mines on the Turkish border were cleared. Today, the mines on the Iranian border are being cleared. Afghans and Pakistanis come from this border every day and post their videos on tiktok.

What do we expect?

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Hasan Erel is a Turkish journalist-writer. He worked as a diplomacy and foreign news reporter and editor in TRT and other media for 30 years. He is a frequent commentator of Sputnik News radio and CRI Turk in Turkiye.    

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***

Introduction to the topic

As a psychologist and long-time psychotherapist, I am convinced that man is good, social and capable of living together without weapons and war (1). However, he is psychologically irritated due to his manipulation in family upbringing and by social institutions.

Only a manipulated human being is capable of inflicting suffering on his fellow human beings: Wars, terrorist actions, kidnapping of children and renting them to paedophiles, organ trafficking, depopulation programmes, displacement, population exchange, falsification of history and so on and so forth.

Inflicting violence and torment on one’s fellow human beings or marching off and striking when the state calls to arms is not the result of free will.

The education of the people has caused them to have to obey the state authorities. Their emotional life is shaped in such a way that they cannot say “NO!”. The fact that he had to follow his father and mother in the nursery is carried by the adult throughout his life – without him being aware of it.

But psychology shows us that people can be helped to become aware of their partly unconscious feelings and behaviour. They can reorient themselves in such a way that they no longer cause suffering to their fellow species.

This psychological approach to explaining human emotional life and behaviour not only corresponds to human nature, it also has a conciliatory effect in contrast to moral reasoning – the question of good and evil.

Only the manipulated human inflicts suffering on his fellow species

Some recent examples make clear what is possible between us humans:

For example, according to “anti-spiegel” of 6 June, a Russian human rights foundation has uncovered a case of organised trafficking of Ukrainian children who have reached South America via intermediate stops, where they are apparently “rented out” to paedophiles for money.

In the face of yet another paedophilia revelation on “Instagram”, Tucker Carlson, the former star anchor of “Fox News”, warned of a deliberate destruction of Western values and believes that there is a system behind the advance of nihilism and the narrowing of the corridor of opinion. In his opinion, it is about destroying values and morals in society and at the same time criminalising any rebellion against them in order to spread fear and terror for the sake of maintaining power (2).

At the summit meeting of the “European Political Community” in Moldova on 1 June, EU chief diplomat Josef Borrell announced his vision of a further enlarged EU including Turkey and Azerbaijan and said: “This will be the ‘dawn of a world without Russia'”. No Western politician has ever spoken so openly about the true plans of expansion (3).

World-renowned researcher and author Dr Naomi Wolf revealed that Pfizer’s “killer injections” (König) were not developed to save humanity from a disease, but to decimate it. It is a depopulation plan that emerges from the giant US pharmaceutical company’s own documents.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mariya Zakharova took the opportunity of US Senator Lindsay Graham’s linguistic gaffe in Kiev (“Russians dying – that’s the best thing we’ve ever spent money on”) to recall the extensive US financial aid and investment to Hitler’s Germany that had already led to World War II (4).

According to a report by the online media portal “InfoBRICS”, former US Congressman and ex-presidential candidate Ron Paul stated that the importance of the US dollar is rapidly declining – and that this is just the beginning. It should surprise no one that other nations are “finally trying” to compete with the US dollar. The reason for the weakening of the US currency, he said, is other countries’ fatigue with US interventionist policies.

Literally, he said:

“We are an interventionist government. We interfere with personal freedom, we interfere with economic freedom. We interfere in the internal affairs of every other nation in the world. We tell them what to do, we impose sanctions to punish them, and then we wonder. (…).” (5)

Finally, an excerpt from the short story “The Lament of the Migratory Bird” (6) by the Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov, who died 15 years ago in Nuremberg. in the face of clashing weapons and human destruction, the animal observer warns people:

“Heaven protect you from suffering that no human being can bear, from conflagrations that no one can extinguish, from bloody wars that no one can stop, from deeds that no one can make good. Heaven protect you from suffering that no one can bear any more.” (7)

Time of reason?

For a long time, humanity lived emotionally in the Middle Ages; what the priest said applied. New thoughts were not allowed; they were punished. But in the course of centuries, humanity has evolved out of the Middle Ages and thought about the world, God and heaven. Many people have come to the point where they doubt whether what the priest once told them is true. They began to think. This was the beginning of the age of reason. But what does this time of reason look like today?

Although people have made tremendous progress in technology and also in other areas of life, there is one thing they have not recognised: themselves. They have not approached themselves, their psyche. Although they have begun to feel responsible for what is happening here in the world, they have not recognised themselves and the other human being. That is why they are not reasonable when it comes down to it, but fail. And this in spite of their increasing reason and in spite of the fact that they have put nature at their service and landed on the moon.

No human being knew about himself, his feelings and his life before the age of reason, until the physician Sigmund Freud (1856-1930) made the discovery in Vienna that humans have an unconscious. Although Freud made speculations that are denied today, his discovery was of great importance.

The depth psychologist Alfred Adler (1870-1937) then realised that people could be helped. With the help of a psychotherapist, he can be reoriented, his feelings can be reformed and he can finally choose reason. Unfortunately, there are still few psychologists today who take care of people’s problems. The knowledge of the person who turns to the study of psychology usually falls on the old ground. He is religious, national, patriotic, believer in the state. He stands on the standpoint of preserving the system.

People are also deliberately misled and misled so that they do not come to their senses. The assessment of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia shows this very clearly. The fact that people put up with this misleading is due to their upbringing. The research results of psychology teach us that upbringing is designed in such a way that already in the first years of life the child can only follow and not say “NO”.

The manipulation begins in the parental home and school – and is supported by the state, the church and the corporate media.

Already in childhood, people are manipulated in such a way that they then respond to everything, are capable of everything. There is hardly a person who has escaped unscathed.

This manipulation is carried along and continued by the state and the church with its various institutions. He is manipulated in such a way that he is not capable of thinking clearly; at the decisive moment he falls down. For example, although the West is fighting the East with all the permissible and impermissible means at its disposal, it is supported emotionally and materially by most of the citizens of the USA and Europe. This is what we do as good Christians. While people in many parts of the world have to starve, we arm ourselves and do not produce the necessities of life. In doing so, we are preparing for the new world war.

Above all, authoritarian education results in a tendency in our thinking and feeling that we know no other opinion. We are so manipulated that we fall for the lure of the authorities and therefore, with few exceptions, fully support the insane proxy war of the US-NATO against Russia, in which Ukrainian and Russian youth are bleeding to death.

The corporate media contribute significantly to this evil. Their venal journalists contribute to the dumbing down of the masses by creating images of the enemy, by warmongering, manipulation and propaganda. Pleasing journalists even receive a multi-million euro fee from governments for this (8).

As early as 1889, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Bertha von Suttner described the press as a “tool of the war ministry” that is “in the service of mass stupefaction, agitation and hate propaganda” (9). Journalists would actually be obliged to be “peacemakers” for the people. But they do not take responsibility for the common good of humanity.

We are the silent ones!

Since we humans are the product of our childhood experiences, what matters is how we experienced our relationship persons, how much trust and how much courage we received and what kind of mood we experienced. We don’t have to have been beaten. Often it is the displeasure, the denial and the rejection that we experienced as a child that, as unconscious emotions, do not make us happy in later life.

Yet the parents usually meant well. In their ignorance they were strict or spoiled us. In any case, they were unable to deal with the child properly. For example, the learned fear of expressing one’s own opinion or of not saying the wrong thing can lead to silence even in the adult. He does not dare to say anything because he might make a mistake or what he wants to say is not quite right.

The adult already got that as a child! He was taught this in childhood – this fear of being precise, very precise! Many people become silencers as a result.

Embrace the results of psychological research!

If people make the results of psychological research their own and get to know themselves and their fellow human beings, then their view of state conditions and the entire social order will change decisively and they will create a humane life for themselves and their descendants (10).

The change in the thoroughly violent world must come from within themselves.

*

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educational scientist and qualified psychologist. After his university studies, he became an academic teacher in adult education. As a retiree he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and professional articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education in values as well as an education for public spirit and peace. For his services to Serbia, he was awarded the Republic Prize “Captain Misa Anastasijevic” by the Universities of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 2021.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://apolut.net/o-tempora-o-mores/

(2) https://de.rt.com/kurzclips/video/172281-nach-paedophilie-enthuellung-auf-insrtagram/

(3) https://de.rt.com/meinung/172016-aufbruch-in-die-welt-ohne-russland/

(4) https://de.rt.com/international/171290-sacharow-ueber-us-hilfen-an/

(5) https://de.rt.com/international/171965-niedergang-us-waehrung.laeuft-brics/

(6) Chingiz Aitmatov. Lament of the Migratory Bird. Zurich 1990, p. 24

(7) op. cit.

(8) https://de.rt.com/inland/172159-23-millionen-euro-an-gefaellige/

(9) https://www.globalresearch.ca/journaille-canaille-media-desinformation-karl-kraus-campaign-against-a-warmongering-press/5677754

(10) https://www.globalresearch.ca/humanity-must-adopt-results-psychological-research-order-create-life-worthy-human-beings/5815983

Featured image is from Public Discourse

This weekend,  friends and family will be meeting up in Montreal to celebrate Kari Polyani Levitt’s 100th birthday.

While Kari’s health is fragile, she remains firm in her incisive understanding and analysis of World events, committed to national sovereignty and fundamental human rights. 

She constitutes a powerful voice in the understanding and analysis of  US hegemony and the global political economy.

Her first book published in 1970 entitled,  Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada. predicted with foresight more than half a century ago, what is happening today.

“First published in 1970, Silent Surrender helped educate a generation of students about Canadian political economy. Kari Polyani Levitt details the historical background of foreign investments in Canada, their acceleration since World War II, and the nature of intrusions by multinational corporations into a sovereign state”.

More than fifty years later, this is her message to Canadians: 

“Well, yes, I think those of us who were concerned about the way in which Canadian business was selling themselves out to American multinationals, we were concerned that it would lead to a loss of sovereignty.

And I think it has. It has happened. We have less sovereignty than we had some time ago.” (Kari Polyani Levitt, June 30, 2021)

Long Live Kari Polyani Levitt

***

Below is the transcript of her July 2021 interview with Michael Welch on the Global Research News Hour.

 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Kari Polanyi Levitt focused her attention on how Canada is losing its sovereignty and its independence on the world stage and on how we might be able to claim the soul of a proud nation once again.

\Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Transcript- Interview with Professor Polanyi Levitt, June 30, 2021

Global Research: Since you wrote your book 50 years ago to the present, there seems to have been more integration between our two countries, right?

Kari Polanyi Levitt: There has been, yes.

GR: I mean is it something that you may have foreseen way back when? Or is this more of a, I mean, from the time you wrote that book to today, is this pretty much the kind of result you would have expected?

KPL: Well, yes, I think those of us who were concerned about the way in which Canadian business was selling themselves out to American multinationals, we were concerned that it would lead to a loss of sovereignty. And I think it has. It has happened. We have less sovereignty than we had some time ago.

GR: The growth since that time, I mean, we’ve had their Free Trade Agreements, right? In the 1980s the Canada US Free Trade Agreement, the NAFTA, and we had military…our militaries became more and more tightly connected. Which strengthened continentalism even further. Where all of these separate decisions just added onto US investments to increase US control of Canada or was it part of the same pattern. First you increase investment then you try more and more integration— 

 

KPL: I would think, yes, part of the same pattern.

GR: Yeah, so are you saying that, what I’m asking is, how far back had the various stages of integration been planned? Is it kind of like a timeline where you say, now this, and then, and then we’re going to throw in a Free Trade Agreement when the time is right? Or did this idea of free trade and then other aspects of integration just sort of come along when the time was right?

KPL: Well, the Free Trade Agreement of the kind we’re talking about were a global phenomenon they were not unique to Canada. But we had what they like to call globalization which really meant they… the power of international capital, particularly the financial capital. What I would like us to talk about is that as we are approaching Canada Day and many people are questioning whether they should celebrate or rather concern themselves about the phenomenon of the residential schools and the young people in the unmarked graves. I like to talk about the present and what happened since I wrote that book. It is an important book. And it remains important.

GR: Well for certain, I mean, in 2021 we are recognizing now that the residential schools have definitely had a, have been a horrific part of our past. But have we really come to the point where…is something special happening now, or are we just seeing our whole, are we just seeing our whole… just finding a way of shifting our dependence on the residential schools to something else. Because it seems as if, for all the acco–… everything that the prime minister is saying, Indigenous peoples are still being subjected to brutal things like the higher-than-average representation in the jails for example. What is your take on that?

KPL: The fact is that the way that this country was built, it was built by, by people who saw the Indigenous people in a very negative way. And the residential schools would never have happened if it were not part of the culture of this country. And I think many people are seeing that this is regrettable and bad. And that something should be done to improve the relationship between the settler communities that constitute the Canadian population and the Indigenous people.

GR: Yeah, do you…do the signs show that we are going to be going in that direction?

KPL: I’m not sure. There are obviously an increasing number of Canadians who are only now learning about this, and they are concerned. But to tell you the truth, when you called me about discussing foreign policy, I thought that’s what we were going to do. And what I think is that Canada, in many ways, has a good name in the world but we are not acting on our own initiative. We are following in the wake of the United States in foreign policy. And I think that this is a very dangerous situation because no matter how much I consider the existence of challenges facing humanity, one of them is how to prevent ourselves from engaging in mutual destruction by the use of atomic weapons. And because we are a party to NATO, Canada is not following an independent foreign policy but his only going along with whatever is the current concern of the United States. I would like us to exert our independence, and that is one of the advantages of having nations.

GR: The military is…there’s no clear division between the militaries, but can you see the nation in any way…I mean are we so united that we can’t break loose even if we wanted to? I mean, when it comes to votes at the UN on nuclear missiles or anything like that, I mean do we even have the power any more to stand up against the United States?

KPL: We have as much or as little as we ever had before. We don’t have less. Although the scandal of the residential schools is a negative. It reduces the legitimacy with which Canada can play a role on the international stage. It’s a blot on our record. And for all kinds of good reasons, something has to be done. But I am thinking about is more, what could Canada do as a medium power in the world with a good reputation, and its sort of commitment to the United Nations. And I think that we should examine what has been our foreign policy.

GR: Is there a particular foreign policy where we could start expressing our independent way of thinking that we could distance ourselves from the United States?

KPL: Well, the obvious one is the field of diplomacy, I mean, we had developed a lot of independent economic and political relations with China, which is the up-and-coming power in the next century.

GR: What about in terms of military policy, getting out of any relationship with the United States on shooting down missiles, well basically what NORAD does, you know, is that something we could even break out of?

KPL: Well, maybe so, but I think more to the point, we should develop our independent relations with other countries. What is clear, is that in the world, that we have to have a… what do they call it again…a world order that is multinational. In other words, there are a number of legitimate political entities in this world who have to be included in a multi-polar world. And that multi-polar world would include China and the United States and Canada. But we should be included, not as a satellite of the United States, but on our own independence. And I think we have, we, the government of Canada made a big mistake in acceding to this demand by the Americans to arrest the lady representing the very important IT company. That was a…because what she was accused of was a violation of US sanctions again Iran, and this is not a criminal act in Canadian law, because Canada did not agree to sanctions against Iran. So that was a big mistake, and it was done entirely because our government said, under some compulsion to act in the way that it did. There was a compulsion to play a subsidiary role regarding relation with the US. And we have done huge damage to Canada’s relationship with China and there are individuals now, Canadian individuals in China who are paying the price.

GR: I know that…there’s an election coming up possibly this fall, I’m wondering if your views on Canada’s need to distinguish itself could possibly play any role in this election and who would you need more inclined to vote towards?

KPL: I don’t know…I couldn’t announce it. I know I would not vote for the Conservatives. I do not trust them. So, I don’t know yet who I’m going to vote for. But what I would like to see the Government of Canada do is to take some initiative in the matter of banning new nuclear weapons. And there was a motion introduced in the General Assembly of the UN some months ago to that effect. And Canada shamefully did not express an opinion in favour of what is clearly the popular view of the majority of member states of the UN.

GR: Kari Polanyi Levitt, I really appreciate everything you’ve had to say today, and I know that we’re kind of getting to the end of her time, but I just wanted to offer you the opportunity to close with any thoughts that you may have that you, that we as Canadians can be more alert to as we move forward toward and beyond the next election.

KPL: Well, I think that Canada should certainly consider its membership of NATO because, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and it is a military alliance and in recent years it has been involved in military conflicts in the regions of the Middle East which are having really nothing to do with the North Atlantic. And I don’t think that…. I think we have to, we should reconsider, and the reasons why it might be difficult for the Canadian government to take a position against nuclear weapons is precisely because North America is so closely integrated with the US, and the US would never never agree to that request. I think I will just leave it there.

GR: Professor Polanyi Levitt I think we’ve come to the end, and I wanted to know how, I feel extremely privileged to have this conversation with you, and I wish you all the best in your coming years.

KPL: That is very kind of you, thank you. And I really like the work that Global Research is doing. I disagree with them about some things, about global warming, but that’s it, a minor disagreement, in my opinion. And one other thing. In order as a Canadian I can again feel proud of, to be a national of this country, our government has to take some action, whether it’s in the area of international diplomacy or some other area, because I do not see it as accountable to be only ashamed of the Government of Canada for what they have done relationship with the Indigenous people. I would like to feel good about the country, which has a lot of good things going for it.

GR: Yeah, that’s a good way to close going into Canada Day. So that’s…Well, you take care and again thank you so much for this interview.

KPL: Thank you!

Kari Polanyi Levitt (born June 14, 1923 in Vienna,  is a Professor (Emerita) of Economics at McGill University, Montreal. 

Kari is an outstanding economist and geopolitical analysis, committed to economic sovereignty and the alleviation of poverty and social inequalities Worldwide. She is the daughter of Karl Polanyi.

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

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***

In a major setback to jailed WikiLeaks founder and journalist, Julian Assange, a UK High Court judge dismissed his appeal against his extradition to the US. In a 3-page decision handed down on Tuesday, June 6, Justice Jonathan Swift of the High Court of Justice in London rejected all eight grounds of appeal against the extradition order that was sanctioned by the UK Home Office around a year ago.

Despite the setback, Assange is expected to file a renewed application challenging Justice Swift’s decision. According to a statement released by lawyer and Assange’s wife Stella, the defense will be preparing a renewed application for appeal to be filed by Tuesday, June 13, challenging the decision before two different High Court judges in a public hearing. This appeal attempt is the last legal recourse for Assange who has been fighting against the US extradition attempt for over three years.

In her statement announcing the decision to appeal, Stella Assange said that they “remain optimistic that we will prevail and that Julian will not be extradited to the United States where he faces charges that could result in him spending the rest of his life in a maximum security prison for publishing true information that revealed war crimes committed by the U.S. government.”

Expressing the disappointment of the family and supporters, Assange’s father John Shipton said, “Julian’s family watch on, horrified, and all fair-minded people the world over watch with profound disquiet and alarm.” He added that his son’s grounds for appeal were “clear, firm and just.”

Years-long legal ordeal

The US extradition plea was initially rejected by a district court judge in London in January 2021 on grounds of Assange’s mental health and the risk of suicide and other bodily harm if he was extradited.

This decision was overturned by the High Court in London in December that year based on diplomatic assurances given by the US after the district court’s decision. In June 2022, the UK Home Office sanctioned the extradition based on the High Court’s decision.

Assange, who was arrested and dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in April 2019, has spent four years without a charge or conviction throughout this litigation period in a high-security prison in Belmarsh in the outskirts of London.

Rights groups condemn verdict

The decision by Justice Swift has raised alarm among press freedom advocates around the world, with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) pointing out that Assange is now “dangerously close” to extradition.

“It is absurd that a single judge can issue a three-page decision that could land Julian Assange in prison for the rest of his life and permanently impact the climate for journalism around the world,” said Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns at RSF, in a statement released in response to the judge’s decision.

If extradited, Assange will stand trial before a federal grand jury in the US on 18 charges that carry a combined prison sentence of 175 years. Of the 18 charges leveled against him, 17 are under the infamous US Espionage Act. The indictment against him, initiated under the Donald Trump administration and continued under President Joe Biden, is the first time ever a publisher has been charged under the Act.

“The historical weight of what happens next cannot be overstated; it is time to put a stop to this relentless targeting of Assange and act instead to protect journalism and press freedom,” Vincent added.

In their statement, the RSF reiterated their demand to President Biden to drop the charges against Assange, close the case against him, and allow for his release without further delay.

In the dismissed appeal, Assange’s defense team had raised several issues with the extradition sanctioned by former UK Home Secretary Priti Patel during the Boris Johnson-led Conservative government. Among the key grounds raised by the defense was that if extradited, Assange will face a politically-motivated trial in the US, in violation of the extradition treaty between the two countries.

The defense also raised matters like Assange’s deteriorating mental and physical health; the fact that he was being prosecuted for publishing what falls within the ambit of protected speech; unsafe prison conditions in the US; and also how the US has misrepresented several facts throughout the course of the extradition trial.

In the meanwhile, calls have been raised from Assange’s home country of Australia demanding the intervention of the Labor-led government of Anthony Albanese. Andrew Wilkie, an independent federal legislator who leads the Parliamentary Julian Assange group, has reiterated his stand against the extradition.

“Mr Assange is an Australian citizen and journalist, whose matter should not even be before a court, as the case has always been an intensely political matter,” Wilkie said in a statement responding to Justice Swift’s decision. “Enough is enough. The US must drop the extradition and discontinue these charges immediately. And the Australian Government must continue to speak up and push for an immediate end to this matter as Julian’s life is at stake.”

Similarly, Green Party senator Peter Whish-Wilson tweeted that the Australian prime minister “must pick up the phone today to call Joe Biden and intervene. Julian Assange must not be extradited to the US where press freedoms will die the minute they seal the door of his high-security gaol cell.”

Progressives and Assange supporters in Australia are also mobilizing to protest against the looming extradition. In Melbourne, a rally has been organized outside the UK consulate, with Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, expected to address the protesters. Similar such mobilizations are expected in different parts of the country.

While the Albanese government has repeatedly expressed concerns about Assange’s case and has claimed that they are making use of diplomatic channels to secure his release, the closed-door nature of these diplomatic negotiations have raised concerns from progressives regarding the government’s dedication on the matter.

*

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***

Dr. Faisal Mekdad, Syria’s Foreign Minister, is in Saudi Arabia for meetings held on June 11 and 12, which marks his third visit to the Kingdom in the last three months. In April, he made his initial visit and accompanied President Assad to Jeddah to attend the Council of the League of Arab States summit on May 19.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MbS, promoted the aid and recovery of Syria through his position as host of the Arab League Summit in May. MbS asked for an Arab decision to bring Syria back to the brotherly league of Arab nations, while the US voiced condemnation of the plan.

“This is a strong signal to America that ‘we’re reshaping and redrawing our relations without you’,” said Abdulaziz Al-Sager, Chairman of the Gulf Research Centre.

MbS took on his leadership role at the helm of the biggest oil exporter in the world while putting the interests of his nation first, and not bowing to pressure from the US Biden administration, who have used undiplomatic language to describe MbS and voiced open threats directed against Saudi Arabia.

The US demanded that Saudi Arabia participate in the Obama-Biden war on Syria for regime change beginning in 2011. The American plan utilized terrorists who raped, maimed, and murdered across Syria while being financed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The project failed, and the Syrian people fought back against the Muslim Brotherhood and Radical Islam to remain the only secular country in the Middle East.

In April, Mekdad and Prince Farhan, the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, discussed a comprehensive political settlement to the Syrian crisis and restoring Syria’s role in the Arab world. 

Syria announced that Saudi Arabia has agreed to resume direct flights between Syria and Saudi airports and they are expected to begin at the end of June. A Saudi technical team arrived on May 28 in Syria to prepare for the reopening of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Damascus.

US Saudi relations

When US President Biden visited MbS last July, he came to demand an increase in oil production to lower the gas prices in the US, but he left empty-handed. On June 8, US Secretary of State Blinken sat with MbS and during the visit MbS announced he will cut oil production in July, raising the price of gasoline to US consumers.

Blinken has voiced the US condemnation of allowing Syria to return to the Arab League, and the US is actively planning revenge on the Kingdom and any other Arab countries who dare to participate in rebuilding the homes, infrastructure, and livelihood of the Syrian people. 

Instead of looking for a peaceful solution for the US-engineered conflict in Syria, Blinken is focused solely on coercing Saudi Arabia into normalization with Israel through the Abraham Accords, which according to Blinken is an American “priority”. 

Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan seemed unmoved by Blinken’s urging, and said that normalization with Israel would have “limited benefits” without “finding a pathway to peace for the Palestinian people.”

MbS has repeatedly called for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and Gaza, which would meet existing UN resolutions. However, such a move is impossible in Israel under the current Jewish extremist regime of Benjamin Netanyahu.  

MbS is in the midst of his Vision 2023 which calls for peace and prosperity for the Middle East. Blinken has no vision for the Middle East, and his priority is to maintain the status quo in Palestine by keeping 6 million people under a brutal military dictatorship. Blinken is oblivious to the suffering of the Syrian people and their neighbors the Palestinians.

During Blinken’s visit to Riyadh, he co-hosted a meeting of foreign ministers from the global coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) and pledged nearly $150 million for efforts in Syria and Iraq. The coalition includes more than 80 countries and new funding for the program amounts to more than $600 million.  The money will flow through the US partner in Syria, the Kurdish communist administration in the northeast.

Mohammed bin Salman paves a new road

MbS isn’t to blame for the destruction in Syria, which was before his time. His vision 2030 is a plan for regional peace and prosperity, including Syria. He has emerged as a global player untethered from Washington. He has started massive economic and social reforms which span from tourism, sports, entertainment, education, commerce, and investments.

Repairing relations with neighbors in Yemen, Qatar, Iran, and Syria are cornerstones in his diplomatic efforts. Regardless of criticism from Washington, MbS insists on working toward a political solution in Syria that will be Arab-driven and seeks to use UN resolution 2254 as a roadmap. 

MbS held a phone call with Russian President Putin on Wednesday, and Venezuelan President Maduro visited MbS before Blinken arrived. The Crown Prince seeks cooperation and diplomacy with varied leaders and is not bound by Oval Office dictates, while pursuing Saudi Arabia’s national interests.

US sanctions, sanctions, and more sanctions

The US Congress is considering yet another round of sanctions on Syria, which prevent the Syrian people from rebuilding homes, schools, hospitals, and infrastructure that was destroyed or damaged by the US-sponsored terrorists.

The new bill is called the Syrian Anti-Normalization Act of 2023 and would be an addition to the already paralyzing Caesar Act of 2020. The new bill seeks to impose heavy fines on any country that would dare to help the Syrian people rebuild and recover.  Arab countries normalizing their relations with Syria would be prevented from helping in the rebuilding.

Experts point to the fact that sanctions only hurt the Syrian people and impede their recovery and prevent jobs and livelihoods from recovering. The law provides for financial penalties to be imposed any time a country made an investment, grant, contract, or donation worth more than $50,000 to parts of Syria held by Damascus, which hold the largest territory and includes all of the major cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, and Latakia. The US protects terrorists in Idlib, and the communist-administrated region in the northeast, but none of those areas have a large city.  The largest group of Syrian civilians live under the administration of the central government seated in Damascus.

Syria analyst Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma believes sanctions on Damascus will not bring justice to the Syrian people, but further impoverish them. Due to US sanctions, medical equipment sits idle in hospitals because sanctions prevent ordering replacement parts. Occasionally, chemotherapy drugs are unavailable in Syria because foreign manufacturers are afraid to face penalties for sending products to Damascus. Building houses in Syria starts with wooden frame, and Syria does not have hardwood forests, so wood must be imported. However, countries such as Canada, Sweden, and Norway will not sell wood to Syrian merchants for fear of penalties. 

EU summit

‘Supporting the future of Syria and the region’ will be held in Brussels on June 14 and 15. The meeting does not address or consider the needs of 15 million Syrians living under the central government, but exclusively focuses resources on the civilians held hostage by terrorists in Idlib, and the needs of foreign countries who are hosting Syrian refugees, such as Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon.

This meeting is the main pledging event of 2023 for donations for Syrians who do not live under the Damascus administration. However, the vast majority of Syrians will never be helped or see any improvement in their lives by this meeting. This demonstrates the priorities of the Western democracies: to support the terrorist leaders who hold 3 million in Idlib, and to make sure that Syrian refugees living in tents in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon are kept from starvation, but held as pawns which will prevent their return home to Syria.

The US and its allies in the European Union are not considering the lives of 15 million people living in Syria. They created the war, supported the terrorists who destroyed the country and divided it, but they refuse to participate in the recovery process for the Syrian people. 

*

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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***

Ken Klippenstein, an investigative journalist at The Intercept, has exposed how the Pentagon very quietly launched a new internal division, dubbed the “Influence and Perception Management Office” (IPMO), in March.

Its existence is not strictly secret, although there has been no official announcement of its launch, let alone an explanation from Department of Defense (DoD) officials as to its raison d’être or modus operandi. Its budget likewise remains a mystery but purportedly runs into the “multimillions.”

Pentagon financial documents from 2022 offer a laconic and largely impenetrable description of IPMO. The Office, it is said, “will serve as the senior advisor” to Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security, Ronald S. Moultrie, on “strategic and operational influence and perception management (reveal and conceal) matters”:

It will develop broad thematic influence guidance focused on key adversaries; promulgate competitive influence strategies focused on specific defense issues, which direct subordinate planning efforts for the conduct of influence-related activities; and fill existing gaps in policy, oversight, governance, and integration related to influence and perception management matters. [IPMO]…provides necessary support to National Defense Strategy…to address the current strategic environment of great power competition.”

Nonetheless, references to “reveal and conceal” and “influence and perception management” are tantalizing in the extreme. So too, is IPMO’s position within the U.S. national security structure and the Office’s acting director being intimately tied to the Pentagon’s spookiest operations.

Despite its low-key rollout, IPMO looks set to be a hugely influential new DoD agency in the future, waging ceaseless information warfare at home and abroad. What makes the new venture all the more sinister is that such capabilities are nothing new; the Pentagon has managed multiple similar, if not identical, operations in the past and continues to do so, despite significant controversy and public backlash.

Indeed, the DoD’s official dictionary has a dedicated definition of “perception management”, linking the practice to “psychological operations,” which are defined as actions intended to influence the “emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior” of target governments, organizations, groups, and individuals:

Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all levels to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator’s objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.”

This, of course, begs the question of why a new incarnation of what came before and never went away is now being inaugurated by the U.S. defense establishment. As we shall see, no reassuring answers are forthcoming.

“Signature Reduction”

Despite the lack of a public paper trail, a memo outlining IPMO’s modus operandi was acquired by Klippenstein. It offers a hypothetical scenario in which the Pentagon “wants to influence Country A’s leaders to stop purchasing a weapon system from Country B” because it believes the sale “might jeopardize DoD’s military advantage, in some way, if the U.S. ever had to engage in armed conflict with Country A.”

“Assuming IPMO has worked to establish the desired behavior change, how might key influencers be identified that have sway over these leaders’ thought processes, beliefs, motives, reasoning, etc. (including ascertaining their typical modes and methods of communication)?” the memo reads. “Thereafter, assuming an influence strategy is developed, how might the DIE [Defense Intelligence Estimate] or IC [Intelligence Community] determine if DoD’s influence activities are working (aside from waiting and watching hopefully that Country A eventually stops purchasing the weapons system in question from Country B)?”

The document was signed by IPMO director James Holly, previously Director of Special Programs for the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). During this time, he ran espionage operations for an unnamed paramilitary organization in Iraq and was an intelligence officer for a Combined Joint Task Force in Afghanistan.

Precisely what these roles entailed is not certain. However, that he made the leap from JSOC to IPMO is striking, given the Command is the nucleus of all the Pentagon’s spookiest, most sensitive operations. The division very rarely makes the news, but when it does, the stories are invariably remarkable and disturbing. For example, in May 2021, Newsweek exposed how the Command operates “the largest undercover force the world has ever known” under a program named “Signature Reduction.” In all, 60,000 people – “more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA” – are part of this secret army, “many working under masked identities and in low profile.” Working both at home and overseas, its operatives carry out covert assignments using civilian cover “in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies.”

“Dozens of little-known and secret government organizations support the program, doling out classified contracts and overseeing publicly unacknowledged operations. Altogether, the companies pull in over $900 million annually to service the clandestine force, doing everything from creating false documentation and paying the bills and taxes of individuals operating under assumed names to manufacturing disguises and other devices to thwart detection and identification, to building invisible devices to photograph and listen in on activity in the most remote corners of the Middle East and Africa.”

A series of photos from the Signature Reduction program provided to Newsweek by William Arkin | Editing by MintPress News

This cloak-and-dagger militia moves entirely in the shadows and may contravene U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, basic standards of accountability, and various codes of military conduct. Chief among the latter is the longstanding principle that the military does not conduct covert operations on American soil. Yet, JSOC has circumvented this restriction ever since its founding in December 1980, operating under a veil of almost total official secrecy, all the while often in tandem with the CIA.

In June 1984, The New York Times outlined how JSOC effectively acted as a law unto itself, quickly evolving far beyond its original remit to “collect intelligence to plan for special military operations” into “a nighttime operation, with its own weapons procurement and research, as well as communications.”

Two months earlier, a senior Pentagon official told elected lawmakers that the Command was not “an agency of interest to the intelligence oversight committee” and refused to answer questions about its activities.

Nonetheless, the Times offered a brief overview of what was known about JSOC’s activities over the prior four years. In addition to assisting the illegal invasion of Grenada, the Command had provided extensive assistance to CIA cloak-and-dagger operations in Central America. In particular, it supported the fascist Contras in Nicaragua, helping the Agency sidestep Congressional restrictions on its brutal efforts to topple the elected left-wing Sandinista government.

“Prohibited, Covert Propaganda”

JSOC’s involvement in that CIA dirty war is particularly notable given this period gave rise to the very concept of “perception management” as a legitimate form of psychological warfare to be waged by the CIA, Pentagon, and other government agencies against the domestic population.

The overriding objective of this Reagan administration push was to falsely paint the murderous Contras as heroic freedom fighters. In reality, the Contras, with CIA direction, funding and arms, deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, slaughtered priests, nuns, labor activists, students, peasants and indigenous citizens.

In turn, the social democratic Sandinistas were transformed into viciously repressive autocrats, ruling Nicaragua with an iron fist and transforming their country into a “beachhead” for Soviet invasion of the U.S. Similar propaganda messaging has been employed in every American proxy war since, from Yugoslavia to Ukraine. All this activity, the full extent of which may never be known, represented egregious violations of the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, which places strict restrictions on the domestic dissemination of state propaganda.

Take, for instance, the Office of Public Diplomacy, a dedicated pro-Contra propaganda unit run by Reagan’s top National Security Council aide Oliver North, who was simultaneously working with cocaine traffickers to arm the Nicaraguan “rebels.” The unit was found to have broken a welter of U.S. laws by separate official investigations into the Iran-Contra scandal. The U.S. Comptroller General, for example, concluded the Office engaged in “prohibited, covert propaganda…beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities.”

An ad placed by the Young Republicans under the cognizance of the Office of Public Diplomacy, March 20, 1985. Credit | NSA Archive

Yet, despite such damning findings, the “perception management” techniques honed by these assorted units, and many of the formal and informal structures contemporaneously created to disseminate CIA, Pentagon, and White House propaganda, did not go anywhere.

Two decades later, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld’s leadership struck upon the bright idea of creating the Office of Strategic Influence to deliberately plant “misleading” black propaganda in the foreign media, which would then be picked up by the U.S. media.

In a perverse twist, precisely this strategy was used by British foreign intelligence service MI6 as far back as 1998 to lay the foundationsfor the Iraq War. Under “Operation Mass Appeal”, the agency circulated dubious or even fabricated “intelligence” to editors and journalists on its payroll the world over, influencing the output of leading international news outlets. The spooks sought to “shape public opinion about Iraq and the threat posed by WMD.”

The Office of Strategic Influence operated in secret from its launch in October 2001 until February of the next year, when the mainstream media caught wind of its existence. Due to intense outcry, just a week later, it was officially shuttered at Rumsfeld’s request. Yet, at a November 2002 press conference, the defense secretary made unguarded remarks starkly indicating it very much lived on thereafter:

The Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And ‘oh my goodness gracious isn’t that terrible, Henny Penny, the sky is going to fall.’ I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing, fine, I’ll give you the corpse. There’s the name. You can have the name, but I’m gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done. And I have.”

Of World War III and UFOs

The Klippenstein-secured memo suggests IPMO is involved in identical propaganda operations to those described here. It notes the Office “is tasked with the development of broad thematic messaging guidance and specific strategies for the execution of DoD activities designed to influence foreign defense-related decision-makers to behave in a manner beneficial to U.S. interests.”

Given that Washington is again heavily engaged in a Nicaragua-style proxy war in Ukraine, an accompanying propaganda unit would be of enormous use. After all, despite the Western media’s best efforts to whitewash the issue, Nazi sympathies of soldiers and military units remain stubbornly flagrant.

The phenomenon of Swastika tattoo and military patch-toting fighters is so profuse that, earlier this month, the New York Times was prompted to publish an article bemoaning how such National Socialist iconography leaves “diplomats, Western journalists and advocacy groups in a difficult position.” On the one hand, “calling attention to the iconography risks playing into Russian propaganda,” on the other, “saying nothing allows it to spread.” The wider question of why so many Ukrainian nationalists eagerly elect to exhibit such emblems was unexplored.

Fittingly too, in December 2022, independent journalist Jack Murphy published an investigation alleging the CIA was “using a European NATO ally’s spy service to conduct a covert sabotage campaign inside Russia under the agency’s direction,” in which JSOC was a key player. The Command purportedly supports these operations “with targeting information from intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, such as drones, that can see and hear deep into Russia.”

Further clues as to the sudden push to formally codify what the Pentagon has been doing with total impunity for so long may likewise be provided by the online records of private security company Sancorp Consulting, which offers “counter-insider threat solutions, artificial intelligence and machine learning, IT solutions, identity and data activities, intelligence and counterintelligence solutions” to private sector and state clients.

An index of Sancorp’s “past performance” for customers lists providing “specialized and sensitive administrative, security, policy, operations, and analytic support services” to none other than IPMO. Since-deleted records from the company’s website indicate it also counts the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) as a client.

This DoD division is charged with investigating UFOs and other unexplained aerial phenomena. The Pentagon has of late exhibited a pronounced interest in flying saucers, just as it did during the Cold War. Then, the purpose was to bamboozle and bedevil the public while providing cover for experimental U.S. military innovations, aircraft, and testing. There is little cause to believe the DoD’s motives have changed in the present day.

Declassified documents show that for years, the Navy Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, known as N2N6, currently exercises complete control over the dissemination of UFO-related information to American audiences on behalf of the Pentagon. This extends to directing Pentagon divisions to respond to media inquiries and FOIA requests from journalists and the public and how.

Perhaps the Pentagon has decided to bring these responsibilities in-house. Coincidentally, on June 6, an Air Force veteran and former member of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency went public with claims that extraterrestrial craft are routinely recovered in secret by the U.S. government.

This shock exposé couldn’t have come at a better time. As the New Cold War ramps up, and ever-more threatening tech is inevitably road-tested in the skies above Area 51 and other shadowy military installations in the U.S. and elsewhere, it is necessary to misdirect public attention away from the known to the unknown and unknowable. Meanwhile, U.S. military chiefs regularly and openly talk about waging war on China in the very near future – which makes constructing a dedicated propaganda office in advance all the more expedient.

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

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***

The White House is developing plans to expand the number of permanent members to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the Washington Post reported on Monday. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield is spearheading the effort to enlarge the body by adding six new members. 

The UNSC is the organization’s most powerful body, wielding the power to impose binding resolutions. Known collectively as the “P5,“ the US, UK, France, China and Russia are currently permanent members on the council, which includes a total of ten rotating members. In September, President Joe Biden said the body should be expanded to include countries from Latin America and Africa. 

Under the proposal the Biden administration is developing, six new permanent members will be added to the UNSC. The White House has not put forward its plan, leaving it unclear what countries may be added to the council. Washington has previously advocated for Germany, Japan and India to receive spots on the UNSC. 

However, the new members will not have the veto power held by the core five members. UNSC rules allow for any of the five permanent members to kill any resolution unilaterally.  

Ukraine has called for Moscow to be removed from the Security Council, citing its ongoing invasion.

“Russia has turned the seat of a permanent member into a throne of impunity,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote in an op-ed published at the Hill. “Russia never legally acquired its status as a permanent UN Security Council member and must lose its seat in this esteemed chamber.”

Reforming the UNSC is expected to meet stiff resistance. An unnamed American official told the Post that Thomas-Greenfield is trying to “forge some consensus on a sensible, credible proposal that could actually succeed and achieve reform.” 

Barbara Woodward, the UK ambassador to the UN, argued that the proposed changes to the council could be used against Russia.

“We must respond to Russia’s egregious use of the veto to protect itself, and update the council’s membership to give a wider, more diverse range of countries a voice,” she said.

Some officials disagree and believe that such reforms could damage Western power.

“Any reform of the Security Council may well reduce the weight of the West. So this is a reality,” a UN  diplomat told the Post. “And the question is, are we really pushing for that now? Is it just nice rhetoric that we want to do this, or are we really serious when we say we want to do it now?”

The proposal is also likely to face opposition from states whose rivals may become permanent council members, risking major regional power shifts. For example, Pakistan objects to the expansion, anticipating that its longtime adversary India will get a seat.

“This is undemocratic; it is unequal; it is contrary to the principle of sovereign equality of states which is part of the [UN] charter,” said Munir Akram, Islamabad’s UN ambassador.

Any change to the UNSC would need to clear a series of hurdles, including formal approval from 128 states on the UN General Assembly as well as the sitting UN Security Council members. For the US, that means ratification by the Senate. 

Passing the legislature seems unlikely as a group of Republican senators oppose Russia remaining on the UNSC. After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, a large group of Republican Senators introduced a resolution urging the Biden administration to remove Moscow from the body. 

“It’s high time to remove Russia from the United Nations Security Council if for no other reason than the unwarranted and violent invasion of Ukraine,” Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said, adding, “Vladimir Putin’s thuggery and aggression should have consequences at every level.” 

The Kremlin has vetoed a series of measures brought before the UNSC that condemned the Russian war in Ukraine. Washington has previously used the body to pass measures for cover for wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen. 

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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 U.S. military did not properly maintain accountability for thousands of pieces of equipment transferred to the government of Ukraine as part of the former’s security assistance program in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, according to a new government watchdog report.

The assessment from the Defense Department’s inspector general published on Monday states that military personnel responsible for rapidly transferring material to Ukraine through an aerial port in Jasionka, Poland, “did not fully implement their standard operating procedures to account for defense items and could not confirm the quantities of defense items received against the quantity of items shipped” in three of five shipments examined by defense officials.

The inconsistent implementation of standard gear accountability procedures occurred primarily due to U.S. military personnel failing to fill out the necessary paperwork for defense material transferred to Ukrainian forces, according to the assessment, a problem compounded by a lack of logistics training for inexperienced personnel on the part of commanders.

In one case, a shipment containing “thousands of small arms, night vision optic devices, and various types of cold weather gear” turned up in Jasionka without a manifest, forcing U.S. military personnel to crack open shipping crates and count items by hand with no real frame of reference for how many items they were supposed to receive in the first place.

As a result of these issues, there was an “increased risk” that the U.S. military is providing “more or less equipment” than authorized and “may not be able to verify” the specific number of defense materials sent to Ukraine, according to the DOD IG report, which emphasized that “although we identified gaps in accountability that increase risk, we did not find any evidence of loss, theft, or diversion of defense items being provided to Ukraine during the course of our evaluation.”

The DoD IG report provides the first major snapshot of how the Pentagon has managed the approximately $31.7 billion in “defense items” transferred to the Ukrainian government since the start of Russia’s invasion. An October 2022 audit of the DoD’s broader accountability of equipment provided to Ukraine remains classified and subject to a Freedom of Information Act request. 

Concerns over accountability for U.S. military gear funneled into Ukraine — already pronounced following the seizure of military assistance provided to the now-defunct U.S.-backed government of Afghanistan by the Taliban — have dogged the U.S. military aid effort since the outset of Russia’s invasion despite repeated assurances from the State Department and Pentagon that the U.S. government takes oversight seriously.

Indeed, a September 2022 diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv reported by Politico described ongoing challenges facing U.S. military officials tasked with maintaining consistent oversight in an active war zone, so far that “kinetic activity and active combat between Ukrainian and Russian forces create an environment in which standard verification measures are sometimes impractical or impossible,” per the cable.

The Russian government has seized upon Western anxieties surrounding large defense material transfers to argue that a significant number of Western-supplied weapons “have already entered, or will soon enter, the black market” across Europe, as a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry claimed in October 2022. Some pro-Russian media cite a since-retracted CBS News report that claimed just 30% of weapons sent to Ukraine actually made it to the front lines.

While Ukrainian and European authorities have dismissed Russia’s claims as propaganda, U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation as recently as this past February to establish a special inspector general explicitly to “ensure that any funding sent to Ukraine for military, economy, and humanitarian aid receives independent and objective oversight and audits,” As House Armed Services Committee vice chairman Rep. Rob Wittman said in a statement at the time. 

“Efforts by the United States and our European allies throughout the last year have clearly demonstrated to Putin his actions will not go without consequences, and I believe we should continue to take strong actions to hold Putin responsible,” Wittman said. “At the same time, we owe Americans peace of mind that their hardworking taxpayer dollars are being used in an efficient manner that prioritizes American interests.”

When asked about the effort, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder emphasized that the U.S. takes accountability for U.S. military assistance to Ukraine “very seriously.”

“We have an active and proactive whole-of-government system, as you’ve highlighted, to prevent the illicit diversion of weapons into Eastern Europe,” Ryder told reporters at the time. “And to this date we have not seen any evidence of any type of widespread diversion of any of the assistance that we’ve provided.”

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Jared Keller is the managing editor of Task & Purpose. His writing has appeared in Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New Republic, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian, and The Washington Post, among other publications. Contact the author here.

Featured image: An airman loads weapons cargo bound for Ukraine onto a C-17 Globemaster III during a security assistance mission at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, Sept. 14, 2022. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Marco A. Gomez).

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***

The Biden administration is expected to provide Ukraine with controversial depleted uranium ammunition for use with US-made Abrams tanks, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Depleted uranium is a byproduct of enriched uranium and is extremely dense, making it a good material for penetrating armor. But depleted uranium is radioactive, and it’s been linked to cancer, birth defects, and environmental damage in areas it’s been used, including Iraq, where US forces frequently fired the toxic munitions and the impact is still being felt today.

According to the Journal report, there has been a debate within the White House over whether or not to provide Ukraine with depleted uranium rounds. Some officials have raised concerns about the criticism the US could face for providing weapons that might cause health and environmental damage.

The Pentagon has been pushing for the US to arm the Abrams tanks it sends to Ukraine with depleted uranium. The US is refurbishing old Abrams tanks that are expected to arrive in Ukraine by the fall.

US-made Bradley Fighting Vehicles can also be armed with depleted uranium, earning them the nickname “tank killer.” Earlier this year, the White House refused to say if it would provide Ukraine with Bradleys armed with the controversial ammunition.

The UK has sent depleted uranium rounds to Ukraine for use with the British-made Challenger 2 tanks. The British took the step despite Russian warnings that it would treat Ukraine’s use of the radioactive ammunition the same as a dirty bomb. Russian President Vladimir Putin said his decision to deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus was a response to the UK arming Ukraine with depleted uranium.

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

Featured image: M1A2 SEP Abrams TUSK demonstrating Mounted Soldier System (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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***

NATO will begin its largest-ever air exercise on Monday. 

The series of aerial manoeuvres being coordinated by Germany is intended to show the strength and unity of the Western military alliance, set against the backdrop of the Ukraine war. 

The “Air Defender 23” exercise will run until 23 June, bringing together some 250 military aircraft from 25 NATO members and partner states, including Japan and Sweden.  

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***

Back in late May, the United States government “finally gave in to pressure” and decided to greenlight the delivery of F-16s to the Kiev regime. As a result, NATO’s European members were given the legal basis to deliver these old fighter jets to the Neo-Nazi junta. The troubled Biden administration has been mulling the move for months, while Ukrainian pilots have been conducting training in several NATO countries, including the US itself. Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued a stark warning to the political West regarding the delivery of nuclear-capable US-made F-16 fighter jets to the Kiev regime.

“We can expect anything from the leaders of the United States and other Western countries whom Washington has brought to its heel. They are proving the truth of this statement now that following the supplies of modern long-range artillery and tanks, they are getting ready, in earnest, to supply the F-16 jets. Some say they will make two squadrons available, others say eight. They are gearing up to continue the escalation of the war against us,” Lavrov stated and then added a stark warning: “We must keep in mind that one version of the F-16 can carry nuclear weapons.”

The Russian Foreign Minister made these comments mere days after troops from NATO took part in incursions into Russia proper, accompanied by escalating drone strikes against targets as far as Moscow itself. However, the mainstream propaganda machine was quick to decry Lavrov’s warnings as supposed “disinformation” and “baseless fearmongering”. The Business Insider claims, citing Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, that “Lavrov’s comments were misinformation, perhaps even disinformation”.

“It’s misinformation because he’s saying things that are not real and using it in a way to, I assume, create public concern or fearmongering about Western intentions,” Kristensen told the Business Insider, adding that

“Lavrov is using the nominal capability of the F-16 aircraft to say that the ones that might be sent to Ukraine could also be converted to nuclear, but that’s not the case. The F-16s that Ukraine is going to get — if and when it gets them — they’re not from the units that have the nuclear mission. There’s no way at all that any nuclear state in the West would give nuclear weapons, or nuclear weapons capability, to Ukraine. It’s completely out of the question.”

The F-16 is designed to be capable of launching nuclear strikes, usually with B61 thermonuclear bombs. The units deployed by NATO members such as Belgium and the Netherlands operate F-16 fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear weapons, specifically as part of their nuclear sharing agreements with the US.

And it’s precisely these countries (in addition to Denmark and others) that still operate F-16s and could very well be the first to send them to the Kiev regime. On the other hand, members such as Poland and Romania are extremely unlikely to do so, as the move would undermine their own security. This further reinforces the idea that the jets destined for the Neo-Nazi junta will be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

This alone makes Lavrov’s concerns all the more factual, rather than “disinformation” and “baseless fearmongering”. Russia has repeatedly warned that the Kiev regime could attempt to acquire nuclear weapons, or at the very least a so-called “dirty bomb”. Such plans were publicly announced by the Neo-Nazi junta’s top officials themselves, including its frontman Volodymyr Zelensky, which is another proof that Moscow’s warnings are not to be dismissed. In addition, Russian intelligence services have found crucial evidence pointing out that the US has been conducting experiments and deploying “sensitive nuclear technologies” in former Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPPs), such as the Zaporozhye NPP, possibly to even attempt a nuclear false flag operation.

Although the US is by far the largest operator of F-16 fighter jets, it still hasn’t announced plans to deliver them to the Neo-Nazi junta forces.

Washington DC’s propaganda machine insists that this is supposedly because “the US is reluctant to do so to avoid escalation with Moscow”. However, this is a moot point, as the belligerent thalassocracy has so far done everything in its power to antagonize Russia through a series of moves that have pushed the world dangerously close to a world-ending thermonuclear conflict. Still, this doesn’t seem to stop the US from going ahead with such plans, at the very least covertly. National Security Council coordinator John Kirby recently admitted this, stating that “the US has been forward-looking about future capabilities and needs”.

According to CNN, back in March, the US hosted two Ukrainian pilots at a military base in Tucson, Arizona, where USAF has been evaluating their skills to assess how much time they would need to learn to fly various American military aircraft, including the F-16. Still, while Washington DC is directly taking part in these efforts, it’s obvious they want to make it look like they’re not, which would explain why the US doesn’t want to send its own jets, but expects its overseas vassals and satellite states to do so.

And while the F-16’s capabilities against Russian jets such as the Su-35S or MiG-31BM are questionable at best (to say nothing of the Su-57), it’s not impossible that Washington DC is trying to give the Kiev regime a nuclear capability to deter a potential Russian counteroffensive that might ensue as the Neo-Nazi junta’s own offensive is failing miserably.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) today launches its annual assessment of the state of armaments, disarmament and international security. A key finding of SIPRI Yearbook 2023 is that the number of operational nuclear weapons started to rise as countries’ long-term force modernization and expansion plans progressed.

Read this press release in Catalan (PDF), French (PDF), Spanish (PDF) or Swedish (PDF).

Click here to download the sample chapter of SIPRI Yearbook 2023 on world nuclear forces.

Nuclear arsenals being fortified around the world

The nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—continue to modernize their nuclear arsenals and several deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2022.

Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12 512 warheads in January 2023, about 9576 were in military stockpiles for potential use—86 more than in January 2022 (see the table below). Of those, an estimated 3844 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2000—nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA—were kept in a state of high operational alert, meaning that they were fitted to missiles or held at airbases hosting nuclear bombers.

Russia and the USA together possess almost 90 per cent of all nuclear weapons. The sizes of their respective nuclear arsenals (i.e. useable warheads) seem to have remained relatively stable in 2022, although transparency regarding nuclear forces declined in both countries in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In addition to their useable nuclear weapons, Russia and the USA each hold more than 1000 warheads previously retired from military service, which they are gradually dismantling.

SIPRI’s estimate of the size of China’s nuclear arsenal increased from 350 warheads in January 2022 to 410 in January 2023, and it is expected to keep growing. Depending on how it decides to structure its forces, China could potentially have at least as many intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as either the USA or Russia by the turn of the decade.

‘China has started a significant expansion of its nuclear arsenal,’ says Hans M. Kristensen, Associate Senior Fellow with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme and Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). ‘It is increasingly difficult to square this trend with China’s declared aim of having only the minimum nuclear forces needed to maintain its national security.’

Although the UK is not thought to have increased its nuclear weapon arsenal in 2022, the warhead stockpile is expected to grow in the future as a result of the British government’s announcement in 2021 that it was raising its limit from 225 to 260 warheads. The government also said it would no longer publicly disclose its quantities of nuclear weapons, deployed warheads or deployed missiles.

In 2022 France continued its programmes to develop a third-generation nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) and a new air-launched cruise missile, as well as to refurbish and upgrade existing systems.

Table: SIPRI © Source: SIPRI Yearbook 2023.

India and Pakistan appear to be expanding their nuclear arsenals, and both countries introduced and continued to develop new types of nuclear delivery system in 2022. While Pakistan remains the main focus of India’s nuclear deterrent, India appears to be placing growing emphasis on longer-range weapons, including those capable of reaching targets across China.

North Korea continues to prioritize its military nuclear programme as a central element of its national security strategy. While North Korea conducted no nuclear test explosions in 2022, it conducted more than 90 tests of missiles. Some of these missiles, which include new ICBMs, may be capable of carrying nuclear warheads. SIPRI estimates that the country has now assembled around 30 warheads and possesses enough fissile material for a total of 50–70 warheads, both significant increases over the estimates for January 2022.

Israel—which does not publicly acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons—is also believed to be modernizing its nuclear arsenal.

‘Most of the nuclear-armed states are hardening their rhetoric about the importance of nuclear weapons, and some are even issuing explicit or implicit threats about potentially using them,’ said Matt Korda, Associate Researcher with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme and Senior Research Associate with the FAS Nuclear Information Project. ‘This elevated nuclear competition has dramatically increased the risk that nuclear weapons might be used in anger for the first time since World War II.’

‘With billion-dollar programmes to modernize, and in some cases expand, nuclear arsenals, the five nuclear weapon states recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty seem to be moving further and further from their commitment to disarmament under the treaty,’ said Wilfred Wan, Director of SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme.

Nuclear diplomacy dealt a further blow by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Nuclear arms control and disarmament diplomacy suffered major setbacks following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the wake of the invasion, the USA suspended its bilateral strategic stability dialogue with Russia. In February 2023 Russia announced it was suspending its participation in the 2010 Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START)—the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty limiting Russian and US strategic nuclear forces. Talks about a follow-on treaty to New START, which expires in 2026, were also suspended. Nevertheless, by SIPRI’s assessment, both countries’ deployed strategic nuclear forces remained within the New START limits as of January 2023.

Iran’s military support to Russian forces in Ukraine and the political situation in Iran also overshadowed talks on reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 agreement meant to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The JCPOA’s revival now seems increasingly unlikely.

The USA and the UK both declined to release information to the public concerning their nuclear forces in 2022, which they had done in previous years.

‘In this period of high geopolitical tension and mistrust, with communication channels between nuclear-armed rivals closed or barely functioning, the risks of miscalculation, misunderstanding or accident are unacceptably high,’ says Dan Smith, SIPRI Director. ‘There is an urgent need to restore nuclear diplomacy and strengthen international controls on nuclear arms.’

Global security and stability in increasing peril

The 54th edition of the SIPRI Yearbook reveals the continuing deterioration of global security over the past year. The impacts of the war in Ukraine are visible in almost every aspect of the issues connected to armaments, disarmament and international security examined in the Yearbook. Nevertheless, it was far from being the only major conflict being waged in 2022, and acute geopolitical tensions, mistrust and division had been growing long before Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.

‘We are drifting into one of the most dangerous periods in human history,’ says Dan Smith, SIPRI Director. ‘It is imperative that the world’s governments find ways to cooperate in order to calm geopolitical tensions, slow arms races and deal with the worsening consequences of environmental breakdown and rising world hunger.’

In addition to the usual detailed coverage of nuclear arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation issues, the SIPRI Yearbook presents data and analysis on developments in world military expenditure, international arms transfers, arms production, multilateral peace operations, armed conflicts and more. Special sections in SIPRI Yearbook 2023 explore the rise of private military and security companies such as the Wagner Group, and the related impact on peace and security; how the war in Ukraine has affected governance of space and cyberspace; the attacks on nuclear power plants during the fighting in Ukraine, and their implications; and the regulation of new technologies such as autonomous weapon systems.

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Author’s Introduction 

The article below entitled Trump, The Manchurian Candidate: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Campaign to Destabilize the Trump Presidency was published on January 4, 2017 prior to the inauguration of president Trump.

In early January 2017, we predicted an unprecedented constitutional crisis characterized by a coordinated and carefully planned operation to destabilize the Trump presidency involving several stages, both before and after his inauguration. 

According to Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, a corrupt political clique within the Democratic Party:

“…began the assault on Donald Trump seven years ago with absurd accusations that Trump teamed up with Russian President Putin to interfere in the US presidential election, throwing the victory to Trump.

This led to the absurd Department of Justice (sic) investigation of “Russiagate” which ended after years of dragging Trump through the mud with a Special Council’s report that the charge had no basis in fact and reflected poorly on the FBI’s honesty and professionalism”. 

Trump was considered by “The Deep State” as a “political impediment” to the conduct of America’s “Long War” as defined by the Project for the New American Century. The unspoken objective was: 

“to get rid of a President who intended to normalize relations with Russia, thus curtailing the budget and power of the military/security complex” (Paul Craig Roberts, emphasis added)

In January 2019, the FBI Russia investigation was quoted by the media as “evidence” that Trump was “wittingly or unwittingly” an agent of the Kremlin.  

Even prior to the inauguration of president Trump, the US media in liaison with US intelligence had launched successive waves of smears directed against President elect Donald Trump.

The objective from the very outset was to discredit president Trump, presenting him as a Manchurian candidate serving the interests of the Kremlin.

RussiaGate initiated in 2016 has now reached its climax with the unscrupulous indictment of a former president of the United States. In the words of Judicial Watch:

“This day will go down in infamy. The unprecedented and corrupt indictment of President Trump is built on sand and is brazen election interference. It is an indictment about nothing. Biden’s further transforming of the FBI and Justice Department into political enforcers in order to jail his leading political opponent could lead to the end of our constitutional republic”

The indictment goes far beyond “election politics”. “The end of our constitutional republic” is an understatement.

What is a stake is the creation of a totalitarian regime as a means to carrying America’s global military and hegemonic agenda directed against all humanity. My January, 4 2017 article concludes with the following sentence:

“Is the tendency (at some future date) towards the adoption of martial law and the suspension of constitutional government?”   (emphasis added)

It is worth noting that war preparations against Russia were already ongoing in 2016 under Obama’s “Operation Atlantic Resolve”. Had Hillary won the November 2016 presidential elections, the US-NATO war agenda would indelibly have gone into “high gear”. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 14, 2023

Author’s Note:

Global Research is based in Canada. As an independent media, GR has no links to U.S. party politics, nor are we supporters of Donald Trump. Our mandate is to reveal the truth. 

 

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Trump, The Manchurian Candidate

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Campaign to Destabilize the Trump Presidency,

Regime Change in America

 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, January 4, 2017

Introduction

Obama has formally accused Moscow of interfering in the US elections on behalf of Donald Trump [December 2016]. These are serious allegations.  Whereas the sanctions are  directed against Russia, the ultimate intent is to undermine the legitimacy of president-elect Donald Trump and his foreign policy stance in relation to Moscow. 

According to the US media, the sanctions against Moscow were intended to “Box in President-elect Donald J. Trump” because  Trump “has consistently cast doubt” that Putin was involved in the alleged hacking of the DNC.  In an earlier report on Kremlin meddling, the NYT  (December 15, 2016) depicted Donald Trump as “…a Useful Idiot”… an American president who doesn’t know he’s being played by a wily foreign power. (emphasis added)

But the accusations against Trump have gone far beyond the “Box in” Narrative. The unspoken truth pertaining to Obama’s Executive Order is that the punishment was intended for Trump rather than Putin.

The objective is not to “Box-In” the president-elect for his “unfamiliarity with the role of intelligence”. Quite the opposite: The strategy is to delegitimize Donald Trump by accusing him of high treason. 

In recent developments, the director of National Intelligence James Clapper has “confirmed” that the alleged Russian cyberattack constitutes an “existential threat to our way of life”.  

“Whether or not that constitutes an act of war [by Russia against the US] I think is a very heavy policy call that I don’t believe the intelligence community should make,” said Clapper.

That “act of war” not by Russia but against Russia seems to be have been endorsed by the outgoing Obama administration: several thousand tanks and US troops are being deployed on Russia’s doorstep as part of Obama’s “Operation Atlantic Resolve” directed against the Russian Federation. 

Are these military deployments  part of Obama’s “act of retribution” against Russia in response to Moscow’s alleged hacking of the US elections? 

Is this a “fast-track” procedure on the part of the outgoing president with the support of US intelligence, intended to create political and social chaos prior to the inception of the Trump administration on January 20th? 

According to Donbass DINA News: “A Massive US military deployment [on Russia’s border] should be ready by January 20 [2016].”  

Political Insanity prevails. 

And insanity could potentially unleash World War III. 

Meanwhile the “real story” behind the hacking op. is not front page news. The mainstream media is not covering it.

Destabilizing the Trump Presidency

The ultimate intent of this campaign led by the Neocons and the Clinton Faction is to destabilize the Trump presidency.

Prior to the November 8 [2016] elections, former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leo Panetta had already intimated that Trump is a threat to National Security. According to The Atlantic,  Trump is a “Modern Manchurian Candidate” serving the interests of the Kremlin.

Vanity Fair November 1 2016

The Atlantic October 8 2016

In the wake of the Grand Electors’ Vote (in favour of Trump) and Obama’s sanctions against Moscow, the accusations of treason directed against Donald Trump have gone into high gear:

“A specter of treason hovers over Donald Trump. He has brought it on himself by dismissing a bipartisan call for an investigation of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee as a “ridiculous” political attack on the legitimacy of his election as president.” (Boston Globe, December 16, emphasis added)

“Liberals are suggesting President-elect Donald Trump is guilty of treason after President Obama announced new sanctions against Russia and Trump praised Vladimir Putin’s response to the sanctions.” (Daily Caller, December 30, 2016, emphasis added)

Coordinated Operation to Destabilize the Trump Presidency? 

Is Trump “in bed with the enemy”?

These are serious accusations allegedly backed up by US intelligence which cannot be brushed away.

Will they just be forgotten once Trump accedes to the White House? Unlikely. They are part of a propaganda campaign on behalf of powerful corporate interests.

What is at stake is tantamount to a carefully coordinated operation to destabilize the Trump presidency, characterized by several distinct components.

The central objective of this project against Trump is to ensure the continuity of the Neocons’ foreign policy agenda geared towards global warfare and Worldwide economic conquest, which has dominated the US political landscape since September 2001.

Let us first review the nature of the Neocons’ foreign policy stance.

Background on The Neocons’ Foreign Policy Agenda

In the wake of 9/11, two major shifts in US foreign policy were devised as part of the 2001 National Security Strategy (NSS).

The first pertained to the “global war on terrorism” against Al Qaeda, the second introduced the preemptive “defensive war” doctrine. The objective was to present “preemptive military action” –meaning war as an act of “self-defense” against two categories of enemies, “rogue States” and “Islamic terrorists”:

“The war against terrorists of global reach is a global enterprise of uncertain duration. …America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.(National Security Strategy, White House, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html

The preemptive war doctrine also included the preemptive use of nuclear weapons on a “first strike” basis (as a means of “self-defence”) against both nuclear and non-nuclear states. This concept of  a preemptive first strike nuclear attack was firmly endorsed by Hillary Clinton in her election campaign.

In turn, the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) launched in the wake of 9/11 has come to play a central role in justifying US-NATO military intervention in the Middle East on “humanitarian grounds” (R2P), including the instatement of so-called “No Fly Zones”. GWOT also constitutes  the cornerstone of media propaganda.

The military and intelligence dimensions of the Neocons’ project are contained in The Project for the New American Century formulated prior to the accession of George W. Bush to the White House. The PNAC also posits a “Revolution in Military Affairs” requiring a massive budget outlay allocated to the development of advanced weapons systems including a new generation of nuclear weapons.

The PNAC initiative was launched by William Kristol and Robert Kagan whose wife Victoria Nuland, played a key role as Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State in engineering the Euro-Maidan coup in Ukraine.

The Neocon project also includes a menu of “regime change”, “color revolutions”, economic sanctions and macro-economic reforms directed against countries which fail to conform to Washington’s demands.

In turn, the globalization of war supports Wall Street’s global economic agenda: The (secretly negotiated) Atlantic and Pacific trade blocks (TPP, TTIP, CETA, TISA), coupled up with IMF- World Bank- WTO “surveillance” are an integral part of this hegemonic project, intimately related to US military and intelligence operations.

“The Deep State” and The Clash of Powerful Corporate Interests

Global capitalism is by no means monolithic. What is at stake are fundamental rivalries within the US establishment marked by the clash between competing corporate factions, each of which is intent upon exerting control over the incoming US presidency. In this regard,  Trump is not entirely in the pocket of the lobby groups. As a member of the establishment, he has his own corporate sponsors and fund raisers. His stated foreign policy agenda including his commitment to revise Washington’s relationship with Moscow does not fully conform with the interests of the defence contractors, which supported Clinton’s candidacy.

There are powerful corporate interests on both sides, which are now clashing. There are also overlapping allegiances and “cross-cutting alliances” within the corporate establishment.  What we are witnessing are  “inter-capitalist rivalries” within the spheres of banking, oil and energy, the military industrial complex, etc.

Is “The Deep State” divided?  These corporate rivalries are also characterized by strategic divisions and clashes within several agencies of the US State apparatus including the intelligence community and the military.  In this regard, the CIA is deeply embedded in the corporate media (CNN, NBC, NYT. WP, etc) which is waging a relentless smear campaign against  Trump and his alleged links to Moscow.

But there is also a  countervailing campaign within the intelligence community against the dominant Neocon faction. In this regard, the Trump team is contemplating a streamlining of the CIA (aka purges). According to a member of the Trump transition team (quoted by the Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2017), 

“The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world [is] becoming completely politicized, … They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact.”

This project would also affect CIA operatives responsible for propaganda embedded within the mainstream media. This would inevitably create profound divisions and conflicts within the US intelligence apparatus, which could potentially backlash on the Trump presidency. it is unlikely that a Trump administration would be able to undermine the inner structures of US intelligence and CIA sponsored media propaganda.

Continuity in US Foreign Policy? 

Crafted in the late 1940s by US State Department official George F. Kennan, the “Truman Doctrine” sets the ideological foundations of America’s post-war hegemonic project.  What these State department documents reveal is continuity in US foreign policy  from “Containment” during the Cold War to today’s post 9/11 doctrine of “Pre-emptive Warfare”.

In this regard, the Neocons’ Project for the New American Century’s blueprint (cited above) for global conquest should be viewed as the culmination of a post-war agenda of military hegemony and global economic domination formulated by the State Department in 1948 at the outset of the Cold War.

Needless to say, successive Democratic and Republican administrations, from Harry Truman to George W. Bush and Barack Obama have been involved in carrying out this hegemonic blueprint for global domination, which the Pentagon  calls the “Long War”.

In this regard, the Neocons have followed in the footsteps of  the “Truman Doctrine”. In the late 1940s, George F. Kennan called for building a dominant Anglo-American alliance based on “good relations between our country and [the] British Empire”.  In today’s world, this alliance largely characterizes the military axis between Washington and London, which plays a dominant role inside NATO to the detriment of Washington’s  (continental) European allies.  It also includes Canada and Australia as key strategic partners.

Of significance, Kennan underscored the importance of preventing the development of continental European powers (e.g. Germany, France, Italy) which could compete with the Anglo-American axis. The objective during the Cold War and its aftermath was to prevent Europe from establishing political as well as economic ties with Russia. In turn, NATO largely dominated by the US has prevented both Germany and France from performing a strategic role in World affairs.

Trump Foreign Policy Realignments

It is highly unlikely that a Trump administration would depart from the mainstay of US foreign policy.

While the Trump team is committed to a socially regressive and right wing agenda on the domestic front, certain foreign policy realignments are possible including a softening of the sanctions against Russia, which could potentially have an impact on the multibillion dollar contracts of the military industrial complex. This in itself would be a significant achievement which could contribute to a period of Detente in East-West relations.

Moreover, while Trump has put together a right wing cabinet of generals, bankers and oil executives,  which largely conforms to the mainstay of the Republican Party, the bi-partisan “entente cordiale” between Democrats and Republicans has been broken. Meanwhile, there are powerful  voices within the GOP who are supportive of the “anti-Trump faction”.

The divisions between these two competing factions are nonetheless significant. With regard to US foreign policy, they largely pertain to US-Russia bilateral relations which have been jeopardized by the Obama administration as well as to the ongoing US military agenda in Syria and Iraq. They also have a bearing on the European Union, which has been affected by Obama’s economic sanctions against Russia.

The sanctions have resulted in a dramatic decline in EU trade and investment with the Russian Federation. In conformity with the “Truman Doctrine” discussed above, US foreign policy under the Neocons, particularly since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, had sought to dismantle the Franco-German alliance and weaken the European Union.

• the media smear campaign against Trump, which has taken on a new slant in the wake of the November 8 [2016] elections (ongoing);
• the engineered anti-Trump protest movement across the US, coordinated with media coverage, petitions, with the objective to disrupt (ongoing);
• The vote recount in three swing states, (No longer relevant)
• The passing of  H.R 6393: Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, which includes a section directed against so-called “pro-Moscow independent media”, in response to Moscow’s alleged interference in the US elections in support of Donald Trump;
• The Electoral College Vote on December 19 [2016] (No longer relevant)
• The Petition launched by California Sen Barbara Boxers on Change.org pertaining to the electoral College vote (No longer relevant)
• The ongoing “Disrupt” Campaign intent upon disrupting the January 20, 2017 Presidential Inauguration Ceremony.
• The possibility of an impeachment procedure is already contemplated during the first year of his mandate.

The Catch Phrase is “Disrupt”. The Objective is “Disrupt”

In turn, the Disruptj20.org website is calling for the disruption of the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, 2017:

#DisruptJ20 is supported by the work of the DC Welcoming Committee, a collective of experienced local activists and out-of-work gravediggers acting with national support. We’re building the framework needed for mass protests to shut down the inauguration of Donald Trump and planning widespread direct actions to make that happen. We’re also providing services like housing, food, and even legal assistance to anyone who wants to join us.

What are the Possible Outcomes?

The propaganda campaign together with the other components of this operation (protest movement, anti-Trump petitions, etc) are used as a means to discredit an elected-president.

This media propaganda campaign against an incoming president is unprecedented in US history. While the MSM routinely criticize politicians in high office including the president of the US, the media narrative in this case is fundamentally different. The incoming president is the target of an organized media smear campaign which will not subside upon Trump’s accession to the White House.

Concurrently, an engineered and coordinated protest movement against Trump has been ongoing since November 8. [2016] In fact it started on the evening of November 8 prior to the announcement of the election results.  The protests have all the appearances of  a “color revolution” style op.

The media also provides a biased coverage of the engineered protest movement. The organizers and recruiters are serving the interests of  powerful corporate lobby groups including the defence contractors. They are not serving the interests of the American people

It is unlikely that these various initiatives including the Disrupt campaign will have a significant bearing on Trump’s inauguration. Our assessment suggests, however, that the president-elect will accede to the White House amidst an aura of controversy.

Impeachment is the “Talking Point”

The propaganda campaign will continue in the wake of Trump’s inauguration intimating accusations of treason. The impeachment of Donald Trump has already been contemplated, prior to his accession to the presidency. In the words of the Huffington Post (January 1, 2017):

Change.org which organizes the engineered protest movement has launched a petition to impeach Trump:

Change.org petition campaign

Boston Globe, December 16, 2016

Huffington Post, December 26, 2016

The American People are the Unspoken Victims: The Need for A Real Mass Movement

The American people are the unspoken victims of this clash between competing capitalist factions.  Both factions are serving the interests of the elites to the detriment of the US electorate.

In turn, meaningful real grassroots opposition to Trump’s right-wing social policy agenda has been “kidnapped” by an engineered protest movement financed and controlled by powerful economic interests. The organizers of this movement are acting on behalf of powerful elite interests. People are misled. What is required in the months ahead is  the development of “real” social movements against the new Trump administration with regard to broad social and economic issues, civil rights, health care, job creation, environmental issues, foreign policy and US led wars, defense expenditure, immigration, etc.

Independent grassroots movements must consequently be divorced from the engineered protests backed and financed (directly or indirectly) by corporate interests. This is no easy task. The funding and “manufacturing of dissent”, the manipulation of social movements, etc. are firmly entrenched.

Ironically, neoliberalism finances activism directed against neoliberalism. “Manufacturing dissent” is  characterized by a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle cooptation of individuals within progressive organizations, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement.

“Co-optation is not limited to buying the favors of politicians. The economic elites –which control major foundations– also oversee the funding of numerous NGOs and civil society organizations, which historically have been involved in the protest movement against the established economic and social order.” (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 20, 2010)

Is America gearing Towards a Deep-seated Constitutional Crisis

At this stage it is difficult to predict what will happen under a Trump administration. What seems abundantly clear, however, is that America is gearing towards a deep-seated political crisis, with major social, economic and geopolitical ramifications.

Is the tendency (at some future date) towards the adoption of martial law and the suspension of constitutional government?

Note: This article relies in part on previous texts written by the author pertaining to the US elections.

Updated on January 5, 2017

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Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding the indictment of former President Donald Trump:

This day will go down in infamy. The unprecedented and corrupt indictment of President Trump is built on sand and is brazen election interference. It is an indictment about nothing. Biden’s further transforming of the FBI and Justice Department into political enforcers in order to jail his leading political opponent could lead to the end of our constitutional republic. The indictment has followed years of prosecutorial misconduct, harassment, and abuse victimizing Trump. Not only is Trump innocent but he is a crime victim. 

Joe Biden wants to distract from his own personal corruption and join the ranks of foreign dictators by trying to jail and turn Trump into a political prisoner. Congress should act immediately and do everything possible under the law to undo this attempt to wreck our republican form of government. Every candidate for public office should denounce this attack on our elections.

Let’s hope the courts recognize this sham indictment for what it is and shut it down. In the meantime, Judicial Watch will continue to hold the Biden administration accountable for its role in the worst corruption scandal in American history – the effort to abuse and destroy President Trump!

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U.S. propaganda is powerful. Responding to an increase in U.S. attacks on China, a delegation was organized by the China / U.S. Solidarity Network, which then visited China from May 11 to May 31.

One focus of the trip was a visit to Xinjiang (pronounced Shinjaang) province to gather video footage and interviews that give a more realistic picture of this vast and quickly modernizing, multiethnic region. Footage for the documentary, currently named “Voice of Xinjiang,” focuses on an area with 4,000 years of history, which is at the center of the ancient Silk Road that today is a major hub in China’s ambitious Belt and Road trade program.

Sara Flounders and Arjae Red with Young Pioneers in Urumqi, May 2023.

The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is a vast arid, mountainous and high-desert region in China’s far northwest. Xinjiang has significant oil and mineral reserves and is currently China’s largest natural gas-producing region. The province — although the largest in geographic area, covering one-sixth of China’s total land mass — is sparsely populated, having only 2% of China’s 1.4 billion population. Of Xinjiang’s population of 25 million, 60% belong to 13 ethnic minorities.

The two major cities we visited — Urumqi and Kashgar — are over 1,000 miles from one another. The surrounding fully mechanized farms were part of our visit.

These cities are part of the “Silk Road,” the great historic trade route that connects Eastern Asia to Central and South Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Xinjiang has vital and strategic international importance. It borders eight countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia, the Republic of Mongolia, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Within China, it shares borders with three autonomous province/regions: Gansu, Qinghai and Tibet.

Source: silkroadtravel.com

Today the population is actively learning new high-tech skills, which play a pivotal role in Xinjiang’s industrial development and its expanded commercial networks of high-speed trains and communications, which reach countries throughout Asia and into Europe and Africa.

Vibrant communities, zero ‘slave labor’

Torrents of U.S. media reports had told us to expect cities under martial law, military forces of occupation and heavily armed police on every corner. The Indigenous population, especially the Uygur people, are described as an impoverished and isolated population, who are allegedly forced into slave labor and doing backbreaking work in the fields or being locked inside concentration camps.

Coming from the New York City area, I expected a police force of at least equal size. The New York City police force is the world’s eighth-largest armed body. On our return, reports of “Stop and Frisk” programs centered on Black and Brown youth dominated the media: “Too many people in New York City are stopped, searched and frisked illegally, federal monitor says.” (abc7ny.com)

What we saw in Xinjiang was vibrant cities — Kashgar and Urumqi — full of tens of thousands of tourists, along with the local population of many nationalities. Huge and colorful marketplaces and bazaars, almost all of them run by Uygur families, stretched for many blocks. Busy subway lines crossed the cities. Everywhere we saw food markets brimming with inexpensive produce. Restaurants, cafes and street food stalls were packed with local people. In the evenings, the streets were full — not silent and ominous.

Our observations are backed up by numerous international studies that are ignored in the Western media.

The illiteracy rate in Xinjiang has fallen to 2.66%, lower than the country’s impressive 2.85% national average. At the time of the 1949 Chinese Revolution, illiteracy was 80% throughout China and more than 90% in Tibet and Xinjiang. Today 97.51% of small children are in preschool programs. Some 98.82% of the youth are enrolled in senior high schools in Xinjiang. (tinyurl.com/bdfyxn29)

A useful study of the area’s health and education achievements, as of 2022, can be found on the website of the South Asia Journal at “Excellent Xinjiang Health, Growth & Education Outcomes Contradict Sinophobic U.S. Lies.” (southasiajournal.net, Jan. 22, 2022)

Drives through the countryside revealed fully mechanized agriculture with tractors, planters, drone sprayers, irrigation canals and acres of plastic-topped greenhouses. We did not see any fields with workers doing hand labor of hoeing, picking and trimming. This is confirmed in numerous reports and many photos. The mechanization of cotton production is at 90%. (tinyurl.com/37s3e7e9)

In Kashgar, the 15th-century Idkah Mosque can house up to 20,000 worshipers. It is only one of the numerous Islamic centers and mosques, which we saw while walking the city streets and in several villages. Tall, slender minarets and dome-shaped roofs seemed to be a part of every block.

The narrative that China is destroying mosques and Islamic centers is continually pushed in the U.S. and Western media. It is regularly countered, however, by representatives from Muslim countries.

Arab and Muslim countries don’t agree with U.S. coverage

On April 27, 2021, the China Global Television Network English-language program “The Point with Liu Xin” interviewed ambassadors from Pakistan, Palestine and Syria, after they had made extensive visits to Xinjiang. They accused Western media of intentionally overlooking “the economic, social and cultural rights that Muslim Uygurs and other ethnic minorities enjoy in the region.”

Palestinian ambassador to China, Fariz Mehdawi said: “You know, the average of mosques, if you have to calculate it all, it’s something like 2,000 inhabitants for one mosque. This ratio, we don’t have it in our country. It’s not available anywhere.” (tinyurl.com/2w5mjdww)

The ambassadors praised the setting up of industries and advanced agriculture, poverty alleviation programs, a focus on education and health, and people-centered policies throughout Xinjiang. Their commentary aligns with what we saw on our visit.

No Arab or Muslim countries have joined in the U.S. rewriting of history and its targeted attacks on China. This is because these countries know that the U.S. government is responsible for 30 years of massively disruptive wars, sanctions, drone attacks and targeted assassinations in a series of Muslim countries, including Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.

They know that more than 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S., the largest prison population in the world, and the history of systematic genocide of Indigenous nations in the U.S. is well-known around the world. The U.S. claim that it is a protector of the Muslim population of China’s Xinjiang province reeks of racist hypocrisy.

Just before the COVID-19 shutdown of world travel in 2019, the Council of Foreign Ministers under the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), with 57 member states one of the largest intergovernmental bodies in the world, had endorsed and commended China’s treatment of its Muslim citizens, following a fact-finding trip to the region. (hongkongfp.com, March 3, 2019)

A week after our trip to Xinjiang, a large delegation from the League of Arab States, including top official representatives from more than 16 Arab/Muslim countries, went to many of the same sites we had visited. Egypt, Bahrain, Algeria, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Iraq, Oman, Comoros, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania and Palestine were represented, along with several departments of the Arab League and the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum.

Their June 1 press statement, released by the Embassy of China in Syria, described the top-level delegation’s findings. The statement said: “Through visits to Urumqi, Kashgar and other places, we saw social harmony, economic development, people of all ethnic groups living in harmony in Xinjiang and accelerated progress in various undertakings. We truly understood the truth about the development of Xinjiang and recognized the true purpose of some international forces to smear and even demonize Xinjiang.”

Charge of ‘genocide’ to justify U.S. sanctions 

The U.S. corporate media, U.S. major think tanks and strategists have labeled this modernization of Xinjiang “genocide.” The schools, universities and vocational training centers are labeled “concentration camps.” Based on these fabricated charges, intense new sanctions have been rammed through the U.S. Congress against all products and goods coming from the Xinjiang region. U.S. sanctions will impact all of China’s cotton exports.

China is the world’s largest exporter of cotton, and before the sanctions legislation, the U.S. was the largest importer of China’s cotton. All commodities using lithium, nickel manganese, beryllium, copper and gold mined in Xinjiang will also be impacted by U.S. sanctions. These include the manufacture of solar panels, electric vehicles made by auto companies and other products from chip makers, electronics and energy firms.

The only support for the wild, unsubstantiated charges used to justify new rounds of U.S. sanctions has come from the G7 imperialist countries and their allies.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, NPR, Radio Free Asia and other U.S.-funded “human rights” and news organizations unanimously claim that the government of China has carried out “massive and systematic abuse” against Muslims living in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Their reports of “forced labor” and religious and cultural suppression are uncritically and widely circulated by the Western corporate media. These reports were preparation for new rounds of harsher sanctions against Chinese exports.

Arjae Red, Sara Flounders and Lee Siu Hin, right, with fruit and nut vender, Nazar, in Urumqi, May 2023. 

First signed by President Joe Biden in December 2021, the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” took effect June 23, 2022. Under this latest anti-China measure, all goods made in Xinjiang province are banned, unless the importer can demonstrate the imports were produced “free of forced labor.” (New York Times, April 8, 2022)

This latest U.S. anti-China propaganda campaign is based on unsubstantiated claims that Uygur people have been forced to take up new jobs in industries recently relocated to Xinjiang.

Welcome changes for farmers and herders

We visited Toltay Farm, outside of Kashgar, the home of an extended family, who had for generations been forced to constantly migrate with their herds of cattle, sheep and camels to find forage in an arid land. They are now able to live stable lives, due to new animal husbandry and farming techniques and government subsidies for new equipment.

They now use the crushed fodder that is extracted from a wide variety of farm products. It is grown on irrigated land, crisscrossed with a network of government-built canals. There are acres of greenhouses topped with plastic. The family proudly showed us their herds, now fattening in pens. With the assistance of technology, local herders can watch over their herds and monitor their health by checking their smart phones. (tinyurl.com/ydmyjzha)

At a local primary school, teachers explained that classes were held in Uygur and Mandarin.

The state farm has been divided into lots, with some families choosing to farm cotton, vegetables or wheat, while others focus on raising animals. We visited families who leased out their land while they trained in construction or as mechanics and equipment operators. Other families were working in new industries but still living in the villages. Very few had left the region, because their lives were now prosperous and stable.

We visited the home of a young veterinarian from a herding family. He described his free education and his care of the small herds belonging to 400 families. At each home we were offered plates of melons, yogurt and fresh bread.

In Urumqi on the side of a road, we visited a Kazak family with a small dairy operation. They buy milk from surrounding families’ herds. The daughter, Sembat, who had just graduated from the agricultural university, ran the store. She insisted we try at least a taste of each of their milk, yogurt and cheese products from horses, camels, goats, sheep and cows. Each taste was sharply different.

Her father described the government program that had opened this new life for them. They invited us into their home, where a traditional yurt, which was erected on its side, was full of beautifully woven pillows and carpets. The yurt is now reserved for family gatherings.

As U.S. imperialism’s hostility to China increases — with military threats, new rounds of sanctions and increasing efforts to inflame hostility against China with wild fabrications — it is crucial to hear first-person reports from people in the region who are proud of the reality of their changed lives.

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Sara Flounders is an American political writer active in progressive and anti-war organizing since the 1960s. She is a Contributing Editor of the Marxist Workers World newspaper as well as a principal leader of the International Action Center. Sara also works actively with the SanctionsKill Campaign and United National Antiwar Coalition. Sara can be reached at [email protected].

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Some 90% of farming is mechanized in Xinjiang, May 2023.

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Maybe you may remember Michael Rubin. He worked with Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), a neocon pro-war outfit set-up in the Pentagon by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The OSP’s objective was to create a series of false pretenses to invade Iraq in 2003.

According to Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer, the Office of Special Plans represented a “subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-option through deceit of a large segment of the Congress.”

Rumsfeld and vice president Dick Cheney used the OSP to publicize “hot garbage” from a cast of dubious characters produced by Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, including “Curveball” (Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, a German intelligence asset pretending to be an Iraqi chemical engineer).

The lies that killed over a million Iraqis were dismissed as “intelligence failures” and swept under the rug. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Rubin, and other neocons were never held responsible for the massive war crimes they perpetuated.

On June 9, Rubin, a “senior fellow” at the American Enterprise Institute (and former “fellow” at the Council on Foreign Relations), penned “Can Biden Deter a Russia Nuclear Attack on Ukraine? Yes, if He Gives Ukraine Tactical Nukes.”

Rubin demands the nazified post-coup government of Ukraine receive nukes. Rubin believes the 1994 Budapest Memorandum (exchanging Soviet-era nukes deployed to Ukraine in exchange for sovereignty) was a monumental error. “The simple fact is this: United States maintains nuclear weapons because they are an effective deterrent against other nuclear states. Ukraine should have the same right,” Rubin writes.

Rubin and his neocon co-conspirators are not interested in “an effective deterrent” in Ukraine; they are interested in destroying the Russian state, the same as they destroyed the Iraqi state. However, Iraq, despite neocon lies, never had nuclear weapons (and the chemical weapons they did possess were supplied US corporations). Russia controls the largest arsenal of nukes in the world.

The non-proliferation mafia might howl with outrage, but the West must gear its nuclear policy toward reality, not wishful thinking or an empty façade of a treaty regimen by which revisionist states no longer abide.

Please read between the lines. According to this entitled “senior fellow,” the neocon “reality” envisions nuclear war as the most effective way to overthrow Putin and dismember the Russian Federation. Rubin, of course, does not call directly for nuclear war. However, his demand that Ukraine be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons will result in precisely that outcome. Imagine Ukraine’s Azov Battalion neo-nazis using nukes to target the Kremlin instead of hit-or-miss drones.

Rubin’s clarion call for nuclear destruction was crossposted on 19FortyFive, a “center-right” website that has produced neocon propaganda subsequently picked up by The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Hill, Reuters, and Voice of America (CIA propaganda), among others. It should be noted that 19FortyFive was until very recently a “regional defense publication.”

With the Ukrainian counter-offensive underway, the threat that Russia might use tactical nuclear weapons is increasingly a likelihood. It would be unfair to blame Kyiv. There is no moral equivalence. Russia invaded Ukraine; not the other way around. So long as Ukraine was on the verge of victory, Putin would arrive at this point of nuclear retaliation.

Nonsense. Zelenskyy’s “counter-offensive” has thus far failed miserably, a fact even the war propaganda media is obliged to admit. Thus, Russia does not need to use nuclear weapons. Rubin, however, is able to make his bogus claim thanks to the fiction of Russian desperation over defeat, a false narrative telegraphed daily by a mendacious and cynically fantasist corporate propaganda media.

As should be expected, Rubin completely ignores the fact Russia went into eastern Ukraine to prevent the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of ethnic Russians. For the neocons, responsible for massive war crimes in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Libya), human life is expendable. Disease, malnutrition, infant mortality, DU-produced cancer—these are the preferred tools for regime change and the destruction of targeted societies resistant to neoliberal serfdom.

Rubin believes the prospect of USG nukes handed over to Russian-hating neo-nazi ultranationalists in Ukraine will save the day and prevent military action “not only against Ukraine but also against Moldova and the Baltic States,” a claim that is utter BS.

Meanwhile, more rational Americans, while small in number, are increasingly concerned about the escalatory behavior of the USG, under the sway of vicious and murderous neocons, which will put an end to not only civilization but all life on planet Earth.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

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***

Paraquat is an herbicide and registered desiccant that has been used on American farms since 1964. A desiccant is a chemical that speeds up the ripening of the crop and dries it out, which facilitates harvesting and allows it to be harvested sooner than were the crop left to dry naturally

Fifty countries have banned paraquat due to its extreme toxicity and adverse effects on health. A single sip is lethal to a human. A considerable body of evidence also links paraquat to Parkinson’s disease

As of mid-March 2023, 2,998 lawsuits filed by farmers with Parkinson’s disease had been consolidated in Illinois federal court. The first bellwether trial is scheduled to begin in October 2023. Class actions have also been filed with state courts in California, Florida, Pennsylvania and Washington. The first state court trial is scheduled to begin in September 2023 in California

The discovery process has unearthed a trove of documents showing Syngenta knew as early as the 1960s that paraquat posed neurological risks and kept the evidence from regulators

Research shows paraquat becomes exponentially more hazardous in combination with plant lectins, as the lectins help shuttle paraquat into your brain, where it induces the neuronal degeneration seen in Parkinson’s disease. Many of the foods treated with paraquat are high-lectin foods, such as peas, beans and potatoes, so strive to buy organic whenever possible

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Paraquat is an herbicide and registered desiccant that has been used on American farms since 1964. A desiccant is a chemical that speeds up the ripening of the crop and dries it out, which facilitates harvesting and allows it to be harvested sooner than were the crop left to dry naturally.

Desiccation is also used to improve profits, as farmers are penalized when the grain contains moisture. The greater the moisture content of the grain at sale, the lower the price they get.

While 50 countries have banned paraquat due to its extreme toxicity and adverse effects on health (a single sip is lethal to a human¹), the chemical remains legal in the U.S., provided farmers receive training on its application. Proper application doesn’t ensure its safety, however, as recent lawsuits by thousands of farmers make clear.

Paraquat Linked to Parkinson’s Disease

A considerable body of evidence² links paraquat to Parkinson’s disease and, as of mid-March 2023, 2,998 lawsuits filed by farmers with Parkinson’s disease had been consolidated in Illinois federal court. The first bellwether trial is scheduled to begin in October 2023.³

The farmers are suing Syngenta, the lead manufacturer, and Chevron, a key distributor, arguing the herbicide caused their disease, and that the manufacturer was aware of this risk and concealed it from the public.

The discovery process has unearthed a trove of documents⁴ showing Syngenta has indeed known that paraquat poses neurological risks and feared the possibility of lawsuits for decades. 

Most of the paraquat lawsuits are taking place in Illinois federal court, but class actions have also been filed with state courts in California, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Washington. The first state court trial is scheduled to begin in September 2023 in California.⁵ As reported by the Miller & Zois law firm, which is handling paraquat cases in all 50 U.S. states:⁶

“Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder of the brain that affects primarily the motor system, the part of the central nervous system that controls movement.

The characteristic symptoms of Parkinson’s disease are its ‘primary’ motor symptoms: resting tremor; bradykinesia (slowness in voluntary movement and reflexes); rigidity; and postural instability. There is currently no cure for Parkinson’s disease.

Existing treatments do not slow or stop their progression; such treatments are capable only of temporarily and partially relieving motor symptoms. These treatments also have unwelcome side effects the longer they are used.

Paraquat is a toxic chemical that is a highly effective plant killer. Unfortunately, the same properties that make paraquat toxic to plant cells also make it highly damaging to human nerve cells and create a substantial risk to anyone who uses it.

Oxidative stress is a major factor in — if not the precipitating cause of — the degeneration and death of dopaminergic neurons which is the primary pathophysiological cause of Parkinson’s disease.

Paraquat is designed to injure and kill plants by creating oxidative stress, which causes or contributes to causing the degeneration and death of plant cells. Similarly, Paraquat injures and kills animals by creating oxidative stress, which causes the degeneration and death of animal cells.

The causal link between Paraquat and Parkinson’s disease is well established. Hundreds of animal studies involving various routes of exposure have found that paraquat creates oxidative stress that results in pathophysiology consistent with that seen in human Parkinson’s disease.

Many epidemiological studies have also found an association between Paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease, including multiple studies finding a two- to five-fold or greater increase in the risk of Parkinson’s disease in populations with occupational exposure to paraquat compared to populations without such exposure.”

Attorneys working on these cases have also highlighted recent research⁷ linking paraquat exposure to end stage renal disease,⁸ so it’s possible that the litigation effort against Syngenta might expand even further.

Syngenta Obfuscated the Evidence

In a June 2, 2023, article⁹ in The Guardian, journalist and author Carey Gillam reviews evidence from the paraquat lawsuits showing Syngenta has known about the chemical’s risk to human health for decades, and went out of its way to bury that evidence.

Some of the research¹⁰ out there suggests lifetime exposure to paraquat raises your risk of Parkinson’s by as much as 250% (odds ratio 2.5), primarily through oxidative stress. In the 2020 book, “Ending Parkinson’s Disease: A Prescription for Action,” four leading neurologists also cite paraquat as a causative factor for the condition.¹¹

Not surprisingly, Syngenta relied on the same strategies developed and perfected by the tobacco industry in years past. While independent researchers kept linking paraquat to Parkinson’s disease, Syngenta sowed doubt by maintaining the evidence was “fragmentary” and “inconclusive,” even though it wasn’t.

Indeed, internal documents obtained during the discovery process reveals Syngenta knew that paraquat accumulated in the human brain and could permanently impair the central nervous system.^12,13,14 As reported by Gillam:¹⁵

“Though it worked to publicize research that supported paraquat safety, Syngenta kept quiet about a series of in-house animal experiments that analyzed paraquat impacts in the brains of mice, according to company records and deposition testimony.

Scientists who study Parkinson’s disease have established that symptoms develop when dopamine-producing neurons in a specific area of the brain called the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) are lost or otherwise degenerate. Without sufficient dopamine production, the brain is not capable of transmitting signals between cells to control movement and balance.

The Syngenta scientist Louise Marks did a series of mouse studies between 2003 and 2007 that confirmed the same type of brain impacts from paraquat exposure that outside researchers had found. She concluded that paraquat injections in the laboratory mice resulted in a ‘statistically significant’ loss of dopamine levels in the substantia nigra pars compacta.”

Jeopardizing Human Health for Profit

The company withheld these and other internal research results from regulators and denounced the validity of independent science showing neurological effects.

Worse, when Syngenta met with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials in 2013 to update the agency on its internal research, the company claimed studies showed paraquat, even at high doses, did NOT reduce dopamine-producing neurons, directly contradicting Marks’ findings.¹⁶

Similarly, in a follow-up presentation to the EPA in 2017,¹⁷ Syngenta claimed that paraquat had “no effect” in the brain and that a “causal relationship between paraquat and Parkinson’s was not supported.”

During a recent deposition, Dana Dixon, lead for product safety operations at Syngenta, was asked point blank if the information presented to the EPA was a lie. Dixon claimed they were “not hiding” Marks’ results, but rather chose to “focus on other studies” that refuted it.¹⁸

Syngenta ‘Swat Team’ Beat Down Negative Reports

At one point, Syngenta also worked behind the scenes to keep a highly regarded scientist involved in the study of Parkinson’s off the EPA’s advisory panel, and internal documents show company officials wanted to make sure the effort could not be traced back to them.¹⁹

As reported by Gillam, Syngenta also had a special “swat team” tasked with the immediate rebuttal of any new reports of adverse effects:²⁰

“… files reveal an array of tactics, including enlisting a prominent UK scientist and other outside researchers who authored scientific literature that did not disclose any involvement with Syngenta …

[M]isleading regulators about the existence of unfavorable research conducted by its own scientists; and engaging lawyers to review and suggest edits for scientific reports in ways that downplayed worrisome findings.

The files also show that Syngenta created what officials called a ‘Swat team’ to be ready to respond to new independent scientific reports that could interfere with Syngenta’s ‘freedom to sell’ paraquat.

The group, also referred to as ‘Paraquat Communications Management Team,’ was to convene ‘immediately on notification’ of the publication of a new study, ‘triage the situation’ and plan a response, including commissioning a ‘scientific critique.’

A key goal was to ‘create an international scientific consensus against the hypothesis that paraquat is a risk factor for Parkinson’s disease,’ the documents state.”

In internal company documents from 2003, Syngenta officials discussed the need for a “coherent strategy across all disciplines focusing on external influencing, that proactively diffuses the potential threats that we face,” including influencing the future work by external researchers.

They also hired external scientists to write papers in support of paraquat without disclosing their relationship with the company. Ghostwriting scientific studies was also a tactic employed by Monsanto, to hide known dangers associated with its Roundup herbicide.

Lawyers Played Central Role in Obfuscation of Evidence

As detailed by Gillam, corporate defense lawyer Jeffrey Wolff also appears to have played a central role in the obfuscation of evidence. He instructed Syngenta scientists on how to take notes and manage communications to ensure the company would be able to claim attorney-client privilege in the case of litigation.

For example, action notes taken were to be labeled “Work Product Doctrine Material Confidential” and carry an attorney-client privilege statement.²¹ Wolff also had an active role in editing various scientific statements, reports and presentations to hide or downplay negative internal findings.

For example, a 2009 internal presentation by a company scientist on paraquat and Parkinson’s disease was reviewed by Wolff, who objected to a statement that said a majority of cases were related to environmental causes. Instead, Wolff suggested the presentation state that the “great majority of PD cases are idiopathic or of unknown cause.”

In another case, Wolff recommended removing the written admission that paraquat caused loss of neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta from a scientific slide show, and instead only mention it verbally during the presentation. As reported by Gillam, the heavy involvement of lawyers is also straight out of the tobacco industry’s dirty playbook:²²

“The involvement of lawyers with the scientists at Syngenta appears similar to highly criticized practices by the tobacco industry in the 1970s and ’80s that downplayed the dangers of smoking, said Thomas McGarity, former EPA legal adviser and co-author of the 2008 book titled ‘Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research.’

‘It looks like the paraquat maker has adopted nearly every strategy we outlined in our book about bending science,’ McGarity said. ‘Science matters. We have to be able to depend on science,’ he said.

‘When it is perverted, when it is manipulated, then we get bad results. And one result is that pesticides that cause terrible things like Parkinson’s remain on the market.’”

Lectins in Food Shuttle Paraquat Into the Brain

Disturbingly, animal research shows paraquat becomes exponentially more hazardous in combination with plant lectins. The cruel irony here is that paraquat is widely used as an herbicide and desiccant on lectin-rich crops in particular, including wheat, soybeans, potatoes, cereal grains and beans.

According to the study²³ in question, published in the journal NPJ Parkinson’s Disease in 2018, plant lectins help shuttle paraquat into your brain, where it does the most damage. As reported by the authors:

“Increasing evidence suggests that environmental neurotoxicants or misfolded α-synuclein generated by such neurotoxicants are transported from the gastrointestinal tract to the central nervous system via the vagus nerve, triggering degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) and causing Parkinson’s disease (PD).

We tested the hypothesis that gastric co-administration of subthreshold doses of lectins and paraquat can recreate the pathology and behavioral manifestations of PD in rats …

These data demonstrate that co-administration of subthreshold doses of paraquat and lectin induces progressive, L-dopa-responsive parkinsonism that is preceded by gastric dysmotility. This novel preclinical model of environmentally triggered PD provides functional support for Braak’s staging hypothesis of idiopathic PD.”

Here again, we see the central role of the substantia nigra pars compacta, the very area of the brain that Syngenta scientist Marks found to be adversely impacted by paraquat. What’s more, the combination of paraquat and lectins could well be the underlying mechanism behind “idiopathic” Parkinson’s, which Wolff wanted listed as the primary “cause.”

Paraquat in Food Supply Puts Your Health at Risk

This also means that farmers aren’t the only ones at risk. Direct exposure is only one way by which paraquat can cause harm. Ingestion through food is the other, and oftentimes, that food is also high in lectins, which multiplies the danger. Reporting on the 2018 findings, Medical News Today wrote:²⁴

“[P]araquat, once in the stomach, causes alpha-synuclein to be misfolded and then helps it travel to the brain. Scientists believe that alpha-synuclein runs along the vagus nerve, which itself runs between the stomach and the brain.

In fact, recent studies have shown that the vagus nerve has a direct connection with the substantia nigra, making it a prime suspect in Parkinson’s disease. This direct link also helps explain why digestive problems often precede the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s by several years.

To investigate, the researchers fed rats small doses of paraquat for 7 days. They also fed them lectins … As expected, they identified Parkinson’s-related changes … As study co-author Prof. Thyagarajan Subramanian explains:

‘We were able to demonstrate that if you have oral paraquat exposure, even at very low levels, and you also consume lectins … then it could potentially trigger the formation of this protein — alpha-synuclein — in the gut. Once it’s formed, it can travel up the vagus nerve and to the part of the brain that triggers the onset of Parkinson’s disease.’

This series of experiments demonstrates how the interplay between two ingested compounds can conspire to create and then transport toxic protein structures from the gut to the brain.”

Take-Home Message

The take-home message here is that foods treated with paraquat may be just as hazardous as direct exposure on a farm. Paraquat is considered one of the “best” drying options for legumes in particular, which are also particularly high in lectins.

As a result, many foods that vegetarians and vegans rely on may pose significant health hazards — and in more ways than one, as lectins are also problematic in and of themselves. In February 2022, I posted an interview with Dr. Steven Gundry, author of “The Plant Paradox,” in which we reviewed the health hazards of lectins.

As explained by Gundry, plant lectins can wreak havoc on your health by attaching to your cell membranes, causing inflammation, damage to your nerves and cell death. Some can also interfere with gene expression and disrupt endocrine function.

So, while lectins can cause severe health problems in and of themselves, by spraying paraquat on lectin-rich crops, those crops are made exponentially more hazardous, as the lectins act as transport vehicles for the toxic herbicide.

You can reduce lectin concentration by pressure cooking, for example, but if you’re starting out with contaminated food, you’re dealing with extra-toxic kinds of lectins. To avoid or at least minimize these hazards, it’s important to buy organic beans, peas, potatoes and other high-lectin foods from a reputable source, ideally a local farmer you can trust.

The other take-home message from all this is that chemical companies are among the least trustworthy sources out there. Like Monsanto before them, Syngenta officials have spent decades hiding the dangers of paraquat, while untold numbers of people got sick, suffered and died.

As noted by Bruce Blumberg, professor of developmental and cell biology at the University of California, Irvine, in response to the revelations about Syngenta’s obfuscation of evidence:²⁵

“It is highly unethical for a company not to reveal data they have that could indicate that their product is more toxic than had been believed. [These companies are] trying to maximize profits and they jeopardize public health, and it shouldn’t be allowed. That is the scandal.”

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Notes

¹ EPA Paraquat Risk Message

² NIH February 11, 2011

^3, 5 Drug Watch April 18, 2023

^4, 13 The New Lede Paraquat Papers Media Library

^6, 8 Lawsuit Information Center Paraquat Lawsuit June 1, 2023

⁷ Environmental Health December 12, 2022; 21 Article number 127

^{9, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22} The Guardian June 2, 2023

¹⁰ Environmental Health Perspectives June 2011; 119(6): 866-872

¹⁴ The New Lede Paraquat Papers October 20, 2022

¹⁷ Paraquat Research Program Update February 6, 2017

^19, 25 The Guardian October 20, 2022

²³ NPJ Parkinsons Disease 2018; 4: 30

²⁴ Medical News Today December 10, 2018

Featured image is from Mercola